Estimated Reading Time: 8 min
Q. Write a summary of The Woman Who Had Imagination by H.E. Bates.
The Woman Who Had Imagination Summary
Henry’s Discontent
A horse-drawn carriage called a brake leaves town. It is filled with the Orpheus Male Voice Glee Singers and their families. They are going to a singing competition.
Henry Solly, a 20-year-old man, is with them. He feels proud and bored and does not want to come on the trip. He thinks the other people are childish and annoying. The air smells of different things, like perfume and old fish.
Henry’s father, Alfred Solly, is the choir conductor. He is a small, vain man. Henry’s mother is also there. She looks uncomfortable. Henry works in his father’s shop. The shop is dull and has few customers.
He feels his life is boring. Henr is waiting for something to happen, but it never does. He imagines his future and pictures himself in the same shop at age 50. His mind would be “starved and enfeebled”. Sometimes he wishes he could run away.
The Journey
The carriage moves slowly. Henry feels stuck with the people and his sad thoughts. They stop at a public house in a village. Henry stays moody. He refuses lemonade from his father. After the stop, he sits between a fishmonger and a girl in a white dress.
The passengers start to argue. They made a bet about a tombstone message. The fishmonger holds the bet money. The trip continues with lively and sometimes rude talking. The slow ride under the hot sun is “intolerable” for Henry.
Mr. Solly’s Instructions
Henry’s father, Mr. Solly, stands up to speak. He gives the choir their final instructions and names the songs they will sing. He talks about the importance of “feeling” and “expression”. Henry feels separate from the group. He thinks their jokes and laughter are “puerile” (childish).
The landscape changes as they get close to a big house. It looks “cold and sepulchral” (like a tomb). The carriage goes through big iron gates. The people in the carriage become stiff and self-conscious.
A man named Antonio Serelli greets them. He is an aristocrat, “mad on singing”. He welcomes them warmly.
Henry’s Encounter
Henry is bored on the crowded lawn. He goes inside the house through a side door. It is cool and quiet inside. It feels like a church. He explores the beautiful but old rooms and compares them to his own small home.
He gets lost upstairs and tries to open several locked doors. One door opens. Inside, he sees an old man and a young woman. The old man is in a torn dressing-gown. He sits by a fire.
The young woman is reading to him. She has “blackest eyes”. Her voice has a “mournful sweetness”. Henry tells her he is lost. The woman tells the old man that Henry is the “new gardener”. She offers to show Henry the way out. She also tells him to visit the lake.
The Lake and the Mysterious Woman
Henry later asks the fishmonger for directions to the lake. The fishmonger tells him some things about it. The lake has not been fished for 20 years. This is because “old Antonio came”.
Antonio is “mad on singing” and does not allow fishing. The fishmonger also says that Antonio and his family are all “mad”. This includes a girl named Maddalena. He says she “never came out”.
Henry goes to the lake. It is large and still. He sees the woman again. She is on the other side of the lake. She wears a yellow dress. They meet. She seems upset and tells him he “shouldn’t come along here”.
Henry reminds her that she told him to come. She looks older and darker now. Her eyes are “utterly black”. Henry thinks she was waiting for someone else.
Despite her agitation, she offers to walk back with him. They talk, and Henry feels a connection to her. She says the lake is private. The fish are protected.
She says she didn’t want him to get into “unpleasantness”. Henry says he is disappointed to leave. She suddenly suggests they go back to the lake. She even proposes taking a boat.
But then she changes her mind. Her eyes fill with tears. She cries with “the helplessness of utter dejection”. She gives a weak excuse for her tears and says her brother would be angry.
He would not want people by the lake. This might end the singing contests. She says her brother loves music and he “lives for nothing else”. She speaks with “curious bitterness” about him. They listen to the choir. Then she slips away.
A Revelation
The choir is on the way home. They are talking about their second-place win and feel disappointed. They think they should have won first place.
Henry barely hears them. He is thinking about the woman. He can see her clearly in his mind. But sometimes he feels she “had never existed”.
The fishmonger drank wine with Antonio. He tells Henry more about the family. He says the old man and the girl in the yellow dress came into the living room. The fishmonger says the girl, Maddalena, just “sat looking at the old man.”
It was as if she “hated him.” When she left, the old man went “raving mad” with jealousy. Antonio had to calm him down. Antonio apologized.
He said the old man “never wants her out of his sight. And she is so young. And then she is a woman of great imagination”. The fishmonger laughs at this. He says, “It needed a bit of imagination to marry that old cock”.
Henry does not say anything. His mind is still “puzzled” by her. The story ends with the carriage driving steadily on in the night.
Explanation of Lines
In “The Woman Who Had Imagination,” a scene unfolds around a humorous interaction involving a tombstone inscription.
This part of the story reveals a bet between two characters over the existence of a unique and amusing epitaph on a tombstone. The small man, having won the bet, reads the inscription aloud:
Let wind go free where’er you be:
In chapel or in church.
For holding wind can be the end of me.
This inscription uses humour to address a common human experience: the natural act of passing gas. It highlights the social expectation to control such actions in public, which is especially important in sacred places.
The presence of this epitaph in the narrative serves several functions.
First, it introduces a moment of levity within the story, contrasting the plot’s more serious and reflective elements.
Second, the scene emphasizes the lengths people will go to conform to societal expectations, even to their discomfort or detriment.
But unfortunately, in bestowing these embraces, a pin in her ladyship’s headdress slightly scratching the child’s neck, produced from this pattern of gentleness, such violent screams, as could hardly be outdone by any creature professedly noisy. The mother’s consternation was excessive, but it could not surpass the alarm.
In the narrative provided by H.E. Bates, a scene unfolds where an attempt at affection results in an unexpected and dramatic outcome.
During a moment meant to display tenderness, a woman’s headdress accidentally injures a child, leading to an extreme reaction.
The child’s screams surprise everyone present, including the mother, who is depicted as significantly worried.
The narrative also focuses on the mother’s intense reaction to her child’s distress, emphasizing a parent’s deep concern for their child’s wellbeing.
The mother’s anxiety is portrayed as a natural response to seeing her child in pain. It reflects the instinctual desire of parents to shield their children from harm.
Additionally, the text indicates that the incident’s alarm affected not only the mother but also others who witnessed it.
This collective concern among onlookers demonstrates a communal empathy for the child’s suffering. It shows how human reactions to distress can unite people in their concern for the vulnerable.
Imagination! It needed a bit of imagination to marry that old cock.
In the story “The Woman Who Had Imagination” by H.E. Bates, there’s a moment where the fishmonger reacts strongly to an old man’s treatment of his wife.
The fishmonger doesn’t criticize the marriage but rather the older man’s controlling and overprotective behaviour towards his wife, Maddalena.
This critical remark illuminates the older man’s character, showing him as someone who severely restricts his wife’s freedom.
The term “old cock” used by the fishmonger is meant to express disdain. It shows his disapproval of the older man’s actions.
The fishmonger’s shock and anger reflect his judgment of the situation. He views the older man’s actions as unreasonable or hard to comprehend.
Maddalena lives under the constant surveillance of her husband, who exhibits signs of jealousy. This situation highlights Maddalena’s challenges in pursuing a life she can choose for herself.
The husband’s behaviour represents an extreme case where marital loyalty and protection turn into oppressive control, which hampers Maddalena’s independence and personal growth.
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