В данной ситуации он совершенно не воспринимает ее всерьез, он задает ей следующие вопросы: «HasJackbeenbullyingyou? Orhasyourdearlybelovedsisterfailedtowrite? » – к тому же согласно тому времени, это было нормально для женщины расстраиваться по таким пустякам. Он даже осмеливается признаться ей в любви «IwanttotellyouhowIlove …», на что она реагирует практически комическим образом: «moaned – "Toolate!"». После этой фразы он уже удивляется и начинает беспокоиться и относиться к ситуации более серьезно: «Hewasawareofaswiftchillathisheart» – холодок прокрался к нему в сердце, и когда он узнает, что проблема связана с мужчиной, он и вовсе отстраняется от девушки: «Hedrewawayfromhergently, andgentlyhedepositedherinabigchair».
Девушка впадает в истерику, она считает, что с ней произошла самая ужасная вещь на свете, она все повторяет, что она безнравственная женщина, что Билли сказал, что после того, что они сделали, она обязана выйти за него замуж: «Wewerewitheachothersomuch. Мы считаем, что нам, так же как и Нэду на ум приходят мысли о том, что у нее с Билли были какие-то половые отношения, а по традиции того времени лишиться девственности можно было только с мужем, во время брачной ночи и настоящий джентльмен должен был жениться на ней после такой окказии. За это время Нэд испытывает и злость и обиду, он и готов кинуться разбираться с Билли: «"Thescoundrel!" With the explosion Ned Bashford was on his feet, no longer a tired Greek, but a violently angry young man», онауверяет, чтоэтовсееевина, тогдаонменяетсвоемнение: « I don't blame you in the least, Loretta. And you have been very honest. But Billy is right, and you are wrong. Youmustgetmarried». Эта комедия продолжается до тех пор, пока Лоретта не обронила одну случайную фразу: «"HowwasItoknow? – Boo – hoo," Lorettawascrying. "He didn't tell me. Nobody else ever kissed me. I never dreamed a kiss could be so terrible . . . until, boo – hoo . . . until he wrote to me. I only got the letter this morning».
Тут у Нэда падает камень с души: «Hisfacebrightened. Itseemedasthoughlightwasdawningonhim», чтобы описать его чувства, автор использует такое олицетворение. И мы понимаем, что эта девушка даже еще более невинна, чем можно было предположить, т.к. после ее фразы: «Ilethim, andhekissedme», Нэд просит ее: «Goon», на что она отвечает: «That'sall», и Нэд настолько удивлен, он не может поверить, что она настолько наивна: «All? Imean – er – nothingworse?», а она даже не понимает, что может быть еще хуже: «"Worse?" She was frankly puzzled. "As though there could be! Billysaid …"»
Нэд в порыве радости хватает ее и, пораженный, насколько девушка все таки чиста, невинна и наивна, не раздумывая, делает ей предложение руки и сердца, на что она просто не могла не согласиться. История со счастливым концом.
Даже не зная, что Джек Лондон писал в начале ХХ века, прочитав эту историю, можно сразу понять, что происходило действие давно, возможно, даже в ХIХ веке, не обязательно в ХХ. Только в то время еще можно было встретить девушек такой наивной простоты. В наши время такие ценности, как девственность и непорочность давно никого не интересуют, редко когда девушка остается невинной до свадьбы. А поверить в то, что после поцелуя вы обязаны выйти замуж и подавно никого не заставить. Так бывает только в сказках.
Рассказ довольно таки комичен. По прочтении мы окончательно убеждаемся в том, что название истории иронично.
Джек Лондон пишет простым, понятным языком, не используя большое количество стилистических приемов, пользуясь, в основном, метафорами и эпитетами для описания главной героини. В данном рассказе автор совершенно не уделяет внимания окружению, а именно, природе, или убранству дома. Самой значимой частью этого рассказа является диалог, где мы окончательно понимаем суть рассказа и то, почему он так назван, а так же отношения между Нэдом и Лореттой.
Заключение
Благодаря проделанной нами работе, мы узнали основные приемы и виды анализа художественно-прозаического текста
Приложение 1
A Wicked Woman by Jack London.
