The Daughter of the Late Colonel/Question No.

-1

Dysfunctional family

The colonel was a very authoritative figure whose predominant self was so bossy
that he could not behave like a normal father ever. He was like the boss, in Katherine
Mansfield's “The Fly", who used to dominate everyone - even his friends - simply because
he had money. Like him, the colonel could never come out of his military attitude even when
he was at home. The daughters - Constantia and Josephine - were under his dominance when
he was alive and were not allowed to make their own decisions. They were not married and
never thought of having an affair. He was the one to make decisions for them and thus to
control their lives.
When their father died they were not able to take the smallest decisions easily and
kept discussing the issues over and over. At the beginning they were trying to figure out
what mementos to give whom. They could not decide whether they should give the top hat
of their father to the porter. Similarly, about the father's watch they found it hard to
come to a conclusion. They requested Nurse Andrews, who took care of the colonel during
his last days, to stay with them for a few days probably because they felt it weird at first
to not have an authoritative figure at home.
They could not believe at first that their father would never come back. Josephine
said that they should never let the church authority bury their father. If they did that,
father would never forgive them. She felt that they should have taken father's permission
before burying him. Father's angry presence was so heavy on them that they were afraid of
entering his room to clear his room. They were arguing in front of the locked door about
who should enter first and they entered at last probably because Kate was watching them
from the kitchen door. They were feeling extremely cold and afraid in the room. Constantia
kept looking towards the bed as if father was still there and Josephine felt that father
was inside the chest of drawers waiting for them to open it. So, they decided not to open
the drawers and let everything stay as they were for a long time.
Finally, the daughters started taking decisions though very much inconclusive. When
Kate came and asked them whether they wanted “fried or boiled", they were angry with her
for not mentioning it properly that she was talking about fish. Constantia had a long
suspicion on Kate that the latter had a habit of going through her stuff in her absence.
They could not take any steps when father was alive, but that day they discussed privately
about the possibility of letting Kate go. The real sense of freedom they felt when the
barrel-organ player came on the street to play. They had to pay him six pence as soon as
possible to move him from the street so that father would not suffer from the sound. They
did not have to do that anymore. They were happy imagining the sound was celebrating their
father's death and they watched the spot of sunlight (a symbol of clarity and joy) on the
carpet. Constantia wanted to catch it as if to warm her cold hands. The Buddha statue
seemed to be smiling more prominently to her. It was not his usual smile mixing pain and
pleasure. It was as if Buddha knew a secret of Constantia which was probably her happiness
at her father's death.

The Daughter of the Late Colonel/Question No.-1

The Daughter of the Late Colonel/Question No.-1

The sunlight was spreading through the room and making the darkness go. We must
remember when they were inside their father's room they felt so cold and damp that they
decided to pull a blind. So, here sunlight is a symbol of their courage. It was debatable
whether their lives would have been different if their mother were alive. It was not clear
whether their mother would fight for their marriage. There was almost no one to marry
them except probably one time their father's Anglo Indian friends wanted to marry them.
It was alright for a father to quarrel with such friends and not to encourage his daughters
to marry such elderly persons. The strange fact was that he never let them visit any men
except the clergy. That's why they had no idea how to meet a man. Even the people of the
surrounding area were so afraid of the colonel that no one ever followed them or tried to
make contact the way lovers do in romantic stories.
The story ends with Katherine Mansfield's usual open-endedness with a little bit of
suggestion. Both of them were probably thinking about restarting their lives and were
ready to talk about it if the other opened the conversation first. So, the ending suggests
that they were getting courage gradually though they were not completely free yet.

The Daughter of the Late Colonel/Question No.-1