I. OFFENCE (l. 1-56)

 

1  

1 logs for the fire.

2 special cakes (scones) for tea.

3 pale and strained.

4 fretfully.

 

2  a: Whatever; b: never; c: ages; d: Why; e: Aren’t; f: nettled; g: authority; h: considered rude; i: Go along; j: stick

 

3

a)

The way he dresses: he’s in shirt-sleeves as if he were at home.

The way he eats: he bends over too much, with his chin near the plate.

The look on his face: looks ruddy and has a strange, suave assurance and a wide-eyed bright look (i.e. too healthy-looking for Banford; too self-contained as though he were keeping himself to himself).

d)

 She chews her food (including the specially-made scones) as if she did not know she was eating at all.

 

4

- watchful eyes.

- glow in his face.

- their delicate fine hair.

- skin.

- penetrating, too hot.

 

II. NEUROSIS (l. 57-196)

 

2 _ a: Banford’s; b: adventure; c: strenuous business of reading; d: the intense and isolated business of reading; e: knees wide apart; f: sideways; g: shirt-sleeves; h: khaki-coloured trousers; i: lumber-camp; j: sticking out; k: thick red

 

3)

 

a)

Floor covering: a Turkey rug

colours: red surrounded by dark stain

fire - place: green - tiles

the most prominent piece of furniture: an open piano

narrator's comments: It has the latest dance music, Banford plays quite well

decoration on the walls: hand painted swans and water lies done by March.

Fire: logs nicely burn in the gate

Doors: all shut

Outside: there's a strong wind

b) Banford is very perfect, that's why Henry is out of place here.

 

4

_ activity: crocheting.

_ mouth: pursed.

_ hair: wisps.

_ bearing: miles away.

_ hands: well-shaped.

_ hears: tenderly.

_ reaction to Banford: startled; penny for your thoughts.

_ looks at: fox.

_ feeling: explanation.

5

- She's trying to read

- sitting between the other two she feels nervous

- she keeps moving; glancing secretly at the other two

- irritated by March's behaviour and by her silence

- her eyes are bad

- she has a queer, almost malignant

- she speaks to March sarcastically

- she tells Henry about how she gets so bored on the farm in winter; and then mockingly refers to his "hoping time"

- He refers to her thin frail hair with its threads of grey

- she bites her fingers

- uses her favourite word "whatever" again and again

- " I Feel I can't stand another thing! Did you mean Henry?"

- She wails " Oh dear, my nerves are all gone"

- She goes to bed early, and fretfully asks March to come to bed early too

6 No. Animated and energetic. It goes back for a moment to the chatty, more friendly tone of their first meeting. And it elicits Henry’s laughter and the quick pleasure behind his comment: “It’s the first time I ever heard of that.”

 

7

_ with quick pleasure.

_ sharply like a puppy.

_ shine.

_ gravely and with polite concern.

_ in silent; clear and intent; warm, pale, fine; delicate nose;

lifted arch of her dark brows; the wideness of her eyes.

 

 9

1 "My nerves are bad to-night", "What are you thinking of?", "Speak with me"

2 "Stay with me", "What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?", "Do you know nothing?", "Do you see nothing?", "Do you remember nothing?", "What shall I do now?", "What shall we do tomorrow?", "What shall we ever do?"

 

 

III. I THOUGHT YOU WERE THE FOX (l. 197-285)

 

1

_ That she thought he was the fox just a few moments earlier when she jumped up and cried out, recalling the time the previous summer when she’d seen the fox nearly at her feet and then seemingly laughing at her.

_ Half-ironic and self conscious

– she turns aside her head again and lets one foot stray loose. She insists she wasn’t afraid of  the fox: “He made an impression on me, that’s all.” [“Perhaps he’d been in my mind without my knowing.”] She then looks at Henry “with a wide, dark, vacant eye.”

_ He laughs in his usual way – like a puppy wrinkling his nose. Then he teasingly suggests she may think he’s come to steal her chickens or something. And he points out that nobody else has ever taken him for a fox.

2

 _ will be waiting.

_ foot loose; face turned aside; outside the circle of light.