It was because she had broken with Billy that Loretta had come visiting to Santa Clara. Billy could not understand. His sister had reported that he had walked the floor and cried all night. Loretta had not slept all night either, while she had wept most of the night. Daisy knew this, because it was in her arms that the weeping had been done. And Daisy's husband, Captain Kitt, knew, too. The tears of Loretta, and the comforting by Daisy, had lost him some sleep.
Now Captain Kitt did not like to lose sleep. Neither did he want Loretta to marry Billy – nor anybody else. It was Captain Kitt's belief that Daisy needed the help of her younger sister in the household. But he did not say this aloud. Instead, he always insisted that Loretta was too young to think of marriage. So it was Captain Kitt's idea that Loretta should be packed off on a visit to Mrs. Hemingway. There wouldn't be any Billy there.
Before Loretta had been at Santa Clara a week, she was convinced that Captain Kitt's idea was a good one. In the first place, though Billy wouldn't believe it, she did not want to marry Billy. And in the second place, though Captain Kitt wouldn't believe it, she did not want to leave Daisy. By the time Loretta had been at Santa Clara two weeks, she was absolutely certain that she did not want to marry Billy. But she was not so sure about not wanting to leave Daisy. Not that she loved Daisy less, but that she had doubts.
The day of Loretta's arrival, a nebulous plan began shaping itself in Mrs. Hemingway's brain. The second day she remarked to Jack Hemingway, her husband, that Loretta was so innocent a young thing that were it not for her sweet guilelessness she would be positively stupid. In proof of which, Mrs. Hemingway told her husband several things that made him chuckle. By the third day Mrs. Hemingway's plan had taken recognizable form. Then it was that she composed a letter. On the envelope she wrote: "Mr. Edward Bashford, Athenian Club, San Francisco."
"Dear Ned," the letter began. She had once been violently loved by him for three weeks in her pre-marital days. But she had covenanted herself to Jack Hemingway, who had prior claims, and her heart as well; and Ned Bashford had philosophically not broken his heart over it. He merely added the experience to a large fund of similarly collected data out of which he manufactured philosophy. Artistically and temperamentally he was a Greek – a tired Greek. He was fond of quoting from Nietzsche, in token that he, too, had passed through the long sickness that follows upon the ardent search for truth; that he too had emerged, too experienced, too shrewd, too profound, ever again to be afflicted by the madness of youths in their love of truth. "'To worship appearance,'" he often quoted; "'to believe in forms, in tones, in words, in the whole Olympus of appearance!'" This particular excerpt he always concluded with, "'Those Greeks were superficial – out of profundity!'"
He was a fairly young Greek, jaded and worn. Women were faithless and unveracious, he held – at such times that he had relapses and descended to pessimism from his wonted high philosophical calm. He did not believe in the truth of women; but, faithful to his German master, he did not strip from them the airy gauzes that veiled their untruth. He was content to accept them as appearances and to make the best of it. He was superficial – out of profundity.
"Jack says to be sure to say to you, 'good swimming,'" Mrs. Hemingway wrote in her letter; "and also 'to bring your fishing duds along.'" Mrs. Hemingway wrote other things in the letter. She told him that at last she was prepared to exhibit to him an absolutely true, unsullied, and innocent woman. "A more guileless, immaculate bud of womanhood never blushed on the planet," was one of the several ways in which she phrased the inducement. And to her husband she said triumphantly, "If I don't marry Ned off this time" – leaving unstated the terrible alternative that she lacked either vocabulary to express or imagination to conceive.
Contrary to all her forebodings, Loretta found that she was not unhappy at Santa Clara. Truly, Billy wrote to her every day, but his letters were less distressing than his presence. Also, the ordeal of being away from Daisy was not so severe as she had expected. For the first time in her life she was not lost in eclipse in the blaze of Daisy's brilliant and mature personality. Under such favourable circumstances Loretta came rapidly to the front, while Mrs. Hemingway modestly and shamelessly retreated into the background.
Loretta began to discover that she was not a pale orb shining by reflection. Quite unconsciously she became a small centre of things. When she was at the piano, there was some one to turn the pages for her and to express preferences for certain songs. When she dropped her handkerchief, there was some one to pick it up. And there was some one to accompany her in ramblings and flower gatherings. Also, she learned to cast flies in still pools and below savage riffles, and how not to entangle silk lines and gut-leaders with the shrubbery.
