PHILOMEL COTTAGE

There are 2 characters who seems to be partners. One is Alix Martin and the other one must be his husband. We can assume they have a good relationship, because she goes out to the door to say goodbye. She's dreamy and probably in love. But she's not living in reality. She has recently changed, sth positive has happened to make her happy. She wasn't a happy person before (she didn't have an easy life) and she hadn't had any man in her life, she was taking care of her an her mother. The implication is her mother is probably dead.

We don't have any information about the husband. Dick's brother is important because we can notice Alix is waiting for Dick to have enough money to be able to marry her. So, obviously, she is interested in him. Also, it's a common element between the two characters, sacrificing their live, hard working to take care of their families. But when Alix gets money from a cousin and they can get married he feels so uncomfortable about the fact of being the woman who pays for everything. He's too shy and conservative, so he had the hope of being able to marry Alix someday, but now she has money he feels sad because he won't be richer than her.

Then she meet Gerald Martin, and we know he's going to marry her because of the family name. All we know about him is he's passionate, and he falls in love with violence (maybe a foreshadowing), and they get engaged in a week. It's surprising, risky, maybe dangerous, and establish a great difference between Dick and Gerald. Gerald doesn't wait, doesn't know Alix and Alix doesn't know him. It's the opposite of Dick, but probably she's tired of waiting.

Dick says the obvious thing: Alix doesn't know anything about Gerald. And she's not very intelligent at this point, she acts so aggressive. And she discovers she didn't really know him, she thought he had no passion because he didn't said her what he felt, but he was just controlling himself.

We have had a flashback about her past life and then we come back to the present.

Then about her dreams, she's worried about it's a very frequent even premonitory. And it's premonitory because she has the right image, but she makes a wrong interpretation; she supposes it's Dick who kill Gerald. This part can be influenced for Sigmund Freud's work, which were been publishing by the time the story was written. Also, the dream is a foreshadowing. She thinks Dick's the dangerous element and not Gerald who could be bad. It's reinforcing the idea of the beginning, she thought she knew Dick, but she didn't, and she thought Gerald was not dangerous, and later we'll know he is.

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The phone rings. Dick's calling from the local pub in the village, near the cottage. Or don't you even know of the existence of your village pub? She's new and have no relation with the rest of the village. She doesn't have been there too many times. She doesn't goes out off the cottage very often. And he wants to see her, trying to be friendly; they haven't forgotten each other. She doesn't want Dick to go home because of the dream. So she wants to get prepared herself to have Dick and Gerald together. And she thinks she has ...

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