From Under the Overcoat

by Sue Orr

JAMES JOYCE WAS BORN in Dublin in 1882 and died in Zurich in 1941. ‘The Dead’ was written in 1907 and is the final story in James Joyce’s 1914 collection, Dubliners. Although each of the fifteen stories in the collection stands alone, together they build a picture of a downtrodden lower-middle-class Dublin at the beginning of the twentieth century. The presence of death — literal and symbolic — pervades the final story, reaching a climatic moment in Gretta Conroy’s disclosure to her husband Gabriel about her childhood sweetheart Michael Furey: ‘I think he died for me’.7

  Dubliners, and ‘The Dead’ in particular, sparked intense literary discussion about the presence of epiphanies in Joyce’s writing. In his introduction to Dubliners, Terence Brown wrote that Joyce believed it the artist’s duty to expedite forth the manifestations of epiphanic moments in a context allowing the reader to discern their possible significance.8 However, critics have debated whether all or any of the Dubliners ‘moments’ constituted true epiphanies.

  THE CREATION STORY

  RIKIHANA HYLAND, QUEENIE, PAKI WAITARA: MYTHS AND LEGENDS OF THE MĀORI, AUCKLAND: REED, 1997

  THE MAORI CREATION STORY is an oral tradition but it is recorded in many books of Māori legends. The story reflects on the beginning of life and existence from a natural perspective. There are different versions but most describe the creation of the world as the separation of the earth and the sky.

  In the beginning, there was nothing — Te Kore. From this Rangi-nui (the sky father) and Papa-Tū-ā-nuku (the earth mother) emerged. They were physically connected, and their children were born between them in darkness — Te Pō. Various versions name different children, but most include Tāne Mahuta (god of the forests), Tangaroa (god of the sea), Tūmatauenga (god of war and humans), Rongo-mā-Tāne (god of cultivated plants), Haumiatiketike (god of wild plants) and Tāwhirimatea (god of the weather).

  The children decided to separate their mother and father, to allow light into the world. The effort was led by Tāne, who forced his parents apart. The only child to object to the separation was Tāwhiri. While the other children stayed with their mother, he ascended to be with his father. From there, he attacked his brothers, using storms, high winds and seasonal changes.

  ‘LIEUTENANT GUSTL’, ARTHUR SCHNITZLER, 1900

  GREAT GERMAN SHORT STORIES, EDITED BY EVAN BATES, NEW YORK: DOVER PUBLICATIONS, 2003

  ARTHUR SCHNITZLER WAS BORN in Austria in 1862 and died there in 1931. In 1900 he published one of the first tales written purely in interior monologue in European literature — a short story entitled ‘Lieutenant Gustl’.9

  The Austrian officer Gustl attends an opera and believes himself to be insulted there. The story — which takes place almost exclusively in Gustl’s mind — tells of the consequences of the perceived insult, the claustrophobic interior monologue a perfect vehicle for Gustl’s rising paranoia.

  The story’s negative portrayal of the officer cost Schnitzler his medical officer’s rank in the Austrian army.10 The interior monologue form was later made famous by James Joyce in Molly Bloom’s soliloquy at the end of Ulysses.

  George Clarke Junior is inspired by a passage from a book published in 1859, The Story of New Zealand: Past and Present — Savage and Civilized. The excerpt dealt with the first official execution in New Zealand in 1842 and conflicting cultural — Māori versus British — perceptions of justice.

  ‘THE PARTY’, ANTON CHEKHOV, 1888

  THE PENGUIN BOOK OF RUSSIAN SHORT STORIES, EDITED BY DAVID RICHARDS, LONDON: PENGUIN BOOKS, 1981

  RUSSIAN WRITER ANTON PAVLOVICH Chekhov was born in 1860, the son of a former serf. He trained as a medical doctor and practised medicine throughout his writing life. His most famous stories were written between 1890 and 1904. He died of consumption in 1904 at Badenweiler, Germany.

  Chekhov’s stories are drawn from everyday life, and focus on both the political and social conditions of the day and the emotional world of his characters. In his introduction to ‘The Party’, David Richards says the ‘poetic poignancy of [Chekhov’s] best work stems from the author’s unvoiced awareness of the ironic gap between our modest hopes and the banal realities of life’.11 ‘The Party’ tells the story of a large, all-day party hosted by Peter Mikhaylovna, a circuit court president, and his wife Olga. Olga, who is pregnant, drifts through the party in an uninvolved way, upset with her husband’s inability to communicate with her and bored with the pretences required by the occasion’s etiquette. She becomes increasingly disillusioned with her marriage as the night progresses, convincing herself that she really does not know her husband at all. By the end of the evening she is uncontrollably enraged and accuses him of marrying her for money. The story ends with her losing their baby.

