The Short Story in Focus The plot.

Vera, a girl of fifteen, must entertain and converse with a gentleman, Mr. Framton Nuttel, who has arrived to visit her aunt, Mrs. Sappleton, at their country home. Mr. Nuttel has come to the country on the advice of his doctors, seeking rest and relaxation as a cure for his nerves. Mr. Nuttel comes prepared with Mrs. Sappleton's name, address, and a letter of introduction, given to him by his sister, who stayed in the neighborhood four years earlier. He silently doubts whether meeting his sister's acquaintances in the country will be beneficial to him. However, his sister has insisted that if he remains alone and secluded, his nervous condition will only worsen. Vera discovers that Mr. Nuttel knows nothing more about her aunt than her name and residence. She then mysteriously announces that her aunt's "tragedy" occurred since his sister's stay. She alerts him to the open French windows that lead to the yard and tells him that exactly three years ago her aunt's husband and two brothers went out into the yard with their spaniel to go shooting. Vera tells Mr. Nuttel that the three were engulfed in a "treacherous bog" and that their bodies were never found. She claims that her deluded aunt believes that they will return and so she keeps the window open every day until evening. Mr. Nuttel is alarmed even further when Vera's aunt arrives in the room and indeed begins to talk of how her husband and brothers are out hunting. Mrs. Sappleton says she expects them to return momentarily. Mr. Nuttel looks over at Vera to acknowledge her aunt's delusion, but Vera stares in horror at the window through which three muddy figures then arrive. Mr. Nuttel runs wildly from the house and into the street. Vera explains to her aunt and family that the dog must have frightened Mr. Nuttel. She says he confessed to having a horror of dogs due to being chased and surrounded by wild dogs in India. The tale ends with the following sly remark: "Romance at short notice was her specialty" ("The Open Window," p. 291). Mr. Nuttel's cure. Mr. Nuttel has been advised to seek relief for his nervous condition by spending time in the country. The little bit of conversation he attempts to make is entirely devoted to his health concerns: "The doctors agree in ordering me complete rest, an absence of mental excitement, and avoidance of anything in the nature of violent physical exercise," announced Framton, who laboured under the tolerably wide-spread delusion that total strangers and chance acquaintances are hungry for the least detail of one's ailments and infirmities, their cause and cure. "On the matter of diet they are not so much in agreement." ("The Open Window," p. 290) Mr. Nuttel's concerns and his doctor's prescriptions reflect the trend at the time of the story toward natural and holistic therapies, some of which resemble modern New Age therapies. During Saki's era, many health professionals, social theorists, and evangelical entrepreneurs set up health spas in country locales. They advocated hydrotherapies (immersion in and absorption of mineral waters), vegetarian diets, heat treatments, exercise programs, and meditation. Throughout the nineteenth century, health practices underwent much speculation and scrutiny. Many philosophers of the day, including John Stuart Mill, promoted the ideal mens sana in corpore sano, which means "a sound mind in a sound body." The widespread epidemics of cholera, typhus, and influenza in the 1830s and 1840s killed hundreds of thousands. It was in the wake of such traumatic disease that many suffered ailments labeled "hypochondria" or "neuroses," labels that did not carry the stigma they later came to acquire. Before the age of psychoanalysis, mental conditions and complaints were treated physically. People suffering from stress and depression were seen as having physical problems with their nervous

