3.1 Mama and Her Graduation Present- Kathryn Forbes

Kathryn Forbes

Kathryn Forbes (1908 –1966) was an American writer and memoirist. She was born in San Francisco in 1908. Her grandmother emigrated to California from Norway in the late 19th century; both of Anderson's parents were native-born Americans. Kathryn married Robert McLean, a carpenter, with whom she had two sons.

Kathryn worked as a radio scriptwriter and started writing short stories afterwards. Mama's Bank Account, is her best-known work which was published in 1943. It describes daily struggles and aspirations of a Norwegian family living in San Francisco in America in the first decade of twentieth century.

Kathryn’s book served as the inspiration for John Van Druten's 1944 play I Remember Mama. In 1948, a film version of the play was released by RKO Pictures and starred Irene Dunne as Mama and Barbara Bel Geddes as her daughter, an aspiring writer.

Kathryn’s novel was twice turned into a stage musical. The first, adapted by Neal Du Brock and John Clifton, opened in Buffalo, New York, in 1972 with Celeste Holm in the role of Mama. In 1979, Richard Rodgers wrote the music for the second musical version. 

In 1947, Kathryn published Transfer Point, regarding the daughter of divorced parents. Unlike Mama's Bank Account, which drew on the experiences of her Norwegian-born grandmother, this novel was closer to Forbes' actual childhood.

The Kathryn Forbes McLean Memorial Fund was created shortly after her death to provide funds for improvements to the library which she frequented.

Mama and the Graduation Present

During the last week that Papa was in the hospital, we rented the big downstairs bedroom to two brothers, Mr. Sam and Mr. George Stanton. 

                The Stantons worked in the office of the Gas and Electric Company, and they paid a whole month’s rent in advance, which was a very good thing for us. They were nice young men, and after dinner every night they would come out to the kitchen to tell Mama how much they enjoyed her cooking. 

After they got better acquainted with Miss Durant, they teased her about her “rabbit food” and made bets with each other as to which one of them would be the first to coax her to eat a big, thick steak— medium rare. 

Mama was very proud of her three boarders; she listened to their chattering and laughter and said it was going to be fine when we had the hospital bills paid up, and the money back to the Aunts. Then we would get more furniture and more boarders. Enough to fill all the chairs in the dining room. The Stanton brothers said they knew two more men from their place who would like to board with us. 

On the day that Papa came home from the hospital, it was like a big party. We all stayed home from school and Mama let Dagmar decorate the table real fancy. 

Everything seemed all right again when Papa walked carefully into the kitchen and sat down in the rocking chair. His face was white, and he looked thinner, but his smile was just the same. He had a bandage on his head and he made little jokes about how they shaved off his hair when he wasn’t looking. 

It was strange, having Papa about the house during the day, but it was nice, too. He would be there in the kitchen when I came home from school and I would tell him all that had happened. Winford School had become the most important thing in life to me. I was finally friends with the girls, and Carmelita and I were invited to all their parties. Every other Wednesday they came to my house and we would sit up in my attic, drink chocolate, eat cookies, and make plans about our graduation. 

We discussed “High” and vowed that we would stay together all through the next four years. We were the only ones in our class going on to Lowell. Lowell, we told each other loftily, was “academic.” 

We were enthralled with our superiority. We were going to be the first class at Winford to have evening graduation exercises; we were having a graduation play; we were making our own graduation dresses in sewing class. 

And when I was given the second lead in the play —the part of the Grecian boy— I found my own great importance hard to bear. I alone, of all the girls, had to go downtown to the costumer’s to rent a wig. A coarse black wig that smelled of disinfectant, but made me feel like Geraldine Farrar. At every opportunity, I would put it on and have Papa listen to my part of the play. 

Then the girls started talking about graduation presents. 

Madeline said she was getting an onyx ring with a small diamond. Hester was getting a real honest-to- goodness wrist watch, and Thyra’s family was going to add seven pearls to the necklace they had started for her when she was a baby. Even Carmelita was getting something special; her sister Rose was putting a dollar every payday onto an ivory manicure set. 

I was intrigued, and wondered what great surprise my family had in store for me. I talked about it endlessly, hoping for some clue. It would be terrible if my present were not as nice as the rest. 