  By setting this marital crisis entirely within a party — in effect a public forum — Chekhov created room to explore more than a personal domestic crisis. The extremely ‘correct’ behaviours required of both Olga and Peter as hosts amplify the chasm between man and wife; the more agitated they become, the more delighted they appear to their guests. The headiness of the event — the food, drink and false gaiety — deprives Olga of a context in which she can contemplate and assess the significance of an eavesdropped conversation. Tragedy occurs before the party finishes, before she has a chance to reflect rationally on what she has heard.

  ‘SLEEPING BEAUTY’, BROTHERS GRIMM VERSION, TITLED ‘ROSEBUD’, 1600S

  GRIMMS’ POPULAR STORIES — ‘ROSEBUD’, LONDON: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1945

  ‘SLEEPING BEAUTY’ IS A tale of wakeful euphoria and somnolent despair. The origins of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ (or ‘Rosebud’) are difficult to trace — versions have been present in different cultures for centuries, with some experts believing that Rosebud’s tribulations were originally inspired by the stories of saints. French writer Charles Perrault included the tale ‘La Belle au Bois Dormant’ in his 1697 collection translated as The Tales of Mother Goose, but this version ran on past the happy awakening to deliver Rosebud and her two children (the off spring of the handsome prince) to further danger at the cannibalistic hands of the prince’s evil mother. Another version — acknowledged by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in their notes to ‘Rosebud’12 — was created in 1634 by Giovanni Battista Basile in his work Pentamerone. That story was called ‘Son, Moon and Talia’. The Brothers Grimm sourced most of their tales directly from German peasants13 and the notes accompanying ‘Rosebud’ source its origin as the Hessian story ‘Dornroschen’.

  The story, as told by the Brothers Grimm, starts with a king and queen who learn they are to have a child. A great party is thrown, but an uninvited fairy wreaks revenge by cursing the child to die at fifteen after pricking her finger on a spindle. Another fairy guest mitigates the promise, turning the death sentence to that of one hundred years’ sleep. The curse is fulfilled and the entire court submits to the sleep. A thorn-ridden thicket grows around the palace. The curse is broken by a prince who succeeds in breaking through the thicket and kissing the princess, awakening her. They marry and live happily ever after.

  ‘THE OVERCOAT,’ NIKOLAY GOGOL, 1842

  THE WORKS OF NIKOLAY GOGOL III THE OVERCOAT AND OTHER STORIES, THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION BY CONSTANCE GARNETT, LONDON: CHATTO & WINDUS, 1923

  NIKOLAY GOGOL WAS BORN in Ukraine in 1809 and died in Russia in 1852. ‘The Overcoat’ has been described as the ‘first appearance in fiction of the Little Man’.14

  Set in St Petersburg, it tells the simple story of Akaky Akakyevitch, a poor, government clerk of low rank who, mocked by his colleagues for his threadbare overcoat, puts himself through enormous hardship to save enough money to buy a new one. A superior from his office hosts a party to celebrate Akakyevitch’s purchase, but on the way home from the occasion Akakyevitch is robbed of the coat. He turns for help to an important person in authority, but is ridiculed. Akakyevitch, coatless, dies of a fever brought on by the severe St Petersburg winter.

  The story seems to find its natural ending at that point but Gogol continues the tale
to a fantastical conclusion, bringing Akakyevitch back as a ghost. The ghost roams the city streets, ripping overcoats off passers-by, including, eventually, the important person. The story ends with a policeman’s account of a ghost disappearing into the night, shaking his fist and asking ‘What do you want?’ The appearance of the ghost has — and continues — to spark literary debate as to Gogol’s intentions in extending the story past the death of Akakyevitch.

  1. MANSFIELD, K., COLLECTED STORIES OF KATHERINE MANSFIELD, INTRODUCTORY NOTE BY J. M. MURRY, LONDON: CONSTABLE, 1945, P. 384.

  2. IBID., ‘THE DOLL’S HOUSE’, P. 394.

  3. JAMES, HENRY, THE TURN OF THE SCREW AND OTHER STORIES, INTRODUCTION BY T. J. LUSTIG, OXFORD: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1992, P. VII.

