King Arthur Movie Tristan

title: Regret


author: Guy de Maupassant

genre: short story/classics



first lines:
Monsieur Saval, who was called in Mantes "Father Saval," had just risen from bed. He was weeping. It was a dull autumn day; the leaves were falling. They fell slowly in the rain, like a heavier and slower rain.




source: http://www.americanliterature.com/





In this story Paul Saval looks back upon his life with regrets. His parents have both passed on, he is not married and he is sixty-two years old.


He thinks about death and wonders how people can enjoy life knowing they will die one day.

Is it not strange that people can laugh, amuse themselves, be joyful under that eternal certainty of death? If this death were only probable, one could then have hope; but no, it is inevitable, as inevitable as that night follows the day.

Paul also reflects on never having someone love him, which I found to be the most depressing part of this story. He admits to being secretly in love with his best friends wife at one point, a woman named Madame Sandres.

He had not even been loved. No woman had reposed on his bosom, in a complete abandon of love. He knew nothing of the delicious anguish of expectation, the divine vibration of a hand in yours, of the ecstasy of triumphant passion.


What superhuman happiness must overflow your heart, when lips encounter lips for the first time, when the grasp of four arms makes one being of you, a being unutterably happy, two beings infatuated with one another.

As Paul reminisces on his secret love, and remembers one day when he was about to confess his love to her, he is full of remorse. He decides to go to Madame Sandres now and tell her how he has felt all this time.








I found this to be a beautifully written and sad short story. The way de Maupassant wrote it is with a sad heart. It's impressive that he was able to pack so much meaning and feeling in so little words.

I could not help but think that Regret was a direct reflection of the author's own feelings.


Moral of the story? Don't let life pass you by?

Life has its sombre days. It would no longer have any but sombre days for him, for he had reached the age of sixty-two. He is alone, an old bachelor, with nobody about him. How sad it is to die alone, all alone, without any one who is devoted to you!

You can read Regret
for free online
here.

Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant (5 August 1850 – 6 July 1893) was a popular 19th-century French writer, considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form's finest exponents.




Maupassant suffered from mental illness in his later years and attempted suicide on January 2nd, 1892. He was committed to a private asylum in Paris and died the following year.

title: The Jilting of Jane

author: H.G. Wells

genre: short story fiction


source: http://www.americanliterature.com/



published: 1894

first line: As I sit writing in my study, I can hear our Jane bumping her way downstairs with a brush and dust-pan.



In this short story by H.G. Wells a man named George tells the story of his housemaid Jane who is in love and engaged to be married to a man named William.

Jane has a low self esteem and thinks William is above her status.
She confides in Euphemia, George's wife, about her love.


When she brings William to the house to meet her employers, they notice that he is well dressed. Jane tells them that he was promoted at work.


William winds up leaving Jane for a wealthy older woman. Jane sees them in the street hand in hand and when she confronts them, they ignore her. Jane actually attends their wedding and throws a boot, yes a boot, at William.



George comments on how young Jane still is and how eventually she will get over the heartache.

We all have our sorrows, but I do not believe very much in the existence of sorrows that never heal.

George and his wife also comment on how this experience has opened Jane's eyes and made her wiser.

"I don't care," she said. "I don't care a rap. He will find out his mistake yet. It serves me right. I was stuck up about him. I ought not to have looked so high. And I am glad things are as things are."

Moral of the story? Time heals all wounds? You live and you learn?

I always enjoy H.G. Wells storytelling and find it impressive that although he was best known for science fiction stories, he still wrote short stories like this one.












About the author:







Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946) was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books. Together with Jules Verne and Hugo Gernsback, Wells has been referred to as "The Father of Science Fiction".


quoted from wiki

title: The Ugly Duckling

author: Hans Christian Andersen

published: 1844

genre: short story/fantasy/classic/fairy tale


source: http://www.americanliterature.com/

first line: It was lovely summer weather in the country, and the golden corn, the green oats, and the haystacks piled up in the meadows looked beautiful.




In this classic children's fairy tale, a mother duck waits for her eggs to hatch.

All but one large egg have hatched and she begins to wonder if it's not a turkey egg. When the egg finally hatches, an 'ugly duckling' emerges.
She thinks he is not so ugly, and takes him into society to introduce him to the other animals on the farm.


The other animals begin to pick on the ugly duckling saying he does not belong with them because he looks different.
The bullying is so bad, he runs away.

