My initial impression of the ending's ambiguity is that Joe has feelings for Maria as he was so touched by her singing. However, I feel more confident in saying that perhaps Joe also lives a rather simple and ignorant life. Joe's difficulty in dealing with the song (for whatever reason) is quickly pushed aside by distracting himself with the location of the corkscrew.

It seems like all of the previous short stories had very pressing dilemmas and tough decisions, but the biggest problem Maria has encountered so far is forgetting her plumcake gift on the tram. A very big departure, perhaps highlighting that Maria lives a rather untroubled life despite being a "lowly" maid.

A very similar moment seen in Mansfield's other short stories where a character has a drastic change in emotion within a few short sentences. Here we see Polly distraught about the situation and crying but then quickly feels happy again after looking in the mirror (also similar to The Garden Party perhaps).

An interesting note that he feels a sense within him that marrying her would be the right thing to do - a "reparation" for a "sin." Though I suppose that he probably only feels this way because society made him this way. As in, I don't know if he would have had this "sense of honour" if it wasn't frowned upon to mess around as he did.

To be as bold as Mrs. Mooney in "winning" is very disheartening to read. I don't doubt that society is on her side and that she would "win," but it's sickening to see a mother treat her daughter as property and play a game around it. Perhaps her intentions are good (troubled marriage, a better life for Polly, etc.) but I would hate to be any character in this story.

I'm noticing a trend between these short stories - seizing a change in a monotonous life and falling short for whatever reason. In An Encounter, the boys were able to adventure away from school but encounter a perverted man. In Araby, the narrator is infatuated and does his best to woo a girl but is failed by his uncle and gives up.

Similarly, we can see the narrator flip back and forth between a new, better life or to stay home and hold onto old memories. Here, the narrator fails herself and her lover rather than anyone else standing in her way.

The uncle's attitude is rather disheartening considering the narrator reminded him earlier in the day and his uncle still forgot. Not only that, the uncle reaffirms in his belief in "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" but if he really believed that he should've made sure that Jack could go to the bazaar as planned. I wonder what the significance of The Arab's Farewell to his Steed is since the narrator leaves before his uncle recites it.

For some reason I was expecting the narrator or Mahony to forget the fake names they assigned each other but they clearly did not. Their plan had worked out and I have a feeling that it will be utilized again in the future but that one of them will forget or mess up the names when they are endangered again (possibly from the same creepy man).

A really creepy description of girls from a man much older than both the two boys. I wonder if CLA could decipher that the man was being very perverted without looking at contextual sentences - in this one, he is speaking about nice girls and beautiful hair which might be confusing to an algorithm despite it being rather creepy to us both with and without context.

I'm assuming that this means that the priest was mentally unwell in the latter part of his life? I wonder if this had something to do with his death since the narrator immediately states that it was due to the priest's third stroke.

Very interesting that the narrator has a preconceived notion of the priest smiling but ends up seeing a rather glum depiction of the body.

I am fortunate enough to not have had to deal with this before (besides when I was too young to really understand the gravity of a funeral) so I don't know if this is something many people experience or if this is something the author included to make the priest seem more insidious in nature.

I do know that many cultures consider funerals a celebration of life and many people in the U.S. also find them beautiful so this feels rather ominous to me (especially the description of smelly flowers!).

While Old Cotter may not have been alluding to this, all I can think of is the numerous amount of sexual abuse cases against the Catholic church. More specifically, many priests have been accused and convicted for child sexual abuse and there have been many attempts by officials to hide these incidents from the public.

To clarify, I am not against religion but would also want my kids to play with people their own age - perhaps they could gain wisdom and advice from their grandparents instead.

I just realized that he got coerced into getting dressed for dinner by his family who promptly forgot about him when he fell asleep. Though I suppose it's possible that they checked in on him and let him sleep, but then why wouldn't a family member check in on him again the 2nd time to wake him up?

A very sad situation overall, seeing him actually try to fit in (in what is I think a more fixable situation than the one in Marriage a la Mode) and do his best and yet stumble at each step.

I feel for Mr. Neave because he definitely seems locked into one future. He is struggling to fit in with his family after working so hard and recognizes that he has what everyone considers an "ideal family" with a lot of money and a full, happy and healthy wife and children.

