This Resource is for students in Year 12 studying ‘We Have Always Lived in the Castle’ in AOS1: Unit 3, Reading & Responding to Texts, Analytical Text Response, in the Victorian VCE Mainstream English Curriculum

Introduction

‘We Have Always Lived in the Castle’ is Shirley Jackson’s last completed novel and, much like the majority of her other works, it features gothic type female characters suffering from mental disorders and the house which represents a place of both security and imprisonment.  The genre is mystery, thriller and gothic set in 1962 in a small town in New England 6 years after the Blackwood family were murdered.  The tone and mood are sinister, frightening and at times darkly humorous.

It is a story about two sisters, Constance and Mary Katherine (Merricat) Blackwood, who continue to live away from the society after the murder of the rest of their family – a crime which is later revealed to have been committed by 12-year-old Merricat herself.  Jackson also describes the two sisters as two halves of the same person, two completely opposite sides of one personality.  Another important thing about this novel is that the home of Blackwood sisters is one of the central themes.  As well as in other Jackson’s works, “the house is a deeply ambiguous symbol—a place of warmth and security and also one of imprisonment and catastrophe” (Zoë Heller, “The Haunted Mind of Shirley Jackson”).  It is the place where the sisters find a sanctuary from the abusive villagers, as well as the place where they are being punished and, in the end, confined.

Through this novel, Jackson challenges the idea of happiness, as well as the morality of both society and individual. These two in particular are in conflict, as is the case in many other Jackson’s stories. Merricat, the narrator of the story, is desperately trying to escape the society and its norms, while those same people are trying to punish her for it. The novel parodies the role of the housewife, but also twists it by making the submissive Constance into a participant in the murder.  The idea of persecution of people who exhibit ‘otherness’ or become treated as outsiders by small town villagers is at the forefront of Jackson’s novel.

Who was the Author Shirley Jackson?

Shirley Jackson was an American writer known primarily for her works of horror and gothic mystery.  She wrote 6 novels, two memoirs and 200 short stories. 

Born in 1916 Jackson herself led a haunted and peculiar life.  In order to escape from her abusive mother “who was disappointed by her daughter and who made it clear that she would have preferred a prettier, more pliable one” (Heller), Jackson married Stanley Edgar Hyman who ended up cheating on her and being jealous of her success. Trapped in another almost hostile household, she appears to have found her way of rebelling through her writing.  As Zoë Heller points out “[t]he motif of a lonely woman setting out to escape a miserable family or a grimly claustrophobic community and ending up “lost” recurs throughout Jackson’s stories”.  Her main characters are mostly female, often women with psychological problems who are being punished by society.  Her novel ‘We Have Always Lived in the Castle’ is no different.  After writing this final novel, “Jackson suffered a nervous breakdown and a prolonged bout of acute agoraphobia that prevented her going outside for half a year” (Heller) not unlike Constance, one of the protagonists.  Jackson died at age 49 in 1965.

1^st Person Narrator – Mary Katherine (Merricat) Blackwood

Mary Katherine (Merricat) Blackwood is the main protagonist and the first-person narrator of Shirley Jackson’s novel. She is an interesting character through whose eyes the reader follows the events in what has remained of the Blackwood family. That being said, Mary Katherine is also the most disturbed individual in the novel and is increasingly losing touch with reality, which makes her point of view not only highly biased, but utterly unreliable.  She could be described as a hypersensitive paranoid schizophrenic, sometimes behaving mildly retarded, but only outwardly, inwardly she is razor-sharp in her observations and hyperalert to threats to her wellbeing.

In addition, her characteristics contribute to the creation of the uneasy, strange and gothic elements in the atmosphere of the novel. The book opens with Mary Katherine introducing herself, but her first sentences are disturbing and ominous, also the first clue to the reader that she is not exactly an ordinary character: “I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf” (p.1). In addition, she says: “I like my sister Constance . . . and Amanita phalloides, the death mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead” (p.1).

Merricat, like other mentally damaged people, fears change in the unvarying rituals of her household and is ‘domesticated’ by only one person, her older sister Constance.  The way for her to deflect change or threat to the ordinary is to use witchcraft involving a simple magic of ‘safeguards’ that were supposed to ward off bad omens. 

