The Baglady Interpretation and Analysis

by A. S. Byatt

In this essay there is going to be an analysis of the short story. The analysis will include a summary in the start, characterization of the persons and symbols. It will also include an analysis of the setting in the story Baglady.

Baglady is a short story written by A. S. Byatt. The story is from a novel collection called Elementals in 1998. The story starts in Medias res the first thing we read about it is the events without any introduction. The narration is a third-person narrator, the third-person is Daphne and it is from her point of view we are seeing the events and everything she goes through.

The story is about some Ladies who was send with some cars from ‘the company to the Good Fortune Shopping Mall. Daphne Gulver-Robinson is married with Rollo. Daphne was the only one who could not fit in with the other Ladies. “Daphne is older than most of them, and dowdier.. She has tried to make herself attractive for his jaunt and has lost ten pounds..” Even though she tries to make something out of herself, she ends up shopping alone, because she is older and dowdier than the other Ladies. Suddenly her camera, purse, credit card and fountain pen have mysteriously disappeared. She miss the rendezvous, packing-time, the delicious lunch and the airport car.

The story takes place in three different places. First on a farm, before Daphne and Rollo take to the trip, then around the breakfast table in the Far-east, where the ladies was breakfasting together, and in a luxurious and mysterious shopping mall called the Good Fortune Mall. The story takes place in a real world, but in some way in an imaginary world, everything in the story seems real, but until Daphne’s things starts to disappear. It is unrealistic because we cannot read who was stealing her purse etc. If the author wrote whom and how the things disappeared, then it will not be an exciting story anymore, he leaves us with a curious feeling. We have to figure the story out by ourselves. We have to read behind the lines to understand the real meaning of this story. The story is actually hinted, but detailed when the author describes the characters.