However, in order to maintain this lifestyle for them, Mr. Neave feels that he has to continue working because Harold wouldn't be able to maintain this "ideal family." In this way, Mr. Neave has no other choice but to keep working instead of trying to relax and bonding with his family.

It seems that Mr. Neave finds it very jarring to witness how his family is acting, comparing them to his memory of them. It's especially interesting that his poor work-life balance is what led him to feel this way and yet he still feels like his identity is tied to his work (a toxic relationship of some sort?). I do think that he's making an effort to bond with his family but is finding it too difficult at this point in time.

This short story ends in pretty much the exact same way as Marriage a la Mode. The main protagonist has her world come crashing down and is very distraught, but in the very next moment forgets all about it and continues to have fun.

While it's possible that Leila is having such a great time that she forgets about the fat man, I think it's more likely that she has decided to ignore problems in her life and would rather live in her own bubble (this is also applicable to Isabel).

I wonder if this is Leila's first experience of reality not being the same as her expectations? She seems to have had very high hopes for this ball but comes crashing down when thinking about possible future implications (though the "fat man" character definitely did not help). In a way, I think that a lot of her duress is her own fault.

Is this a joke about the awkwardness of small talk? I thought perhaps it was fitting for Leila to comment on the floor's slippery nature (it's her first dance) but it was actually the "faint voice" that brought up the floor in the first place.

While I initially had no clue as to why William considered his wife "the new Isabel," her actions with her friends during his stay tell the whole story. I've never seen such a quick 180 after deciding that your friends were "vile" and wanting to dedicate time to your marriage, but it seems fitting for her character to have done so.

This is a very somber, yet sweet thing to say your wife. My initial impression of William was that he was the stereotypical working man that was away from his family a lot and didn't care about them much, but this letter has confirmed to me that he is not like that.

William seems to have a high level of emotional intelligence and respects his wife's decisions ever though he doesn't approve of them while his wife takes advantage of her freedom away from him (and support from him).

It's really sad to read that, after coming back for a full day and night, the only time he had alone with his wife was when he was departing.

In addition, I feel like her comment on the weight of the suitcase is rather damning - it implies that she normally carries it which is why she noticed that it was heavier this time. With them walking together silently, it must mean that William packed up a lot of stuff from and home and that this is the last time William plans to visit for a very long time.

The story has only just begun but we've already seen William refer to his wife as "the new isabel." I don't really understand why he's calling her that - all I've seen so far is that she's picky about the toys he buys for their children. My only guess is that she has changed so much while he's been away at work that he dubs her a new person.

I'm not really sure what is meant by her stumbling and talk about how she likes to wait and is always waiting. This ending is very reminiscent of the Garden Party because we also have to come to our own conclusion as to what this girl is feeling after what she experienced throughout the day.

From my perspective, she doesn't actually like "waiting" (who does?) and is referring to how she is waiting for something to happen in her life besides being noticed for her beauty.

She's a very cocky person and we can see how rude she is to her mother. I guess I have a stereotype in my mind that a bad-mannered, conceited person like this who gets away with everything enjoys public attention, but we can see very clearly that she doesn't. I wonder what else is defining about her?

A clearly unhealthy way of dealing with deep-rooted issues, but perhaps that's all we can expect of them at the moment.

We can see that Constantine's fear of her father is so strong that she thinks she will be attacked by him leaping out of the drawer - a rather huge disconnect between memories (assuming he attacked her) and reality.

Overall, it seems like they attempted to move past their father's death by dealing with the colonel's room but in the end they accomplished nothing.

Josephine has so far seemed like the sister that is "in control" but the roles have seemingly swapped in this moment. She is being extremely illogical about what their father is capable of doing in death and Constantia is the one explaining to her that they couldn't have kept him in their home. It's possible that their father was meaner to Josephine and, as such, she is more afraid of him.

This is really sweet to read and see how caring a person can be for something that is insignificant to his or her life. I might be reading into it too much but her concern about the mouse in addition to the hat and gowns earlier makes me think that she might be overly concerned with these minute details. Perhaps it has something to do with how she is handling her father's death?

