The Little Girl was written by Katherine Mansfield. This story is about a little girl named Kezia who lived with her parents and grandmother. However, she was always afraid of her father and avoided him as much as she could. She took a great sigh of relief whenever he left for work. She trembled with fear whenever she confronted him. She would mumble in terror whenever she was near him. According to her, her father was a rude and harsh person and she would try hard not to confront him whenever he was at home.
Kezia’s grandmother would always tell her to understand her parents in a better way. She would often encourage the little girl to chat with her parents in the drawing-room. But, the young girl always received a cold treatment from her parents. One day, her grandmother advised Kezia that she should make a pin-cushion as a gift for her father’s birthday that was coming the following week. Kezia stitched three sides of the cushion laboriously and kept one side open to stuff the case with something. She wondered what she could stuff it with and wandered into her mother’s bedroom to search for some scraps. There she found numerous sheets of fine paper, accumulated them, tore them into small pieces and stuffed the pin-cushion case, then finally sewed the fourth side.
Those papers were actually her father’s great speech for the Port Authority. When Kezia’s mother came to know that the little girl had torn those sheets of paper, she called her daughter to the drawing-room immediately. Her father was angry with her and he didn’t even listen to the reason why she tore the sheets of paper. He simply punished her with a ruler on her little, pink palms. Kezia sobbed miserably, but failed to understand why she was punished for speaking the truth and accepting the blunder that she committed. She felt miserable and silently wept and questioned the purpose of God in creating fathers. Later in the evening, she saw Mr. Macdonald playing with his children and having a merry time with them. From this incident, she analysed that all fathers do not have the same behaviour. She realised that there are some fathers like Mr. Macdonald who are kind and loving, whereas there are some who are rude and harsh like her father.
However, Kezia’s demeanour towards her father transformed soon. One day, suddenly her mother fell ill and was hospitalized. Her grandmother went along with her mother. So, Kezia was left alone in the house with no one around except the cook, Alice. During the daytime, everything went well but during night-time, Kezia found it hard to sleep. She had a dreadful nightmare of a butcher holding a knife and a rope, who came closer smiling wretchedly and she was unable to move from that place. This nightmare woke her up and when she opened her eyes she noticed that her father was standing right next to her.
Soon Kezia’s father took her to his bedroom and made her a cosy and comfortable place to sleep on his bed. Besides, he also told her that she could rub her feet against his legs for some warmth. Later, she felt very safe and comfortable in her father’s company and that he wasn’t as bad as she had assumed him to be. She could feel the fatherly love that she felt deprived of all this while and understood that her father loved and cared for her in his own way. Kezia realised that her father was usually cranky every day for the hard work he did to earn a living for his family and was too tired by evening to come and play with her. After that day, the little girl honoured, loved and cared for her father as much as she loved her grandmother and mother.
Rohit Singh 4 years, 1 month ago
3Thank You