“The Open Window”

by Saki

THE LITERARY WORK

A short story set in an upper-class home in the English countryside sometime between 1880 and 1905; published in 1914.

SYNOPSIS

As a prank, an English girl of the upper class fabricates a tale about ghosts and madness in her family for a gentleman visitor suffering from a nervous condition.

Events in History at the Time of the Short Story

The Short Story in Focus

For More Information

H. H. Munro (born in 1879 in Burma) took the pen name “Saki” (after the cup-bearer in the immensely popular Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám) when his first work was published in the Westminster Gazette, a London literary journal. He had a tendency to display dark humor in most of his writing, as reflected in “The Open Window” and in most of his other short stories. Saki’s morbid storytelling was due in large part to his secluded upbringing by his grandmother and two unmarried aunts in the countryside of west England in the 1870s and 1880s as well as to his conservative social and political philosophies, increasingly under seige in an age of striking social changes. H. H. Munro was to die, like many young men of his generation and class, on a battlefield in France; he was killed November 14, 1916, near Beaumont Hamel.

Events in History at the Time of the Short Story

Decay

Saki’s characters tend to be drawn from the milieu he knew best, the English upper class, of which he was a member. Not particularly wealthy, Munro’s family was nevertheless of solid social standing and he moved in elite circles. During his writing career, England was experiencing a series of social shifts, the most prominent of which was the gradual rejection of Tory or conservative politics in favor of more liberal approaches to governing a changing society. In 1906, the Liberal party defeated the Tories in national elections, a change in allegiance that had been developing slowly over the past few years. The long-standing class system that divided the privileged from the masses was being destabilized by the growth of the middle class and by an increased social mobility that resulted from the new wealth and influence created by the country’s successful industrialization.

When Queen Victoria died in 1901, ending a reign that spanned 64 years, many of her grieving subjects mourned not only the death of a beloved monarch but the passing of England’s greatness. The word “decay” perhaps best characterizes a widespread feeling of enfeeblement and defeat that coursed through the nation in the early years of the new King Edward’s reign. In January 1902, General Sir Frederick Maurice reported in the Contemporary Review that fully 60 percent of Englishmen were so physically unfit as to disqualify them from service in the country’s armed forces. Of course, a great number of such men came from Britain’s teeming urban poor, who lived in deplorable conditions, suffering, among other things, from malnutrition and disease. Nevertheless, the idea that the English people as a whole had somehow become dissipated took hold in conservative circles unprepared to establish social programs to improve the living conditions of the poor. The problem was a matter of morality, rather than sociology or economics—how had such a problem been allowed to grow in the first place? Further alarming statistics concerning a lack of mental acuity among the English did not help the general feeling of decline; between 1891 and 1901, it was reported, England saw a 21.44 percent increase in the number of “mentally defective” citizens, a whopping 18 percent increase over the number cited for the previous decade (Hynes, p. 23).

A BREATH OF FRESH AIR

Saki’s aunt’s estate in Devonshire, where he grew up, had large French windows in the drawing room leading out to a large yard, reminiscent of those in “The Open Window.” However, unlike the aunt in the short story, Saki’s aunt Augusta would not allow the windows to be open because she believed fresh air to be hazardous to a person’s health. Saki and his siblings were not allowed to go into the yard, and the drawing room windows and those throughout the house were barred. When Colonel Munro, Saki’s father, finally finished his military duty overseas and resumed care of his children, he bought an estate only four miles from his sisters. Colonel Munro nailed open the windows in the bedrooms of his new home, and Saki finally was allowed to breathe fresh air.

Saki himself was politically and socially conservative, and when he parodies the upper classes, as he does in “The Open Window,” it is less because of his devotion to a revised social order than because, in his opinion, the ruling class should never have been so ill-prepared as to allow such a predicament to arise in the first place. Increased poverty, disease, economic expansion, powerful weapons, and the threat of war were the reward for complacency and clinging to luxurious habits in the face of a changing world.

The other half

A variety of surveys on the living conditions of the lower classes in London and York were widely circulated during the same broad period in which Saki was writing his short fiction. Sociologist Seebohm Rowntree, a wealthy businessman concerned about the widening gap between social classes in the cities, conducted a highly publicized investigation into the daily lives of the nation’s urban poor. Published in 1901, Rowntree’s study, Poverty, a Study of Town Life, concluded that 25 to 30 percent of the urban population of the nation was living in poverty. By linking the poverty problem to living conditions, Rowntree’s study focused attention on public health. Slum conditions included residences where inhabitants lived sometimes more than two to a room “which provided inadequate air space” (Bentley, p. 41). Rowntree also discussed the fact that so many of the army recruits from major British cities were rejected on medical grounds. There was, the study indicated, a national health crisis, not just because urban men were unwell, but because they were incapable of military action. The British political maneuvers that would eventually lead the country into World War I were already taking shape in the early years of the century; that England would need a standing army was growing more and more obvious by the day. A national health crisis could not be ignored if it threatened to weaken Britain’s military effectiveness. The government appointed a committee whose efforts would lead to the adoption of numerous social reforms to improve public health as well as education, employment conditions, and welfare.