Constance Blackwood – Protagonist and Sister to Merricat

Mary Katherine and her older sister Constance are pure opposites of one another.  While Merricat is lively and energetic, loves to spend time outside, and can be quite aggressive, Constance seems to be more timid, submissive, and reluctant to leave her kitchen.  Constance is perhaps the one who comes closest to the idea of an innocent heroine. Throughout the whole novel, she is trying to justify Merricat’s behaviour and it is possible to ascribe this kind of reaction to extreme fear or love, but both of these emotions are then stretched to the point of being unhealthy. 

Of course, Constance is not mentally healthy to begin with – the most obvious proof being her fear of outer space (agoraphobia). It is certain that the readers will never really know how Constance came to be how she is now; whether she has always been that way or the death of her family and the events that followed are what made her that way. But if it is taken into consideration that it is extreme love what Constance feels for her mentally ill sister, one has to wonder how far that love is ready to go, and what kinds of terror it is ready to justify. But through the characters of Merricat and Constance, Jackson also shows just how cruel and disturbed women can be.

What Prompted the Girl’s Mental Problems?

At this point, the reader also has to wonder what prompted the girls’ mental problems and the murder of their parents, as the murder may be seen as a sort of liberation from potential abuse. Jackson never reveals the family’s history, which leaves enough room for speculation, and indeed, even escalation of the hidden horrors in the family.

The Importance of the Setting of ‘The Castle’

The setting in gothic fiction often plays the key role in the story, so it is no surprise that the setting of this novel is mentioned already in its title. “The castle” is in fact the Blackwood mansion, now almost completely deserted, save for Mary Katherine, her sister Constance and Uncle Julian. The interesting thing about it is that it acts both as the place of security for the sisters, as well as the place of their confinement.

Conclusion about the Novel

At the end of the novel after the fire, the Blackwood sisters willingly barricade themselves in their home in order to escape the abusive society which hates them for breaking their rules. However, by doing so on their own will, Constance and Merricat reverse the trap, making their prosecutors into the submissive ones, the ones who continue to serve and fear the sisters, turning their isolation into a somewhat ‘happy ending’.  The gothic fairy tale is of the more wicked variety, with the ending ironic and literal, the consequence of unrepentant witchcraft and a terrible sacrifice of others.

Main Characters
Mary Katherine (Merricat) Blackwood – narrator & protagonist	Constance Blackwood – older sister of Merricat & progatonist	Uncle Julian Blackwood – brother of John Blackwood & uncle to the 2 girls
Charles Blackwood – cousin to the girls & main antagonist	Jonas – Merricat’s cat	Helen Clarke – old friend of the Blackwood family
Stella – runs a café in the village	Jim Donell – one of the villagers who hates the Blackwoods	Jim Clarke – husband of Helen

Themes
Female power & female powerlessness	Home as a sanctuary or confinement	Patriarchal society & male power
Sexual repression	Vengeance & dislike of change	Sadistic fantasies & hate
Family & gender & human nature	Innocence & guilt & punishment	Isolation & sacrifice
Relativity of truth	Witchcraft	Mental & personality disorders
Murder & evil & horror	Abusive society & otherness	Fear & being haunted

Symbols
Food & ritual meals	The poisoned sugar	The moon
The Blackwood’s house & its property	The cellar in the house	Jonas Merricat’s cat
Amanita phalloides – death cap mushroom – poisonous	Merricat’s rituals & magic	Constance & Merricat’s household rituals
The safe & money

Irony
Merricat is the actual murderer (situational irony)	The villager’s views of justice (dramatic irony)	Julian’s view of Merricat (dramatic irony)
Constance as undutiful daughter (verbal irony)

Imagery
The Blackwood house	The Blackwood’s land	Jonas’s restlessness
The moon	Constance & Merricat’s appearance	The village setting

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This Resource is for students in Year 12 studying ‘Go, Went, Gone’ in the Victorian VCE Mainstream English Curriculum

Genre

‘Go, Went, Gone’ is a novel told in the 3^rd person limited point of view and centred on the protagonist Richard’s perspective.  However, at times the narrative does alter perspective shifting to 2 of the refugees’ stories, for example Chapter 13 is from Apollo’s perspective and Chapter 27 from Awad’s perspective.  Erpenbeck uses these brief moments of perspective shift to allow the reader access to thoughts they would not otherwise see.  The work is fiction but the issues in the novel are based in reality regarding the refugee crisis and the German and European response.  The novel draws also on real laws, regulations and events making is grounded in fact and the stories of the men Richard interviews even more powerful.

Structure

The novel has a fairly linear structure, beginning, middle and end with 55 chapters but includes different layers, conversations, Richard’s own thoughts and various events that are important to the refugee’s lives and moments on Richard’s own life journey.  The text also references laws and regulations surrounding the refugees along with other intertextual references, direct quotes and allusions.

