Category: Short Stories

Short Story Mini-Review: An Imaginative Woman by Thomas Hardy

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An Imaginative Woman by Thomas Hardy (1894)

This is the first of Thomas Hardy’s short stories that I’ve read but I would now like to read more. As you might expect from Hardy, An Imaginative Woman is well-written and descriptive but with a slightly dark and melancholy feel.

Ella Marchmill, the ‘imaginative woman’ of the title is an aspiring poet, writing under the male pseudonym of John Ivy because ‘nobody might believe in her inspiration’ if they knew she was a woman. Her husband, a gunmaker, is her exact opposite in temperament and interests. When the couple and their three children go on holiday to Solentsea in Upper Wessex, Ella becomes obsessed with the previous occupier of their lodgings – a fellow poet by the name of Robert Trewe. During their stay in Solentsea she convinces herself she has fallen in love with a man she has never even met and desperately tries to arrange a meeting with Trewe. As I don’t want to spoil the story for you I won’t reveal any more of the plot and will leave it to you to find out whether or not Ella succeeds in meeting Robert Trewe.

No, he was not a stranger! She knew his thoughts and feelings as well as she knew her own; they were, in fact, the self-same thoughts and feelings as hers, which her husband distinctly lacked; perhaps luckily for himself, considering that he had to provide for family expenses.

“He’s nearer my real self, he’s more intimate with the real me than Will is, after all, even though I’ve never seen him,” she said.

The theme of this story was actually very similar to the Mary Elizabeth Braddon novel The Doctor’s Wife which I reviewed a few weeks ago, in which a woman becomes bored with her marriage and develops an obsession with another life that exists only in her fantasies. The outcome of the two stories, however, is very different. There’s a clever plot twist at the end of An Imaginative Woman but I found the final few paragraphs a bit too harsh and cruel.

If you’d like to read this story yourself, you can find it online here.

The illustration by Arthur J. Goodman shown at the top of this post originally appeared in The Pall Mall Magazine in April 1894 and depicts Robert Trewe and Ella Marchmill – Picture courtesy of Philip V. Allingham

Have you read any of Thomas Hardy’s short stories? Which one do you think I should read next?

A Short Story for Wednesday: The Signal-Man by Charles Dickens

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The Signal-Man by Charles Dickens (1866)

After recently reading Drood by Dan Simmons which described Charles Dickens’ involvement in the Staplehurst Rail Disaster, I decided to read Dickens’ short story, The Signal-Man. Although it doesn’t directly reference the Staplehurst incident, The Signal-Man was written the following year so was almost certainly influenced by his experience.

Whilst taking a walk one evening, the unnamed narrator discovers an isolated railway station and makes the acquaintance of the lonely signalman. The signalman tells him of a ghostly figure that he has previously witnessed on two occasions standing below the danger light in the entrance to the tunnel. On both occasions, the ghost’s appearance has been followed by tragedy. Now the spectre has appeared again and the signalman is convinced that another disaster is imminent…

This is the first of Charles Dickens’ short stories that I’ve ever read and having read some of his full-length novels, I was surprised by how quick and easy The Signal-Man was to read. Although the outcome of the story was very predictable, Dickens creates a wonderfully eerie and foreboding atmosphere. Highly recommended if you’re in the mood for a classic ghost story.

“His post was in as solitary and dismal a place as ever I saw…So little sunlight ever found its way to this spot, that it had an earthy, deadly smell; and so much cold wind rushed through it, that it struck chill to me, as if I had left the natural world.”

Read The Signal-Man online

* Clayton Tunnel picture – in the public domain

A Short Story for Saturday: The Artist of the Beautiful by Nathaniel Hawthorne

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The Artist of the Beautiful by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1844)

Owen Warland is a young watchmaker who devotes his life to the creation of a beautiful mechanical butterfly which he presents to his friend Annie as a wedding gift. Annie and her family are not artists and they are unable to appreciate the beauty of Owen’s butterfly or to understand why he wasted so much time making it when he could have been doing something more useful. Each character in the story represents a different side of human nature and it’s interesting to see how Owen’s butterfly reacts differently to each of them.

This is a beautifully written story with the message that not everything in life needs to have a purpose – some things are worth doing just for the sake of doing them. Despite being ridiculed by the other townspeople, Owen doesn’t let other people’s opinions stop him in his pursuit of spiritual happiness.

“Yes, Annie; it may well be said to possess life, for it has absorbed my own being into itself; and in the secret of that butterfly, and in its beauty – which is not merely outward, but deep as its whole system – is represented the intellect, the imagination, the sensibility, the soul of an Artist of the Beautiful!”

Read The Artist of the Beautiful online here

* Butterfly picture by Galawebdesign used under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

A Short Story for Saturday: The Black Monk by Anton Chekhov

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The Black Monk by Anton Chekhov (1894)

Where do we draw the line between genius and madness? Anton Chekhov explores this question in The Black Monk – the story of a young man called Andrei Kovrin who suffers from an undisclosed mental illness which causes him to believe he is being visited by a monk dressed in black. Even when he becomes aware that the monk is only a hallucination, he is not concerned because his visions make him feel happy and full of energy and creativity. Eventually though, his family begin to worry about his sanity…

This is a fascinating, unusual story which I found easy to read but difficult to fully understand. Chekhov’s poetic writing creates an eerie, disturbing atmosphere appropriate to Kovrin’s descent into mental illness.

“Once or twice a week, in the park or in the house, he met the black monk and had long conversations with him, but this did not alarm him, but, on the contrary, delighted him, as he was now firmly persuaded that such apparitions only visited the elect few who rise up above their fellows and devote themselves to the service of the idea.”

Read The Black Monk online here

Review: The Rendezvous and Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier

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The Rendezvous and Other Stories is a collection of short stories written by Daphne du Maurier. Some of them are among the earliest examples of her writing and most of them, as you would expect if you’ve ever read any of du Maurier’s work before, are slightly disturbing and unsettling. She takes some quite ordinary situations and ordinary, flawed people, and adds undertones of suspense and drama.

Many of the stories are just 10-20 pages long – perfect if you don’t have a lot of time, although in most cases I would have preferred them to be longer and more developed. My favourite story from the collection was No Motive, in which a private detective investigates an apparently motiveless suicide. I felt it could easily have been expanded into a full length detective novel, though it worked well as a short story too. The other one that really stood out for me was Split Second, in which a woman goes out for a walk one afternoon and returns home to find strangers living in her house. This story had a touch of the supernatural about it, as did Escort, which describes a ship leaving port during World War II and being rescued from a submarine attack by a mysterious sailing ship.

I liked the three stories I’ve just mentioned, as well as The Closing Door and La Sainte-Vierge, but there were too many of the others that I just didn’t enjoy very much. However, it was still interesting to read them and see how good Daphne du Maurier’s writing was even in the early stages of her career.

Genre: Fiction – Short Stories/Pages: 288/Publisher: Virago/Year: 2005/Source: Library book