The Real Country Way of Doing Things

How i learnt to be a Real Countrywoman
The short story how I learnt to be a Real Countrywoman is written by Deborah Moggach in England 1995. It is told by a first person narrator, and it is told in flashback. The short story deals with a modern housewife, who is moved from London to a little town long away from London. They moved on the country because her husband Edwin got fired, when the school he taught on was dissolved. Another quite important reason for moving was that the government was brutish and philistine, and London was full of fumes and pollution, so Edwin said they should move. But the point in the story starts after they were moved in to the country. They are sitting in the kitchen and were opening Christmas cards. Edwin opened the last one, it was a brown envelope, and it contains a letter from their local council. They wrote that they were going to build a two-lane dual carriageway through their local wood. The local inhabitant were going to campaign against the ring road, but the only alternative was through their member of parliaments daughters riding school, so it was not a possibility. But the narrator will not let all this spoil her loving wood. So she starts to plant preserved and rarely plants to the wood. She doesn’t tell anybody about this, even not Edwin. In the end the wood got designated as a site of Outstanding Scientific Interest. So the ring road is built through the riding school instead of through the wood.
The narrator has a quite complicated relationship whit her husband, Edwin. In the start of the text the nearly even speak to each other, and they haven’t had sex for the last two years. They are very different; the narrator is a modern housewife, who likes being in the city, shopping and being at cocktail parties. And Edwin is more a country man; he likes the nature, the peace and fresh air. In the first time since they have moved to the country the narrator misses her busy life in London very much. The narrator thinks it is boring living in the country, and she has a very debilitate attitude of the new lifestyle, she speaks also bad about it. They have total different values. The narrator likes the stores right around the corner, her friends and shopping. Edwin is more shut in, and he emphasizes a calm family life and nature. In the beginning of this short story they were opposites and their differences made them divided, but in the end they get interested in one other and reunite and started speaking with each other.
The narrator feels very alone in the country in, but when she starts saving the wood, she has something to do, and spent her time on. The gets very interested in plants, and she gets happy to have a little secret; “I hadn’t felt so happy since I was pregnant”.
All through this short story the narrator is quite ironic and sarcastic; this makes the story a bit funny in spite of the fact that it is a sad story for her in the beginning.
The narrator entrust her to the reader, and makes the reader feel like a friend or something like that, because she tells her deepest feelings to us. It can make us feel quite accessary, because we know about her plans. We are also told a lot of details about the narrator and Edwin’s love life, which also is quite personal.
The main themes in this short story are marriage, family life, countryside of doing things vs. city side and personal values.
In the end the narrator starts liking nature, and get interested in the plants and trees in the local wood. She also find it quite stimulating that she could set a goal, and after all she could finally reach it and see that what she have done has made a difference. She feels finally important on the country when she saves the wood. She also enjoys all the people who come to see the new wood, and she likes that people all over comes and knock on their door and ask the way and admire their cottage. Another thing that tells us that she likes their new lifestyle is, that she is started to sell eggs. She is absorbed in this egg-sale, and we gets to know that their eggs is guaranteed salmonella-free because she feeds them with her organic bread. Sometimes people even leave their children to play with the narrators children, while they walk through the field to look at the orchids. And after all this wonderful experience with the wood and all the nice people, she doesn’t miss Camden Town at all. Finally she decides to do teas. She is going to buy Old-style spiced buns, and throw away the packets. She has learnt a lot these past years, and she found “the real country way of doing things.”