The Importance of the Verb ‘To Go’ in the Title

The novel takes its title from the German irregular verb ‘to go’ and its various tense forms ‘gehen, ging, gegangen’ is literally translated to ‘go, went, gone’.  The words ‘to go’ are repeated in several places in the novel.  The phrase ‘Where can a person go when he doesn’t know where to go?’ is repeated on two pages 266 & 267 highlighting the complex issue of where do the refugees go when no country wants them to stay.  The German language is also symbolic of a new life and new possibilities for the refugees but the barrier of not understanding is also problematic when they cannot interpret the complex laws that govern their rights to live and work in Germany.

Libyan Civil War in 2011

‘Go, Went, Gone’ was published in Germany in 2015 at the height of the ‘immigration crisis’.  What was framed as a crisis for European states such as Germany, Italy, Greece, The Netherlands, Denmark and France, among others, was in fact a humanitarian catastrophe affecting some of the world’s poorest nations and resulting in the mass migration of these populations from zones of political instability and violence.  As in the case of Libya, largely caused by direct NATO assault on the existing state.  In 2011 forces loyal to Colonel Gaddafi in Libya clashed with foreign forces trying to remove him from power that escalated into a full-blown civil war where more than one million people fled the country.  Black Africans were being targeted by rebel forces as they tried to flee and were subjected to atrocious violations of their human rights.

Seeking Asylum in Europe

The distance between Tripoli, in Libya, and the Italian island of Lampedusa is only 300 kilometres, but the journey over rough seas, in poorly provisioned, barely seaworthy boats, is a harsh one.  Refugees fleeing Libya often paid smugglers for the journey but many died in transit or are drowned when the ships are wrecked by storms and rough seas before ever reaching land.  Of the few that survive the journey, the process of seeking refuge and asylum is far from easy.  Erpenbeck’s readers will immediately recognise the charged political setting of the novel.  Refugees seeking asylum are kept in a state of permanent uncertainty as to their rights to even apply for asylum, a situation that Erpenbeck examines as a cruel contemporary denial of human rights.

Laws and Regulations on Asylum Seekers

The novel refers to laws and regulations that govern the movement and settlement of migrants across Europe.  The one Richard studies in ‘Go, Went, Gone’ is ‘Dublin II’ that is based on the assumption all EU member states provide refugees with similar levels of protection.  However, the reality is more complex with each country interpreting the regulations in ways that suit their needs and is unfair to the asylum seekers.  Detained in countries like Germany in the novel the refugees are not permitted to work while their papers on asylum are being processed.

The Text from Richard’s Perspective

As Richard, a recently retired classics professor, contemplates what appears to be his own diminishing and solitary future, he encounters a group of men whose collective futures are exceedingly more precarious.  In ‘Go, Went, Gone’, Jenny Erpenbeck dramatises this fateful encounter between an otherwise unremarkable character and the poignantly rendered African refugees.  Richard is an individual who also happens to personify, through his career and academic specialisation, the deeply inscribed values of European civilisation, its classical humanist culture of thought, literature and philosophy – quite a contrast to this very different group of men who have arrived in Germany from outside Europe’s borders, from outside Europe’s cultural identity.

Characters
Richard – protagonist, retired professor of philology becomes interested in the refugee men’s issues. His life journey changes perspective to become their friend & the shared human experience of empathy for their plight.	Detlef & Sylvia – close friends of Richard, share history of Richard’s wife’s death & offer him a sounding board for his feelings towards the refugees.	Jorg & Monika – friends of Richard’s whose attitudes towards the refugees show a lack of empathy and make jokes about Richard’s relationship with them.
Rashid – Richard calls the Olympian/the thunderbolt-hurler.  Lost his children on the voyage from Africa.  Was a metalworker and is frustrated at his inability to work.	Apollo – Richard names him after the Greek God.  He is a Tuareg man from the desert.	Osarobo – Richard teaches him piano at his home and he is convinced Europeans think black men are criminals.
Karon – first seen by Richard sweeping and his actions seem futile without hope.  Richard buys Karon’s family land in Ghana.	Awad – Richard calls Tristan.  His father was killed by Gaddafi’s men & Awad fled on a boat for Europe.	Rufu – a silent and brooding figure that later Richard finds out was prescribed tranquilisers but after his tooth was filled, he came back to full health.

