BSc BA ADP English Notes Short Stories The Shadow In The Rose Garden (D. H. Lawrence) Summary and Question Answers

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Question Answers

Q1 Describe the ways of Frank?

Ans. Frank was an electrician in a mine and had come to a seaside town for his honeymoon. He was rather small in stature but had a strongly built body. His wife was much superior to him in all respects. It was quite early in the morning when he came out in the garden. He was waiting impatiently for breakfast and his wife who was still in the bed. He was restlessly roaming up and down the house in which they were staying. He looked at his reflection in the mirror and was happy to see himself. He was no doubt a handsome man. Then he went into the garden and was tempted to see the brown apples hanging seductively in the garden. He broke off an apple and took a sharp bite. Then he turned toward the house and saw his wife absentmindedly standing in the window looking to the sea. He tried to attract her by throwing some poppy flowers in her direction but she moved away as soon as she looked at him. All of his movements showed his restless and dissatisfied mind. He didn’t have good relations with his wife and was much disturbed though he tried to suppress his agonized feelings.

Q2. What is the significance of the rose garden?

Ans. The heroine of the story sends her husband away telling him that she would stay at home because she had to do so many things. When he went out, she too came out hiding her face in a sunshade. She didn’t want to be recognized by anyone. She walked along the road and reached a splendid garden full of roses. It was surrounded by a wall and had thousands of roses. The building adjacent to the garden looked uninhabited, the windows were curtain less and black. The kitchen door was open but perhaps was not used anymore. The lady walked ahead yearningly when a gardener interrupted her and told her that the garden wasn’t open for public that day. This was a great shock for her as this garden belonged to the rector’s family and wasn’t a public place. She requested him to let her have a look at the roses that he reluctantly agreed upon. Then she moved ahead and looked around at the beautiful arrangements of flowers growing all around her. She was there to recall her past. The garden was very significant for the lady as she had been living in this town some years before and had a love affair with an army man. This garden was the place where they used to see each other. So she had come there to recall all the past activities of her good days spent there with Archie, the rector’s son. As she was sitting on the seat in corner of the garden, she saw her former lover and was stunned to see him alive as he was thought to have died many months ago. She tried to converse with him but he had become a lunatic by then and was not able to recognize her. This was a great setback to the already strained relations of the heroine with her husband. This event had further upset her and she didn’t want to see any one. She came back home and locked herself in the room. So the garden and the lunatic lover were the symbols of her lost love that had shattered her completely.

Q3. Evaluate the feelings of the heroine?

Ans. The heroine of the story was a good-looking lady; she had married a man, who was lower than her in status. She had been in love with an army man who later went to war and was reported dead of sunstroke. Exactly at the day when she received the news of her lover’s death she met her to-be- husband and decided to marry him. Though she married him but she couldn’t accept him and give the true status of a husband to him because she was unable to forget her lover. She always compared her husband with Archie who was superior to him in every way. He was more handsome, polished and socially well placed while her husband was a short statured man of lower social status. And the main reason was that she loved Archie but she couldn’t even tolerate her husband’s presence. She behaved in an arrogant way towards him and he was aware of it though he didn’t give much importance to it apparently but in fact he was badly bruised from inside because of her attitude. He knew that she held him inferior and was tortured by it.

Their marriage was so meaningless to her that she had chosen her lover’s town for honeymoon that is a cruel irony indeed. She wanted to visit the place where she had been living with her lover. She was engrossed in her thoughts all the time even when her husband tried to attract her she avoided his presence. She went to the rose garden, which was the witness of her love. She nervously entered the garden and was only ruminating her past. Then quite unexpectedly she came across her lover who was thought to be dead. He was not in his senses and behaved in an indifferent way with her. It was very painful for her. She desperately tried to get any trace of acquaintance in his eyes but couldn’t because he was completely out of his brain. This shock was enough to shake even her soul. She was very upset and her attitude towards her husband became more poignant and trivial. She neglected him completely by locking herself up in the room.

On her husband’s insistence she told him the whole truth. He was tormented very badly. He questioned about her relation with Archie. She gave direct answers and told him that how deeply she loved Archie without caring about her husband’s feelings. He tried to tease her but his own anguish was too much. The lady was so overwhelmed with grief and shock that she was out of her being. She didn’t have any feeling for herself or her husband. She told him that she had seen Archie that day and that he had gone mad. At this point she became silent and her husband realized that how much distance was there between them so without saying anything he went out of the room.

Q4. Analyze the end of the story?

Ans. This story ends at a curious point; both the wife and the husband are in a shocked state. Their relationship was already not very warm but now it had been strained to its extreme limit. The husband had come to know the reason of his wife’s distanced behaviour and the presence of a lover had told him the whole truth behind her cold attitude. The lady had seen her former lover in a lunatic state and was trying to accept the new situation. Their conjugal relation had been subjected to a long period of stress and strain but it had reached its climax by now. The revelation of her past and the depth of her love for Archie was a big blow to her husband. He had been so much weighed down by his disappointment and anguish that he no longer hated her. She too had been deprived of any feelings. He left her squatted on the bed and went outdoors.

D. H. Lawrence doesn’t draw any conclusion and leaves it upon the reader to guess whether the husband had gone away forever or did he want to stay away for some time and then come back and restart his relation with his wife. Similarly the final feelings of the heroine are also held so that the reader can’t guess her plan of action too. The possibilities of both sorts are present. So the end is quite tricky.