Short Fiction · Chapter
An Evening’s Entertainment explained
The chapter contrasts the rational, scientific education of children in enlightened households with the traditional, superstitious storytelling of a grandmother.
What happens
The chapter contrasts the rational, scientific education of children in enlightened households with the traditional, superstitious storytelling of a grandmother. The grandmother recounts a grim local tale of murder, suicide, idolatry, and a clandestine burial at a crossroads, illustrating the persistence of folklore and supernatural belief.
Themes in this chapter
Folklore and Ancient Beliefs
The grandmother's tale embodies oral tradition, passing down a local legend of murder and supernatural dread.
Supernatural and the Uncanny
The story includes a hanged man in a mock-surplice, a mysterious wheel ornament, a horse terrified by blood, and lingering mist or light at the burial site.
Decay and Mortality
Graphic descriptions of corpses, blood, and the pit burial emphasize physical decay and death.
Characters to notice
- The Squire
Exhausted after a day's shooting, he dozes by the fire and grumbles at the children's noise.
- Mr. Davis
A victim of murder, found with his breast split open by an axe in his own home.
Key passages
“Nothing is more common form in old-fashioned books than the description of the winter fireside, where the aged grandam narrates to the circle of children that hangs on her lips story after story of ghosts and fairies, and inspires her audience with a pleasing terror.”
Old books often depict a grandmother telling ghost stories to children by the fire, but never reveal the actual tales.
Sets up the chapter's frame: the lost content of traditional storytelling.
“And they had little doubt that that wicked young man had put some of this into Mr. Davis’s drink, and then used him as he did, and, after that, the sense of his sin had come upon him and he had cast himself away.”
They believed the young man drugged Mr. Davis, murdered him, and then hanged himself out of guilt.
Summarizes the grandmother's explanation of the double death.