Themes
Immigration & the refugee crisis	Changing perspectives	The meaning of life
Freedom & confinement	Importance of the past	Barriers & borders
Accommodation	Empathy	Storytelling
Privilege & identity	Movement of displaced people	Legacy of European humanism
Lost futures and German past	GDR & The Berlin Wall	Laws & regulations on refugees Dublin II

Symbols
The dead man in the lake	Language barriers & learning German language ‘go, went, gone’	Music & piano
Bodies of water	Borders	The ‘iron law’

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This Resource is for Year 12 students studying Gabriel Garcia Marquez ‘Chronicle of a Death Foretold’ in the VCE Victorian Curriculum Unit 3 AOS1 Reading and Responding to Texts.

Author

Gabriel García Márquez

Year Published

1981

Type

Novella

Genre

Surrealistic Fiction – magic realist style – as the overwhelming number of accidents, misunderstandings, misinterpretations, contradictions, and confused memories seem to completely undermine reason and human understanding regarding how events unfold in the real world.

Perspective and Narrator

Chronicle of a Death Foretold is told from the perspective of an unnamed narrator, allegedly the author, who pieces together a journalistic narrative of a past event. The story as related by the characters is told in the third person by the narrator, who also uses the first person to describe his own involvement in the story.

Tense

Chronicle of a Death Foretold is told in the past tense.

About the Title

The title Chronicle of a Death Foretold states that the novella is a chronicle, which narrates events in chronological order. However, the author uses the label chronicle with verbal irony (when what is meant is different from what is said), because the events in the story are not revealed in chronological order. Further, the title reveals that the story’s deathis foretold or known in advance—and this death occurs at the very beginning of the novella. So, this too, undermines the real-life, journalistic pretence of the author. In short, the title contrasts with the nonlinear and somewhat mysterious and inexplicable nature of the events in the narrative.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold Character Analysis

Narrator

The narrator lived in the town as a boy, and his mother, sisters, and brother still reside there. He returns to the town decades after Santiago’s murder to find out exactly what happened. He is now working as a journalist, and he uses his skills as an interviewer and investigator to try to tease out the facts about what happened at that fateful time and why.

Santiago Nasar

Santiago is an open-hearted, good-natured, and innately innocent young man. Angela Vicario names him—falsely—as the man who violated her prior to her marriage. The macho code of honour makes him the target of the vengeful Vicario brothers, who seek him out to murder him. For inexplicable reasons Santiago does not learn of the murderous twins’ plan until it is too late, and they hack him to pieces at his front door.

Angela Vicario

Angela is a young, pretty girl of marriageable age whose family keeps a close eye on her to protect her honour. However, inside she is a free spirit who chafes at her family’s overprotection. After she lies about Santiago and the tragedy plays itself out, she lives on her own, guided only by her free will and her love for Bayardo. Angela never divulges with whom she had sex with before her marriage.

Pablo Vicario

Pablo Vicario is the twin brother of Pedro and older brother to Angela. He is a hog-butcher and a hot-headed macho Latino male who is hell-bent on finding Santiago and avenging the honour of his sister, Angela, who supposedly was violated by Santiago before her marriage. It is Pablo who forces his twin, Pedro, to pursue the murder of Santiago even after Pedro feels events have satisfied his lust for revenge.

Pedro Vicario

Pedro Vicario is Pablo’s twin brother and works with him as a hog butcher. Pedro eventually becomes less intent than his brother on finding and murdering Santiago. However, he lets Pablo force him to help with the killing. He is far more affected by the murder and afterward goes off to join the military, where he disappears and is never heard from again.

Plácida Linero

Plácida is an upper-class woman who lives with her son Santiago and servants in a large house on the town plaza. Despite the intention of several townspeople to warn her of the threat to her son, she never learns of the murder plot before it is carried out. It is by chance that Plácida aids in the murder when she bolts the front door as Santiago rushes toward it to escape the Vicario brothers.

Bayardo San Román

Bayardo comes from a rich and high-status military family. He is supremely self-confident and lavish in planning his wedding celebration and in buying Angela the house of her dreams. His confidence is crushed by the scandal surrounding Angela and the termination of their marriage. He nearly dies from his alcoholism. Decades later he is still bitter and closemouthed about the terrible events that occurred during and after his wedding to Angela.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold Plot Summary

Epigraph from Portuguese Playwright Gil Vincente about Falconry & Finding Love

The book opens with an epigraph about falconry: “The pursuit of love is like falconry.” Here, finding love is represented as a form of predation in which the raptor, or the seeker of love, snares a love object almost at random and then kills it. Finding love is likened to a blood sport in which the beloved is a victim of inevitable violence. The quote sets the stage for the fury and violence that love engenders in the novella. It is also likely a critique of the cultural norm of vengeance killing, a custom that must be taught to the men who carry it out, perhaps in the same way captive falcons are trained to hunt on the wing.

