The two short stories “The Darkness Out There” and “Old Mrs Chundle”
both deal with similar relationships, whilst at the same time having many
differences. The most pronounced similarity of the two stories is that both deal
with younger people’s relationships with an older person. Another marked theme
is that Hardy’s story concerns itself with the curate’s deception
(unconsciously) of Mrs Chundle, while in the Lively one it’s the younger
people who are deceived by appearances. Kerry Stevens and Sandra in “The
Darkness Out There” (from Sandra’s point of view) have an interesting
relationship, which develops throughout the story; at the beginning, Kerry is
seen to be quite immature and is looked down upon by Sandra: “Kerry Stevens
that none of…(Sandra’s) lot reckoned much on … some people you only have
to look at to know they’re not up to much.” This is quite a harsh view from
Sandra, taking into consideration the fact that she doesn’t really know him.
Sandra believes that she is much more mature than Kerry, “she considered him,
over a chasm, Mum said boys matured later, in many ways,” and this shows how
ironic Penelope Lively is being concerning the relationship. For, throughout the
story, it’s Kerry who acts more maturely than Sandra. He offered her some
chocolate when she’d been yelling at him for jumping out of the bush as
she’s walking to Mrs Rutter’s, and he’s the first to realise the old lady
is not all she appears to be (“ “I don’t go much on her.” ”) Sandra
bases her opinions a lot on appearances, and this is why at first she sees
nothing out of the ordinary with Mrs Rutter. This is also the way she is with
Kerry; while all the time we are led by Sandra to believe that she’s the adult
one (although all the time the reader knows this isn’t true) this illusion is
in fact shattered at the ending, when we see Kerry (from Sandra’s point of
view) in a different light. “Are people who help other people not always very
nice looking?” This shows how shallow Sandra is, with her immature dreams and
fantasies (“One day she’d have a place in the country… a little white
house peeping over a hill.”) Lively, while all the time telling the reader
ironically that Sandra is the more adult, nevertheless through her writing shows
the reader the true scale of things (that Kerry is much more mature than Sandra
all along). Lively, by reporting the way Kerry acts and speaks in the eyes of
Sandra, shows how false the circumstances are regarding the youngster’s
relationship and the way the girl perceives it. This is similar to in “Old Mrs
Chundle,” the way relationships are sometimes misinterpreted by those involved
with it. Sandra sees the relationship as her being superior to him at the start,
while all along it’s Kerry who has the guts to face up to the stark reality of
Mrs Rutter’s hidden past. The relationship between Mrs Chundle and the curate
in Hardy’s story is a misunderstood and uneven one too; Mrs Chundle, after
befriending the curate while he was out painting (a past-time she could never do
due to her social class and financial circumstances), believes she’s found a
“real friend” in the younger man; whereas the curate views Mrs Chundle,
rather coldly, as a charity case. For example, when the curate goes to the
rector to ask about the old woman he’d just received dinner from he refers to
her as “a curious old soul”, which is a rather emotionally detached way of
speaking about her, almost as if she’s some sort of foreign being! Another
point why I feel the curate to be so apathetic is the way he’s so quick to
judge Mrs Chundle after hearing from his rector that she told him a small lie
about going to church. Only after a few seconds of conversation, the curate
passes judgement when he doesn’t know the full story; that she wants to save
herself the embarrassment of not hearing a word at church due to her deafness.
This is an insight into how the curate’s mind works. We must judge the Hardy
characters more by the way they act and speak rather than into any past
flashbacks or mental workings revealed to the reader like in “The Darkness Out
There.” This is because there are less insights into what the characters are
thinking in “Old Mrs Chundle” – we must rely upon Hardy’s descriptions
and their actions to form an opinion, whereas in the Lively tale Sandra reveals
her hopes and dreams and aspirations to the reader and Mrs Rutter tells
intimately of her past using flashbacks in the writing. I don’t think the
curate knows how one-sided the relationship is himself – he seems to be
unaware of the chasm that separates the two. He seems so umempathetic, so
totally not able to perceive what the old woman’s life is like, that he just
plunges into the situation without fully perceiving the consequences of his
actions. “ ”You don’t know this parish as well as I (the rector). You
should have left the old woman alone.” “ This is the voice of experience –
it shows how the curate didn’t know anything about what he was getting
involved in and how the older rector wouldn’t have done something as reckless.
It’s not that he is consciously a bad person – he’s just so wrapped up in
his middle-class viewpoints, that he’s blinded to other people’s way of
life. In this way, the curate never fully understands the relationship he has
with Chundle even though he’s trying to help her. In fact, Mrs Chundle seems
to run in circles around him when he is offended about the lie about going to
church; she knows the conversation’s balance with her traditionally uneducated
mind while he, the middle-class scholar sent into the church, doesn’t: “
“Now, I wonder what I did that for? … Well, you could ha’ guessed that I
didn’t come to any service… Your own commonsense ought to have told ‘ee
that ‘t was a figure o’ speech.” This shows how much more astute Mrs
Chundle is than the curate. This is similar to “The Darkness Out There” –
Sandra is also so self-involved like the curate that she doesn’t see into the
deeper layers of what she’s gotten into. She takes things at face value, such
as the way the old woman looks (“she seemed composed of circles, a
cottage-loaf of a woman”), and automatically places Rutter into some kind, old
dear stereotype she has built in her mind. The girl is only helping in the Good
Neighbour’s Club because it had become “thing to do”, she isn’t helping
others out of kindness, she’s doing it because everyone else is. The curate,
too, doesn’t see Chundle for what she really is – he views her as another
way he can do his job, by helping her: “Her soul required a special machinery
to save it… this was decidedly a case for his ministrations.” This passage
underlines the running tones of the story – this is his JOB to help Chundle,
he isn’t doing it out of personal compassion (exactly the same as Sandra). The
“friendly conversation” he engages her with when he leaves is not genuine.
