Dangerous Dog: A Short Story from the collection, Reader, I Married Him. Kirsty Gunn
id="u7fa128f5-0a75-5cc5-89b6-76a4ef8ad366">
Dangerous Dog
Kirsty Gunn
Published by The Borough Press
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2016
Foreword © Tracy Chevalier 2016
Dangerous Dog © Kirsty Gunn
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
Cover design by Heike Schüssler © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016
Jacket photograph © Dan Saelinger/Trunk Archive
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This story is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical events and figures, are the works of the authors’ imaginations.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008150594
Ebook Edition © April 2016 ISBN: 9780008173357
Version: 2016-03-09
Contents
Why is Charlotte Brontë’s “Reader, I married him” one of the most famous lines in literature? Why do we remember it and quote it so much?
Jane Eyre is “poor, obscure, plain, and little”, with no family and no prospects; the embodiment of the underdog who ultimately triumphs. And “Reader, I married him” is Jane’s defiant conclusion to her rollercoaster story. It is not, “Reader, he married me” – as you would expect in a Victorian society where women were supposed to be passive; or even, “Reader, we married.” Instead Jane asserts herself; she is the driving force of her narrative, and it is she who chooses to be with Rochester. Her self-determination is not only very appealing; it also serves to undercut the potential over-sweetness of a classic happy ending where the heroine gets her man. The mouse roars, and we pump our fist with her.
Twenty-one writers, then, have taken up this line and written what it has urged them to write. I liken it to a stone thrown into a pond, with its resulting ripples. Always, always in these stories there is love – whether it is the first spark or the last dying embers – in its many heart-breaking, life-affirming forms.
All of these stories have their own memorable lines, their own truths, their own happy or wry or devastating endings, but each is one of the ripples that finds its centre in Jane and Charlotte’s decisive clarion call: Reader, I married him.
Tracy Chevalier
IN A WAY, I could start this short story with a dream I had last night in which I was attacked by two rogue Labradors who’d seemed sweet at first but then turned mean. This was at the gates of the park where I normally go running, and the Labradors went for me right there, one biting my hand, holding on and not letting go, the other mauling my clothing. I could start with that, I suppose, because the same park features heavily in the story I want to write and it works as a nice “gateway to narrative” – a phrase Reed has taught me and the kind of thing I come out with now as casually as terms like “core muscles” or “aerobic as opposed to muscular fitness”, which have been a natural part of my professional vocabulary as a fitness trainer and personal body-development coach.
So yes, I could start with that dream, with me reaching down to a pair of dogs who were sitting just outside the gates to the park, just reaching down to pat their soft black heads – and wham! Just like that they were on to me, one with my hand in its mouth, the other grabbing on tight to the hem of my jacket. “Hang on a minute, you two,” I heard myself say, “this isn’t what you’re supposed to do. You’re Labradors, for goodness’ sake.” At which point, hearing myself speak, I woke up.
Of course everyone knows about dreams like this, about Jung and Freud, those dream counsellors with their unconscious-world this and their myths-and-meanings that. And sure, we all know about the biting-dog dream: that it’s about either sexual repression or confidence. Or fear of sex. Or too much, or not enough. Whatever. So I suppose it could be that the dream itself might be a little short story if I wanted. It’s starting the writing classes that got me thinking this way. You, whoever you are, are reading now because you like reading, you’re used to it – even something like this, a short story from a writing class – and you’re used to thinking of life in a fictional sort of way; you probably write short stories yourself. But for me, finding meanings in the day-to-day, using them to create a written piece of work … It’s weird and it’s exciting. Now I think back on so many things that have happened to me and find shapes in those things, patterns … Like how come I went through most of my adult life in and out of relationships when I know I’ve got my own ways of going about things, always have had, so why should I be surprised they didn’t work out? Of