"Bliss" is a modernist short story by Katherine Mansfield first published in 1918. It was published in the English Review in August 1918 and later reprinted in Bliss and Other Stories . [1] [2]
The story follows a dinner party given by Bertha Young and her husband Harry.
The story starts with Bertha in a blissful mood as her party approaches, as she considers the specialness and unconventionality of her mood. The maid has prepared a colourful fruit tray for the party, which Bertha will arrange. The nanny is feeding the baby, who reluctantly lets Bertha hold her. The moment of connection with her daughter brings her more bliss.
After a phone call from her husband, who is running late, Bertha thinks ahead to who will attend the party that evening. A couple, Mr. and Mrs. Norman Knight (close friends to Bertha and Harry), Eddie Warren, a neurotic and sought-after writer, and Pearl, a strange, mysterious young woman that Bertha has taken a liking to after meeting at a club. As she prepares the drawing room cushions, Bertha recalls how Harry has declared that he finds Pearl dull. She is sure there is much more to her. Her feeling of bliss continues as she hugs the cushions and looks over the balcony to a most perfect blossoming pear tree in the garden, which she imagines "as a symbol of her own life." She lists to herself some of the many aspects of her life she is grateful for, and finds that her outfit is even reminiscent of the tree.
As the guests start to arrive, with Mr and Mrs Norman Knight calling each other nicknames and Eddie complaining about his taxi, she notes their outfits and appreciates how attractive the company is. As Harry arrives late, she considers the charm of her husband's eccentricities. Pearl is the last to arrive and, as Bertha takes her arm to lead her to the dining room, she feels an intense yet unspoken intimacy with her guest.
With everyone present, the meal begins. Compliments are paid regarding the food as theatre is discussed, and Bertha is overcome again by a sense of bliss, delighting in the company she has chosen. She thinks of the perfect pear tree in the moonlight in the garden, as she wonders how she can feel so connected to Pearl. She is somehow sure that Pearl must be feeling the same.
After dinner, when Pearl asks if Bertha has a garden, she takes it as a sign of their connection and leads her to the garden window. Here, she opens the curtains to reveal the pear tree. The two women stand side-by-side admiring its beauty and in a seemingly perfect moment of mutual understanding and bliss, when the lights are snapped on and the moment ends.
They rejoin the group for coffee, cigarettes, and more lively conversation. Bertha thinks about how her husband is being quite rude to Pearl, which upsets Bertha. She decides that she will try to find a way to explain to him what she and Pearl have shared, but also realises that soon the party will end. She fears she will be alone with just her husband but then, "for the first time in her life", finds that she is also filled with desire for him. She wonders if this ardent feeling is what all her bliss has been leading up to.
As the guests begin to leave to catch their trains and taxis, Harry goes to help Pearl with her coat in the hallway, which Bertha appreciates considering his earlier brusqueness. In the drawing room still, Bertha fetches a book for Eddie to borrow. As she turns her head to peer down the hallway she sees Pearl and Harry in a romantic embrace, secretly arranging to see each other the next day.
Not knowing they have been spotted, Pearl returns to the drawing room to say goodbye to Bertha and mentions the pear tree. As the final guests leave, Harry nonchalantly locks up behind them. Uncertain about the future, Bertha runs to her garden window and gazes upon her perfect tree, "as lovely as ever."
Cards on the Table is a detective fiction novel by the English author Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 2 November 1936 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company the following year. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6) and the US edition at $2.00.
The Age of Innocence is a 1920 novel by American author Edith Wharton. It was her eighth novel, and was initially serialized in 1920 in four parts, in the magazine Pictorial Review. Later that year, it was released as a book by D. Appleton & Company. It won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, making Wharton the first woman to win the prize. Though the committee had initially agreed to give the award to Sinclair Lewis for Main Street, the judges, in rejecting his book on political grounds, "established Wharton as the American 'First Lady of Letters'". The story is set in the 1870s, in upper-class, "Gilded Age" New York City. Wharton wrote the book in her 50s, after she was already established as a major author in high demand by publishers.
The House of Mirth is a 1905 novel by American author Edith Wharton. It tells the story of Lily Bart, a well-born but impoverished woman belonging to New York City's high society around the end of the 19th century. The House of Mirth traces Lily's slow two-year social descent from privilege to a lonely existence on the margins of society. In the words of one scholar, Wharton uses Lily as an attack on "an irresponsible, grasping and morally corrupt upper class."
