The Cut-Glass Bowl

"The Cut-Glass Bowl" is a short story by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald, first published in the May 1920 issue of Scribner's Magazine, and included later that year in his first short story collection Flappers and Philosophers.

First published in the May, 1920 Scribner's Magazine.

Background

It tracks the lives of a married couple in New York, Evylyn and Harold Piper, through various difficult or tragic events that involve a cut glass bowl they received as a wedding gift. The bowl is symbolic of fate.

As the story opens, Mrs. Roger Fairboalt, an elderly gossip, visits Evylyn Piper. She is a snoop who is curious about Mrs. Piper and the rumored affair with Freddy Gedny.

They both talked about the furnishings in the house, the china. Mrs, Fairboalt focused on the large, cut-glass bowl. Evelyn explained that it was a wedding gift from a friend, someone she saw socially before she married. When he gave it to her, he exclaimed: "Evylyn, I'm going to give a present that's as hard as you are and as beautiful and as empty and as easy to see through." The bowl becomes a mirror or reflection of herself.

After her departure, a man approaches the house. Evylyn informs him that she cannot continue to see him.

Her husband arrives home early. She conceals Freddy but he hits the cut-glass bowl revealing his presence to Harold.

The marriage became strained thereafter. She focused on raising their two children. She was "receding gradually into middle age."

On Evylyn's thirty-fifth birthday, her husband calls to tell her they are having company for dinner, a business dinner with a potential partner and his wife to discuss a merger of their companies. Harold insists on the cut-glass bowl for the punch. Everyone is inebriated and the dinner ends in disaster.

The girl cuts her hand on the bowl and develops blood poisoning. Her hand is amputated.

In the final scene, Evylyn receives news of the death of her son in the war. She reads it next to the bowl. In grief and despair, she takes the bowl outside the house but as she descends the stairs she falls and the bowl shatters into pieces.

Fitzgerald wrote the story in October 1919.[1]

Sources
  • Fitzgerald, F. Scott and Matthew J. Bruccoli, ed. The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald. New York: Scribner's, 1989.
  • Fitzgerald, F. Scott and Matthew J. Bruccoli, ed. A Life in Letters: A New Collection Edited and Annotated by Matthew J. Bruccoli. New York: Scribner's, 1995.
  • Trumball, Andrew. Scott Fitzgerald. New York: Scribners, 1962.

Notes
  1. Petry, Alice Hall (1989), Fitzgerald's Craft of Short Fiction: The Collected Stories, 1920-1935, University of Alabama Press, p. 16, ISBN 9780817305475.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.