"He is too big," they all said, and the turkey cock, who had been born into the world with spurs, and fancied himself really an emperor, puffed himself out like a vessel in full sail, and flew at the duckling, and became quite red in the head with passion, so that the poor little thing did not know where to go, and was quite miserable because he was so ugly and laughed at by the whole farmyard. So it went on from day to day till it got worse and worse. The poor duckling was driven about by every one; even his brothers and sisters were unkind to him, and would say, "Ah, you ugly creature, I wish the cat would get you," and his mother said she wished he had never been born.

He stumbles upon an old woman living in a cottage. She is half blind and doesn't see how different the duck looks, so she takes him in. Three weeks pass and he decides he wants to set off and explore the world. He comes upon beautiful swans and can't believe his eyes. He wants to be just like them.

One evening, just as the sun set amid radiant clouds, there came a large flock of beautiful birds out of the bushes. The duckling had never seen any like them before. They were swans, and they curved their graceful necks, while their soft plumage shown with dazzling whiteness. They uttered a singular cry, as they spread their glorious wings and flew away from those cold regions to warmer countries across the sea.

The ugly duckling endures a harsh and lonely winter, almost freezing to death in the water and nearly starving.

When Spring finally arrives, he stretches his wings and comes upon beautiful swans again. He swims to them and bows his head, asking them to kill him.
But when he bows his head, she sees his reflection in the water. He himself has become a beautiful swan and is welcomed by the others.

He now felt glad at having suffered sorrow and trouble, because it enabled him to enjoy so much better all the pleasure and happiness around him; for the great swans swam round the new-comer, and stroked his neck with their beaks, as a welcome.

The ugly duckling appreciates everything he has now, because of all he has suffered.

..he was so happy, and yet not at all proud. He had been persecuted and despised for his ugliness, and now he heard them say he was the most beautiful of all the birds.

I think the story of The Ugly Duckling is timeless. Many of us can relate to going through that awkward phase in life and coming out stronger because of it, myself included.
This is one of my favorite fairy tales.



This is a statue in Central Park, NYC, of Hans Christian Andersen.







About the author:

During his lifetime he was acclaimed for having delighted children worldwide, and was feted by royalty. His poetry and stories have been translated into more than 150 languages. They have inspired motion pictures, plays, ballets, and animated films.

title: A Sister's Confession


author: Guy de Maupassant


genre: short story/classics


first line: Marguerite de Therelles was dying.


source: http://www.americanliterature.com/





A Sister's Confession opens with Marguerite de Therelles on her death bed and her older sister Suzanne, sobbing beside her.



Years ago Suzanne's fiance Henry died suddenly, and Marguerite swore she would never marry and never leave her sisters side. Marguerite however, was sickly and seemed unhappy after she promised to live with her sister forever.



When the priest arrives, Marguerite sits up suddenly in her bed and says she needs to confess. I won't tell you what the confession was, you'll have to read the story to find out.




This short story was so-so for me. The storyline was a bit too cliche for me, but then again this was written in the mid to late 1800's.


Guy de Maupassant did have me intrigued though, I really wanted to know what the confession was.


The one thing that bothered me about this story was that Marguerite's dialogue was annoying.

You remember? Oh, don't speak! Listen, listen. I, I alone did not die. But I have always been ill. Listen--he died--you know--listen--that was not the worst. It was afterward, later--always--the most terrible-listen.



My life, all my life--such torture! I said to myself: 'I will never leave my sister. And on my deathbed I will tell her all.' And now I have told. And I have always thought of this moment--the moment when all would be told. Now it has come. It is terrible--oh!--sister--

I will be reading more of Guy de Maupassant's short stories. I did enjoy The Necklace.





You can read A Sister's Confession for free online here.

Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant (5 August 1850 – 6 July 1893) was a popular 19th-century French writer, considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form's finest exponents.



Maupassant suffered from mental illness in his later years and attempted suicide on January 2nd, 1892. He was committed to a private asylum in Paris and died the following year.

title: The Little Mermaid


author: Hans Christian Andersen


genre: short story/fantasy/classic/fairy tale


published: 1837


first line: Far out in the ocean the water is as blue as the petals of the loveliest cornflower, and as clear as the purest glass.


source: http://www.americanliterature.com/






The original story of The Little Mermaid is one of my favorite fairy tales. As a child I watched an animated version (non Disney) and enjoyed the beauty and sadness of the story.