The Mysterious Mr Quin is a short story collection by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by William Collins & Sons on 14 April 1930 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company later in the same year. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6) and the US edition at $2.00.
The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding and a Selection of Entrées is a short story collection written by Agatha Christie and first published in the UK by the Collins Crime Club on 24 October 1960. It is the only Christie first edition published in the UK that contains stories with both Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, the writer's two most famous detectives. It retailed in the UK for twelve shillings and sixpence (12/6) and comprises six cases. It was not published in the US although the stories it contains were published in other volumes there.
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The Thirteen Problems is a short story collection by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the UK by Collins Crime Club in June 1932 and in the US by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1933 under the title The Tuesday Club Murders. The UK edition retailed at seven shillings and sixpence (7/6) and the US edition at $2.00. The thirteen stories feature the amateur detective Miss Marple, her nephew Raymond West, and her friend Sir Henry Clithering. They are the earliest stories Christie wrote about Miss Marple. The main setting for the frame story is the fictional village of St Mary Mead.
"The Man Without a Temperament" is a 1920 short story by Katherine Mansfield. It was first published in Arts and Letters in Spring 1920, and later reprinted in Bliss and Other Stories.
"Prelude" is a short story by Katherine Mansfield. It was first published by the Hogarth Press in July 1918, after Virginia Woolf encouraged her to finish the story. Mansfield had begun writing "Prelude" in the midst of a love affair she had in Paris in 1915. It was reprinted in Bliss and Other Stories (1920). The story was a compressed and subtler version of a longer work The Aloe, which was later published posthumously in full.
Topper Returns is a 1941 American supernatural comedy thriller film directed by Roy Del Ruth and starring Joan Blondell, Roland Young, Carole Landis and Billie Burke. The third and final installment in the initial series of supernatural comedy films inspired by the novels of Thorne Smith, it succeeds Topper (1937) and Topper Takes a Trip (1938).
Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree is a 1995 Christmas television special starring Robert Downey Jr., Stockard Channing and Leslie Nielsen, featuring Kermit the Frog as a narrator and various other Muppets created exclusively for the special. It was sponsored by Nabisco and originally aired December 6, 1995 on CBS.
Molly and Me is a 1945 American comedy film directed by Lewis Seiler and starring Monty Woolley, Gracie Fields, Reginald Gardiner and Roddy McDowall and released by 20th Century Fox. The screenplay was based on the novel written by Frances Marion and adapted by Roger Burford.
The Secret Garden is the 1987 Hallmark Hall of Fame made-for-television film adaptation loosely based on Frances Hodgson Burnett's 1911 novel The Secret Garden, aired on CBS November 30, 1987 and produced by Rosemont Productions Limited. The film stars Gennie James, Barret Oliver, Jadrien Steele, Billie Whitelaw, Michael Hordern, and Sir Derek Jacobi. It won a Primetime Emmy Award in 1988 for Outstanding Children's Program.
Shake, Rattle & Roll III is a 1991 Filipino horror anthology film and the third installment of the Shake, Rattle & Roll film series. It was distributed by Regal Films and was directed by Peque Gallaga and Lore Reyes. The film is an entry of the 1991 Metro Manila Film Festival.
The Babysitter is a 1980 American made-for-television thriller film directed by Peter Medak and starring Patty Duke Astin, William Shatner and Stephanie Zimbalist about a young girl hired as a live-in nanny who infiltrates and tries to destroy a suburban Seattle family. The film originally premiered as The ABC Friday Night Movie on November 28, 1980.
Padlocked is a 1926 American silent drama film directed by Allan Dwan and written by Rex Beach, Becky Gardiner, and James Shelley Hamilton. The film stars Lois Moran, Noah Beery Sr., Louise Dresser, Helen Jerome Eddy, Allan Simpson, Florence Turner, and Richard Arlen. The film was released on August 2, 1926, by Paramount Pictures.
A Girl of the Limberlost is a 1934 American drama film, directed by Christy Cabanne. It stars Louise Dresser, Ralph Morgan and Marian Marsh, and was released on October 15, 1934. This is the second film adaption of Gene Stratton-Porter's 1909 novel of the same name. The first film adaptation had been released in 1924, and a third was released in 1945.
Bertha Lee Turner (1867–1938) was an American caterer, cookbook author, and community leader in Pasadena, California, in the early 1900s. She is most famous for compiling The Federation Cookbook: A Collection of Tested Recipes Compiled by the Colored Women of the State of California.