Jack Hemingway did not care to teach beginners, and fished much by himself, or not at all, thus giving Ned Bashford ample time in which to consider Loretta as an appearance. As such, she was all that his philosophy demanded. Her blue eyes had the direct gaze of a boy, and out of his profundity he delighted in them and forbore to shudder at the duplicity his philosophy bade him to believe lurked in their depths. She had the grace of a slender flower, the fragility of colour and line of fine china, in all of which he pleasured greatly, without thought of the Life Force palpitating beneath and in spite of Bernard Shaw – in whom he believed.
Loretta burgeoned. She swiftly developed personality. She discovered a will of her own and wishes of her own that were not everlastingly entwined with the will and the wishes of Daisy. She was petted by Jack Hemingway, spoiled by Alice Hemingway, and devotedly attended by Ned Bashford. They encouraged her whims and laughed at her follies, while she developed the pretty little tyrannies that are latent in all pretty and delicate women. Her environment acted as a soporific upon her ancient desire always to live with Daisy. This desire no longer prodded her as in the days of her companionship with Billy. The more she saw of Billy, the more certain she had been that she could not live away from Daisy. The more she saw of Ned Bashford, the more she forgot her pressing need of Daisy.
Ned Bashford likewise did some forgetting. He confused superficiality with profundity, and entangled appearance with reality until he accounted them one. Loretta was different from other women. There was no masquerade about her. She was real. He said as much to Mrs. Hemingway, and more, who agreed with him and at the same time caught her husband's eyelid drooping down for the moment in an unmistakable wink.
It was at this time that Loretta received a letter from Billy that was somewhat different from his others. In the main, like all his letters, it was pathological. It was a long recital of symptoms and sufferings, his nervousness, his sleeplessness, and the state of his heart. Then followed reproaches, such as he had never made before. They were sharp enough to make her weep, and true enough to put tragedy into her face. This tragedy she carried down to the breakfast table. It made Jack and Mrs. Hemingway speculative, and it worried Ned. They glanced to him for explanation, but he shook his head.
"I'll find out tonight," Mrs. Hemingway said to her husband.
But Ned caught Loretta in the afternoon in the big living-room. She tried to turn away. He caught her hands, and she faced him with wet lashes and trembling lips. He looked at her, silently and kindly. The lashes grew wetter.
"There, there, don't cry, little one," he said soothingly.
He put his arm protectingly around her shoulder. And to his shoulder, like a tired child, she turned her face. He thrilled in ways unusual for a Greek who has recovered from the long sickness.
"Oh, Ned," she sobbed on his shoulder, "if you only knew how wicked I am!"
He smiled indulgently, and breathed in a great breath freighted with the fragrance of her hair. He thought of his world-experience of women, and drew another long breath. There seemed to emanate from her the perfect sweetness of a child – "the aura of a white soul," was the way he phrased it to himself.
Then he noticed that her sobs were increasing.
"What's the matter, little one?" he asked pettingly and almost paternally. "Has Jack been bullying you? Or has your dearly beloved sister failed to write?"
She did not answer, and he felt that he really must kiss her hair, that he could not be responsible if the situation continued much longer.
"Tell me," he said gently, "and we'll see what I can do."
"I can't. You will despise me. – Oh, Ned, I am so ashamed!"
He laughed incredulously, and lightly touched her hair with his lips – so lightly that she did not know.
"Dear little one, let us forget all about it, whatever it is. I want to tell you how I love … "
She uttered a sharp cry that was all delight, and then moaned –
"Too late!"
"Too late?" he echoed in surprise.
"Oh, why did I? Why did I?" she was moaning.
He was aware of a swift chill at his heart.
"What?" he asked.
"Oh, I . . . he . . . Billy.
"I am such a wicked woman, Ned. I know you will never speak to me again."
"This–er–this Billy," he began haltingly. "He is your brother?"
"No . . . he . . . I didn't know. I was so young. I could not help it. Oh, I shall go mad! I shall go mad!"
It was then that Loretta felt his shoulder and the encircling arm become limp. He drew away from her gently, and gently he deposited her in a big chair, where she buried her face and sobbed afresh. He twisted his moustache fiercely, then drew up another chair and sat down.