27 pages • 54 minutes read
SakiThe Open Window
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1911A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Absurdity of Etiquette
Saki satirizes the social practices of his time and class, displaying them as absurd through their failure and misappropriation. At the beginning of the story, the antagonist is introduced as “a very self-possessed young lady of fifteen” (Paragraph 1). She has been allowed to greet a visitor on her own, which is inappropriate according to Edwardian-era custom. At 15, she was not yet presented to society, thus, she was not considered a woman fit to entertain—especially if the guest was a man—no matter how “self-possessed” she was. Already out of place due to her age, Vera takes advantage of Edwardian customs for her entertainment, gaining control of a situation in which, as a young woman, she had no formal power.
Framton calls on the Sappleton house because Edwardian etiquette demands that it is necessary to visit those to whom letters of introduction have been supplied. Such letters made it possible for people to force hospitality from strangers with only pen and paper as leverage. In Framton Nuttel’s case, the sister who provided the letters barely knew the individuals they addressed and had not had contact with them for four years. To display the absurdity of such a custom, Saki highlights the anxiety such meetings caused the man partaking in a “nerve cure” (Paragraph 2). Meanwhile, Vera becomes excited as she determines that Framton is not only a stranger to the region but knows “practically nothing” about her aunt (Paragraph 8). Because he is visiting strangers, Vera can seize control of the visit, using the man’s nerves against him. At other places in the story, etiquette is made to appear absurd as Framton and Mrs. Sappleton engage in empty conversation—one preoccupied with his health and increasing anxiety and the other bored to the point of hiding “a yawn at the last moment” (Paragraph 21).
For modern readers, such customs may be difficult to imagine, but readers in Saki’s era would be familiar with the traditional hospitality that upper-class individuals observed to uphold societal standards. By allowing a young girl to take control of the visit, Saki highlights the absurdity of adhering to etiquette practices that force individuals to play the part of familiar friends with people they have never met.
Longing for Escape
Longing for escape is prevalent in “The Open Window” from the perspective of both the protagonist and antagonist, who both desire to escape societal expectations and conventions. Framton is visiting the countryside on the advice of his doctor to seek relief for his nerves. He escapes the city to find solace in a “restful country spot” where “tragedies seem out of place” (Paragraph 11). He wants to leave behind anything that might cause “mental excitement” in favor of “complete rest” (Paragraph 20). His visit, while meant to be an escape from social conventions, is anything but when he is expected to visit the people to whom his sister has written letters of introduction. Eventually, his tranquil rest leads to a chaotic exit.
Vera seeks a different sort of escape. A young girl living with an aunt who seems distracted and out of touch, she seeks to escape social expectations through the excitement her imagination provides. Vera uses elements of the truth like the “white waterproof coat” her uncle wears or the song his brother-in-law sings to build macabre stories for her entertainment (Paragraph 14). As a bonus, her storytelling places her in a position of power over the adults that is unusual for a young lady of her station, allowing her to escape both into her imagination and from the constraints in which society places her. Vera’s imagination is another “open window” that creates endless possibilities in a society that offers her few.
For modern readers, Vera might seem simply manipulative, but in the context of the Edwardian period, she perhaps represents people who had no escape from the confines into which they were born. For Vera, society deemed her worth largely on her ability to entertain guests and act as a good hostess. In her longing to escape, she took imagination to an extreme, gaining control of the way adults interpret the actions of those around them. For lower-class young women during the Edwardian period, there was even less opportunity, and the fight to escape the confines of Edwardian classism drove many of them to fight for their rights, bringing about great change to British society.
Appearance Versus Reality
Saki experiments with the thin line between appearance and reality throughout “The Open Window.” The embedded narrative in the story adds a layer of possible interpretation as the few facts that can be determined with certitude are open to many interpretations. Little information is given initially—all the reader knows is that Vera is a “self-possessed” teenage girl (Paragraph 1), and Framton is an anxious man who was sent to a “restful country spot” to procure relief from his nerves (Paragraph 11).
Because of the frame narrative’s lack of specificity, Vera’s story about her aunt’s “tragedy”, the first embedded narrative, seems plausible to both Framton and the reader. When her aunt enters the room “late in making her appearance” (Paragraph 15), she seemingly confirms Vera’s story as she notes that her “husband and brothers will be home directly from shooting” (Paragraph 18). At this point in the story, the reality—that Mrs. Sappleton’s husband and brothers left that morning for a hunt on the marsh and would soon return through the open window—appears to confirm Vera’s story—that the men left three years ago and never returned. When the story reaches its climax, there are two possible interpretations.
As reality is revealed to the reader, the characters in the story—aside from Vera—are left with a misperception, because no one has the entire story. Framton, believing Vera’s story to be true, takes flight in a “headlong retreat” trying to escape from the apparitions (Paragraph 25). Mrs. Sappleton and the hunting party are baffled by his flight, and like Framton at the story’s start, they find themselves in the dark about the situation at hand. Vera twists reality in another embedded narrative. This time, she relates a story about Framton, seemingly explaining his sudden flight, and convinces the remaining adults that her story is true.
By the story’s end, only Vera and the reader are aware of reality. For every other character, an alternative version of events has been given the appearance of reality. The juxtaposition of these “realities” highlights how easily controlled people can be when they believe a narrative because it fits a few facts with which they are familiar. While Saki’s story is humorous, such twisting of the truth can create serious issues among individuals and even nations. By experimenting with how easily an individual’s sense of reality can be shifted by lies, Saki highlights the fragility of understanding and the ease with which perceptions can be controlled by others.
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