THE LITTLE GIRL – KATHERINE MANSFIELD
SUMMARY
Kezia was a little girl who lived with her mother. She was afraid of his father and used to avoid him. She used to feel relieved on seeing her father go to his office. Kezia was so afraid of her father that he stuttered in front of him. He appeared to her as harsh, rude and critical. Her grandmother wanted her to understand her parents better and would ask her to go to the drawin g room to chat with her parents. But she found them indifferent towards her.
One day grandmother suggested that she should prepare a pin cushion for her father’s birthday. Kezia stitched the three sides of the cushion casing. Now she wanted to stuff it with something. Inher mother’s room on the bed table, she found many sheets of fine paper. She tore them off into small pieces and filled the pin cushion and stitched the fourth side. By mistake she had used the papers which contained her father’s very important speech for the Port Authority. Though she accepted her mistake and tried to explain the reasons behind it, her father was too angry to listen to anything and punished her with a ruler on her palms. She failed to understand the punishment met out to her when she had already accepted her mistake. Bitterly she said, ‘What did God make fathers for?’
One evening, she saw Mr. McDonald playing with his children, laughing and enjoying with them. This convinced Kezia that all fathers are not alike. Some are loving and caring like Mr. McDonald and some are cruel like her father.
Soon her attitude towards her father also changed. One day her mother had to be taken to thehospital and her grandmother accompanied her. Kezia was left alone in the house with the cook. The day was fine but the night was different issue. She woke up in the middle of the night screaming as she had a horrible nightmare. She was weeping out of fear. When she opened her eyes she saw her father beside her bed. He carried her to his bedroom, and made her warm and comfortable on his bed. Father told her to rub her feet with his legs and set them warm. She felt very safe comfortable with him.
It was now she realized that her father was not that giant. That he loved and cared for her in his own way. That he had to work the whole day to provide for his family and was too tired by the evening to play with her.
I. Read the extracts given below and answe r the questions that follow.
1. To the little girl he was a figure to be feared and avoided. Every morning before going to work, he came into her room and gave her a casual kiss, to which she responded with ‘Good Bye Father’. And oh, there was a glad sense of relief when she heard the noise of the carriage growing fainte r and fainter down long the road!
a) What was the daily routine of her father?
b) When did the daughter feel relief?
c) Who is ‘he’ in the first line?
d) Trace a word from the passage which means ‘answered’.
2. She sat on a stool, gravely watched him until he woke and stretched and asked the time – then looked
at her. ‘Don’t stare so, Kezia. You look like a little brown owl’
a) Whom is Kezia watching gravely?
b) Why was she sitting there waiting for him to wake up?
c) Who said ‘ Don’t stare Kezia’?
d) Trace the word in the extract which means ‘seriously’?
3. ‘But it was for your b-b birthday’ Down came the ruler on her little, pink palms. Hours later, when grandmother had wrapped her in a shawl and rocked her in the rocking-chair, the child clung to her soft body. ‘What did god make fathers for’? she sobbed.
a) Who is responding in the first line and before whom?
b) How did the father react?
c) She sobbed. Who is ‘she’?
d) Find a word from the passage that means ‘wept’.
4. But same old nightmare came. The butcher with a knife and a rope who came nearer and nearer, with that dreadful smile, while she could not move, only standstill, crying out ‘Grandma’! She woke shivering to see father beside her bed, a candle in his hand. ’What’s the matter? He said.
a) Why did she get the nightmare?
b) Where was the butcher?
c) What was the state of Kezia?
d) Find a word from the passage that means ‘shake in fear and cold’.
II. Answer the following questions in 30-40 words.
1. Why did Kezia avoid her father?
2. What kind of a person was Kezia’s father?
3. What made Kezia’s father punish her?
4. How did the father comfort the little girl when she scared in her sleep?
5. How was Kezia’s father different from Mr. McDonalds?
III. Answer the following question in 120-150 words.
1. How did Kezia feel in presence of her father?
2 How did Kezia’s negative attitude towards father change?
Please click on below link to downloadCBSE Class 9 English The Little Girl Worksheet Set A
