Feuille d’ Album

1. Feuille d’ Album

2. The Author (1) Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923). Born in New Zealand, she moved to London in 1902, and apart from a two-year stint in New Zealand between 1906 and ’08 she spent the remainder of her life in Europe. She was plagued with bad health most of her adult life. She had a miscarriage in 1908, contracted gonorrhoea in 1911 and tuberculosis in 1917.

3. The Author (2) It was while combating tuberculosis in health spas across Europe, that Mansfield began writing the works she would become best known for. Her most famous story is perhaps “Miss Brill”, which appeared in the collection Bliss in 1920 (and which you will read next year). “Miss Brill” is frequently cited as one of the best short stories ever written. “The Singing Lesson” appeared in Garden Party, and Other Stories in 1922.

4. The Author (3) Mansfield spent her last years at the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man in Fontainebleau, France, where she continued to write despite her failing health. She succumbed to tuberculosis shortly after her thirty-fourth birthday.

5. Characterisation protagonist: Ian French, a painter minor characters: the girl from across the street the girls/ladies that find him hopeless third-person narrator (who apparently also finds Ian French impossible)

6. Setting Where? Paris Ian lives in a loft overlooking the water (the Seine?) and, more importantly, looking across to the girl’s windows. When? 1920s

7. Ian French An awfully clever painter. Shy and quiet. Very organised. No interest in anything but his painting and the girl.

8. The girl Strangely thin and always wears a dark pinafore and a pink handkerchief. Very serious character.

9. Plot Womankind has given up on Ian French, who is rather clumsy with the ladies, and seems rather uninterested in them anyway. Ian, however, only has eyes for one girl, the girl who lives across the street from him. He has attributed all sorts of qualities to her (even though he knows almost nothing about her). One day he follows her on the street, meaning to approach her, but he can’t quite muster the nerve to speak to her. Finally, he follows her up her stairway and gives her an egg, which he claims that she has dropped. We can only imagine what her response is.

10. What happens next? • Continue the story from the moment Ian hands the girl the egg, from one of these points of view: • In the voice of the same third-person narrator that has told the story so far • From the point of view of Ian (first-person narration) • From the point of view of the girl (first-person narration) • An act. • Write about 100 words.