Luis Adolfo Maraz Sandoval

Norma Isabel Ojeda

English literature

Looking for a Golden Case

How I finally lost my heart, written by Doris Lessing tells, in first person, in

which the narrator speaks directly to the reader, the story of how she "lost her heart",

initially she tells the reader that in her life there have been different true loves that

have given her joy and pain, excluding in this count the two men who have always

been in her life: her father and her brother.

The narrator, who is inferred to be a woman by her own description in one part

of the story, is waiting for a man she calls C after having had lunch with the man she

calls her first true love A and a man she calls her second true love B with whom she

had tea. As she was about to leave after realizing she had not felt the click (as the

narrator defines it), she feels something slip into her hand, something she describes

dismissively as "a large red pulsing bleeding repulsive object", she tries to throw it

away but the heart clings to her hand, so she covers it with tin foil and wraps it

carefully -contradicting the dismissive treatment she initially gave it when she

described it-. then she finally called C, whom she would no longer consider a

possible C, to excuse herself for not keeping her appointment.

4 days passed and his heart was still stuck in his hand, when he looked out

the window and she noticed something that made him act excited, a woman whose

footsteps stood out in the middle of the street scene. This made him leave, although

without a concrete direction. she took the train and there she saw a young woman

who was "mad" for the way she was accusing a man and a woman in the train

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carriage, in the middle of the analysis that the narrator made to the young woman

she felt how her heart was detached from her hands, she took it with the care that it

would not stick again to her hand and left it on the chair near that woman who took it

with affection and disowned her husband letting him go from her life. The narrator

then felt happy and felt the approval of those watching.

Once the story is briefly described, it is understood (even from the title) that

the central topic of this story is love, the search for love and how the pains and

sorrows that this can mean leads the narrator to desist from feeling love but not from

feeling in love. We cannot fail to mention how in the final part of this story is

mentioned several times the expression "a golden cigarette case" or "case" which is

what the mad woman says when accusing some passengers of the train

compartment, being the "case" the person who keeps your heart, being as precious

as a golden case and that after having recovered a heart, even if it was not hers, she

is no longer afraid to part with that "golden case" because she already has a silver

heart.

But what if all this episode that the narrator lived in that train carriage was

nothing more than the reflection of her subconscious to express that desire to free

herself from the ties that her loves entailed, since she entered the train carriage she

speaks of that "golden case" that were her loves, A, B and the possible C, those that

as she did when it was in her hand, could take care of and protect her heart, and it is

at the end, after recognizing the defects and inaccuracies that her heart is free, and

that she presents to herself the heart that now is not tied even to her hands, and that

she no longer sees as that repulsive object, but as a silver heart and feels the joys

and congratulations after "having lost her heart". Even this concept can be further

denoted when the last locution of the narrator says. "Hear that sound? That's

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laughter, yes. That's me laughing, yes, that's me" because now, without those

pressures she feels free and herself.

Another very important aspect to highlight is how the story totally breaks the

stereotype of the demure and submissive woman, in the story the narrator openly

accepts that she has more than one man in her life and instead of considering it an

unnatural or even sinful act, she justifies it as the search for love, as steps to get to

real love, to serious love in her own words, even the same day she saw two men (A

and B) and was waiting for C, all this could be scandalous even in modern society (of

the XXI century) so we must imagine how transgressive she could have been at the

time of its publication.

even without knowing much about the author, or the writer, we can discern

the intention of resignifying the role of women, not only in society but as the owner of

her own being, her body and her will, the narrator in the story does not tell in depth

how she is but we can say that she feels beautiful, she even tells the reader this, she

is a woman who feels calm about the decisions she has made and that her anguish,

without her being aware of it, was not to look for real love, but her own love, the one

that does not have to look for a man to take care of her, that does not take care of

her heart, because she was able to do it and turned it into that silver heart.

It is possible to argue that the story "how I finally lost my heart" is not about

how a woman lost her heart but on the contrary, she made it free, away from the

need imposed by society to have a man to take care of it and that the love of a man

is the real love as she says at the beginning of the story.