Anna’s life is the storyline off subservient dating, away from “taking good care of the new sloppy,” where it’s mainly Anna who does brand new compassionate , and you may she can it towards full spectrum of definition from authoritative service to help you charity to help you love
That Anna’s emotional wedding is a blunder is soon created aside by sour specifics she has currently anticipated: their own most readily useful matchmaking was deceived so you can a man, “an alternative doctor one Mrs. Lehntman realized” (56).
Shonjen’s house was threatened from the a female exactly who the guy plans to marry. Unfortunately but resolutely, Anna quits the house now governed from the usurper from her residential energy.
Anna today takes up the career with Miss Mathilda, looking after a unique lackadaisical spinster: “So Anna began a special lifestyle taking good care of [. ] careless Skip Mathilda.” (61) They are the happiest https://kissbrides.com/paraguay-women/santa-rosa/ years of the nice Anna’s lives. She will signal and you will scold when you find yourself at the same time valuing and you may admiring their unique rich and you may highly experienced mistress:
Yes, taking good care of Skip Mathilda had been brand new happiest days of most of the the good Anna’s strong hard-working lives. (63)
Anna’s psychological relationship to Skip Mathilda nevertheless remains unsymmetrical – eclipsed by working matchmaking, pushed lower than and never openly expressed – though it does cover their unique from the vicious frustration regarding their unique romance which have Mrs. Lehntman. The expression “romance” is actually superceded from the “pleased members of the family.” The story now settles with the story book home-based idyll discussed from the inception, that have Skip Mathilda, Anna therefore the stray animals under their own fees, her “children”: “Sally and old Child and young Peter together with jolly little Towels.”(68)
Skip Mathilda wasn’t a love on the a beneficial Anna’s lives, however, Anna offered her much solid affection that it nearly occupied her lives due to the fact complete. (64) [. ] It actually was a very happier relatives indeed there as a whole on kitchen [. ]. (68)
Here could only stick to the anticlimax out-of Anna’s joy, initiated whenever Miss Mathilda resumes their own nomadic lifestyle – “Skip Mathilda got so you can far drifting and often altered their own home” (75) – , an eventuality mentioned during the their own interviews 5 years prior to however, next suppressed and you will destroyed inside Anna’s quotidian happiness.
The third area anticipates the ending within its title: “New Death of A Anna” (77). Anna’s past decades are referred to as good self-destructive withdrawal from lifestyle. Being kept in charge of Miss Mathilda’s household and you can vaguely longing for their return, Anna temporarily rents the recently vacated bed room in order to lodgers who she is scold and you will purchase regarding for the normal styles. Nevertheless the higher void in her own mental life results in actual symptoms of world-weariness and you can dejection. Again Anna becomes ill and really should features an operation. Anybody, no less than, has been her when she passes away: Mrs. Drehten, a pal which have exactly who she got constantly mutual Weltschmerz off one another a broad and you may type of kind and you will who had been today by herself distress off a tumefaction. Mrs. Drehten’s letter to overlook Mathilda closes with Anna’s past content so you can life – also to Miss Mathilda.
Anna’s welcome to miss Mathilda converts the new significance of your verbal cover-up “care” clearly into that which stays unexpressed and you may unfulfilled, but nonetheless their particular biggest craving: “like,” practically Anna’s last utterance prior to their passing and you can through to the last word-of the language – “FINIS
“Handling this new careless” seems to be the brand new uninsidious character development that makes the new taboo homosexual thinking between feminine you can easily, or in other words significantly more suggestively than simply clearly portrayable.16 That Anna’s story leads to sadness and you can dying, whether or not she read to be flexible when you look at the to relax and play their unique character, renders an individual disappointed. The break up stays mysteriously incomprehensible, especially while the Mathilda’s penchant to possess “wandering” is done clear from the extremely outset. The new fairy tale residential idyll, a hopefully pleased problem for them each other, nonetheless try not to create Miss Mathilda to settle down, and you may Anna is not the just one who finds out they incomprehensible. This program out-of occurrences implies the big question: Who is it mysticized, blissfully husbandless, nameless, “large and you can idle,” “large and you may careless mistress” “Skip Mathilda” (21 f.), “[who] got in order to much drifting” (75)? For now let us get off issue open, since the does what.