system, and retreats to the country were sometimes recommended to such patients as "nerve cures." The physical ailments of a hypochondriac were taken seriously. They were treated along with their mood and seen as early stages of what could become a deteriorating or even fatal condition. It was further thought that the ideal of "a sound mind in a sound body" could be achieved through proper exercise of the will. Those who failed to achieve it seemed frequently to be individuals of artistic temperament; writers, for example, appeared to often become afflicted with mental ailments. Physicians, as well as literary critics, determined this fact to be the result of the authors' overactive and "morbid" imaginations and intellectual solitude (Haley, p. 60). Thus, while a "change of air" and "scenery" were recommended cures, all intellectual and artistic enterprises were discouraged during the period of recovery. While Victorian fiction usually attributed nervous ailments to solitude, Saki turns this concept around in "The Open Window." He creates great irony by having a patient attempt to quietly socialize in the country in order to rest his nerves and instead be traumatized by a seemingly delusional woman and a conniving girl. As psychoanalysis began to become more familiar -Freud's The Psychopathology of Everyday Life was published in 1904 and On Psychotherapy in 1905- nerve cures and rural retreats started to look more like pseudo-science. It is in this kind of light that Saki presents Mr. Nuttel's cure. Both in the way he describes Nuttel and in the fate he constructs for him, Saki pokes fun at the idea of a superficial social visit in the country curing anyone's nervous condition. Sources. Saki, along with his sister, Ethel, and his older brother, Charlie, was left in the care of his grandmother and his two aunts, Augusta and Charlotte, after his mother died in 1872. Saki's father, Colonel Charles Augustus Munro, was stationed in west Burma as an officer in the British military police. "The Open Window," like many of Saki's short stories, involves a mischievous child rebelling against an aunt with whom the child lives. Many of the circumstances and characters in the story resemble those of Saki's childhood growing up at his aunts' estate. While Saki himself never admitted to any direct correlation between his fiction and real-life experiences, his biographers, including his sister, have commented on the similarities. Saki planned many practical jokes to amuse himself and his sister when he was a boy, just as in "The Open Window" Vera plays an imaginative prank on her aunt and her visitor. Saki's sister, Ethel, may have inspired references in the story to Mr. Nuttel's sister. Saki carried on a consistent correspondence with Ethel. And just as Mr. Nuttel's sister does in "The Open Window," Ethel Munro offered her brother plenty of advice in her letters. Saki's older brother, Charlie, was sent to boarding school very soon after moving in with his aunts. Augusta and Charlotte found him too loud and active to handle. Charlie sometimes returned for holidays. When his return coincided with visits from his uncle Wellesley Munro, the boys were taken out around the grounds by their uncle with a dog that was otherwise constantly tied to a post at the estate. In "The Open Window," Vera describes her aunt's husband and younger brothers going out to hunt with an eager spaniel. Vera says her aunt's youngest brother, Ronnie Sappleton, used to sing loudly and got on her aunt's nerves. It may be memories of the outings with his brother Charlie and Uncle Wellesley that inspired Saki's depiction of boisterous Ronnie Sappleton enjoying the chance to roam the grounds with his brother and the dog.

Fictional Name Real-life Source Mrs. Sappleton Augusta Munro (Saki's aunt) Vera Saki as a child Framton's sister Ethel Munro (Saki's sister) Mr. Sappleton Wellesley Munro (Saki's uncle) Ronnie Sappleton Charlie Munro (Saki's brother)
In 1872 Saki's mother was pregnant with her fourth child. Although all three of her previous births had been successful in Burma, her husband decided to send her back to England for her health and

nerves. Walking along a quiet lane soon after arriving, she was charged by a cow and killed. The brutal irony of his mother's death may have been the inspiration for many of Saki's stories, especially "The Open Window," in which a retreat to the country leads to crisis instead of relief. Reviews. In 1912 Saki began regularly submitting his short stories to different newspapers and periodicals, including the Westminster Gazette and The Morning Post. In June of 1914, John Lane published a collection of these short stories. Entitled Beasts and Super-Beasts, the collection contained "The Open Window." Editors in the early 1900s were particularly impressed by the surprise ending. Another author, O. Henry, was famous for using this literary device. Certain publishers who worked with Saki began to nearly demand it of him after "The Open Window" was specifically praised for it in a review in the London periodical Spectator.

[Saki] has the complementary quality of knowing how to leave off. Perhaps the best instance of this is to be found in that extraordinary fantasia, "The Open Window," which we well remember reading in the Westminster Gazette. Here, after an almost intolerable situation has been suddenly converted into comedy with a jerk like that of a cinematograph, the strange conduct of the young lady is summed up in seven words: "romance at short notice was her specialty." It may be added that it is a formidable specialty.