The Oval Lady, Other Stories: Six Surreal Stories

by Leonora Carrington

English, Spanish (translation)

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Horror, Classics, Womens, British Literature, Fantasy

52 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1938

About the author

Leonora Carrington was an English-born Mexican artist, surrealist painter, and novelist. She lived most of her adult life in Mexico City, and was one of the last surviving participants in the Surrealist movement of the 1930s. Carrington was also a founding member of the Women’s Liberation Movement in Mexico during the 1970s.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leonora Carrington… Her stories are like her pictures… An endless enigma… A surreal danse macabre…

A very tall and very thin lady happened to be standing in front of her window. The window was also very tall and very narrow. The face of that lady was pale and sad. She remained motionless, and nothing moved near the window, except a pheasant’s feather which was stuck in her hair.

A lady is supposed to be The Oval Lady… And everything that happens is beyond reality…
The Débutante… Everyone has one’s own debut…

When I was a débutante I often went to the zoological garden. I went so often that I was better acquainted with animals than with the young girls of my age. It was to escape from the world that I found myself each day at the zoo.

White Rabbits… Those rabbits were carnivorous…
The Beloved… Their wedding night was somewhat different…

I had Agnes in my arms. We did not sleep. That terrible kitchen contained all kinds of things. Many rats had stuck their heads out of their holes and then sang with screeching and disagreeable little voices.

The Royal Command… A visit to the royal quarters…

Upon reaching the palace, an impassive servant, dressed in red and gold, said to me: “The queen went crazy yesterday; she is in her bathtub.”

Uncle Sam Carrington… A story of relatives…

When Uncle Sam Carrington saw the full moon he was never able to stop laughing. A sunset had the same effect on Aunt Edgeworth. These two events created much suffering for my mother who took pleasure in a certain social prestige.

The world of madness is much more surreal than the world we live in.

[Glenn Russell]

Great little collection, this. Included are The Oval Lady, The Debutante, White Rabbits, The Royal Command, Uncle Sam Carrington and the below -

If Hieronymus Bosch were a short-story writer living today, he surely would write like Leonora Carrington. Here's a Leonora snapping turtle snapper in its entirety where the Boschian surrealism creeps up on a reader in a series of movements - a dead woman who remains warm lying in a bed covered with weeds, chicks and eggs under the covers, a country gentleman who collects lamb chops, wolves and a fox standing in for humans, rats who can sing.

THE BELOVED
One late afternoon, passing through a narrow street, I stole a melon. The fruit man who was hidden behind his fruits seized me by the arm and said to me: “Señorita, I’ve been waiting for an occasion like this for forty years. I have spent forty years hidden behind this pile of oranges with the hope that someone would steal a fruit from me. I will tell you why; I need to talk, I need to tell my story. If you don’t listen, I will hand you over to the police.”

“I’ll listen,’ I said. Without letting me go, he took me to the inside of the store, among fruits and vegetables. We shut a door at the far end, and we reached a room where there was a bed on which an immovable and probably dead woman lay. It appeared to me that she had been there for a long time since the bed was covered with weeds.

“I water her every day,” said the fruitman with a pensive air. “In 40 years I have not succeeded in knowing whether she is dead or not. She has never moved, nor spoken, nor eaten during that time. But the curious thing is that she remains warm. If you don’t believe me, look.”

The man lifted a corner of the cover, which permitted me to see many eggs and some little chicks recently hatched.

“As you notice,” he said, “I incubate eggs here. I also sell fresh eggs.”

We each sat down on one side of the bed and the fruit man began to tell his story.

“Believe me; I love her so much! I have always loved her! She was so sweet! She had little agile white feet. Would you like to see them?”

“No,” I answered.

“Finally,” he continued, after exhaling a deep breath, “she was so beautiful! My hair was blonde; hers, magnificently black! Now, both of us have white hair. Her father was an extraordinary man. He had a mansion in the country. He was a collector of lamb chops. For that we came to know each other. I have a certain skill in drying meat with a glance. Mr. Pushfoot (so he was called) heard about me. He invited me to his house in order to dry his ribs to keep them from rotting. Agnes was his daughter. We loved each other from the first moment. We departed in a boat by way of the Seine. I rowed. Agnes said to me: ‘I love you so much that I only live for you.’ I answered her with the same words. I believe that it is my love which keeps her warm, perhaps she is dead, but the warmth persists.”