After all of Laura's back-and-forths as to whether the party was a good idea or not, she finally got to visit the cottages, talk to some of the poor, and genuinely looked at death in the face. While she isn't able to form any real words as to how she currently feels, she at least denies the experience as being awful like Laurie suggests. I have high hopes that Laura is returning a wiser, more socially-aware person that will turn out differently to the rest of her family.

There is such a stark contrast between Laura and her family that is completely unrelatable to me. I could never imagine myself being so out of touch with reality that I hated how ugly the cottages were and how my family should be able to do whatever we want. Unfortunately, it seems like there are a lot of people like this in real life so it's fitting to see it here.

It's really funny to read this because we can tell that Laura clearly doesn't know what "bang slap in the eye" means. I'm getting a vibe that she's considerably different from her mom - she seems far less elitist and more interested in interacting with the workers.

Really interesting that the three Indians that we saw throughout the story were actually Brahmins (highest caste) who gave up their way of life in order to retrieve the Diamond. This is incredibly selfless - especially knowing that they could never return to their old lives and how they must be on pilgrimage until death. I know I could never do that if I were in their place!

I always thought the story about Franklin being under the influence of opium and how Rachel saw him take the Diamond was a little confusing, but it's very clear now that Rachel's story was absolutely correct and that she didn't see what had happened outside of her bedroom (which is how it was placed into Godfrey's possession).

I can't help but think that this entire thing might not have happened if Rachel had approached him in the morning and worked with him to figure out what had happened between him leaving her room and going back to his. Franklin wouldn't have remembered of course, but something may have arisen from this. You could probably say this about all mystery/crime novels and movies though!

Godfrey lived a double life and it's fitting that he genuinely had an intricate disguise to live that life. A wig and a beard seem "reasonable" but to wear extensive makeup that has to be washed off is something else!

I'm not so sure I understand what we should be gleaning from this experiment. It seems like Betteredge, Bruff, Rachel, and Jennings are convinced that Franklin is innocent but didn't he still enter the room and search for the Diamond? I know he talks to himself about the safety of the Diamond but I feel like he might be involved in the disappearance somehow (though I suppose it is reasonable to absolve him of premeditation).

I knew that Betteredge loved Robinson Crusoe, but I thought it was in a more "passionate hobby" type of way. It's made very clear here that Betteredge dismisses those who do not share the same belief in this novel which doesn't make much sense to me (though I suppose it is similar to Clack's belief in religious guidance).

I can only imagine how incredibly conflicted Rachel must be feeling. She (believes that she) saw Franklin steal the diamond but she still loves him so much that she didn't act on this knowledge. Franklin seems to have taken it better than I expected and seems true to his intent of figuring out what happened by listening to all of the details surrounding the theft.

I find it really interesting that Franklin is even considering the possibility that he stole the diamond. I understand that the nightgown is the reasoning for this, but I would much more quickly trust my own knowledge of myself and wonder how someone else had access to it rather than me being drunk or sleepwalking. Perhaps he's writing all of this down to allude to readers how he couldn't have done it but in reality he did?

As shown in lecture, here is another instance of "pipe" and "Crusoe" being mentioned together in the text. I feel like these "word pairs" don't particular stand out to me - I couldn't really think of any other ones so I'm wondering what we could do to discover other word pairs to check using nltk.

This might be the clearest statement ever regarding how much Franklin trusts in Betteredge's truthfulness and opinions. As a reader, I am also very partial to Betteredge and Franklin but I might be biased because I like their characters and personalities. Collins probably started with Betteredge so that we'd like and trust him - so maybe I just fell into this trap!

I think what Bruff is saying is that this Indian visitor had no intention of receiving a loan and really only wanted to ask that one question about loan repayment. We can see this through the fact that the inquirer did not make any attempts to convince Bruff to lend him money (which is uncharacteristic of someone who wants to borrow a large sum of money). Though I find the ordeal suspicious too, I'm not so sure as to why it's important to know that most loans are repaid within a year.