Yet, Kerry, the boy with the “explosion of acne on his chin” is the only
genuine article in the show; he doesn’t go to help Mrs Rutter because it’s
“in” at that moment, because he isn’t “in” with Sandra’s crowd. HE
is the only one who helps out of the pure kindness of wanting to help; the two
other helpers (Sandra and the curate) aren’t. Actually, there’s a certain
amount of irony to the relationship with Mrs Chundle; the curate’s referred to
by Hardy as “the kind-hearted curate” when in fact what I’ve mentioned
earlier is closer to the truth. Again, this is the same as in “The Darkness
Out There”, using irony. What’s mocking about the story’s relationships is
the way Kerry is seen as the immature one throughout, Sandra the more adult
(from the latter’s point of view.) These perceptions are only revealed to be
false to Sandra at the end, even though we are given clues throughout the story.
Also, the way Rutter has “sympathy for young people” is ironic; clearly a
lie, seeing as she let a young German boy die over a period of two days in the
war, an act of inhuman cruelty which contradicts what she tells the two young
house helpers. Although in “The Darkness Out There,” we’re not given an
insight into what Kerry is thinking, we can see a much more impersonal
(unbiased) account of the relationship between Chundle and the curate due to the
writing style; far more simple in its structure than the Lively story even
though the old-fashioned dialogue isn’t written in our modern train of
thought, because it’s written pre-twentieth century. The relationships in
“The Darkness Out There” are also far more complex in the way the writers
portray them. Another insight into the “Old Mrs Chundle” tale is given by
the way Hardy reveals the characters to the reader using the speech patterns of
his characters (for there are lots less physical descriptions here than in the
other story, which is one main difference – the “Darkness Out There”
focuses much on imagery and not, until the end, speech, because this then sets
the reader up for the climax of an ending which destroys all the first, visual,
impressions). Hardy’s sentimental tale (in comparison to “The Darkness Out
There”) uses dialect to reinforce the idea of social difference in the
curate’s and Chundle’s relationship. The old woman speaks in a common,
everyday, regional dialect, while the curate refrains from colloquial speech
altogether and uses standard English. “”’Tis all my own growing… a bit
o’ victuals… I tell ’ee ‘tis twopence…”” This shows the social gap
again with the two; she is seen as lower class, working class, while he has
middle-class opinions and habits first revealed in the beginning sentences. For
example, Chundle knows that she can never have the comfort of painting because
she hasn’t the money or the time, and she also sees the “snack” the curate
wants for his light lunch as a luxury. She wouldn’t, in real life, have been
able to afford the bread and cheese he’d like and seems a bit contemptuous of
his liking of it (“a sour look crossed her face”). She also dismisses his
painting, aware of the gulf between them while he’s oblivious; “Sure, ‘tis
well some folk have nothing better to do with their time…” This is the
writer’s voice coming through the text; this is Hardy’s opinion while Mrs
Chundle is saying it. He probably wrote the story for a magazine for money but
it’s obvious that he’s sending an important message in his eyes to the
readers. He’s putting across to the readers that he’s a little contemptuous
of the meddling of middle-class people or just people in general getting
involved in something they can’t ever comprehend. However, Mrs Chundle is also
respectful to the curate. She doesn’t even sit at the table with him when she
prepares their meal: “I don’t want to eat with my betters.” This shows
that she’s more aware of the relationship’s true scale more than he ever
will. Mrs Chundle is far more perceptive to the balance of things than him. At
the end she believes in him as a person and thinks that he’s not just another
do-gooder, which is wrong, even though the curate may not know it himself. All
these combining factors, that show the true balance of the relationship, tell me
that the relationship, in the eyes of Hardy, is doomed from the start. The
couple can never be true friends; the social classes and upbringings and
perceptions won’t allow it. When the curate is in the least bit repulsed by
her he abandons her and takes flight; after the tube incident he casts her away,
almost as if she’s not a person, just “another charity case,” as I
mentioned earlier. He doesn’t value their friendship much to put in the amount
of effort he has and then just abandon her when he’s achieved his goal. A fine
example of this self-involvement is when the curate can’t even speak to
Chundle after the ear-pipe solution to her deafness didn’t work, “the curate
could not speak to her that morning.” In “The Darkness Out There,” the
relationship between the old woman and the youths is interesting; while the more
mature Kerry is not deceived by appearances and doesn’t trust her from the
start, Sandra, basing her opinions purely on visual input, thinks of her as
harmless. Sandra is quite shallow in this regard; helping the older people had
become “the thing to do” in her school and it’s obvious that she takes
into account what everyone else thinks before she decides an opinion for
herself. Look how she treats Kerry, for a start. Because of his “lardy
