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1. Read and translate into your mother tongue Text Four from the book by V.D.Arakin (5 year) pp.101-104.
2. Do exercise 10 pp. 110.
3. Do exercises 15, 16, 17, 18 p.25.
4. Read the pattern stylistic analysis of the text (compiled by L.I.Serdyukova) and give your own commentaries on the style of Text One taking into account the suggested analysis (see Supplement 2 ‘The Scheme of a Stylistic Analysis of Fiction’).
“Dangerous Corner”, written and staged in 1932, is one of the most artistically conspicuous plays by J. Priestly as a dramatist. In it he unmasks the immorality hidden behind the hypocritical respectability of a typical bourgeois family. Priestly observes the family’s decay but he can’t, or rather is unable to tell the reason why, and more than that, to explain it away socially. The play’s leitmotif is the drama of the truth revealed.
The scenes of the play are laid in the country house belonging to Robert Gaplan, a flourishing journalist and publisher, and a “nice chap” into the bargain. The seven of his relatives and friends that appear in the footlights exchanging opinions of the wireless play under the title of “The Sleeping Dog” that they have just heard, seem a good and nice lot too. They make a show of their noblest feelings of what might be mistaken for the Gaplans’ mutual love and affection, the men’s friendship, the cult of the deceased brother Robert Martin, the tenderness of the newly-wed Betty and Gordon. Among the Gaplans’ old friends are Olwen, a modest clever girl, the old, prim Maud Mockridge, a woman writer, and Stanton, an old bachelor of a somewhat cynical disposition. Gradually, in the course of their conversation, the truth comes out, and the viewers come stunningly to know all about the background of these civilized people, and all about how far the prosperous family has progressed along the lines of their respectability. The firm and stiff Freda, the mistress of the house, turns out to have been also the mistress of Martin whose memory is worshipped in the family. And the deceased himself, as it happens, was a drug addict and a profligate. Gordon, one of the newly-weds, is a neurotic, and his young wife had once being a harlot. On top of it all, the clever and quiet Olwen had once, when Martin’s advance to her proved too much, assisted him to his grave. Such is the way the “apple-cart” has been upset in the respectable home of the Gaplans. And such is the fool’s paradise that has been held by mutual guarantee.
The shot that is heard in the end of the play behind the scene at the point of general exposal suggests the suicide of the host of the house. But Robert Gaplan who has lost his brother a second time and has been disillusioned with his wife has not the slightest desire to shoot himself. The tragedy proves a frustration, and everything starts afresh. The play ends to the melody of a popular song, and the cynical Stanton who enlarges upon the danger of truth revealed proclaims the author’s idea that TELLING THE TRUTH IS ABOUT AS HEALTHY AS SKIDDING ROUND A CORNER AT SIXTY. It is this assumption that makes up the play’s message.
An unbiased view of Priestly’s play suggests the assumption of the evil’s fatality. Priestly lets one see how false are the fool’s paradises in the world around him. But he never ventures beyond a mere statement of fact, gathers the apples, mixes them up, puts the cart on its wheels and rolls it on till the next upsetting.
In Priestly’s plays one definitely traces the influence of A. Chekhov and B. Shaw, but Priestly was specifically keen on the artistic device of Literary Time Tricks. The artistic interest of “Dangerous Corner” lies in the fact that it has a framing composition and a surprise finale. The framing symbolizes the vicious circle of evil disguised as virtue, and by this method Priestley wants to make the reader as pessimistic about the triumph of virtue as he possibly can. In this connection, the very idea of leaving Robert Gaplan alive and of the play: “No, Robert, no. This is horrible, mad. Please, please don’t go on. (Quieter) IT WON’T SEEM LIKE THIS TOMORROW”. The “time-trick employed by Priestley returns the action of the play to its starting point, but what happens in the next “round” is ambiguous because every word that the characters utter turns into a pack of lies.
The dramatic genre that Priestley chooses to convey his idea of falsity and deceit disclosed and evil disguised as truth is perhaps very successful and fitting, for the action unwinds itself rapidly and descriptions would only have impeded it. Besides, the dramatic style facilitates the problem of speech characterization. The dialogues of the selections presented in the textbook are emotional and full of vigour. The so-called break-in-the-narrative is their primary feature, cf.:
O l w e n: Freda can’t you -?
R o b e r t: Don’t you see, we’re not living in the same world now. Everything’s gone. My
brother was an obscene lunatic… And the girl’s a greedy little cat on the tiles –
A lot of exclamatory sentences, either elliptical or one-member, build up the emotive ring all through the action:
R o b e r t /crazy now/ Tomorrow! Tomorrow!
O l w e n: Stop, Robert! Stop! Stop!
Syntactically, the emotion is also manifested in a gradational climax:
Ro b e r t: You’re a thief, a cheat, a liar, and a dirty cheap seducer.
On a number of occasions Robert’s indignation finds vent in similes:
R o b e r t: You run short of the stuff that creates beautiful illusions, just as if a gland had
stopped working.
…I had to meddle, like a child with a fire.
The vocabulary of the dialogues is mostly neutral. Colloquialisms are seen not as often as might be expected in a dramatic peace /fun, fibbing, come out, terribly, stuff, rotten, bloody, damned, fool, to get at smth./. These words mostly come from Robert who is the defeated side here, and their connotations are rather evaluative-emotional than functional-stylistic. This shows the social background of the characters proves equal rise to the so-called “civilized society” they belong to. And only Stanton’s speech of a cynic distinguishes itself as terse and strikingly ironic. Thus, for instance, he uses decomposed phraseology and modified allusion that have a sense of bitter irony:
S t a n t on: You’ve been living in a fool’s paradise, and
Now, having got yourself out of it by tonight’s
Efforts - all your doing – you’re busy building yourself a fool’s hell to live in.
S t e n t o n: / a match for or snybody else present/
… To lie or not lie – what do you think, Olwen? You’re looking wise…
But decomposition plays a more important role in the title of the wireless play that the characters discuss during the opening scene. “The Sleeping Dog” is derived from “to let the sleeping dogs lie” / to let bygones be bygones/, and this idiom acquires an added significance in the context of “Dangerous Corner”. Observe, in this connection, what Olwen says in the first fragment:
O l w e n: You know I believe I understand that play now. The sleeping dog was the truth, do you see, and that man – the husband – insisted upon disturbing it.
In fact, “The Sleeping Dog” is very fit as another title of “Dangerous corner” / the words occur in Freda’s statement:
And life’s got a lot of dangerous corners-hasn’t, Charles?
And that proves that “Dangerous corner” is not only a brilliant experiment in “time-tricks”, but also an experiment of “play in a play”.
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