Art and Experience

"Mrs. Bathurst" explores, among other things, the relationship between experience and its artistic representation through language. The central story of the tale is told second-hand, by Mr. Pyecroft, with help from Sergeant Pritchard. Readers must evaluate the relative positions of all of the narrators in the story in order to understand that each of their perspectives on the story is only one of many. Mr. Pyecroft addresses this issue when he says, "I used to think seein' and hearin' was the only regulation aids to ascertainin' facts, but as we get older, we get more accomodatin."' In other words, he realizes that his narrative, like many, relies on lived experience reconstructed through language, and that there is always room for discrepancy between what actually happened and how events are later remembered.

Moreover, since details of the central plot in "Mrs. Bathurst" are provided by three...