Analyse af Carys Davies' novelle 'Jubilee'

To truly feel lonely is a state of mind that no person ever wants to experience. A persistent feeling of sadness that is so overwhelming that it can shape your outlook on life. As humans, we have a need for personal relations, a need for a valuable connection that allows the opportunity to share life. Marriage has for centuries been the symbol of commitment to your partner, and most see marriage as the most sacred connection two humans can have. It makes sense that one would value their partner in marriage very highly, but when that isn’t the case, it often ends tragically. Marriage in the 19th century was pretty much an obligation, and it was very uncommon for one to not be in a marriage. Because of this, it was hard for a widow, widower, or the remainder of a failed marriage to live a life that fulfilled society’s expectations which could result in great loneliness. Surely this would affect one’s quality of life. And maybe even change one’s life perspective.

In the short story” Jubilee” by Welsh author Carys Davies, we meet Arthur Pritt. As the main character, we are told the short story through his thoughts in third person. The short story is told only through Pritt’s interpretation of his surroundings and the narration is very subjective because of that. He states his thoughts about the rumors in town about Her Majesty Queen Victoria and her deceased husband, Prince Albert, even though it’s only an assumption and not facts: “He’d wondered if it was true what people said, that she had her husband’s clothes laid out for him every morning, his stockings and his shoes…”. Pritt had lost his wife because of her unfaithfulness and is at a point of great grief, therefore he projects his feelings on The Queen in relation to her own experience of losing a lover. When Pritt tells Queen Victoria the story of his beloved ex-wife, he expects consolation and comfort from her because of her own connection to the story, he expected that her experience of losing a loved one, in one way or another would be the same as he has had. Just as harmful. But this is not the case. Queen Victoria seems more interested in the story, rather than Pritt’s feelings: “But the old Queen didn’t seem to be interested in what had happened afterward; she didn’t seem to want to hear Arthur talk about his feelings.” His interpretation of the queen’s feelings was wrong, and this indicate that Pritt interprets the world and other people’s emotions differently because of his grief. The style of writing from lines 21-30 also show that Pritt is at a bad point in life and that his emotions dictate how he interprets his surroundings. The writer shows us this by using a set of words with negative connotations such as: “dismal”, “moan”, “grey”, “hard to believe”, “lunatics”, “end” and “makeshift”. The author creates a view of the world through Pritt’s eyes that is very negative, and if there weren’t any other information disproving this, it would be the reality in the story. But by disproving Pritt’s observations we know that his view on the event would be affected too much by grief to give an accurate and trustworthy narrative. The short story takes place at the time when Queen Victoria was the queen of The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and her husband Prince Albert’s death which was in 1861. The look on marriage at that point in time was very sacred and it was shameful and unusual to split up with your partner. This explains the magnitude of Pritt’s grief and why he has such an awful reaction to the separation.