Metta Victoria Full Victor - "The Blunders of a Bashful Man"

by Alfred Russell Wallace - "The Malay Archipelago Volume 1"

Henry Harford - "Fan"

Ernest Belfort Bax - "German Culture Past and Present"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Jill the Reckless

P >> P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse >> Jill the Reckless




Wally left the mantelpiece, and came slowly towards her.

"Jill!" He choked. "Jill!"

Suddenly he pounced on her and swung her off her feet She gave a
little breathless cry.

"Wally! I thought you didn't approve of cavemen!"

"This," said Wally, "is just another new morning exercise I've thought
of!"

Jill sat down, gasping.

"Are you going to do that often, Wally?"

"Every day for the rest of my life!"

"Goodness!"

"Oh, you'll get used to it. It'll grow on you."

"You don't think I am making a mistake marrying you?"

"No, no! I've given the matter a lot of thought, and ... in fact, no,
no!"

"No," said Jill thoughtfully. "I think you'll make a good husband. I
mean, suppose we ever want the piano moved or something.... Wally!"
she broke off suddenly.

"You have our ear."

"Come out on the roof," said Jill. "I want to show you something
funny."

Wally followed her out. They stood at the parapet together, looking
down.

"There!" said Jill, pointing.

Wally looked puzzled.

"I see many things, but which is the funny one?"

"Why, all these people. Over there--and there--and there. Scuttering
about and thinking they know everything there is to know, and not one
of them has the least idea that I am the happiest girl on earth!"

"Or that I'm the happiest man! Their ignorance is--what is the word I
want? Abysmal. They don't know what it's like to stand beside you and
see that little dimple in your chin.... They don't know you've _got_ a
little dimple in your chin.... They don't know.... They don't know....
Why, I don't suppose a single one of them even knows that I'm just
going to kiss you!"

"Those girls in that window over there do," said Jill. "They are
watching us like hawks."

"Let 'em!" said Wally briefly.


THE END

* * * * *


WHAT THIS STORY IS ABOUT


Jill had money, Jill was engaged to be married to Sir Derek Underhill.
Suddenly Jill becomes penniless, and she is no longer engaged. With a
smile, in which there is just a tinge of recklessness, she refuses to
be beaten and turns to face the world. Instead she went to New York
and became a member of the chorus of "The Rose of America," and Mr.
Wodehouse is enabled to lift the curtain of the musical comedy world.

There is laughter and drama in _Jill the Reckless_, and the action
never flags from the moment that Freddie Rooke confesses that he has
had a hectic night, down to the point where Wally says briefly "Let
'em," which is page 313.

* * * * *

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