II. Questions and Tasks for Analytical Reading.

1. How did Mrs. Garstin behave during the period of her last illness? What traits of character did she reveal? What Mrs. Garstin’s personal features did her bedroom preserve?

2. What new outlook of her mother’s personality did Kitty adopt looking at Mrs. Garstin on her deathbed? What did she feel? What differed her dead mother from the other dead persons Kitty had seen before?

3. How did Doris behave at her mother’s deathbed? Did she feel a greater affection for their mother than Kitty? Why didn’t Kitty cry? Why did she regret it? Why didn’t Doris visit her father?

4. How did Mr. Garstin behave when Kitty came into his study? Why was he nervous? Why did he start to bring excuses for his reading a newspaper? Why didn’t he dare to smoke in his daughter’s presence? Why did he start to speak to Kitty about her troubles?

5. What feeling did Mr. Garstin experience after his wife’s death? Why did he try do hide it from his daughter? Why was she able to guess what he felt? Was his inner state somehow corresponding to hers? What feelings did she have for her father? How did she estimate their relations – in the past and in the present?

6. What perspectives did the new position he had accepted and his wife’s death open for Mr. Garstin? Why did he try to convince Kitty that she would be more comfortable living in London when she expressed her wish to join him? What feelings did he experience? Why did he agree to his daughter’s joining him though he didn’t really want her company?

7. Why did Kitty decide to join his father though she realised they were not close at all? Why was it so important for her that he should accept her willingly? What did she do to convince him that she wanted to stay with him not because she needed to be taken care of but because she felt attached to him? Did his attitude to her change somehow in course of their talk? Did she manage to convince him?

8. Why did Kitty want her future child to be a girl? How did Kitty’s personal development tell on her idea how she should bring up her daughter?

9. What was Kitty’s anticipation of the future? How do the philosophical ideas she had learnt from her friends in Mei-tan-fu reunite in her new perception of life?

10. Recall the epigraph to the book. The line is taken from Percy B.Shelly’s poem, the whole text of which is as follows:

Lift not the painted veil which those who live

Call life: though unreal shapes be pictured there

And it but mimic all we would believe

With colours idly spread, - behind, lurk Fear

And Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave

Their shadows, o’er the chasm, sightless and drear.

The translation of this poem in interpretation of K. Chemen may help you to understand the original lines better:

Не поднимайте расписных завес,

Носящих имя жизни, – с их цветными

Картинами несбыточных чудес;

Страх и Надежда прячутся за ними,

И лишь для нас имеют цвет и вес

Пустые тени, сотканные ими.

Make the analysis of the epigraph in general and in connection with the book’s events.

В пособии использовано следующее издание:

Моэм У.Сомерсет. Разрисованный занавес. Книга для чтения на англ. яз. – М.: «Менеджер», 1997. – 272 с.