Family matters

(Two points of view on a family relationship)

James Mitford about his daughter.My wife and I had the one child. It might have been nice to have a son, but we didn`t plan a family, we just had Amy. I see her as my best friend. I think she`d always come to me first if she had a problem. We have the same sense of humour, and share interests. I don`t mind animals, but she`s completely obsessed with them, and she has always had dogs, cats, horses, and goldfish in her life. We were closest when she was about four, which I think is a lovely age for a child. They know their parents best, and don`t have the outside contacts. She must have grown up suddenly when she went to school, because I remember her growing away from her family slightly. Any father who has a teenager daughter comes across an extraordinary collection of people, and there seemed to be an endless stream of strange young men coming through our house. By the time I`d learned their names they`d gone away and I had to start learning a new lot. I remember I told her off once in front of her friends and she didn`t talk to me for days afterwards.

I wanted more than anything else for her to be happy in what she was doing, and I was prepared to pull strings to help her on her way. She went to a good school, but that didn`t work out. She must have upset somebody. When she left she decided she wanted to become an actress so I got her into drama school. It wasn`t to her liking so she joined a theatre group and began doings bits and pieces in films. She was doing well, but then gave it up. She probably found it boring. Then she took up social work, and finally went for a designer and he became her husband. And that`s really the story of her life. She must be happy with him, they are always together. We have the same tastes in books and music, but it takes me a while to get used to new pop songs. I used to take her to see the opera, which is my big passion, but I don`t think she likes it very much, she doesn`t come with me any more. I don`t think she`s a big television watcher. She knows when I`m on, and she might watch, but I don`t know. It`s not the kind of thing she tells me. We`re very grateful for Amy. She`s a good daughter as daughters go. We`re looking forward to being grandparents. I`m sure she`ll have a son.

Amy Mitford about her father.I don`t really know my father. He isn`t easy to get on with. He`s quite self-centred, and a little bit vain, I think, and in some ways quite unapproachable. The public must think he`s very easy-going, but at home he keeps himself to himself. He can`t have been at home much when I was a child, because I don`t remember much about him. He`s always been slightly out of touch with family life. His work always came first, and he was always off somewhere acting or rehearsing. He loves being asked for his autograph, he loves to be recognized. He has won several awards, and he`s very proud of that. He was given the Member of the British Empire, and we had to go to Buckingham Palace to get the medal. It was incredibly boring – there were hundreds of other people getting the same thing, and you had to sit there for hours. He shows off his awards to whoever comes to the house.

I went to public school, and because of my total lack of interest and non-attendance I was asked to leave. I didn`t want to go there in the first place. I was taken away from all my friends. He must have been very pleased to get me into the school, but in the end it was a complete waste of money. I let him down quite badly, I suppose. I tried several jobs but I couldn`t settle down in them. They just weren`t challenging enough. Then I realized that what I really wanted to do was to live in the country and look after animals, so that`s what I now do. As a family, we`re not that close, either emotionally or geographically. We don`t see much of each other these days. My father and I are totally different, like chalk and cheese. My interests have always been the country, but he`s into books, music and above all, opera, which I hate. If they do come to see us, they`re in absolutely the wrong clothes for the country – mink coats, nice little leather shoes, not exactly ideal for long walks across the fields. He was totally opposed to me getting married. He was hoping we would break up. Gerald`s too humble, I suppose. He must have wanted me to marry someone famous, but I didn`t, and that`s all there is to it. We don`t want children, but my father keeps on and on talking about wanting grandchildren. You can`t make someone have children just because you want grandchildren. I never watch him on television. I`m not that interested, and anyway he usually forgets to tell me when he`s on.

Answer the questions.

1. How would you describe father-daughter relationship?

2. How would you describe James Mitford?

3. How would you describe Amy?

4. What did he think of her friends when she was a teenager?

5. Why did she leave school?

6. Why did she give up her jobs?

7. What does he think of her husband?

8. Is she interested in his career?

9. Is she going to have children?

10. How often do they see each other?

11. Who has the more realistic view of the relationship? Why?

12. Do the back-translation of the text.

Step C. Here are two letters written on the same day. Read them and discuss the main ideas with your group-mates.

Triton Hotel

Ayia Trias

Greece

28 June 2002

Dear Mum and Dad,

I`m having an amazing time. The sea`s lovely, and the weather`s been wonderful. And something else has been wonderful, too: I`ve met the most marvellous woman. I thought I`d never fall in love again after Angela and I broke up, but this is the real thing. It just knocked me over. Her name`s Anastasia, she comes from a family that`s lived in the village since time began, and she`s beautiful and clever, and, well, just wonderful. She`s a year younger than me, but has been running the family grocery business on her own since her parents died four years ago. I know this is sudden, but I`m sure she`s the one for me. I`ve asked to marry me, and I hope I`ll have your blessing. I`d like to bring her home for you to meet when the tourist season`s over, and we`d like to get married here in January.