“It is the custom, then,” Mama asked, “the giving of gifts when one graduates?” 

“My goodness. Mama,” I said, “it’s practically the most important time in a girl’s life— when she graduates.” 

I had seen a beautiful pink celluloid dresser set at Mr. Schiller’s drugstore, and I set my heart upon it. I dropped hint after hint, until Nels took me aside and reminded me that we did not have money for that sort of thing. Had I forgotten that the Aunts and the hospital must be paid up? That just as soon as Papa was well enough, he must do the Beauchamp job for no pay? 

“I don’t care,” I cried recklessly, “I must have a graduation present. Why, Nels, think how I will feel if I don’t get any. When the girls ask me—” 

Nels got impatient and said he thought I was turning into a spoiled brat. And I retorted that since he was a boy, he naturally couldn’t be expected to understand certain things. 

When Mama and I were alone one day, she asked me how I would like her silver brooch for a graduation present. Mama thought a lot of that brooch— it had been her mother’s. 

“Mama,” I said reasonably, “what in the world would I want an old brooch for?” 

“It would be like a— an heirloom, Katrin. It was your grandmother’s.” 

“No, thank you, Mama.” 

“I could polish it up, Katrin.” 

I shook my head. “Look, Mama, a graduation present is something like— well, like that beautiful dresser set in Mr. Schiller’s window.” 

There, now, I had told. Surely, with such a hint— 

Mama looked worried, but she didn’t say anything.  Just pinned the silver brooch back on her dress. 

I was so sure that Mama would find some way to get me the dresser set, I bragged to the girls as if it were a sure thing. I even took them by Schiller’s window to admire it. They agreed with me that it was wonderful. There was a comb, a brush, a mirror, a pincushion, a clothes brush, and even something called a hair-receiver. 

Graduation night was a flurry of excitement. 

I didn’t forget a single word of my part in the play. Flushed and triumphant, I heard Miss Scanlon say that I was every bit as good as Hester, who had taken elocution lessons for years. And when I went up to the platform for my diploma, the applause for me was long and loud. Of course, the Aunts and Uncles were all there and Uncle Ole and Uncle Peter could clap very loud, but I pretended that it was because I was so popular. 

And when I got home— there was the pink celluloid dresser set! 

Mama and Papa beamed at my delight, but Nels and Christine, I noticed, didn’t say anything. I decided that they were jealous, and felt sorry that they would not join me in my joy. 

I carried the box up to my attic and placed the comb and brush carefully on my dresser. It took me a long while to arrange everything to my satisfaction. The mirror, so. The pincushion, here. The hair-receiver, there. 

Mama let me sleep late the next morning. When I got down for breakfast, she had already gone downtown to do her shopping. Nels was reading the want-ad section of the paper. Since it was vacation, he was going to try to get a job. He read the jobs aloud to Papa and they discussed each one. 

After my breakfast, Christine and I went upstairs to make the beds. I made her wait while I ran up to my attic to look again at my wonderful present. Dagmar came with me, and when she touched the mirror, I scolded her so hard she started to cry. 

Christine came up then and wiped Dagmar’s tears and sent her down to Papa. She looked at me for a long time. 

“Why do you look at me like that, Christine?” 

“What do you care? You got what you wanted, didn’t you?” She pointed to the dresser set. “Trash,” she said, “cheap trash.” 

“Don’t you dare talk about my lovely present like that! You’re jealous, that’s what. I’ll tell Mama oh you.” 

“And while you’re telling her,” Christine said, “ask her what she did with her silver brooch. The one her very own mother gave her. Ask her that.” 

I looked at Christine with horror. “What? You mean— Did Mama—?” 

Christine walked away. 

I grabbed up the dresser set and ran down the stairs to the kitchen. Papa was drinking his second cup of coffee, and Dagmar was playing with her doll in front of the stove. Nels had left. 

“Papa, oh, Papa!” I cried. “Did Mama— Christine says—” I started to cry then, and Papa had me sit on his lap. 

“There now,” he said, and patted my shoulder. “There now.” 