I personally don't agree with Rachel's reasoning as to why she shouldn't tell Godfrey that she knows about his deceitful nature. She says she can't stand the public shame of making such a huge mistake but is strong enough to acknowledge it privately? There's a pretty big disconnect there for me (i.e. I acknowledge my mistakes and don't hide them), but I've never broken off an engagement of course. I do think it's wise to not let Godfrey know of her suspicions though, so I think the end result is positive.

It's one thing to push your religion onto someone else, but this scenario is one of the worst ones I can think of. Lady Verinder is in poor health and has already rejected Miss Clark's offer (no reason would even be needed but she even says that she is forbidden from reading).

Any normal person would stop pushing but Clark decides to hide a bunch of Christian books around the room. I find this really disrespectful and, combined with her biased opinions of the people around her, makes her my least favorite character and narrator by far.

It doesn't make sense to me at all that Godfrey defends a "random person" like Luker so vehemently if he supposedly doesn't know him. This is of course amplified by the supposed coincidence that Luker's valuable was a gem.

Perhaps it's because I don't like or trust Godfrey, but I must also comment that it is extremely annoying to read Miss Clack's biased opinions about people and how often she turns to faith-based descriptors. Betteredge had his opinions on the others too but it wasn't constantly in your face passage after passage.

I don't believe that they just accidentally robbed Godfrey - there must be some reason as to why he was targeted. The rest of the paragraph is extremely sarcastic as well, so perhaps Miss Clark's writing is making me think this rather than both of us coming to the same conclusion.

I found this sentence very powerful and unsettling. I don't really understand what it means, but my best guess is that she feels like her life was always going to end this way. Perhaps not by suicide - but that she believed she wasn't meant to be happy since she was a laborer and had a spotted past.

From context, I assumed (correctly) that a pony-chaise is a horse carriage. I hadn't heard of a pony-chaise until reading this text, so it must be an older English term that has fallen out of use. If you look up "carriage" on Google, you'll see that "chaise" is not one of the provided synonyms. It shows up on Webster's though, so I'm wondering how resource intensive it would be for NLP to recognize words like this if they have to account for uncommon synonyms for every single term.

I can only imagine how suspicious it would be if you thought Verinder stole the diamond and then witnessed her leave in the way she did. It would completely affirm my belief that she stole it. Though, as a reader, I can see why she reacted this way and don't think that she's the culprit.

While reading through Franklin's suggestion on how the Indians had stolen it, I too thought that it was very far fetched. With Betteredge's context about the locked doors and dogs, I agree with him that Franklin's explanation doesn't reallly make any sense. This probably means that the thief is from within the household!

This passage has three words/phrases that aren't written the same way today. "to-morrow" and "up-stairs" are of course one word now, while "good-night" is now written with a space instead of a dash. This would be really easy for CLA to deal with if we wanted to take note of how often these words appear over time across different literary works.

I don't understand why everyone reacted in the manner they did. Is it because they don't believe Mr. Murthwaite or that they know that she's safe in England? Regardless, I found it odd that they thought it was funny.

Such a roller coaster of emotions within these few lines. They were happy, and then they were upset, but all of this made Penelope really happy! The feeling of being rejected is absolutely horrible and I would hate if someone witnessed all of it and was experiencing schadenfreude on top of that too.

This is a really funny, roundabout way of saying "we were guessing the odds of them getting married." To me, this type of speech is pretty advanced (i.e. it isn't explicitly taught in English courses). If non-native speakers don't understand irony, sarcasm, and idioms very well, is it possible to have NLP pick up on stuff like this to simplify it for readers?

Though this shows that Betteridge is a caring individual, it's really funny to read him calling her a "plump young lass" as a compliment. This descriptor (as a compliment) is normally only for very young children, so it caught me off guard. Perhaps textual analysis could tell us more about how this "comment" has evolved over time.

It seems like Betteridge thinks that all of this traveling is making Franklin a "universal genius," but the only phrase I can think of when reading this passage is "jack-of-all-trades." This is abundantly clear when the narrator comments that Franklin can write (a little), paint (a little), etc.

This is a rather disparaging view to hold about your wife, and, by modern standards, is extremely looked down upon. Society is starting to realize that "supermoms" are unsustainable and unfair to women holding a "woman's role" in the household. It might be interesting to analyze different novels over 100+ years to see if we can recognize any changes to this attitude.