Meanwhile, I wonder if I could ask you a favour? We`d really like to expand the grocer`s shop to meet the growing demand from tourists. Would you consider making us a loan? We could pay you back over five years or so, and pay the same kind of interest as you`d get from a bank account. I hope you`ll say yes. And I hope you`ll like Anastasia – I can`t wait for you to meet her.

Love,

Jonathan

28 June 2002

Dear Jonathan,

We hope you`re enjoying yourself. The weather here`s lovely at the moment, lots of sun and flowers everywhere – a perfect English summer. Your Mum`s recovering well from her operation, and we`re all set to go to Wales in the third week of July.

Jonathan, I`m writing to say that I`ve been talking to my old school friend Peter. You remember him – he`s the one who used to bring you chocolates when he came to see us. Well, I`ve been playing badminton with him from time to time. The other night when we were having a drink after a game he asked how you were doing. He`s always been fond of you, you know. Well, when I told him you`d finished school and were a bit undecided about what to do, he offered you a job! You know he works for Scottish Standard, the insurance company. Well, he has a place in his department for a school leaver `with good maths and an outgoing personality`. You could begin in September, and you`d be in their management trainee programme. So you could end up President of the company, if you kept at it!

I hope you`ll consider this seriously. Your mother and I think it`s a marvelous opportunity for you.

Much love,

Dad

For each letter choose the three main points from the list and write them out in the same order as in the letter.

Jonathan`s letter

1. The weather has been wonderful.

2. I want to marry her.

3. I would like you to meet Anastasia.

4. Please lend us some money for her business.

5. I am in love with a wonderful woman.

Dad`s letter

1. You could begin work in September.

2. Mum and I think you should take the job.

3. My friend Peter has offered you a job.

4. Your Mum is better.

5. You could end up President of the company.

For the given words and expressions find synonyms in the letters.

Jonathan`s letter

1. unbelievably good

2. stopped being together

3. managing, organising

4. fast and surprising

5. make smth. Bigger

6. think about

7. money that is earned by letting someone keep your money

Dad`s letter

1. getting back to normal health

2. completely ready

3. one night recently

4. liked you

5. someone who`s just finished secondary school

6. chance

Find things in the text that tell you:

1. Jonathan had probably been very much in love with his girlfriend Angela.

2. The grocer`s shop is probably not very busy out of the tourist season.

3. Jonathan is probably on holiday.

4. Jonathan`s parents are probably happy being in Britain.

5. Peter probably has quite a good job.

6. Jonathan is probably good at Maths.

Reading Comprehension (1). Read the text and do the tasks after it.

KITTY

Within three months of her marriage she knew that she had made a mistake, but it had been her mother`s fault even more than hers.

There was a photograph of her mother in the room and Kitty`s harassed eyes fell on it. She did not know why she kept it there, for she was not very fond of her mother, there was one of her father too, but that was downstairs on the grand piano. It had been done when he took silk and it represented him in a wig and gown. Even they could not make him imposing. He was a little, wizened man, with tired eyes, long upper lip, and a thin mouth. Kitty`s mother was a woman of fifty, thin, with prominent cheek-bones and a large, well-shaped nose. She was a hard, cruel, managing, ambitious and stupid woman.

It was unlikely now that Bernard Garstin (Kitty`s father) would ever be made a judge of the High Court, but he might still hope for a County Court judgeship or at the worst an appointment in the Colonies. Meanwhile Mrs.Garstin had the satisfaction of seeing him appointed Recorder of a Welsh town. But it was on her daughters that she set her hopes. By arranging good marriages for them she expected to make up for all the disappointments of her career. There were two: Kitty and Doris. Doris gave no sign of good looks, her nose was too long and her figure was lumpy, so that Mrs.Garstin could hope no more for her than that she should marry a young man who was well off in a suitable profession.

But Kitty was a beauty. She gave promise of being so when she was still a child, for she had large, dark eyes, brown, curling hair in which there was a reddish tint, exquisite teeth and a lovely skin. Her features would never be very good, for her chin was too square and her nose, though not so long as Doris`s, too big. Her beauty depended a good deal on her youth, and Mrs.Garstin realized that she must marry in the first flush of her maidenhood. When she began to come out she was dazzling: her skin was her greatest beauty, but her eyes with their long lashes were so starry and yet so melting that it gave you a catch at the heart to look into them. She had a charming gaiety and the desire to please. Mrs.Garstin bestowed upon her all the affection, of which she was capable, she dreamt ambitious dreams, it was not a good marriage she aimed at for her daughter, but a brilliant one.