And he dipped , a cube of sugar into his coffee and fed it to me. We were not allowed to drink coffee- even with lots of milk in it— until we were considered grown up, but all of us children loved that occasional lump of sugar dipped in coffee. 

After my hiccupping and sobbing had stopped. Papa talked to me very seriously. It was like this, he said. I had wanted the graduation present. Mama had wanted my happiness more than she had wanted the silver brooch. So she had traded it to Mr. Schiller for the dresser set. 

“But I never wanted her to do that. Papa. If I had known— I would never have let her—” 

“It was what Mama wanted to do, Katrin.” 

“But she loved it so. It was all she had of Grandmother’s.” 

“She always meant it for you, Katrin.” 

I stood up slowly. I knew what I must do. 

And all the way up to Mr. Schiller’s drugstore, the graduation present in my arms, I thought of how hard it must have been for Mama to ask Mr. Schiller to take the brooch as payment. It was never easy for Mama to talk to strangers. 

Mr. SchiUer examined the dresser set with care. He didn’t know, he said, about taking it back. After all, a bargain was a bargain, and he had been thinking of giving the brooch to his wife for her birthday next month. 

Recklessly, I mortgaged my vacation. 

If he would take back the dresser set, if he would give me back the brooch, I would come in and work for him every single day, even Saturdays. 

“I’ll shine the showcases,” I begged. “I’ll sweep the floor for you.” 

Mr. Schiller said that would not be necessary. Since I wanted the brooch back so badly, he would call the deal off. But if I was serious about working during vacation, he might be able to use me. 

So I walked out of Mr. Schiller’s drugstore not only with Mama’s brooch, but with a job that started the next morning. I felt very proud. The dresser set suddenly seemed a childish and silly thing. 

I put the brooch on the table in front of Papa. 

He looked at me proudly. “Was it so hard to do? Daughter!” 

“Not so hard as I thought.” I pinned the brooch on my dress. “I’ll wear it always,” I said. “I’ll keep it forever.” 

“Mama will be glad, Katrin.” 

Papa dipped a lump of sugar and held it out to me. I shook my head. “Somehow,” I said, “I just don’t feel like it, Papa.” 

“So.?” Papa said. “So?” 

And he stood up and poured out a cup of coffee and handed it to me. 

“For me?” I asked wonderingly. 

Papa smiled and nodded. “For my grown-up daughter,” he said. 

I sat up straight in my chair. And felt very proud as I drank my first cup of coffee.

From-https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.268342/2015.268342.Mamas-Bank_djvu.txt  (Posted with due acknowledgement for educational purpose.)

Questions for practice:

1. Who were the Santons?

2. Write a character sketch of Mama.

3. Write a character sketch of Katrin.

4. Write a character sketch of Papa.

5. Write a note about Katrin’s friends.

6. Describe Katrin’s graduation present.

7. How does Mama manage to purchase the graduation present for Katrin?

8. How do Nels and Christine react to Katrin’s getting graduation present?

9. What did Papa offer Katrin at the end of the story? Why?

10. How does Katrin become a “grown up” daughter?

3.2 War- Luigi Pirandello    

Luigi Pirandello

Biographical

Luigi Pirandello(1867-1936) was born in Girgenti, Sicily. He studied philology at Rome and at Bonn and wrote a dissertation on the dialect of his native town (1891). From 1897 to 1922 he was professor of aesthetics and stylistics at the Real Istituto di Magistere Femminile at Rome. Pirandello’s work is impressive by its sheer volume. He wrote a great number of novellas which were collected under the title Novelle per un anno (15 vols., 1922-37). Of his six novels the best known are Il fu Mattia Pascal (1904) [The Late Mattia Pascal], I vecchi e i giovani (1913) [The Old and the Young], Si gira (1916) | [Shoot!], and Uno, nessuno e centomila (1926) [One, None, and a Hundred thousand].