British military occupation of India

The British presence in India is reflected in “The Open Window.” Saki and his father both served in the British forces in the area, and Vera, the young woman with the rather cruel imagination in the short story, invents a tragic Indian episode to explain Mr. Nuttel’s precipitous flight from the house of her aunt. There had been a strong British presence on the Indian subcontinent since the first decade of the seventeenth century, when the East India Company, a British trading conglomerate, set up its first post on India’s northwest coast. The Company controlled trade, law and order, and education in India until 1859, when Queen Victoria proclaimed that India would be governed directly by the British sovereign. What changed the Company’s fortunes in India was the Indian Mutiny, or the First Indian War of Independence, depending on which side one stands. The chain of events leading to the bloodshed is convoluted, but perhaps the overarching reason for the uprising was the suspicion that the British intended to dispense with basic Indian social and religious customs and replace them with British traditions. Economic and legal reform was one thing, but to threaten ancient customs and taboos was quite another. The single event that precipitated the fighting was the arrival from Britain of a new kind of cartridge for the rifles carried by Indian soldiers in the ranks of the East India Company’s army. This cartridge required greasing with a mixture of animal fats. The British, however, failed to recall the taboo in Hindu culture against touching any product made from cattle, and the Muslim taboo against pork. Company officials were careful to specify to British manufacturers of the cartridge lubricants that only goat or sheep fat was to be used, but once subcontractors in India itself began to produce the stuff, the directions got less precise.

A rumor spread among the Indian ranks that the British purposely used animal fats that would, according to Indian customs, contaminate the men who used them; this fear grew rapidly, fed by the more general suspicion that the British intended to flout religious standards important to the Indian soldiers. Discontent spread like wildfire. Eighty-five Indian soldiers stationed at Delhi refused to grease their rifle cartridges, and for their disobedience were immediately sent to jail for ten years. This touched a raw nerve among the thousands of Indians in British regiments, who took up arms against the British. Within days, beginning on May 10, 1957, the British colony at Delhi was butchered in its entirety, including women and children, and the violence spread to many parts of the country. A year of savage fighting had begun, with the British response matching the Indian in terms of atrocities. Saki’s own grandfather, George Munro, was killed during this time.

As both a child and as an adult, Saki lived with the legacy and landmarks of the Indian Mutiny. He heard many details of the murders and open graves of British military victims of the uprisings. In the short story, Vera’s account of Mr. Nuttel’s night spent in a newly dug grave on the banks of the Ganges River brings to mind such a disaster.

Class distinction in social practices

In “The Open Window,” Mr. Nuttel has arrived with a letter of introduction to Vera’s aunt, Mrs. Sappleton, from his sister. A letter of introduction was a means by which members of the upper class distinguished themselves as such to one another; it served as a sort of social glue. Such a letter would verify the family background and connections of an individual to assure the host of their status and class.

The social sphere to which Saki belonged and which he often mocked maintained an intricate system of etiquette throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Such social practices as letters of introduction, calling cards, parlor regulations, formal address, and provisions for seating at table were adhered to with a sort of religious scrupulousness. Many of these practices involved comparing or connecting individuals through their family titles, which enabled the upper class to maintain an elitist hierarchy whose members would always recognize each other’s social status.

In “The Open Window” Saki calls these upper-class practices into question. Although coming to the country to rest his nerves, Mr. Nuttel feels obligated to first follow the protocol required of a gentleman by making the appropriate set of social contacts. Although she advises him to establish himself as a gentleman for the sake of his nerves, Mr. Nuttel’s sister has forced him into a situation that is uncomfortable for him and ironically shatters his nerves.

Saki’s story focuses first on the formalities that concern the characters. Mr. Nuttel is worried about his letter of introduction and his conversation with Vera. He feels he must “endeavor … to say the correct something which should duly flatter the niece of the moment without unduly discounting the aunt that was to come” (“The Open Window,” p. 288). Mrs. Sappleton apologizes for having him wait, and when she speaks with him she must “replace … a yawn at the last moment” (“The Open Window,” p. 291) so as not to offend him.