People who own falcons train the birds to hunt and then enjoy a rather grisly spectacle. When the falcon is released, its owner watches as it soars upward searching for a bird it can snare in its talons. (This horrific scene mimics the death of Santiago.) The relevance to the novella is clear: Angela seems to pick Santiago’s name out of thin air, the same way a falcon catches a bird in flight. It is his random, strange, and meaningless fate to be murdered just as it is the fate of the falcon’s prey to be the one bird the predator grabs. There are references to falconry, and its lethal arbitrariness, in several places in the novella.

Chapter 1

Santiago Nasar has been murdered. He had gotten up early to go and see the bishop who was arriving on a boat that morning. The day before there had been a large and lavish public wedding celebration in honour of the marriage of Angela Vicario to Bayardo San Roman. Unbeknownst to Santiago, Bayardo had dragged his wife back to her parents’ home the night before because he discovered she was not a virgin. When her twin brothers demanded to know who had deflowered her, Angela said it was Santiago. Her brothers Pedro Vicario and Pablo Vicario swear to murder Santiago as revenge for dishonouring their sister.

The narrator, who grew up in this town, has returned 27 years later as a professional investigative journalist to uncover the truth about why and how Santiago was murdered. Unfortunately, most townspeople have confused memories of what happened. Still, the narrator is determined to unearth the reason that although most of the people in the town knew of the Vicario brothers’ plot to murder Santiago, no one warned him or did anything to stop the killing.

Chapter 2

Bayardo is handsome and rich. He arrived in town in August to look for a bride. The moment he sees Angela Vicario walking with her mother, he falls in love with her. The couple gets married in February. Bayardo’s wedding feast is the most lavish and expensive the town has ever seen.

Angela does not want to marry Bayardo because she does not love him, but because she had a strict upbringing, she must do what her parents tell her to do—and they want her to marry Bayardo. When Bayardo brings her home after discovering her dishonour, Angela’s mother beats her. When the townspeople find out about her dishonour, they are amazed. Angela has always been closely controlled by her mother. How had she found a way to have sex with a man before her wedding?

The narrator, his brother, his friend, and Santiago spend the entire night of the celebration together. Santiago is delightful and carefree. The narrator is certain it could not have been Santiago who had sex with Angela. She must have lied when she named him.

Chapter 3

The Vicario brothers, who are twins, must avenge the lost honour of their sister. They go to the pig butchery where they work and get two long slaughtering knives. They go to the meat market to sharpen their knives, and they boast to all the butchers there that they are going to kill Santiago Nasar. Then they go hunting for him. They roam the town looking for Santiago, and along the way, they tell everyone they meet about the murder they are about to commit. No one in town takes them seriously, so no one bothers to warn Santiago, his mother, or anyone else who might prevent the crime. People think the twins are either too drunk to be taken seriously or that they are just bluffing.

While the Vicario twins hunt Santiago, he, the narrator, his brother, and his friend go up to the newlyweds’ house to serenade the couple. They are unaware that Bayardo is alone in the house, having already returned his bride to her family.

The Vicario twins finally wait for Santiago to return home. They sit in the milk shop, which is across the street from Santiago’s house, and plan to attack Santiago when he returns. They tell each person who comes into the milk shop of their murderous plan. Again, no one takes them seriously or does anything to prevent it. The owner of the shop tells a beggar woman to go to warn Santiago’s mother, but it is not known if she gets the message.

Chapter 4

The Vicario brothers have killed Santiago Nasar with their butcher knives, nearly hacking him to pieces. He dies in front of his home. The mayor orders the town priest to conduct an immediate autopsy, as the body reeks in the heat. The botched autopsy leaves Santiago’s body even more mutilated. The priest concludes that Santiago died of seven fatal stab wounds.

The Vicario brothers turn themselves in to the church. They show no remorse because they feel an honour killing is not a sin. The priest, like most other men in town, seems to agree. Because of an unwarranted fear of reprisal by the town’s Arab community, however, the Vicario brothers are moved to a jail some distance away. Angela Vicario, her mother, and the rest of her family also move out of town, fearful (needlessly) of Arab revenge.