But Pirandello’s greatest achievement is in his plays. He wrote a large number of dramas which were published, between 1918 and 1935, under the collective title of Maschere nude [Naked Masks]. The title is programmatic. Pirandello is always preoccupied with the problem of identity. The self exists to him only in relation to others; it consists of changing facets that hide an inscrutable abyss. In a play like Cosí é (se vi pare) (1918) [Right You Are (If You Think You Are)], two people hold contradictory notions about the identity of a third person. The protagonist in Vestire gli ignudi (1923) [To Clothe the Naked] tries to establish her individuality by assuming various identities, which are successively stripped from her; she gradually realizes her true position in the social order and in the end dies «naked», without a social mask, in both her own and her friends’ eyes. Similarly in Enrico IV (1922) [Henry IV] a man supposedly mad imagines that he is a medieval emperor, and his imagination and reality are strangely confused. The conflict between illusion and reality is central in La vita che ti diedi (1924) [The Life I Gave You] in which Anna’s long-lost son returns home and contradicts her mental conception of him. However, his death resolves Anna’s conflict; she clings to illusion rather than to reality. The analysis and dissolution of a unified self are carried to an extreme in Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore (1921) [Six Characters in Search of An Author] where the stage itself, the symbol of appearance versus reality, becomes the setting of the play.

The attitudes expressed in L’Umorismo [Humour], an early essay (1908), are fundamental to all of Pirandello’s plays. His characters attempt to fulfil their self-seeking roles and are defeated by life itself which, always changing, enables them to see their perversity. This is Pirandello’s humour, an irony which arises from the contradictions inherent in life.

This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.

Luigi Pirandello died on December 10, 1936.

Luigi Pirandello – Biographical. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Media AB 2019. Mon. 19 Aug 2019. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1934/pirandello/biographical/> 

War

by Luigi Pirandello    

The passengers who had left Rome by the night express had had to stop until dawn at the small station of Fabriano in order to continue their journey by the small old-fashioned “local” joining the main line with Sulmona.

At dawn, in a stuffy and smoky second-class carriage in which five people had already spent the night, a bulky woman in deep mourning, was hoisted in—almost like a shapeless bundle. Behind her—puffing and moaning, followed her husband—a tiny man, thin and weakly, his face death-white, his eyes small and bright and looking shy and uneasy.

Having at last taken a seat he politely thanked the passengers who had helped his wife and who had made room for her; then he turned round to the woman trying to pull down the collar of her coat and politely enquired:

“Are you all right, dear?”

The wife, instead of answering, pulled up her collar again to her eyes, so as to hide her face.

“Nasty world,” muttered the husband with a sad smile.

And he felt it his duty to explain to his traveling companions that the poor woman was to be pitied for the war was taking away from her her only son, a boy of twenty to whom both had devoted their entire life, even breaking up their home at Sulmona to follow him to Rome where he had to go as a student, then allowing him to volunteer for war with an assurance, however, that at least for six months he would not be sent to the front and now, all of a sudden, receiving a wire saying that he was due to leave in three days’ time and asking them to go and see him off.

The woman under the big coat was twisting and wriggling, at times growling like a wild animal, feeling certain that all those explanations would not have aroused even a shadow of sympathy from those people who—most likely—were in the same plight as herself. One of them, who had been listening with particular attention, said:

“You should thank God that your son is only leaving now for the front. Mine has been sent there the first day of the war. He has already come back twice wounded and been sent back again to the front.”

“What about me? I have two sons and three nephews at the front,” said another passenger.

“Maybe, but in our case it is our only son,” ventured the husband.

“What difference can it make? You may spoil your only son with excessive attentions, but you cannot love him more than you would all your other children if you had any. Paternal love is not like bread that can be broken into pieces and split amongst the children in equal shares. A father gives all his love to each one of his children without discrimination, whether it be one or ten, and if I am suffering now for my two sons, I am not suffering half for each of them but double....”

“True ... true ...” sighed the embarrassed husband, “but suppose (of course we all hope it will never be your case) a father has two sons at the front and he loses one of them, there is still one left to console him ... while ...”

“Yes,” answered the other, getting cross, “a son left to console him but also a son left for whom he must survive, while in the case of the father of an only son if the son dies the father can die too and put an end to his distress. Which of the two positions is the worse? Don’t you see how my case would be worse than yours?”

“Nonsense,” interrupted another traveler, a fat, red-faced man with bloodshot eyes of the palest gray.

He was panting. From his bulging eyes seemed to spurt inner violence of an uncontrolled vitality which his weakened body could hardly contain.

