Dear Liz
Your explanation does not disappoint me. Thanks. I fully agree with the idea
that "inside" people do not wish strangers to meddle with their
relationships with the spirits of the dead children.
One tiny observation : the first time the narrator refers to something akin,
he "barges in [her] woods" (woods : plural) ; thereafter always uses "walk
in the wood" (wood singular) : that is why I suspected it might be a local
saying. But your arguments are fully convincing.
Thank you
Max
----- Message d'origine -----
De : Liz Breuilly <[log in to unmask]>
À : Kipling Mailbase <[log in to unmask]>
Envoyé : mardi 23 novembre 1999 10:07
Objet : Walk in the woods
> Dear Max,
> I have a suspicion that you're not going to like my explanation any more
> than Michael Healy's.
> I am quite sure that 'walking in the woods' is not a Sussex expression,
> but a phrase that has meaning only within the story 'They'. It is clear
> in the story that all the villagers, including unsympathetic ones like
> the tenant farmer, know that spirits of dead children are met with in
> that house and those woods. So 'walking in the woods' has come to be,
> within that particular community, a euphemism for 'mourning a dead
> child'. That is why it is something that you do not explain or talk
> about, except to someone who has already experienced the presence of the
> children.
> It had not crossed my mind, until you asked, that it might be a more
> generally known phrase, and having considered the possibility, I am
> inclined to reject it because:
>
> - when RK uses well-known local sayings, he usually signals them in
> some way (I'd have to hunt for examples, but I'm sure that's the case);
> - if it were an expression in use in Sussex at the time, I think he
> would have used it elsewhere, given his preoccupation with the memory of
> his daughter Josephine, and his feeling of her presence at Batemans;
> - if it were in use anywhere else, I think someone would have remarked
> on it by now;
> - it fits with the logic of the story that those 'in the know' have
> their own coded way of referring to what is going on.
>
> Liz
>
>
>
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