This bittersweet fairy tale is about a little mermaid who gives her life up in the sea for the chance to have a human soul and to be with her true love, a Prince.






In Hans Christian Andersen's version, the little mermaid lives in the ocean with her father, grandmother and five sisters.

They were six lovely girls, but the youngest was the most beautiful of them all. Her skin was as soft and tender as a rose petal, and her eyes were as blue as the deep sea, but like all the others she had no feet. Her body ended in a fish tail.

When she sees a young Prince, and saves him from drowning, the little mermaid falls in love with him and cannot think of anything else. She longs to have human legs and live on shore with her Prince.


I found it sad how the mermaid longs to be something she is not. After she rescues the Prince, she often visits the shore just outside his home in hopes of seeing him.

Many evenings and many mornings she revisited the spot where she had left the Prince. She saw the fruit in the garden ripened and harvested, and she saw the snow on the high mountain melted away, but she did not see the Prince, so each time she came home sadder than she had left. It was her one consolation to sit in her little garden and throw her arms about the beautiful marble statue that looked so much like the Prince. But she took no care of her flowers now. They overgrew the paths until the place was a wilderness, and their long stalks and leaves became so entangled in the branches of the tree that it cast a gloomy shade.

The little mermaid goes to the sea witch and asks her to make her human. This part of the story was creepy. The witch agrees to give the mermaid a potion that will give her human legs....but for a price. The witch wants her beautiful voice in exchange for the potion.

The witch tells the mermaid that her human legs will be always unbearably painful, like walking on knives. She also tells her that if the prince doesn't love her completely and marry her, she will die.

If he marries someone else, your heart will break on the very next morning, and you will become foam of the sea.

Despite all of this, the mermaid agrees and the sea witch cuts off her tongue and gives her the potion.





The little mermaid takes the potion and finds her Prince. He does end up loving her, but eventually he marries someone else. She gave her life and her family up for him and she saved him from the shipwreck, but the little mermaid can't explain herself to him, since she is now mute.



All she can do is watch the wedding ceremony brokenhearted, knowing that this will be her last night alive. She was always taught that mermaids do not go to heaven after they die, there is no afterlife for them.



Her sisters appear to her that night and give her one chance to save herself. The cost would be to stab the prince with the sea witches knife. The little mermaid cannot kill her true love, so the following morning, she becomes the foam on the sea.



But when she dies, the mermaid becomes a spirit, because of the selfless act she committed by not stabbing the Prince to save herself.
She now has a chance of going to heaven if she does good deeds for 300 years. So the little mermaid gets a chance at her happy ending after all.





For me this is the most moving moment in the story since mermaids cannot cry because they have no tears. However after the little mermaid dies and becomes a spirit, she can finally cry:

The little mermaid lifted her clear bright eyes toward God's sun, and for the first time her eyes were wet with tears.

Hans Christian Andersen's story is beautiful, sad and scary all at once. I enjoyed the descriptive storytelling, and found myself easily able to imagine the mermaid's undersea world. The part where the sea witch chops off her tongue was creepy, I would think young children would be scared by that.





One thing I wasn't thrilled with was the part at the end where the little mermaid would get to heaven after 300 years of helping children. Seems a bit harsh no?
I would have thought she had already redeemed herself by sacrificing herself instead of the prince.




All in all, this is a favorite fairytale of mine and I enjoyed reading it.

Moral of the story? Perhaps that we shouldn't try to be something we are not? Or maybe that selfless acts will grant us a spot in heaven?












The photo above is of the Little Mermaid statue located in Copenhagen, Denmark.







This has been a part of Once Upon a Time

title: The Door in The Wall

author: H.G. Wells


genre: short story/science fiction/fantasy/classic

source: http://www.americanliterature.com/

published: 1911

first line: One confidential evening, not three months ago, Lionel Wallace told me this story of the Door in the Wall.




In this short story by H.G. Wells, the narrator is a man named Redmond. He is telling the story of his friend Wallace's obsession with a door in a wall that leads to a beautiful otherworldly garden. Wallace discovered the door when he was a lonely five year old, out walking in West Kensington, London.
While he was there, he played with children and even spent time with an angel-like woman, a mother figure.