  4. IBID., P. XII.

  5. ANDERSON, SHERWOOD, WINESBURG, OHIO, INTRODUCED BY J. MEYERS, NEW YORK, BANTAM BOOKS, 2005, P. X.

  6. IBID., ‘DEATH’, P. 209.

  7. JOYCE, JAMES, DUBLINERS, INTRODUCED BY T. BROWN, LONDON: PENGUIN, 2000, P. 221.

  8. IBID., P. XXXVI.

  9. E. BATES (ED.), GREAT GERMAN SHORT STORIES, NEW YORK: DOVER PUBLICATIONS, 2003, P. VIII.

  10. IBID.

  11. RICHARDS, D. (ED.), THE PENGUIN BOOK OF RUSSIAN SHORT STORIES, LONDON: PENGUIN BOOKS, 1981, P. 169.

  12. GRIMM, JACOB LUDWIG CARL AND WILHELM CARL, POPULAR STORIES — ‘ROSEBUD’, LONDON: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1945, P. 381.

  13. IBID., P. VII.

  14. O’CONNOR, FRANK, THE LONELY VOICE: A STUDY OF THE SHORT STORY, NEW JERSEY: MELVILLE HOUSE, 2004, P. 14.

  ‘THE OVERCOAT’

  NIKOLAY GOGOL

  In the department of … but I had better not mention in what department. There is nothing in the world more readily moved to wrath than a department, a regiment, a government office, and in fact any sort of official body. Nowadays every private individual considers all society insulted in his person. I have been told that very lately a petition was handed in from a police-captain of what town I don’t recollect, and that in this petition he set forth clearly that the institutions of the State were in danger and that its sacred name was being taken in vain; and, in proof thereof, he appended to his petition an enormously long volume of some work of romance in which a police-captain appeared on every tenth page, occasionally, indeed, in an intoxicated condition. And so, to avoid any unpleasantness, we had better call the department of which we are speaking a certain department.

  And so in a certain department there was a government clerk; a clerk of whom it cannot be said that he was very remarkable; he was short, somewhat pockmarked, with rather reddish hair and rather dim, bleary eyes, with a small bald patch on the top of his head, with wrinkles on both sides of his cheeks and the sort of complexion which is usually associated with haemorrhoids … no help for that, it is the Petersburg climate. As for his grade in the service (for among us the grade is what must be put first), he was what is called a perpetual titular councillor, a class at which, as we all know, various writers who indulge in the praiseworthy habit of attacking those who cannot defend themselves jeer and jibe to their hearts’ content. This clerk’s surname was Bashmatchkin. From the very name it was clear that it must have been derived from a shoe (bashmak); but when and under what circumstances it was derived from a shoe, it is impossible to say. Both his father and his grandfather and even his brother-in-law, and all the Bashmatchkins without exception wore boots, which they simply resoled two or three times a year. His name was Akaky Akakyevitch. Perhaps it may strike the reader as a rather strange and farfetched name, but I can assure him that it was not farfetched at all, that the circumstances were such that it was quite out of the question to give him any other name. Akaky Akakyevitch was born towards nightfall, if my memory does not deceive me, on the twenty-third of March. His mother, the wife of a government clerk, a very good woman, made arrangements in due course to christen the child. She was still lying in bed, facing the door, while on her right hand stood the godfather, an excellent man called Ivan Ivanovitch Yeroshkin, one of the head clerks in the Senate, and the godmother, the wife of a police official and a woman of rare qualities, Arina Semyonovna Byelobryushkov. Three names were offered to the happy mother for selection — Moky, Sossy, or the name of the martyr Hozdazat. ‘No,’ thought the poor lady, ‘they are all such names!’ To satisfy her, they opened the calendar at another place, and the names which turned up were: Trifily, Dula, Varahasy. ‘What an infliction!’ said the mother. ‘What names they all are! I really never heard such names. Varadat or Varuh would be bad enough, but Trifily and Varahasy!’ They turned over another page and the names were: Pavsikahy and Vahtisy. ‘Well, I see,’ said the mother, ‘it is clear that it is his fate. Since that is how it is, he had better be called after his father, his father is Akaky, let the son be Akaky too.’ This was how he came to be Akaky Akakyevitch. The baby was christened and cried and made wry faces during the ceremony, as though he foresaw that he would be a titular councillor. So that was how it all came to pass. We have recalled it here so that the reader may see for himself that it happened quite inevitably and that to give him any other name was out of the question. No one has been able to remember when and how long ago he entered the department, nor who gave him the job. However, many directors and higher officials of all sorts came and went, he was always seen in the same place, in the same position, at the very same duty, precisely the same copying clerk, so that they used to declare that he must have been born a copying clerk in uniform all complete and with a bald patch on his head. No respect at all was shown him in the department. The porters, far from getting up from their seats when he came in, took no more notice of him than if a simple fly had flown across the vestibule. His superiors treated him with a sort of domineering chilliness. The head clerk’s assistant used to throw papers under his nose without even saying: ‘Copy this’ or ‘Here is an interesting, nice little case’ or some agreeable remark of the sort, as is usually done in well-behaved offices. And he would take it, gazing only at the paper without looking to see who had put it there and whether he had the right to do so; he would take it and at once set to work to copy it. The young clerks jeered and made jokes at him to the best of their clerkly wit, and told before his face all sorts of stories of their own invention about him; they would say of his landlady, an old woman of about seventy, that she beat him, would enquire when the wedding was to take place, and would scatter bits of paper on his head, calling them snow. Akaky Akakyevitch never answered a word, however, but behaved as though there was no one there. It had no influence on his work even; in the midst of all this teasing, he never made a single mistake in his copying. Only when the jokes were too unbearable, when they jolted his arm and prevented him from going on with his work, he would bring out: ‘Leave me alone! Why do you insult me?’ and there was something strange in his words and in the voice in which they were uttered. There was a note in it of something that aroused compassion, so that one young man, new to the office, who, following the example of the rest, had allowed himself to mock at him, suddenly stopped as though cut to the heart, and from that time forth, everything was, as it were, changed and appeared in a different light to him. Some unnatural force seemed to thrust him away from the companions with whom he had become acquainted, accepting them as wellbred, polished people.

