A very high proportion of Sargeson's [earliest] stories are told in the first person. The degree to which the narrator is aware of the implication of what he tells varies widely from story to story: thus the tone may lie anywhere between the extremes of puzzled uneasiness and full consciousness. The physical elements of a story, however, are usually carefully contrived to enable the reader himself to contribute the appropriate response—compassion, a sense of irony, or of shock.

In 'Chaucerian' these elements provide a severely simple contrast between a humane physicality (as found in The Canterbury Tales) and a pinched moralism (as found in certain religious sects)…. Through surprise … the implications of the story are widened and the sense of consciousness behind the narrator increased. In 'Chaucerian' these effects are substantiated, for the narrator's own horizons do become larger, and his own mature consciousness of the moral...