This Resource is for Year 12 students studying Tessa Hadley’s ‘Bad Dreams and Other Stories’ in the VCE Victorian Curriculum for 2024 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 20th 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 |