After spending time within the enchanted garden, he came back home to the real world where his governess raised him since his father was a busy lawyer. He told to his father about the garden behind the wall, but Wallace received a spanking for telling lies. Wallace wanted to go back to the garden, often dreaming about it.



Years pass, and a forty year old Wallace still obsesses with the door. He is now a successful politician. Wallace actually sees the door a few times throughout his life, but he never goes through it again, only contemplates it.

You may think me superstitious, if you will, and foolish; but, indeed, I am more than half convinced that he had, in truth, an abnormal gift, and a sense, something - I know not what - that in the guise of a wall and door offered him an outlet, a secret and peculiar passage of escape into another and altogether more beautiful world.

I always enjoy reading Wells stories. Here is a man who was ahead of his time. I love his imagination and the way he spins a story, to make it almost believable.
In this story, poor Wallace was neglected by his busy father and ends up finding this paradise-like world behind a door. It's no wonder he often thought about it for the rest of his life. As a reader, you do wonder whether the door actually existed or if it was his way of compensating for the neglect he suffered. He never went through the door again even though he saw it a few more times.

I became in a moment a very glad and wonder-happy little boy - in another world. It was a world with a different quality, a warmer, more penetrating, and mellower light, with a faint clear gladness in its air, and wisps of sun-touched cloud in the blueness of its sky.

About the author:




H.G. Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books. Together with Jules Verne, Wells has been referred to as "The Father of Science Fiction".




This has been a part of Once Upon a Time

title: A Shameful Affair

author: Kate Chopin


genre: short story fiction

source: http://www.americanliterature.com/


published: 1891

first line: Mildred Orme, seated in the snuggest corner of the big front porch of the Kraummer farmhouse, was as content as a girl need hope to be.



Kate Chopin's A Shameful Affair is a short story about a woman named Mildred who lives on a farm. One day she notices a farmhand named Fred Evelyn when he picks up a paper that has gotten out of her reach and hands it to her.

The handsome young farmhand is simply being polite, and doesn't pay Mildred the attention she wants, so she feels snubbed by him.



Until one day he gives her a long stare that makes her heart skip a beat.
Soon enough she comes upon him in the woods fishing by a river on a hot summer day.
When he suddenly kisses her, Mildred is shocked. She feels really guilty afterwards and decides to act like it never happened. When Fred approaches her to apologize, she tells him she will forgive him once she is able to forgive herself.

why was that kiss the most delicious thing she had known in her twenty years of life? The sting of it had never left her lips since it was pressed into them. The sweet trouble of it banished sleep from her pillow.

This story was really short, and Chopin had me wanting more. The shameful affair was a simple kiss, yet Mildred hated herself for enjoying it so much.

Chopin has a way of packing alot of meaning into a few simple words.

It was summer time; she was idle; she was piqued, and that was the beginning of the shameful affair.

Kate Chopin (1850–1904) was born in St. Louis and, upon marriage, settled in New Orleans. The mother of six, Chopin did not begin writing until her husband’s death left her in debt. The Awakening (1899), Chopin’s best known work, was so far ahead of its time in its portrayal of a dissatisfied wife, that it was overlooked. Today Chopin is considered the forerunner of twentieth-century feminist authors.

title: A Pair of Silk Stockings

author: Kate Chopin

genre: short story fiction

source: http://www.americanliterature.com/

published: 1896

first line: Little Mrs. Sommers one day found herself the unexpected possessor of fifteen dollars.




This story starts off with Mrs. Sommers finding fifteen dollars. She begins to think of the many ways she can use the money, mainly for dressing her children.
Mrs. Sommers is a bargain hunter and needs to make every penny count.



She reflects on how her neighbors talked about the better days financial wise, before she was wed and with children.

She had no time--no second of time to devote to the past. The needs of the present absorbed her every faculty. A vision of the future like some dim, gaunt monster sometimes appalled her, but luckily to-morrow never comes.

While at the store, Mrs. Sommers comes upon a pair of silk stockings on sale. She is tempted to indulge and buys them for herself. She puts them on in the ladies room. After having the pretty stockings on, she decides she need shoes to match as well as gloves. On a roll spoiling herself, Mrs. Sommers buys herself lunch at a nice restaurant and goes to see a play.


After the play is over Mrs. Sommers hails a cab. As she is driven home, she has a wish for the cab to never stop and instead drive on with her in it forever.




