Voyage In The Dark

Anna spends her days drinking and writing unsent letters to Walter as she attempts to grasp her situation: “every time you put your hand on my heart it used to jump well you can’t pretend that can you can pretend everything else but not that it’s the only thing you can’t pretend…” (90). The letters exhibit a sort of inebriated form of stream-of-consciousness and illuminate Anna’s alcohol-driven depression.

She tells her landlady she is ill and that she prefers to keep to herself. A woman from the upstairs floor introduces herself as Ethel Matthews and asks about Anna’s health, as Ethel has heard Anna may be ill. Although Anna wants Ethel to stay, as she “was a human being”; Anna further describes her as a woman who knew “her own cunning, which would always save her, which was sufficient to her” (92).

Ethel asks if Anna would like to join her for the cinema and comments on her lovely fur coat. Together, they go to see a show called “Three-Fingered Kate.” Afterwards, Ethel comments on the main character of the show, lamenting on the choice of the actress: “Couldn’t they have got an English girl to do it? It was just because she had this soft, dirty way that foreign girls have” (94).