Kitty had been brought up with the knowledge that she was going to be a beautiful woman and she more than suspected her mother`s ambition. It accorded with her own desires. She was launched upon the world and Mrs.Garstin performed prodigies in getting herself invited to dances where her daughter might meet eligible men. Kitty was a success. She was amusing as well as beautiful, and very soon she had a dozen men in love with her. But none was suitable, and Kitty, charming and friendly with all, took care to commit herself with none. The drawing-room in South Kensington was filled on Sunday afternoons with amorous youth, but Mrs.Garstin observed, with a grim smile of approval, that it needed no effort on her part to keep them at a distance from Kitty. Kitty was prepared to flirt with them, and it diverted her to play one off against the other but when they proposed to her, as none failed to do, she refused them with tact but decision.

Her first season passed without the perfect suitor presenting himself, and the second also, but she was young and could afford to wait. Mrs.Garstin told her friends that she thought it a pity for a girl to marry till she was twenty-one. But a third year passed and then a fourth. Two or three of her old admirers proposed again, but they were still penniless, one or two boys younger than herself proposed, a retired Indian Civilian did the same: he was fifty-three. Kitty still danced a great deal. She was thoroughly enjoying herself but still no one whose position and income were satisfactory asked her to marry him. Mrs.Garstin began to grow uneasy. She noticed that Kitty was beginning to attract men of forty and over. She reminded her that she would not be any longer so pretty in a year or two and that young girls were coming out all the time. Mrs.Garstin did not mince her words in the domestic circle and she warned her daughter tartly that she would miss her market.

Kitty shrugged her shoulders. She thought herself as pretty as ever, prettier perhaps, for she had learnt how to dress in the last four years, and she had plenty of time. If she wanted to marry just to be married there were a dozen boys who would jump at the chance. Surely the right man would come along sooner or later. But Mrs.Garstin judged the situation more shrewdly: with anger in her heart for the beautiful daughter who had missed her chances she set her standard a little lower. She turned back to the professional class at which she had sneered in her pride and looked about for a young lawyer or businessman whose future inspired her with confidence.

Kitty reached the age of twenty-five and was still unmarried. Mrs. Garstin was exasperated and she did not hesitate often to give Kitty a piece of her very unpleasant mind. She asked her how much longer she expected her father to support her. He had spent sums he could ill afford in order to give her a chance and she had not taken it. It never struck Mrs. Garstin that perhaps her own hard affability had frightened the men, sons of wealthy fathers or heirs to a title, whose visits she had too cordially encouraged. She put down Kitty`s failure to stupidity. Then Doris came out. She had a long nose still, and a poor figure, and she danced badly. But in her first season she became engaged to Geoffrey Dennison. He was the only son of a prosperous surgeon who had been given a baronetcy during the war. Geoffrey would inherit a title – it is not very grand to be a medical baronet, but a title, thank God, is a title – and a very comfortable fortune…

Kitty had known Walter but a little while and had never taken much notice of him. She had no idea when or where they had first met till he told her that it was at a dance to which some friends had brought him. She certainly paid no attention to him then and if she danced with him it was because she was good-natured and was glad to dance with anyone who asked her. Once he said: `I want to say something to you`.

She looked at him quickly and saw that his eyes were filled with a painful anxiety. His voice was strained, low, and not quite steady. But before she could ask herself what this agitation meant he spoke again.

- I want to ask you if you`ll marry me.

- You could knock me down with a feather, she answered, so surprised that she looked at him blankly.

- Didn`t you know I was awfully in love with you?

- You never showed it.

- I`m very awkward and clumsy. I always find it more difficult to say the things I mean than the things I don`t.

Her heart began to beat a little more quickly. She had been proposed to often before, but gaily or sentimentally, and she had answered in the same fashion. No one had ever asked her to marry him in a manner which was so abrupt and yet strangely tragic. `You must give me time to think`. She didn`t know what to answer.

Then the announcement of Doris`s engagement to Geoffrey Dennison came. Doris, at eighteen, was making quite a suitable marriage, and she, Kitty, was twenty-five and single. Supposing she did not marry at all? That season the only person who had proposed to her was a boy five years younger than herself. She had made a hash of things. Last year she had refused a widowed Knight of the Bath with three children. She almost wished she hadn`t. Mother would be horrible now, and Doris, Doris who had always been sacrificed because she, Kitty, was expected to make the brilliant match, would not fail to crow over her. Kitty`s heart sank.

In panic Kitty married Walter Fane.

(from `The Painted Veil` by W.S. Maugham)

Answer the questions:

1. What do you think about the relationships in this family? Are they normal?

2. What can you tell about these two sisters?

3. What feelings do you think Doris had knowing she`s not so beautiful as her sister?

4. Do you think beauty and happiness are connected?

5. What is happiness for you?

6. What do you think about Walter?

7. Why do you think he still proposed to Kitty knowing why exactly she wanted to get married to him?

8. If you were Walter (Kitty), can you do the same?