In this short story Mrs. Sommers is an unselfish mother, always thinking of her children. Upon finding the money, she instantly thinks of dressing her kids in nice clothing. Yet, when she sees the stockings, they are too tempting to resist.
She enjoyed living one day almost like a fantasy. At the end of the day, she doesn't want to go back home, back to her reality of being married with children and struggling financially.




Again, Chopin touches on feelings that most women can relate to. Most people want to escape the pressures of real life for just one day. Mrs. Sommers indulged in a few new items of clothing as a form of escaping the harsh reality of her poverty. I do think it is interesting that she feels no guilt at the end of the story, she simply does not want to go home. She also tries not to reflect on her past, when she was probably better off economically.

Kate Chopin (1850–1904) was born in St. Louis and, upon marriage, settled in New Orleans. The mother of six, Chopin did not begin writing until her husband’s death left her in debt. The Awakening (1899), Chopin’s best known work, was so far ahead of its time in its portrayal of a dissatisfied wife, that it was overlooked. Today Chopin is considered the forerunner of twentieth-century feminist authors.

title: The Necklace

author: Guy de Maupassant

source: http://www.americanliterature.com/

genre: short story

published: 1884

first line: SHE WAS ONE OF THOSE PRETTY AND CHARMING GIRLS BORN, as though fate had blundered over her, into a family of artisans.



The short story The Necklace is about a woman named Mathilde Loisel who is unhappy with her lot in life. She feels she deserves to be rich and have all sorts of fancy and expensive belongings.







She suffered endlessly, feeling herself born for every delicacy and luxury. She suffered from the poorness of her house, from its mean walls, worn chairs, and ugly curtains. All these things, of which other women of her class would not even have been aware, tormented and insulted her.






One day her husband hands her an invitation to a party but Mathilde is upset complaining that she has nothing to wear.
Her husband gives her his savings to buy a dress for the event. Mathilde is still unhappy because she has no jewelry to wear.

She ends up borrowing a diamond necklace from her friend, Madame Jeanne, who is well off. Mathilde is a hit at the party with her beautiful dress and diamond necklace. However, when she arrives home that night, she notices the necklace is no longer around her neck.



In a frenzy her husband runs out trying to retrace their steps, but the necklace is nowhere to be found. Their only hope is to replace the necklace so they begin to go to jewelers trying to find its match.

Mathilde's poor husband uses his entire inheritance plus borrows money from friends and takes out loans just to buy the new necklace.

He mortgaged the whole remaining years of his existence, risked his signature without even knowing it he could honour it, and, appalled at the agonising face of the future, at the black misery about to fall upon him, at the prospect of every possible physical privation and moral torture, he went to get the new necklace and put down upon the jeweller's counter thirty-six thousand francs.




After ten years, the debt was paid off with much suffering and hard work. Mathilde didn't have any nice clothes or extras at all now and aged prematurely.
Now she really knew what poverty was.

Madame Loisel looked old now. She had become like all the other strong, hard, coarse women of poor households. Her hair was badly done, her skirts were awry, her hands were red. She spoke in a shrill voice, and the water slopped all over the floor when she scrubbed it. But sometimes, when her husband was at the office, she sat down by the window and thought of that evening long ago, of the ball at which she had been so beautiful and so much admired.






While out one day Mathilde runs into the her friend who lent her the necklace all those years ago. Madame Jeanne does not recognize Mathilde, she has aged so badly.
Mathilde blames her friend for her misery and tells her that all those years ago she lost her diamond necklace and has been paying off the debt ever since.
Madame Jeanne reveals a sad truth about the necklace.





I enjoyed this short story by Guy de Maupassant. There is a twist ending that I saw coming but it still gave me a little shock when I read it.

The moral of the story: All that glitters is not gold.












Henri Ren Albert Guy de Maupassant (Aug 5, 1850 - Jul 6, 1893) is considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and his work influenced Somerset Maugham, O. Henry, Anton Chekhov and Henry James among others. He was a popular French writer and fought in the Franco-Prussian war as a young man. He drew heavily on that experience and that war provides the setting for many of his stories which often depict the tragedy and suffering of innocent civilians caught in war's path.






Read The Necklace free online here.

title: A Respectable Woman

author: Kate Chopin

genre: short story fiction

published: 1894

first line: Mrs. Baroda was a little provoked to learn that her husband expected his friend, Gouvernail, up to spend a week or two on the plantation.



