Tuesday, October 30, 2018

"The Balcony"

30 October 2018: "Each story is different, or appears so to her; each has some unique and peculiar pathos in it. And so she dramatizes and inflects it, trying to make the point visible to her apparent also to her hearers. Sometimes the pathos and interest to the hearers lie only in this - that the relater has observed it, and gathered it, and finds it worth telling." --Grace King, "The Balcony"

Taught this little sketch this afternoon in the Gender and Women's Studies class. It's always such a satisfying piece to teach, especially to open up discussions about women and storytelling. I am especially fond of the sentiment above, in which the narrator explains why the women on the balcony value the stories others share: they matter because the storytellers think they do. That's enough.

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