Baglady

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she says they are stolen. “People like you, not allowed in here” , the policeman says. The short story ends with the policemen’s attempting to get rid of Daphne, because she appears to be a baglady.

The main character of the text “Baglady” is Daphne Gulver-Robinson, who’s an English lady married to a businessman named Rollo. She joins her husband on this trip to make their family seem more real and great. As a reader it seems like something odd because why would she “help” him portray that he’s a family man. When she meets the other wives Daphne feels very uncomfortable because she’s older than them, and she did really make something out of herself for this trip to be elegant like them, “… has lost ten pounds and had her hands manicured; but now she sees the other ladies, she knows it is not enough…”

Daphne gets a mental breakdown and start screaming inside The Good Fortune Mall because she can’t find a way out and all her belongings starts disappearing in the middle of it all, leaving her desperately looking for a way out of the mall.

The other character we hear a lot about is Rollo, Daphne’s husband, who’s on this business trip with his company, and the chairman of the company, Lord Scroop, wanted all the men to bring their wives on this business trip to the Far East. Rollo told Daphne he didn’t want her on this trip with him because he knew how much happier she would be just staying home. But according to himself he didn’t have a choice or Lord Scroop would think that it’s very odd, or Rollo is very odd by not bringing his wife with him on this trip.

Then we have the wives that are described by Daphne as, “Most of the wives are elegant, with silk suits and silky legs and exquisitely cut hair. They chat mutedly, swapping recipes for chutney and horror stories about nannies…” The wives are everything Daphne isn’t and as a reader we can see how hard it is on her, because she wants to be just like them, but she isn’t enough.

The setting in the text is very well described, with many details, for example, “Daphne Gulver-Robinson looks around the breakfast table. It is beautifully laid with peach-coloured damask, bronze cutlery, and emit guts of perfume”.

Furthermore, the story takes place in what seems to be middle east-areas. ““…, isolated by bullet proof glass from the smells and sounds of the Orient.” . Another example, “I understand that it is a real Aladdin’s Cave of treasures and all sorts of little indulgences for ourselves…”

The Good Fortune Mall could be a symbol or reflection on Daphne herself. The mall from outside looked like an army barrack or a prison. If you compare that with Daphne, “Her style is seated tweed, and stout shoes, and bird’s-nest hair”.

But inside it has all these floors with different things on each floor, and that may resemble to Daphne personality, because she seems like a person with an identity crisis, and she doesn’t know where to go and what to do. Moreover, she did have a breakdown when all her belongings and identification were gone, and then she might had lost her clarification on who she was herself as well.