After a short pause, with an absent look, he continued: “Next year I will grow some tomatoes; it wouldn’t surprise me if they would grow well there inside … It became night, and I didn’t know where we would spend our wedding night. Agnes had become very pale, because of fatigue. Finally we had scarcely left Paris behind when I saw an inn that faced the river. I moored the boat and we walked toward an obscure and sinister terrace. There were two wolves there and a fox, who began to walk around us. There was nobody else … I knocked and knocked at the door, on the other side of which a terrible silence prevailed. ‘Agnes is tired! Agnes is very tired!’ I shouted with as much force as I could. Finally, an old lady’s head appeared at the window and said: ‘I don’t know anything. The landlord here is the fox. Let me sleep. You are bothering me.’ Agnes began to cry. There was no other remedy than to direct ourselves to the fox. ‘Have you beds?’ I asked several times. Nobody responded: he didn’t know how to speak. And again the head, older than the other, but which now descended slowly through the window tied to the end of a little cord. ‘Direct yourself to the wolves; I am not the landlord here. Let me sleep! please!’ I understood that that head was crazy and I did not have the heart to continue. Agnes kept crying. I walked around the house a few times and finally, I was able to open a window, through which we entered. Then we found ourselves in a kitchen with a high ceiling; over a large oven made hot by fire were some vegetables that were cooking and they jumped in the boiling water, a thing that much amused us. We ate well and then we laid ourselves down on the floor. I had Agnes in my arms. We did not sleep. That terrible kitchen contained all kinds of things. Many rats had stuck their heads out of their holes and then sang with screeching and disagreeable little voices. Filthy odors expanded and diminished one after the other, and there were air drafts. I believe that it was the air drafts that finished my poor Agnes. She never recovered. From that day, each time she spoke less . . .”

And the fruitman was so blinded by tears that I could escape with my melon.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

The rabbit story is as creepy as anything Robert Aickman ever penned. Brilliant!

[Alix · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Scarcely was I on my knees when the beating of the wings was drowned out by a great commotion at my door. My mother entered, pale with rage. 'We were coming to seat ourselves at the table,' she said, 'when the thing who was in your place rose and cried: ‘I smell a little strong, eh? Well, as for me, I do not eat cake.’ With these words she removed her face and ate it.'"

favorite stories: the debutante & white rabbits.

[Andy Weston · Rating 4 out of 5]

This slim book of very short stories from Carrington is an excellent way to sample her blend of the sinister and the surreal, stirred in with a dollop of humour.

First published in 1938, André Breton (author of The Surrealist Manifesto) writes an introduction, during which he says..

The act of reading a Carrington parable is one which leads us to the question of why the fruit salesman incubates eggs, what it means to water one’s deceased wife, what the significance is of a corpse that is not entirely dead, and how we are to interpret the language of cypresses.

The stories will reveal something by way of an explanation.

One of the best, Beloved, is available free online here

[Jan Moens · Rating 5 out of 5]

9/10

[Antonia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leonora Carrington är magi. ÄLSKAR! Det är underligt, galet, vackert och ljuvligt.

[Jami Lin · Rating 4 out of 5]

-

[Natalia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant!

[•maria• · Rating 3 out of 5]

'the debutante' and 'white rabbits' were my favs

[Silverin · Rating 4 out of 5]

7/10⭐

[Kimia almasi · Rating 3 out of 5]

It wasn't weird enough!

[Mips · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dit boek bevat zowel de surrealistische verhalen als de tekst 'En bas', een weergave van haar zware mentale crisis, na de internering van haar vriend, Max Ernst in 1940.

Heb stiekem wel een boontje voor Leonora Carrington! Zou af en toe ook wel eens lekker excentriek/non-conformistisch willen UITBREKEN...Mag ik?

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surreal stories. The introduction takes the reader through the first story, explaining the symbolism of the characters and objects. There is more here than I could grasp. I enjoyed these short stories which reminded me of Borges a little in their unpredictability.

[Velma]

Recommended by Joanna Walsh for #readwomen2014 (OOP)- http://booksbywomen.org/readwomen2014...

[Jimmy van der Hoeven · Rating 2 out of 5]

De korte verhalen: Surrealistisch ja. Boeiend nee.
Het verhaal wat meest gaat over haarzelf 'Beneden' is nog wel interessant.