Decades later when the journalist narrator comes to investigate the crime, he tries to interview Bayardo, who refuses to discuss the incident. The narrator locates Angela Vicario living on her own in a distant town, and she agrees to speak with him. She discusses many details of the event but will not say who had sex with her before her wedding day. She tells the narrator that, since the incident so many years earlier, she has fallen in love with Bayardo. She has written him frequent letters for many years, even though he never answers her.

Chapter 5

The people of the town are obsessed by the murder that took place so many years ago. They want to understand how and why it happened—why no one warned Santiago—but they can make no sense out of the senseless accidents and wrong choices that failed to save him.

A few weeks after the murder, a magistrate shows up in town to investigate. He, too, is bewildered by what happened. He cannot understand how everyone in town knew the murder was about to take place but no one warned Santiago or did anything to stop the crime.

The narrator goes on to describe the mischances, misunderstandings, miscommunications, unlucky choices, coincidences, and accidents that seem to have made a whole host of townspeople unable or unwilling to warn Santiago to save him. Perhaps they could not believe he would really be murdered, but it is his fate to be murdered. His fate is foretold when Angela names him and in the inaction of those who know about the killing but do nothing. Santiago meets his fate at his front door where the Vicario brothers butcher him.

THEMES
honour & gender machismo & marianismo	revenge	expectations on women and men & purity of women
dishonour	fairness	sanctity & Christ
deception	supernatural	fate & chance
sacrifice	choice	memory & confusion
death & murder	truth & false truth	complicity & guilt
authority	loyalty	moral compass
SYMBOLS
falconry & birds	the bishop	natural world
the river	flowers real & artificial	dreams
magic surrealism	animals	the cult of death linked to Christ’s crucifixion
smells	the weather	flying
Biblical references	knives

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This Resource is for Year 12 students studying Tessa Hadley’s ‘Bad Dreams and Other Stories’ in the VCE Victorian Curriculum for Unit 3 AOS1 Reading and Responding to Texts.

Introduction

Tessa Hadley is a British writer of 6 novels and 2 short story collections.  Her 10 narratives in ‘Bad Dreams and Other Stories’ are realist in style and set in England between the early 20^th century and the present day.  They typically examine the experiences of women, often in terms of the psychological ramifications of family relationships, sexual encounters, or seemingly innocuous events.  The stories turn things upside down into new thresholds that are crossed, pushing character’s feelings of safety into another new perspective on the problem.

Transformation

Many stories deal with transformation and the need for her characters to process new experiences with sometimes seismic shifts of understanding and memory that can occur in a lifetime.  The reader asks if the retelling of the event or relationship helps to clarify how one feels, or does it layer one’s experiences with a new perspective, recasting the memory, changing the plots points?

Experiences

The stories speak deeply to the experience of change and loss and misery dealt to women who care for themselves, for other people, or for abstract principles like love or justice.  While some situations might be considered ‘everyday’ these experiences are shown to be significantly formative, shaping identities or facilitating transitions from innocence to experience. While gaining experience can be revelatory, it can also be fraught with danger and in some stories the characters are punished for their desire to have that particular experience.

What is important is the uncovering of secrets in the revelatory experiences. When secrets are revealed their impact can be shocking as well as enlightening.

Bad Dreams Story Collection
An Abduction p.1-29 3rd person omniscient Jane Allsop protagonist	The Stain p.31-55 3rd person omniscient Marina protagonist	Deeds Not Words p.57-65 3rd person limited Edith Carew protagonist
One Saturday Morning p.67-86 3rd person limited Carrie protagonist	Experience p.87-111 1st person Laura protagonist	Bad Dreams p.113-126 Shifting 3rd person limited Unnamed young girl protagonist
Flight p.127-152 3rd person limited Claire protagonist	Under the Sign of the Moon p.153-182 3rd person limited Greta protagonist	Her Share of Sorrow p.183-194 3rd person omniscient Ruby protagonist
Silk Brocade p.195-215 Shifting 3rd person limited Ann Gallagher protagonist

Themes from Stories
Transformation of a person	Transformation of clothes or specific items	Memory & remembrance
Dreams	Change	Social status & social change
Relationships between families & couples	Growth & development of children & naivety	Empathy, sympathy & tenderness
Death, loss & misery & disability	Tragedy & atonement	Love, forbidden love & sexual encounters
Identities & crisis of identity	Wry humour	Epiphany & perception
Delusions & disappointment	Self-improvement	Re-telling of an event
Hope & hopelessness of life	Happiness in the moment or event	Secrets and their revelations

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