Anton Chekhov's "Misery" made me want to shake the characters he tried to talk with. I found them self-centered and unable to extend themselves into compassion. The editor says that the final character that listens is Iona's mare. The editor points out how they are linked in that the driver "cranes his neck" and "then the mare cranes her neck, too." The editor submits that the mare is "almost a part of Iona" and that makes her the "best possible listener" because extreme grief "can be told only to the self." I see the point, but I would like to extend another viewpoint.
The mare takes the place of and is to Iona, his wife. The mare is not a gelding or stallion. A mare if a female. She is, as the editor points out, "almost a part of Iona." She is his partner, helper, sharer of good and bad times. She seems old to me because Chekhov comments on "the angularity of her lines" and "stick-like straightness of her legs." She doesn't have the curves of youth and neither would Iona's wife who would have given birth to an adult son who drove the sleigh before his death.
Iona is kind to the mare. He shares his money and food with the mare. He is disappointed with himself that not only can't he eat well, but he doesn't have enough to give his mare oats. She must content herself with hay, and we're not told that Iona eats any supper himself.
It wasn't surprising to me that he speaks of his grief to the mare and that she answered him with her breath on his hands. They share a love and caring.
"Desiree's Baby" by Kate Chopin.
At first, I bought into Armand's proclamation that Desiree gave birth to a non-white child because she was non-white. I wondered at the prejudice and racial hate of a man that was so immersed in love for his wife. But I decided he remembered his station in life and that it was the way things were back then.
Desiree's foster mother noticed immediately that the child wasn't white. She was surprised and exclaimed, "This is not the baby!" Desiree doesn't see it, and thinks her mother is surprised about the baby's weight and size. But the foster mother loves with a true love, no matter what, and when Desiree is sent away, takes her in and says, "Come with your child."
I don't believe that Armand knew he was the cause of the non-white baby until he read the letter weeks after his wife and child are gone. In his shock at reading his mother's letter, he destroys all memories of the wife and baby he killed with his prejudice, by fire. Fire purges. Even so, the reader is left with the question of whether he can purge his own soul of not only his sin but the knowledge of his heritage.
I enjoyed this story even though my emotions were torn, shredded, and ripped apart with warmth, loathing, and compassion. Was the victim finally Armand or his wife and child? Or, perhaps, the victim was love.
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