In Chopin's short story, A Respectable Woman , Mrs. Baroda's husbands college friend, a man named Gouvernail, comes to visit them at their plantation home in Louisiana. Gouvernail stays at the Barodas home for a short while and Mrs. Baroda can't help but take notice of him.


He talked freely and intimately in a low, hesitating drawl that was not unpleasant to hear.



However, Mrs. Baroda insists she dislikes Gouvernail, she even tells her husband she will be going to stay at her aunts home until he is gone. Something about him really bothers her, mostly his reserve. Mrs. Baroda's husband doesn't understand his wife's dislike for Gouvernail.


One night she is sitting on a bench under an oak tree when she hears Gouvernail approaching. He sits next to her and begins to reminisce about his college years and he quotes Whitman. Mrs. Baroda finds herself wanting to reach out and touch him.


Her mind only vaguely grasped what he was saying. Her physical being was for the moment predominant. She was not thinking of his words, only drinking in the tones of his voice. She wanted to reach out her hand in the darkness and touch him with the sensitive tips of her fingers upon the face or the lips. She wanted to draw close to him and whisper against his cheek--she did not care what--as she might have done if she had not been a respectable woman.



She abruptly leaves to go inside her home, and the next morning she goes to her aunts house and does not return until Gouvernail has left.
Almost a year later, Mrs. Baroda actually suggests to her husband that Gouvernail come back to visit. Her husband is happy that she seems to have let go of her dislike for his friend.



The ending however, hints that Mrs. Baroda might actually do something unrespectable next time. She tells her husband, "I have overcome everything! you will see. This time I shall be very nice to him."




I enjoyed this short story. Mrs. Baroda found herself attracted to Gouvernail and this is why she acted like she disliked him so much.
she knew there are some battles in life which a human being must fight alone


Again, here is Kate Chopin writing about topics and feelings that were not openly discussed in her day. This makes her all the more a favorite author of mine.

Kate Chopin (1850–1904) was born in St. Louis and, upon marriage, settled in New Orleans. The mother of six, Chopin did not begin writing until her husband’s death left her in debt. The Awakening (1899), Chopin’s best known work, was so far ahead of its time in its portrayal of a dissatisfied wife, that it was overlooked. Today Chopin is considered the forerunner of twentieth-century feminist authors.

Read A Respectable Woman free online here .

Good morning Sunday Saloners. I've been reading a lot of short stories online lately.
Maybe it's because I have a short attention span, but I've always enjoyed a good short story. It's like a quick dose of fiction I can savor, and have a small sense of accomplishment after I'm done reading. Some of my favorite short stories are actually Edgar Allan Poe's work, he always sets the mood perfectly and his stories give a good dose of the macabre. I've also been reading some of Kate Chopin's work, I've been a fan of hers since reading The Awakening.






What about you? Do you enjoy reading short stories? What are some of your favorites?
I will leave you with a review of a short story I recently read called
The Storm by Kate Chopin.



Enjoy your Sunday :)





title: The Storm


author: Kate Chopin


genre: short story/fiction


written: 1898


source: http://www.americanliterature.com/


first line: The leaves were so still that even Bibi thought it was going to rain.





Set in Louisiana, The Storm
opens with young Bibi and his father Bobinôt, at the general store.


Clouds and thunder start to form announcing an upcoming rain storm. Bibi worries over his mother who is home alone, but his father assures him she will be safe inside the house, while they wait out the storm at the store.




Calixta is home alone when the storm starts to develop. She puts her sewing down and goes outside to gather the laundry from the line so it won't get rained on when she sees her old flame Alcée Laballière ride in. Calixta allows him inside her home to wait out the downpour.




Once he is inside the storm really starts to get bad and Calixta begins to worry for her son. Laballière tries to assure her that her son will be just fine and tries to calm her down, grabbing her by the shoulders at one point.

The contact of her warm, palpitating body when he had unthinkingly drawn her into his arms, had aroused all the old-time infatuation and desire for her flesh.

In the middle of this torrential downpour, the two old flames reignite and they have a passionate encounter. After they are done, the storm passes and Laballière rides off to his home. He writes a letter to his own wife, who is away on a trip with their children telling her he misses her but is doing fine himself and she needn't rush home.



Calixtas husband and son arrive soon after, worried that she will be upset at them for being out in the storm and worrying her. Instead Calixta is happy to see them and has started dinner already. She covers her son and husband with kisses.