  And long afterwards, at moments of great gaiety, the figure of the humble little clerk with a bald patch on his head rose before him with his heart-rending words: ‘Leave me alone! Why do you insult me?’ and in those heart-rending words he heard others: ‘I am your brother.’ And the poor young man hid his face in his hands, and many times afterwards in his life he shuddered, seeing how much inhumanity there is in man, how much savage brutality lies hidden under refined, cultured politeness, and, my God! Even in a man whom the world accepts as a gentleman and a man of honour …

  It would be hard to find a man who lived in his work as did Akaky Akakyevitch. To say that he was zealous in his work is not enough; no, he loved his work. In
it, in that copying, he found a varied and agreeable world of his own. There was a look of enjoyment on his face; certain letters were favourites with him, and when he came to them he was delighted; he chuckled to himself and winked and moved his lips, so that it seemed as though every letter his pen was forming could be read in his face. If rewards had been given according to the measure of zeal in the service, he might to his amazement have even found himself a civil councillor; but all he gained in the service, as the wits, his fellow-clerks expressed it, was a buckle in his button-hole and a pain in his back. It cannot be said, however, that no notice had ever been taken of him. One director, being a good-natured man and anxious to reward him for his long service, sent him something a little more important than his ordinary copying; he was instructed from a finished document to make some sort of a report for another office; the work consisted only altering the headings and in places changing the first person into the third. This cost him such an effort that it threw him into a regular perspiration: he mopped his brow and said at last, ‘No, better let me copy something.’

  From that time forth they left him to go on copying for ever. It seemed as though nothing in the world existed for him outside his copying. He gave no thought at all to his clothes; his uniform was — well, not green but some sort of rusty, muddy colour. His collar was very short and narrow, so that, although his neck was not particularly long, yet, standing out of the collar, it looked as immensely long as those of the plaster kittens that wag their heads and are carried about on trays on the heads of dozens of foreigners living in Russia. And there were always things sticking to his uniform, either bits of hay or threads; moreover, he had a special art of passing under a window at the very moment when various rubbish was being flung out onto the street, and so was continually carrying off bits of melon rind and similar litter on his hat. He had never once in his life noticed what was being done and going on in the street, all those things at which, as we all know, his colleagues, the young clerks, always stare, carrying their sharp sight so far even as to notice any one on the other side of the pavement with a trouser strap hanging loose — a detail which always calls forth a sly grin. Whatever Akaky Akakyevitch looked at, he saw nothing anywhere but his clear, evenly written lines, and only perhaps when a horse’s head suddenly appeared from nowhere just on his shoulder, and its nostrils blew a perfect gale upon his cheek, did he notice that he was not in the middle of his writing, but rather in the middle of the street.