Daughters Of The Late Colonel

3 Pages 786 Words

From this anthology of short stories, many lessons can be learnt and each one is entertaining in its own way but the one that stands out is Katherine Mansfield’s Daughters of the Late Colonel.

The first lesson this story teaches is the importance of having a mind of your own. It is the sisters’ lack of decisiveness and a mind of their own that leads to their sad unfulfilment in their lives. Years of dependence on their domineering father has sapped them of any decision-making powers. Their inability to make decisions for themselves are shown when they cannot come to a consensus regarding Kate - “on this one subject I’ve never been able to quite make up my mind” – and their dismay towards their first ever decision of burying father. Helpless without their father to make their decisions for them, both sisters end up being bound forever to the memory of their father and forgetting “what it was (they were) going to say”. They will continue to live in the void created by the demise of their father, never being able to step out.

The second lesson that can be learnt is the effects of parental influence. Throughout the whole story, the huge extent of control their father wields over them can be seen. All their lives, everything that Josephine and Constantia have done are out of fear of their father. And we can see that even after the colonel has died, his presence lingers on “in the top drawer with his hankerchiefs and neckties, or in the next with his shirts and pyjamas, or in the lowest of all with his suits.” He is in the wardrobe “among his overcoats”, he lives on in the hearts and minds of Josephine and Constantia and he lives on through Kate and Nurse Andrews. The fact that Josephine and Constantia hold on to this twisted belief that their father is never really gone show the extent their dysfunctional childhood with the colonel.

Another lesson is how to deal with death. As this story spans “the week aft...