Funny thing about The Storm is that I read it many years ago and didn't realize until now it was Kate Chopin who wrote it. The story intrigued me then and it still does.




I can see why The Storm would be considered scandalous in Chopin's day. She wrote it in 1898 but it was not published until 1969, sixty-five years after her death.
Nowadays we are used to romance novels and this type of passionate writing is common.

The generous abundance of her passion, without guile or trickery, was like a white flame which penetrated and found response in depths of his own sensuous nature that had never yet been reached.

These two people are overtaken by their passion, the storm itself is metaphor for that intensity.

She went and stood at the window with a greatly disturbed look on her face. She wiped the frame that was clouded with moisture. It was stiflingly hot. Alcée got up and joined her at the window, looking over her shoulder. The rain was coming down in sheets obscuring the view of far-off cabins and enveloping the distant wood in a gray mist. The playing of the lightning was incessant.

The Storm
is passionate and intense. Kate Chopin was not afraid to write about a woman who had a whirlwind affair and enjoyed it. Calixta suffered no guilt, neither did Laballière. As the storm built so did their desire. I wonder if there were no storm, would the affair have occurred?



They both enjoyed their tumultuous sexual encounter, neither judging the other for it. Chopin wrote this at a time when women weren't even supposed to have sexual desires, let alone act upon them. Chopin was way ahead of her time.

title: A Moonlight Fable

genre: short story/classic

author: H.G. Wells

first line: There was once a little man whose mother made him a beautiful suit of clothes.

source: http://www.americanliterature.com





In this short story by H.G. Wells, a young man loves a suit that his mother sews for him. He loves this suit so much, he wants to wear it all the time. His mother however insists he keep the suit safely packed away until his wedding day.

It was green and gold and woven so that I cannot describe how delicate and fine it was, and there was a tie of orange fluffiness that tied up under his chin. And the buttons in their newness shone like stars. He was proud and pleased by his suit beyond measure, and stood before the long looking-glass when first he put it on, so astonished and delighted with it that he could hardly turn himself away.

The boy loved his suit so much that he dreamt about it. He would often take the suit out of it's storage and admire it. He is mother allowed him to wear the suit on Sundays to church, but with tissue covering the buttons so they wouldn't tarnish and tacked on protective guards on the elbows and cuffs so they wouldn't tear. Whenever the boy would peek at the buttons under the tissue wrap, he would notice they were becoming duller and duller, and this would cause him anxiety.


One night he sees the moonlight shining into his bedroom and he gets out of bed with an urge to put the suit on. He makes up his mind to tear off the protective tissue and guards off the suit.

Thought joined on to thought like things that whisper warmly in the shadows. Then he sat up in his little bed suddenly, very alert, with his heart beating very fast and a quiver in his body from top to toe. He had made up his mind. He knew now that he was going to wear his suit as it should be worn. He had no doubt in the matter. He was afraid, terribly afraid, but glad, glad.

He hurries quietly out of the house and to his mothers garden wearing his suit.
He starts to run with his arms out wide, tearing his suit on thorns along the way, but he doesn't care. All that matters is that he is wearing his beautiful suit.
He even runs into a duck pond and begins to swim around.


After swimming through the pond and coming out on the other side, he comes along a road. As he is running along, he sees a moth. The moth circles his head and brushes his lips. He is running straight toward a deep pit and does not notice. The next morning he is found dead at the bottom of the pit.




A Moonlight Fable threw me for a loop with its morbid ending. I really didn't expect the boy to die. Was Well's trying to prove a point here? Since the boy didn't listen to his mother and insisted on wearing the suit and then running around at night in it, he wound up suffering the ultimate price?



While reading, I assumed the boy was young since his mother was saving the suit for his wedding day. But wouldn't he outgrow it by then? Unless by 'little man' Wells meant a young adult.







The single thing I did like was the descriptive writing in this story.

There was no darkness in the world, but only warm, mysterious shadows; and all the leaves and spikes were edged and lined with iridescent jewels of dew. The night was warmer than any night had ever been, the heavens by some miracle at once vaster and nearer, and spite of the great ivory-tinted moon that ruled the world, the sky was full of stars.

About the author:



H.G. Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books. Together with Jules Verne, Wells has been referred to as "The Father of Science Fiction".




