Gina Berriault’s protagonist is a struggling young actress who has just begun a day job as a social worker in the women’s ward of a city hospital. With no qualifications or experience, she finds it hard to maintain clinical detachment and begins to identify with the suffering, often troubled women in the ward. She reflects on turning points in her own life, and concludes that women are shaped by the beds (a metaphor for common life experiences) they have chosen, or someone else has chosen for them, to lie in. Themes: empathy, choice vs. superstition/destiny, identity, aloneness, connection. More…
A Clean Well-Lighted Place
This story by Ernest Hemingway takes place in a cafe. Two waiters (one young, the other middle-aged) talk about an old man sitting alone at one of the tables. A line from each waiter exemplifies three major themes. From the young waiter: I wouldn’t want to be that old. An old man is a nasty thing. (attitudes towards the aged). From the older waiter: It [life] was all a nothing and a man was a nothing too. (emptiness and despair). Other themes include aging and death, gender stereotyping, and the fact that money doesn’t buy happiness. More…
The Grave
In this coming of age story by Katherine Anne Porter, a motherless nine-year-old girl defies social convention by wearing similar day clothes to her brother, and wandering the woods freely with him. Two events bring about an epiphany in her life. Trading of an object she finds in an open grave for a gold ring brings about the first stirrings of womanhood. Seeing unborn kittens in the womb of a dead rabbit adds to the picture of what it is to be female. Themes include the cycle of life (youthful innocence, adulthood, birth and death), matriarchy, gender roles, poverty. More…
The Devoted Son
This heartbreaking story from Anita Desai begins with a working-class Indian father’s proudest moment. His son, always exceedingly respectful to his parents, has topped the country at medical school. The son becomes a highly successful doctor, and fulfills his familial duty by caring for his parents in their old age. As the father’s mental and physical health wanes, their relationship changes. The son ceases to respect his father’s wishes, and implements a harsh treatment plan that includes progressive denial of the old man’s few remaining pleasures in life. Themes: sacrifice, success, respect, envy, rituals/traditions, aging with dignity, devotion vs. duty. More…
Vision out of the Corner of One Eye
Two frequent themes in Luisa Valenzuela’s short stories are the daily violence associated with living in 1960/70s Argentina and feminism. This is one of the latter, satirizing gender imbalance and “Machismo” in society. A woman traveling on a crowded bus feels herself being groped. When she tries to move away, more people get on the bus and the groping develops into “fondling” and “jiggling”. Rather than make a scene, she gives the pervert some of his own medicine and more… rubbing his behind and expertly removing his wallet in the process. Themes include sexual assault, indignation, distress, doubt, revenge, theft. More…