Here is this week’s paper I wrote for my literature course. We had to read five designated short stories from Short Story Masterpieces and summarize all of them, then select one story to discuss further through our impressions and a critical analysis on a topic of our choice.

Summary:

“The Horse Dealer’s Daughter” by D.H. Lawrence tells the story of Mabel, the horse dealer’s daughter, who is currently struggling to make ends meet after the death of her mother. When visiting her mother to tidy up her grave, she gets overwhelmed by her feelings and almost commits suicide by drowning. Nearby, Jack, a doctor, comes to save her life by extracting her from the water and nursing her back to health. From Mabel’s perspective, Jack did this because he loved her; from his perspective, Jack did this because he is a doctor. As the story comes to a close, Mabel realizes that Jack doesn’t actually love her, but Jack decides to marry her anyway and proposes to her before he returns to his senses.

“Flowering Judas” by Katherine Anne Porter is about Laura, a young woman living near Xochimilco. She works for Braggioni, a large man who sings to Laura when she returns home. He is a man with great self-esteem who is not told of how bad he is at singing because of people’s fear of his retaliation. He is dissatisfied with his wife and chooses to go away for an extended period of time. During this leave, Laura meets a prisoner named Eugenio. When Braggioni returns home, his wife apologizes; that night, Laura dreams of Eugenio.

“A Country Love Story” by Jean Stafford tells the story of Daniel and May, husband and wife, who choose to purchase a house in the country. The particular house they select happens to have an antique sleigh in the front lawn; at first, they have a strange impression of it, but eventually, they just let it be and decide not to get rid of it. As the story progresses, Daniel and May have a conflict, the first of its kind in their five years of marriage, after Daniel has a hallucination indicating that May has been unfaithful. Daniel remains in his room working, while May is lonely. The sleigh begins to take a symbolic role, as it represents May’s loneliness, as well as acts as the residing place of May’s hallucinations. Eventually, Daniel realizes that his hallucinations were what was fueling the arguments, and Daniel and May proclaim their love for each other again.

“Flight” by John Steinbeck features Pepé, a boy who lives with his mother and siblings in Mexico. Pepé’s mother always berates him for not being a man, but one day, still sends him off to get some medicine, which is a man’s job. During the trip, Pepé acquires the medicine, but also gets in a physical confrontation while he and others are consuming wine. When he returns home, the fact that he stabbed a man initiates another journey where he heads off into the mountains. During his trip, his horse gets injured by some people who are pursuing Pepé; eventually, he dies after being buried by an avalanche.

“Why I Live at the P.O.” by Eudora Welty is narrated by Sister, a woman whose sister, Stella-Rondo, recently moved back into her house with her adopted daughter to live with family after she got a divorce. Upon Stella-Rondo’s arrival, Sister suspects that her daughter is not adopted, but biological. This insults Stella-Rondo and motivates her to turn the entire family against Sister. Stella-Rondo spreads rumors about Sister to Papa-Daddy and Uncle Rondo to make them believe that Sister has been bad-mouthing them. Eventually, Sister becomes fed up with Stella-Rondo and decides to move out to live at the post office.

Impressions:

When reading “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter,” although it is somewhat apparent that it was supposed to be a sad story at first due to the sully setting and the poor situation in which Mabel is, I sort of thought it was partially a comedy in disguise. I thought the plot revolved around a perfect example of different perspectives gone wrong. Most of us have experienced a situation where two different people with two different backgrounds or levels of experience see the same scenario differently, and end up having some sort of humorous misunderstanding. I felt Lawrence integrated this concept well into this story, and twisting a developing love relationship into the confusion made it even more compelling.

Critical Analysis:

I decided to expand upon my initial interest with the idea of differing perspectives and take a closer look at the primary conflict present in the story by extracting and analyzing the motivation and implications behind each character’s actions and connecting it to the conclusion of the story. The primary conflict of perspectives is how Mabel and Jack perceived the fact that Jack rescued Mabel from drowning, as illustrated by, “… the small black figure walked slowly and deliberately towards the cent[er] of the pond … gradually moving deeper into the motionless water.”

From Jack’s perspective, he identified a figure that was intentionally walking into the water to commit suicide. As a doctor, he sensed someone in danger and felt the urge to help them – his intuition is noted when it says “the doctor’s quick eye detected a figure in black passing through the gate of the field, down towards the pond,” and later, “When he rescued her and restored her, he was a doctor, and she was a patient. He had had no single personal thought of her.” It can thus be concluded that, for Jack, this was just his normal work outside of regular working hours, and he was helping a person in need.

To Mabel, however, the fact that Jack saved her was something completely else. She was told of this novel experience unfolding from Jack’s perspective because her inquiry of “‘What did I do?’” implies she does not remember what happened. However, rather than seeing it from a perspective paralleling Jack’s, she applied her own opinions and emotions to the recount. From a normal person’s point of view, it is understandable to interpret someone risking their own life to save yours as an act of altruism so powerful that only love could motivate someone to do such a thing. To make the situation more intense, Jack undressed Mabel so she would cease to lose body heat from the cold, drenched clothing; to Jack, this was standard doctoral procedure, but to Mabel, she interpreted this as an act of intimacy.

So what made Jack cave in and decide to propose to Mabel? In Mabel’s flurry of confusion, she overwhelmed Jack with actions symbolic of love, such as forcing him to admit his love through words and kiss her. As a result, Jack’s own personal emotions took over and made him just as confused as Mabel, causing him to change his position from a professional doctor to a dutiful man. In essence, the conflict of perspectives was “resolved” when Jack took on the same perspective to the rescue as Mabel.