 Hello and welcome to a summary of all you need to know about the Bath by Janet Frayn. I'll explain the meaning of this story as it appears in Stories of Ourselves, the University of Cambridge International Examination Anthology of Short Stories in English. I'll begin with some context about the author of this story before explaining the plot in a nutshell. I'll explain the characters you should be aware of in this story and then I will highlight and analyse important themes you should be aware of when studying this text. Do bear in mind that we have a Stories of Ourselves course that goes into depth on these stories to do make sure you also sign up for our course. So let's get started. Now firstly, let's begin with a bit of context relating to Janet Frayn herself. She's from New Zealand and she was born in 1924 and she died in 2004. Her works of poetry and fiction are noted with the explorations of alienation and isolation. Frayn was born to a railroad worker and a some-time poet who had been made for a family of Whiter Catherine Mansfield and her early years were marked by poverty, the drowning death of her sister and the disruptions created by her brother's epilepsy. And of course, this idea of drowning is explored to some extent in the bath. Now in 1945, whilst starting to be a teacher, Frayn herself suffered a mental breakdown. Ms. Darknose is having schizophrenia. She spent nearly a decade in psychiatric hospitals. From 1947, following the drowning death of another sister, she endured repeated courses of electroconvulsive therapy and during that time, she read the classics voraciously and cultivated her writing talent. Now, 1951 was still a patient. Frayn's first book, The Lagoon, was published. A collection of short stories, it expresses a sense of isolation and insecurity of those who feel they don't fit into a normal world. Frayn was scheduled to have a lobotomy, which is a surgery on her brain until hospital officials learned that she had won a literary award for this book, The Lagoon, and the procedure was cancelled and Frayn was released in 1955. In all her novels, Frayn depicts a society deprived of wholeness by its refusal to come to terms with disorder, irrationality and madness. And her sophisticated and original use of frame stories to convey the subjectivity of experience in the existence of individuality, distinct realities is a hallmark of her work. Now let's examine the story itself, the bath. Now to summarize, on the story and on the surface rather, the story seems quite direct and simple. It briskly describes what seems to be the routine of a woman who's grown old and it shows how she's on the verge of no longer being able to take care of herself. She also seems to be poor. The story is told without sentimentality. The woman is alone and the husband has been dead for a long time and she visits him often at the cemetery, taking the bus to get there. Yet each visit is getting more and more difficult, or so we think. This is because we really only see a few moments in the woman's life. It's an everyday life and a terrifying life. It's normal and tragic and it's an honest, because literal portrait, of what it feels like to get old. The story starts with the woman struggling to get out of the bath. It's laborious to draw the bath for her. And she must heat the water or pails and finally enter. Yet what's worrying and presumably this has been building up for days, months and years is that it's more and more difficult for her to actually get out of the bath once she's done. And on this particular day, portrayed for us in the story, she seems close to this breaking point. This is a day that the woman comes dangerously close to not being able to get out. Scratching her nails against the tub, slipping, falling back in again. Not enough strength. No one to help her. She's alone and scared. She's bored and helpless. What would happen if she couldn't get out? We ask ourselves. She's thinking and thinking each time she splashes back into the bath. And at the same time, she struggles and struggles and struggles again. And we as readers can really feel her sense of frustration and her growing panic. We also as readers do feel her poverty. She holds pails to draw a bath and one gets the feeling that she's led a life of very heavy labor and we can almost smell the potato pills that she's trying perhaps to wash off her hands, the garlic, the onions that have infused her body. And there's dirt under her fingernails and ground into her knees from scrubbing the wooden floor. Her hair is greasy with dried sweat. She takes baths less and less now. We wonder if it's too much of a luxury for this poor woman and if she's too afraid of reaching a point where she actually can't get out hence why she doesn't take baths frequently. Now finally she does get out of this bath and she's able to take a bath to her husband's grave site. And eventually she does reflect that she might not even be able to do this and this is quite clear to us in her world. Seems like it's going to shrink until there's nowhere else to go. There will be no way to get out of the bath and nothing left at all. Also it's all so banal. It's so ordinary but also extraordinary this life that we see. And it seems so straightforward but also so mysterious, so unfair and her age seems really inevitable just like old age and when you become less and less able to be independent and we get the sense that being poor she might not even die well. Now in terms of the characters in the story, the main one of course is the old lady. So the story is narrated from the third person perspective and we get the sense that the old lady is quite isolated as she goes around very routine errands in her day and her husband and parents are dead and we sense she's going increasingly old and unable to conduct simple chores in her house and around in her life. She however rails against these limitations however she unwillingly succumbs to the acceptance that someone may need to start coming in to help her with daily activities like having a bath as she grows frail. Now in terms of themes of this story the first is loneliness. So the old woman throughout the story seems alone when she gets stuck in the bath despite calling out for help no one comes to assist her. When she's placing the flowers in her husband's grave site again she's alone. The fact that this old woman is so alone in life that she appears so long alone and too long for a time when she herself is dead is quite poignant for us and it's as though life has become just one long struggle for this old woman. The other theme is that of control so the old lady no longer has control over her body. The tasks she would like to perform seem now very challenging and something as simple as getting out of a bath or taking down a pot of jam from a shelf is something that she's finding increasingly difficult and she can't really do it with ease. She also has to rely on others to assist her and this might be significant as it suggests that time is caught up with her. The next theme is that of struggle. So the old woman struggles with every task that she performs. She also may struggle with the loss of her husband. Not only is she emotionally attached to him as one would expect her would it to be but she also relies on him physically. If he was still alive he would be able to help her out of the bath. However the sense of struggle that the old woman feels would also read us as leaders to believe that frame is suggesting that life may be getting too much for this old woman is as though she wishes for her life to be over. The other important theme of course is mortality which is quite closely linked. So this old woman longs to be dead such as the difficulty she incurs in life and not only is the longing for death driven by her loneliness but it's also the fact that the old woman's body is worrying out. She is unable to do the things she once was and is reliant on others to assist her. And if anything it seems that there's no joy in the old woman's life as she gets older. Everything is a struggle and it's tinged with sadness. The other theme is that of loss and death. So it may be possible that the loss of the husband of this old woman is just too much for her. Though she attends his grave for his anniversary it most likely is that she's a frequent visitor to this grave and even though frame doesn't give any details as to the type of relationship this old woman had with her husband they're still nonetheless the sense that she loved and continues to love her husband. It may also be significant that the old woman can no longer enjoy the simple things in life such as looking at the sky as this suggests that she may have given up on life and it's as though she's been defeated by her body and the fact that she's alone. Indeed simple things are no longer simple for her and everything is a difficult effort will may not be worth it to this old woman. She also appears to be comfortable actually with our idea of death. Something that is symbolically noticeable by the fact that the old woman's wishes she could fall asleep in the graveyard. It's as though the graveyard is the only place where the old woman is able to find peace and also she'll be close to her husband. So that's all. If you found the summary video useful do make sure you sign up for our stories of ourselves course and check out our website which is www.firstretutors.com where you can find revision worksheets, model answers and online courses covering all the major civil abuses including edXcel, AQA and IGCSE. Thank you so much for listening.