midriff… (his) chin… explosive with acne” she forms an opinion without
even knowing him; when she finally does at the end, she realises that she’s
misjudged people such as Kerry and Mrs Rutter until now. Kerry and Mrs Rutter
have a rocky relationship from the first few introductions; while Kerry is sent
outside to do “men’s’ work” and Sandra sent to do cleaning and dusting
etc., Rutter chats to Sandra about herself. What reveals the Kerry-Rutter
relationship is the way she can’t even remember the boy’s name! “See if
what’s-‘s-name would like (a biscuit).” Mrs Rutter and Kerry do not get
along from the start. Mrs Rutter seems to be watching him a lot, taking his
measure. She seems to know right away that he doesn’t really “go much on
her.” “She glittered at them… her eyes examined (Kerry)… Mrs Rutter
watched her come in.” This shows how Mrs Rutter is much more than just another
dear old lady, that behind her stereotypical exterior she’s something more to
be looked at. I, personally, feel that the writer knows traditionally eyes are
supposed to be the “windows to the soul” – the view to a person’s true
colours. It could be that through these descriptions Lively is saying that Mrs
Rutter is cold and calculating, watchful, not dear and sweet, as we would first
believe from her inviting soft-toned greetings to the children: “ “Just give
it a push, the door. It sticks, see, that’s it”… her voice flowed softly
one.” The writer uses eyes a lot in her descriptions in Mrs Rutter and they
seem to be important to the development of the character; while all the time she
seems to be harmless her eyes reveal the true Rutter, it’s just that Sandra
and, to a lesser extent, Kerry, don’t realise it. Another important factor in
“The Darkness Out There” is the use in descriptions of darkness and light.
While in “Old Mrs Chundle” it’s the message of being deceived by your own
actions and the actions of others (shown through the curate and Mrs Chundle’s
actions), in the Lively story the writer uses the handles of darkness and light
contrasting as another literary technique to display the underlying meaning to
her writing. There are lots of instances where Lively uses the sun and the
shadows to get across an idea, such as when Sandra is watching the sun on her
legs (“neat and slim and brown… she saw the neat print of the strap-marks
against her sunburn… it was all right out here in the sunshine”) and then
fears the darkness of the area she calls “Packer’s End.” In Sandra’s
self-involved world, she fears the woods because (again, stereotypically) they
are seen to be a place of evil and bad men (“gypsy types”) because the light
doesn’t enter it at all and she’s associated the darkness with bad things
since she was young. “She wouldn’t go in there for a thousand pounds…
witches and wolves and tigers… police hunt rapist, girl attacked on a lonely
road.” When, however, her character has developed and matured at the end
(after the truth about Mrs Rutter is revealed), Sandra realises that there’s
nothing to be feared about a German plane or witches or wolves in the woods,
because it’s not the “darkness of tree shadows” that’s to be feared but
the “(darkness) in your head”, the capacity for evil inside your own minds,
and that appearances aren’t all what they seem in “a world grown
unreliable.” This shows the maturing and realisation of Sandra that she’s
not been practical before, with all the childish shallow fantasies of houses in
the country. The relationship tilts and shifts as Sandra realises Kerry has been
in full control of his senses all along and wasn’t deceived by Mrs Rutter –
that he’s a deeper person than she is and isn’t as easily fooled. At the
closing of “The Darkness Out There” Sandra ends with a growing maturity on
the opinion of the world around her and Lively makes Sandra see that it isn’t
the literal things that are to be feared, rather the mental and deceptive
qualities of others. Overall, I’d say that the stories have one main
similarity; that while all of the relationships in the two stories are clouded
in misconceptions and misinterpretations at the start (the “kind-hearted”
curate “helping” Mrs Chundle, the rosy picture of Mrs Rutter Sandra builds
up while Kerry isn’t deceived) all of them develop so at their close the true
scale of them are shown to the readers and the characters. Throughout in both,
the readers are given clues as to what the situations truly are and in both
endings these clues lead up to what the stories’ characters have been
indicating all along. Both stories deal with the way we judge ourselves and how
this affects the world around us; Sandra believes she’s mature and the more
adult out of the two youngsters while the curate at the end of Hardy’s tale
has a revelation and realises his lack of compassion fully. The curate believed
he was trying to help Mrs Chundle and then realises that although this is true,
he wasn’t as noble in his intentions as he thought. However, in the two
stories it’s too late to alter the course of things; Mrs Chundle is already
dead and the teens have already been deceived by Mrs Rutter’s appearance
helping her. Perhaps the authors are saying that some things can’t be helped;
i.e. the curate’s and Mrs Chundle’s relationship was never going to last
(see above for the reasons) and Sandra, because of the way she is, was never
going to see past Mrs Rutter’s face and visual values, while Kerry all along
was doomed to not get along with Mrs Rutter because of his maturity and lack of
trust on purely false exteriors.