Rewriting an excerpt of "The Doll's House", by Katherine Mansfield

Por Juliana Miyashiro

Enviado em: 21/08/2023

Parágrafo de contexto: Foi uma das atividades avaliativas de literatura de língua inglesa: contos. De início achei a atividade bem complicada, mas acabei me encontrando um paralelo entre as literaturas, no caso a literatura inglesa e a brasileira. A atividade  consistia em selecionar um conto lido na disciplina e reescrever algum trecho dele, modificando suas características narrativas. Escolhi o conto: "The Doll's House", no qual temos uma descrição longa. Abaixo, você poderá ler primeiro o trecho original seguido da minha reescrita, e um comentário reflexivo no final.

Reference: MANSFIELD, Katherine. The Doll 's House. The Complete Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield (Literatura Classics Series). Available at: https://www.katherinemansfieldsociety.org/archive/www.katherinemansfieldsociety.org/assets/KM-Stories/THE-DOLLS-HOUSE.pdf.  Acessed on: 6 Apr 2024. 

Original excerpt 

“They were the daughters of a spry, hardworking little washerwoman, who went about from house to house by the day. This was awful enough. But where was Mr. Kelvey? Nobody knew for certain. But everybody said he was in prison. So they were the daughters of a washerwoman and a gaolbird. Very nice company for other people’s children! And they looked it. Why Mrs. Kelvey made them so conspicuous was hard to understand. The truth was they were dressed in “bits” given to her by the people for whom she worked. Lil, for instance, who was a stout, plain child, with big freckles, came to school in a dress made from a green art-serge table-cloth of the Burnells’, with red plush sleeves from the Logans’ curtains. Her hat, perched on top of her high forehead, was a grown-up woman’s hat, once the property of Miss Lecky, the postmistress. It was turned up at the back and trimmed with a large scarlet quill. What a little guy she looked! It was impossible not to laugh. And her little sister, our Else, wore a long white dress, rather like a nightgown, and a pair of little boy’s boots. But whatever our Else wore she would have looked strange. She was a tiny wishbone of a child, with cropped hair and enormous solemn eyes—a little white owl. Nobody had ever seen her smile; she scarcely ever spoke. She went through life holding on to Lil, with a piece of Lil’s skirt screwed up in her hand. Where Lil went, our Else followed. In the playground, on the road going to and from school, there was Lil marching in front and our Else holding on behind. Only when she wanted anything, or when she was out of breath, our Else gave Lil a tug, a twitch, and Lil stopped and turned round. The Kelveys never failed to understand each other.”

Modified excerpt

“These boys were the sons of a robust woman who collected garbage in the metropolis of São Paulo. They were the sons of a paper collector and the first was the son of a Portuguese sailor, the second the son of a Spaniard, and the girl the daughter of a merchant. What wonderful companions they were for the other children! And what humble figures! No one understood why Carolina cared so much about her children’s education. The truth is that she dedicated herself to ensuring that her children studied and had a better future than hers. João José, for example, was very calm, liked reading comic books, accompanying his mother on her trips to and from collecting paper, and did favors for his mother when asked. He wished a better future for the family, saying that “[...] when I grow up, I won’t drink. A man who drinks doesn’t buy clothes. He doesn’t have a radio, he doesn’t build a brick house.” As for José Carlos, he was very mischievous, he was always pointing fingers at people in the favela, sometimes he would disappear into the favela, he said he would be a distinguished man and that one day his mother would call him “Seu José”.The little girl, Vera Eunice, was very vain, loved shoes, her mother’s greatest companion on her journey, said that she would buy a car “just to carry pretty people around”, the girl was an example of friendliness, liked to celebrate birthdays and parties. Even with the fights between the siblings, and family intrigues, in addition to the difficult reality of the family, the De Jesus never failed to understand each other.”

Comment

I've really liked Katherine’s short story itself, and I've really liked Carolina’s book. Through this excerpt from the short story I tried to portray the reality of the children in the novel “ O quarto de despejo” , through the description of the children, just as is the description of the girls in “The Doll’s house”.