Rattling Earrings and Incoherent Nuns: Examining Control in “Nuns at Luncheon”
At the start of Aldous Huxley’s short story, “Nuns at Luncheon”, we find our narrator obsessed with his lunch-mate’s pendant earrings, referring to them both admiringly and mockingly, as “corpses hanging in chains” (250), and then congratulating himself on producing a brilliant literary simile. As we become acquainted with Miss Penny’s flamboyant and intimidating character, we understand that these earrings are not just two small ornaments on a person covered in rattling trinkets. The earrings weave their way into the story through our narrator’s beguiled eyes, as Miss Penny herself begins to tell him a story, of Sister Agatha, the nun, whom she met on a recent …show more content…
Miss Penny and the narrator, are two Brits making fun of a German. We begin to feel uneasy, as England won the war, and we get the sense that they are poking fun at German culture for sport. At Miss Penny’s request, the narrator picks on light, frivolous German folk songs to embellish Sister Agatha’s story, such as “‘Und wir konnen tanzen Bumstarara,/ Bumstarara, Bumstarara....’” (256), an onomatopoeic dancing chant. As Miss Penny becomes more and more excited about Agatha’s predicament toward the end of the story, “Her large hare eyes glittered, the long earrings swung and faintly tinkled.” (262). There is something menacing about the earrings, as they are essentially spoils of war. At the same time however, it is not completely clear who is mocking who; while it seems that the two protagonists mock the nun and make light of German culture, it could just as well be that they are taunting each other. Throughout the story there seems to be tension between the two characters as well as amity. The narrator through examining Miss Penny’s earrings, or by making comments such as, “‘I suppose you don’t smoke cheroots’” (254) when he knows she does, pokes fun at and challenges her femininity. While she taunts him throughout the story about being a fiction writer, the undermining mockery is more commonly directed from the narrator, who in the reader’s eyes is secondary, to Miss Penny, who is a stronger, more dominant figure, as it serves to diminish the control that Miss Penny believes she has all worked
At the start of Aldous Huxley’s short story, “Nuns at Luncheon”, we find our narrator obsessed with his lunch-mate’s pendant earrings, referring to them both admiringly and mockingly, as “corpses hanging in chains” (250), and then congratulating himself on producing a brilliant literary simile. As we become acquainted with Miss Penny’s flamboyant and intimidating character, we understand that these earrings are not just two small ornaments on a person covered in rattling trinkets. The earrings weave their way into the story through our narrator’s beguiled eyes, as Miss Penny herself begins to tell him a story, of Sister Agatha, the nun, whom she met on a recent …show more content…
Miss Penny and the narrator, are two Brits making fun of a German. We begin to feel uneasy, as England won the war, and we get the sense that they are poking fun at German culture for sport. At Miss Penny’s request, the narrator picks on light, frivolous German folk songs to embellish Sister Agatha’s story, such as “‘Und wir konnen tanzen Bumstarara,/ Bumstarara, Bumstarara....’” (256), an onomatopoeic dancing chant. As Miss Penny becomes more and more excited about Agatha’s predicament toward the end of the story, “Her large hare eyes glittered, the long earrings swung and faintly tinkled.” (262). There is something menacing about the earrings, as they are essentially spoils of war. At the same time however, it is not completely clear who is mocking who; while it seems that the two protagonists mock the nun and make light of German culture, it could just as well be that they are taunting each other. Throughout the story there seems to be tension between the two characters as well as amity. The narrator through examining Miss Penny’s earrings, or by making comments such as, “‘I suppose you don’t smoke cheroots’” (254) when he knows she does, pokes fun at and challenges her femininity. While she taunts him throughout the story about being a fiction writer, the undermining mockery is more commonly directed from the narrator, who in the reader’s eyes is secondary, to Miss Penny, who is a stronger, more dominant figure, as it serves to diminish the control that Miss Penny believes she has all worked