You can read A Moonlight Fable online here.

title: Regret

author: Kate Chopin

genre: short story fiction/classics

source: http://www.americanliterature.com/

first line: MAMZELLE AURÉLIE possessed a good strong figure, ruddy cheeks, hair that was changing from brown to gray, and a determined eye.



Kate Chopin's 'The Awakening' is a favorite classic, so when I came across this short story online, I was eager to read it.


Fifty year old Mamzelle Aurélie lives on her farm with no one but her dog Ponto and her fieldhands. Aurélie never married and never regretted it.

Mamzelle Aurélie had never thought of marrying. She had never been in love. At the age of twenty she had received a proposal, which she had promptly declined, and at the age of fifty she had not yet lived to regret it.

Her neighbor a woman named Odile asks Aurélie to watch after her four young children for two weeks while she tends to her sick mother. Soon enough the children are making a mess of the home, playing and running and just doing what children usually do. Aurélie does get used to the kids and you even get the sense that she starts to love them.

It took her some days to become accustomed to the laughing, the crying, the chattering that echoed through the house and around it all day long. And it was not the first or the second night that she could sleep comfortably with little Élodie's hot, plump body pressed close against her, and the little one's warm breath beating her cheek like the fanning of a bird's wing.

I felt sorry for Aurélie. She never had children of her own and seems to never have realized how lonely she was. The story ends with her sobbing at her kitchen table after the children leave with their mother. Her dog Ponto is licking her hand but Aurélie doesn't notice.
She doesn't bother to clean up the mess the children left behind, almost as if she wants a reminder that they were there in the first place.
The main theme in this short story is regret, and you do get a feel of Aurélie's sadness and remorse.

Kate Chopin was an American author of short stories and novels. She is now considered by some to have been a forerunner of feminist authors of the 20th century.

I read Regret online here.

title: Eva is Inside Her Cat

author: Gabriel García Márquez

genre: short story fiction

source: http://www.americanliterature.com


first line: ALL OF A SUDDEN SHE NOTICED that her beauty had fallen all apart on her, that it had begun to pain her physically like a tumor or a cancer.



I first discovered Gabriel García Márquez and his beautiful prose when I read Love in the Time of Cholera. However, as much as I was taken in by his wonderful writing I disliked the characters in Cholera.

I had the same kind of experience reading this short story, the writing was captivating, yet the story was creepy and depressing.



In the short story Eva is Inside Her Cat, Eva has dreams of being ordinary.


Apparently her beauty is a burden and she likens it to 'tiny insects' who live under her skin. As the story goes you see that the narrator Eva, was mentally ill and has committed suicide. Her story is being told after her death.

Those insects didn't belong to her. They came, transmitted from generation to generation, sustaining with their tiny armor all the prestige of a select caste, a painfully select group. Those insects had been born in the womb of the first woman who had had a beautiful daughter. But it was necessary, urgent, to put a stop to that heritage. Someone must renounce the eternal transmission of that artificial beauty.

After Eva's suicide she is still not free, her spirit is in limbo. When she realizes she is dead, she starts to crave an orange. A man is buried under an orange tree outside Eva's home and she is both drawn to the oranges and repulsed by them, thinking that the man is somehow a part of the oranges since his decaying body nourished the trees.



Eva decides to possess the house cat so she can have a body in which to be able to eat the oranges. When Eva realizes her spirit is inside her cat, she looks around she sees only arsenic covering everything in her home. She realizes two thousand years have passed since her suicide and she is still stuck inside her cat.

Why didn't it dawn right then and there or why didn't she die once and for all? She had never thought that beauty would cost her so many sacrifices.

As I said Márquez writing always grabs my attention. When I first began reading Eva is Inside Her Cat, I didn't think it would be a depressing story about a woman who has been dead for two thousand years and has been craving oranges and mourning the curse of her beauty, yet the story piqued my interest from the start.

The story has a lonely and desperate feel to it, especially when Eva comes to realize that she is already dead. Márquez does a great job conveying Eva's anxiety. I think his writing has a touch of genius to it and this makes me a fan of his work.

But at every moment something was vibrating in her, a shudder that ran through her, overwhelming her, making her aware of that other physical universe that moved outside her world. She couldn't hear, she couldn't see, but she knew about that sound and that sight. And there, in the heights of her superior world, she began to know that an environment of anguish surrounded her.

Gabriel García Márquez is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist. He is considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century.