“Nonsense,” he repeated, trying to cover his mouth with his hand so as to hide the two missing front teeth. “Nonsense. Do we give life to our children for our own benefit?”

The other travelers stared at him in distress. The one who had had his son at the front since the first day of the war sighed: “You are right. Our children do not belong to us, they belong to the Country....”

“Bosh,” retorted the fat traveler. “Do we think of the Country when we give life to our children? Our sons are born because ... well, because they must be born and when they come to life they take our own life with them. This is the truth. We belong to them but they never belong to us. And when they reach twenty they are exactly what we were at their age. We too had a father and mother, but there were so many other things as well ... girls, cigarettes, illusions, new ties ... and the Country, of course, whose call we would have answered—when we were twenty—even if father and mother had said no. Now, at our age, the love of our Country is still great, of course, but stronger than it is the love for our children. Is there any one of us here who wouldn’t gladly take his son’s place at the front if he could?”

There was a silence all round, everybody nodding as to approve.

“Why then,” continued the fat man, “shouldn’t we consider the feelings of our children when they are twenty? Isn’t it natural that at their age they should consider the love for their Country (I am speaking of decent boys, of course) even greater than the love for us? Isn’t it natural that it should be so, as after all they must look upon us as upon old boys who cannot move any more and must stay at home? If Country exists, if Country is a natural necessity like bread, of which each of us must eat in order not to die of hunger, somebody must go to defend it. And our sons go, when they are twenty, and they don’t want tears, because if they die, they die inflamed and happy (I am speaking, of course, of decent boys). Now, if one dies young and happy, without having the ugly sides of life, the boredom of it, the pettiness, the bitterness of disillusion ... what more can we ask for him? Everyone should stop crying: everyone should laugh, as I do ... or at least thank God—as I do—because my son, before dying, sent me a message saying that he was dying satisfied at having ended his life in the best way he could have wished. That is why, as you see, I do not even wear mourning....”

He shook his light fawn coat as to show it; his livid lip over his missing teeth was trembling, his eyes were watery and motionless, and soon after, he ended with a shrill laugh which might well have been a sob.

“Quite so ... quite so ...” agreed the others.

The woman who, bundled in a corner under her coat, had been sitting and listening had—for the last three months—tried to find in the words of her husband and her friends something to console her in her deep sorrow, something that might show her how a mother should resign herself to send her son not even to death but to a probable danger of life. Yet not a word had she found amongst the many which had been said ... and her grief had been greater in seeing that nobody—as she thought—could share her feelings.

But now the words of the traveler amazed and almost stunned her. She suddenly realized that it wasn’t the others who were wrong and could not understand her but herself who could not rise up to the same height of those fathers and mothers willing to resign themselves, without crying, not only to the departure of their sons but even to their death.

She lifted her head, she bent over from her corner trying to listen with great attention to the details which the fat man was giving to his companions about the way his son had fallen as a hero, for his King and his Country, happy and without regrets. It seemed to her that she had stumbled into a world she had never dreamt of, a world so far unknown to her and she was so pleased to hear everyone joining in congratulating that brave father who could so stoically speak of his child’s death.

Then suddenly, just as if she had heard nothing of what had been said and almost as if waking up from a dream, she turned to the old man, asking him:

“Then ... is your son really dead?”

Everybody stared at her. The old man, too, turned to look at her, fixing his great, bulging, horribly watery light gray eyes, deep in her face. For some little time he tried to answer, but words failed him. He looked and looked at her, almost as if only then—at that silly, incongruous question—he had suddenly realized at last that his son was really dead ... gone forever ... forever. His face contracted, became horribly distorted, then he snatched in haste a handkerchief from his pocket and, to the amazement of everyone, broke into harrowing, heart-rending, uncontrollable sobs.

from: http://members.lycos.co.uk/shortstories/pirandellowar.html

Questions for practice:

1. Why was the bulky woman unhappy?

2. What does a passenger tell about parental love?

3. Explain the plight of the passengers in “War”?

4. Why does a traveller in ‘War’ say that “everyone should stop crying”?

5. Explain the theme of patriotism in ‘War’.

6. Why did everyone congratulate the brave father?

7. How is youth and old age compared in ‘War’?