 

3  a: won’t; b: even; c: flatly; d: I’m like the fox; e: young; f: light low; g: dimmer; h: doesn’t move; i: moment; j: silently; k: turns; l: neck; m: winces; n: again; o: draws; p: quickly;

q: burns; r: intolerably; s: Jill

 

IV. HENRY TELLS BANFORD ABOUT THE PROPOSAL (l. 286-389)

 

1

 _ He looks round the place and attends to the stock.

_ He thinks one could live there easily enough.

_ Both.

 

2 She’s good-natured but nervy.

3  Yes; he addresses Jill politely as Miss Banford, which was considered correct at that time. And he seems to want to share his good news with her, “smiling like one who has a secret.”

 

5

_ eyes: tired, slightly reddened.

_ generally: frail, little.

_ hair: delicate, thin, bobbed, hangs softly, faded brown and grey.

_ face: worn.

_ fingers: thin, delicate.

 

7

a)

1.when she puts down her knife = it seems that she would never take the knife up to eat any more.

2.when she stares = her eyes are blank and reddened.

3.when she looks at March = she seems a bird that has been shot: a poor little sick bird.

4.when she exclaims "Never!" = she is unable to do anything (helpless).

5.when she turns aside her face = it seems that the sight of the food on the table made her sick.

6.when she says she'll never believe it = she cries and her plainitive, fretful voice has a mix of anger and despair.

7.when she looks back at Henry = she looks at Henry from her wide vague eyes, as if he were some creature in a museum. 

b)

-It seems that she would never take the knife up to eat any more.

-She seems a bird that has been shot.

-It seems that the sight of the food on the table made her sick.

 

8

_ He looks bright and gloating.

_ He speaks with all his soft, velvety impertinence.

 

10

a)

I think that the most insulting parts are: "Oh because she can never be such a fool. She can't lose her self-respect to such an extant", "If she hasn't lost it already", "More than it has to do with you, probably". In this parts Banford is particularly rude with Frank.

b)

I think that Henry should understand Banford's reaction because he has broken a perfect balance between the two women. He is a foreign and she doesn't accept what he would like to do with March. But I think that Henry will react in a very negative way because he wants to realize his plan (to marry March) and he wants to remove the obstacle, that is Banford.

 

11

The narrator says that Banford's voice is cold, plaintive, drifting, insulting and venomous. She looks at Henry with vague fixity from behind her spectacles.

Henry is also very anger and he answers in a temper. He becomes red and vermilion. He sits stiff in his chair staring with hot blue eyes from his scarlet face and un ugly look has come on his brow.

13

Henry:

Outwardly: the devil still in his face

Actions: goes out with the gun and comes back in the evening with a rabbit and a pigeon

Inwardly: in a devil of a temper feeling he had been insultated.

Outwardly: his eyes go almost black with rage. His face looks sulkier. He never forgets his polite intonation.

Banford:

Outwardly: has been crying. Manner more remote and supercilious when Henry speaks, she turns her head.

 

V. HENRY LISTENS TO WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT HIM IN PRIVATE

 

(l. 390-462)

 

3 To live on the farm all together.

 

5

 _ a month; the churchyard.

_ get out of March.

_ live on them.

_ stranded.

_ master of both of them.

_ run off to Canada or somewhere again; he’d never knownthem.

 

6

a. "I feel quite sick with the smell of his clothes."

b. "It [trying to do a kind action] always flies back in your

face like a boomerang." ; "We ought never to have lowered ourselves."

c. "He's just a good-for-nothing, who doesn't want to work." ; "a hateful, red-faces boy, a beastly labourer." ; "awful little beast." ; "I'd no more trust him than I'd trust a cat not to steal."

d. "But you'll find out, if you see much of him. Oh, Nellie, I can't bear to think of it."

 

7  Mrs Burgess has told her that “the old man could never get him to do any steady work. He was off with the gun on every occasion.”

 

8

_ Henry’s never going to set foot on the farm while she lives.

_ “We’ll tell he can’t come here.”

_ “I don’t think he’s as bad as all that.”

