LISPETH by
RUDYARD KIPLING
The story is
set in India,
in a Christian Mission; there's a 3 th
person narrator.
The text opens
with a description of L. , a beautiful Hill-girl, who is the main character of the
story. When she is a
child, her parents decide to take her to the Ch. Mission to baptise her after
two bears destroyed their harvest. After that, her parents die for cholera, but
she decides to remain at the Mission
and she becomes half servant, half companion of Chaplain's wife. In the story
there are two social group: Hill-people (Indian People) and White People
(People of the mission); L. doesn't belong to either group: in fact Hill-people
hate her because she became like a white people (she washes herself every day)
but the white people doesn't consider her like a member of their community
either. But L. is happy in that kind of
life at the mission. One day, during one of her walks, she meets on the ground
a unconscious man, an Englishman and she decides to take him home: The first
sentence that she says when she arrives to the Mission is: "This is my husband"
; in fact she wanted to marry him. The Chaplain's and his wife's reactions are
very severe because L. is very passionate and instinctive but the intention of
marry the Englishman is very hard in Lispeth.
After fortnight the Englishman recovers
and he can go but in these 15 days he stayed every time with L. who fall in love with him. At the moment of his departure L. is
very sad but the Englishman says her that he will return to marry her. Now she
is very very happy, she thinks him every day, she imagines when he can be in
every moment but actually the Chaplain's wife told the Englishman that he tell
L. that he will return to marry her, because she though L. was a wild girl and
that her feelings weren't so important; but L. doesn't know that, and waits for the
Englishman's arrival. Three months
after the Englishman's departure Chaplain's wife decides to tell L. the truth:
the Englishman will no return. L. doesn't want to believe that, in fact the Englishman told her
he love her. So L. wears the dress of Hill-girls and decides to return to own
people where she will stay until her death; she spoke about her first love, the
Englishman, just when she was drunk.
