A review of The Jilting of Jane

The main character, Jane, is a servant. She has been engaged to a young man, William, for three years. She considers his behaviour, his prospects and his family background, and she believes he is a very good match for her. William is second porter in a draper’s. However, when he is promoted to head porter, he finds a new girlfriend, a milliner. Jane follows the new lovers a number of times and tells the milliner that she is William’s fiancée. But in the end, William marries the milliner and when they come out of church, Jane throws a boot at the bride, but it hits William’s eye instead. 

 

The author, HG Wells, uses the story to criticise class divisions. The narrator, the master of the house, keeps his distance from his servants, and he probably does not talk to them. Jane is a servant and an orphan, so she needs to find a man who has prospects. She has social ambitions and she is a snob. Since Jane believes William is a respectable man, and his relatives are not labourers, if she married William, it will give her a little bit of security and improve her social status. But, she does not see William as a social climber; he keeps up his good work, reads a self-help book to improve himself, and dresses up to improve his appearance. He also joins a religious group which his employer also belongs to. Eventually, he probably thinks a milliner is better than a servant; the milliner might make hats for him or he may be able to set up a business selling hats, whereas Jane buys him a tie so far.

A review of A Shocking Accident

The main character, Jerome, is a boy of nine, who is told that his father had been accidently killed by an overweight pig falling from a balcony. When he grows older, he realises people are unable to suppress their laughter or amusement at the comic aspect of the story of his father’s death and this makes him reluctant to tell the story. In the end, he dares not tell it to his fiancée, Sally, but his aunt does. To his surprise, Sally does not laugh, but she feels it is a horrible accident.

When People usually hear about somebody’s death, they feel sad, and sympathise with the relatives. The author, Graham Greene, is good at observing human nature and this can be seen in the story; when people hear about Jerome’s father’s unusual and unexpected death, they react in different ways. The reactions are very believable and you might think if you heard a similar story then you would react in the same way.

The author uses the characters in the story to show that there are many ways to tell the story of Jerome’s father’s death. He contrasts serious and comic aspects of the story, in particular the serious idea of death with the ridiculous way in which it occurs.

A review of Bliss

The story is set in London. The main character, Bertha, is a married woman of thirty, who thinks she has a perfect life. She is going to hold a dinner party for some friends. She is secretly attracted to one of the guests, Miss Pearl Fulton. As Bertha is always attracted to beautiful women who have something strange about them. In the end, she discovers her husband, Harry, is having an affair with Pearl.

The author, Katherine Mansfield, uses the main character to criticise social conventions. Bertha is inhibited by conventions, and wants to get rid of. Although she struggles against them, this is not easy for her. She can’t follow her impulses to run and dance in the street and she asks herself why you are given a body if you keep it in a case like a rare fiddle. Babies usually are looked after by nannies, and their parents do not want to spoil them, so, she thinks it is not appropriate to tell a nanny that a baby clutching a strange dog’s ear is rather dangerous. When the nanny refuses to give her baby to her, she asks herself again why have a baby if it was held in another woman’s arm like the rare fiddle kept in the case. She can’t express her feelings to Pearl, not even to her husband. On the other hand, her husband and other guests are less inhibited and more easy-going; they criticize and make jokes about other people.

The author also uses Bertha’s point of view to show that the main character does not fully understand herself and her feelings. She misinterprets her feelings for Pearl; they are not her own feelings of bliss; they are Harry’s. He has a perfect life, always loves beautiful women, and falls in love with Pearl. Once Bertha discovers she has been betrayed, her feelings towards her husband change. Before she thought Harry had many good characters, at the end of the story, he becomes roughness and his face becomes ugly.