9  First, with the words “Well, it won’t hurt you, Jill, darling.” Then with her “soft, deep, tender voice comforting, with wonderful gentleness and tenderness.”

 

VI. HENRY SHOOTS THE FOX (l. 463-560)

 

1 _ eyes: so round and wide that he seemd to see the whole night.

_ ears: almost jumping off his head.

_ body: frozen stiff.

_ head: feels his head is coming off.

_ mind: can’t sleep; can’t keep still.

_ actions: he creeps back to bed, then on to the landing again, and downstairs to the kitchen. He puts on his boots and overcoat, takes the gun and goes out, intending to shoot something.

 

3 _A cat. Because his eyes dilate so much they seem “to be able to grow black and full of sight in the dark.”

4

_ was constricted even in the dark.

_the fox.

_ sniffing round.

_ loudly-barking, thick-voiced, innumerable little houses.

_ Henry sees England as full of aggressive dogs and smallness; whereas Lawrence here focuses on England as a country in decline.

5 The lad. It is a dialect word for “boy” and very affectionate.

 

6 Not directly. Perhaps he’s trying to eliminate something in himself that March has identified too simplistically and too randomly with the fox, but the narrator does not say this explicitly. It is clear from the evocative description that he feels he is a true hunter. March doesn’t know what to say.

 

7

_ The pine trees.

_ An owl.

_ The dogs rom the neighbouring cottage up the hill.

_ The wakened dogs from the farms around.

_ The pine trees.

_ A chicken.

_ The gun.

_ The commotion.

 

8

- At first: sliding.

- Movements: creeping; a snake. - sniffing; prowl under the edge of the barn. - sliding up the incline; his nose to the boards. - his paws in death.

VII. MARCH’S SECOND DREAM (l. 561-579)

 

1

Banford is dead

March is:

-  snobbing her earth out

-  feeling she had to put Banford into her coffins, she is in againg

- despair while looking for something to cover up the dead at the poor darling

- covering Jill with a fox-skin

- crying and crying till the morning

VIII. THE DEAD FOX (l. 580-638)

 

1

The Dead Fox

- Gender: dog-fox

- Age: in its prime

- Fur: handsome, thick, winter coat

- Colour: lovely golden-red, with grey as it passed to the belly, all white belly

- Tail: great full brush with delicate black and grey and pure white tip

- Banford's Reaction: poor brute! If it wasn't such a thieving wretch, you'd feel sorry for it

- March's Reaction

                   speech: said nothing

                  foot: trailing aside

                   hip: one hip out

                   face: pale

eyes: big and black

thoughts: white and soft as snow his belly; wonderful his black-glinted brush; full and frictional, sharp, thick, splendid

actions: she passes her hands down it and she takes its head in her hands

Banford's Reactions to Henry

- walks away when he comes

Henry's Reaction to March

- as always: Henry "could make nothing of her"

- She seems partly: shy and virgin

- and partly: grim, matter of fact, shrewish

- her words so different from: the look of her eyes

Henry

- inside: angry

- outside: polite and affable; He leaves march alone without say anything about his intention

 

IX. I’M NOT USED TO THAT WAY (l. 639-746)

 

1

- Banford tries to re-establish her territorial rights making some relevant questions to Henry about the future.

- After dinner in the dining-room Banford is writing some letters, March is sewing a dress and Henry is mending some little contrivance.

- Banford is rude to Henry during the dialogue because she makes him a lot of questions but she wants some answers. Besides she doesn't try to help him because she doesn't want they (a couple married) to stay in the Bailey Farm. She is not courteous with Henry.

 

2

Banford is right to be petulant because the presence of the young boy, who has broken the perfect balance between she and March and who has upset her life, is not endurable for her.

 

3 

- She says that it is the first time she has heard it and she is not very sure about what to do. As the matter of fact she says that "it depends on how I'm going" because she doesn't want to go jammed up in the steerage, as a soldier's wife.

- Henry's main concern is the marriage: he would like to marry March before leaving and going towards Canada.

- She doesn't reassure really him because she says that she shall have to thinkl about the marriage. And she adds nothing.