《The Doll#39;s House and Other Stories (level 4)》.doc

Introduction What can you do if you are thirty and, suddenly, turning the corner of your own street, you feel perfectly happy, as if you had swallowed a piece of the late autumn sun? Berthas feelings show her love of the moment and her satisfaction with her home, her family and her interesting circle of friends. Yet pain is not far away. Before the day is over, Berthas safe, happy world has been destroyed and she faces an uglier, crueller reality. In the other stories in this book, we are shown other uncomfortable comparisons: the way a music teacher behaves towards his pupils and towards his own family; the friendliness which richer children show towards each other and the cruelty with which they treat poor ones; the way in which one neighbouring family gives an expensive party and the other is affected by a sudden death. Katherine Mansfield is now recognized as one of the greatest short story writers in the English language but she had a difficult life and was often unhappy. She was born in Wellington, New Zealand, in 1888 but went to London when she was fourteen and lived the rest of her life in Europe. She married John Middleton Murry, an important journalist and critic. Through him she met other famous writers, such as D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf. Her best-known collections of short stories are Bliss and Other Stories (1920) and The Garden Party and Other Stones (1922). However, she had serious health problems. She died of tuberculosis in France in 1923, at the early age of thirty-five. Bliss Although Bertha Young was thirty, she still sometimes wanted to run instead of walk. She wanted to dance in the street. She wanted to throw something up in the air and catch it again, or to stand still and laugh at - nothing — at nothing, simply. What can you do if you are thirty and, suddenly, turning the corner of your own street, you feel perfectly happy, as if you had swallowed a piece of the late afternoon sun? She ran up the steps of her house and felt in her b