The short story entitled "A Gift" by Rahila Gupta, traces the feelings and emotions of a platonic relationship between two women. One being the dominant and the other the submissive one. The relationship however comes to an end as one woman rejects the other for an older partner. Gupta manages to portray both women's feelings through the use of imagery, alliteration and repetition.
The two women are both very different from each other.
In the first two paragraphs of the story, the author shows the speaker as angry towards the other (assumingly French) woman. She says, "I am gifting you an experience, were your parting words. You ultimate egoist." To this the author replies with, "My experience is of my own making, thank you." These two quotes clearly show the speaker as having a grudge against the other woman.
The second paragraph also shows the speaker trying to gain will-power, but is still hung up on the relationship.
Choosing Paragraph Patterns
The Globe, the Hague
InDesign Paragraph Style Span ColumnsShe refers to her will-power as, "that limp uninflatable thing that hung around my self-hood, making its presence felt as a missing dimension..." The speaker goes on to name the reasons why she first notices the other woman. She says it was because, "you had such a fiery commitment to your politics," "you spoke not fluently but in a rush as if you had a pact with silence," and because, "somewhere deep down stirred an old memory about the romance of a French woman," which could imply that the other woman was French because she spoke with a French accent.
In the third paragraph the speaker describes the impact the French woman has on her. "You had entered my consciousness like air in my lung - essential but unfelt." She then says, "And when you entered again and again, my skin...