The polite concerns at the beginning of the story contrast greatly with Vera’s outlandish prank and its consequences. The story’s tone and climax seem to celebrate the mischievous way in which Vera undermines the social conventions that govern Mr. Nuttel’s visit.

The Short Story in Focus

The plot

Vera, a girl of fifteen, must entertain and converse with a gentleman, Mr. Framton Nuttel, who has arrived to visit her aunt, Mrs. Sappleton, at their country home. Mr. Nuttel has come to the country on the advice of his doctors, seeking rest and relaxation as a cure for his nerves.

Mr. Nuttel comes prepared with Mrs. Sappleton’s name, address, and a letter of introduction, given to him by his sister, who stayed in the neighborhood four years earlier. He silently doubts whether meeting his sister’s acquaintances in the country will be beneficial to him. However, his sister has insisted that if he remains alone and secluded, his nervous condition will only worsen.

Vera discovers that Mr. Nuttel knows nothing more about her aunt than her name and residence. She then mysteriously announces that her aunt’s “tragedy” occurred since his sister’s stay. She alerts him to the open French windows that lead to the yard and tells him that exactly three years ago her aunt’s husband and two brothers went out into the yard with their spaniel to go shooting.

Vera tells Mr. Nuttel that the three were engulfed in a “treacherous bog” and that their bodies were never found. She claims that her deluded aunt believes that they will return and so she keeps the window open every day until evening.

Mr. Nuttel is alarmed even further when Vera’s aunt arrives in the room and indeed begins to talk of how her husband and brothers are out hunting. Mrs. Sappleton says she expects them to return momentarily. Mr. Nuttel looks over at Vera to acknowledge her aunt’s delusion, but Vera stares in horror at the window through which three muddy figures then arrive.

Mr. Nuttel runs wildly from the house and into the street. Vera explains to her aunt and family that the dog must have frightened Mr. Nuttel. She says he confessed to having a horror of dogs due to being chased and surrounded by wild dogs in India. The tale ends with the following sly remark: “Romance at short notice was her specialty” (“The Open Window,” p. 291).

Mr. Nuttel’s cure

Mr. Nuttel has been advised to seek relief for his nervous condition by spending time in the country. The little bit of conversation he attempts to make is entirely devoted to his health concerns:

“The doctors agree in ordering me complete rest, an absence of mental excitement, and avoidance of anything in the nature of violent physical exercise,” announced Framton, who laboured under the tolerably wide-spread delusion that total strangers and chance acquaintances are hungry for the least detail of one’s ailments and infirmities, their cause and cure. “On the matter of diet they are not so much in agreement.”

(“The Open Window,” p. 290)

Mr. Nuttel’s concerns and his doctor’s prescriptions reflect the trend at the time of the story toward natural and holistic therapies, some of which resemble modern New Age therapies. During Saki’s era, many health professionals, social theorists, and evangelical entrepreneurs set up health spas in country locales. They advocated hydrotherapies (immersion in and absorption of mineral waters), vegetarian diets, heat treatments, exercise programs, and meditation.

Throughout the nineteenth century, health practices underwent much speculation and scrutiny. Many philosophers of the day, including John Stuart Mill, promoted the ideal mens sana in corpore sano, which means “a sound mind in a sound body.” The widespread epidemics of cholera, typhus, and influenza in the 1830s and 1840s killed hundreds of thousands. It was in the wake of such traumatic disease that many suffered ailments labeled “hypochondria” or “neuroses,” labels that did not carry the stigma they later came to acquire.

Before the age of psychoanalysis, mental conditions and complaints were treated physically. People suffering from stress and depression were seen as having physical problems with their nervous system, and retreats to the country were sometimes recommended to such patients as “nerve cures.” The physical ailments of a hypochondriac were taken seriously. They were treated along with their mood and seen as early stages of what could become a deteriorating or even fatal condition.

It was further thought that the ideal of “a sound mind in a sound body” could be achieved through proper exercise of the will. Those who failed to achieve it seemed frequently to be individuals of artistic temperament; writers, for example, appeared to often become afflicted with mental ailments. Physicians, as well as literary critics, determined this fact to be the result of the authors’ overactive and “morbid” imaginations and intellectual solitude (Haley, p. 60). Thus, while a “change of air” and “scenery” were recommended cures, all intellectual and artistic enterprises were discouraged during the period of recovery.

While Victorian fiction usually attributed nervous ailments to solitude, Saki turns this concept around in “The Open Window.” He creates great irony by having a patient attempt to quietly socialize in the country in order to rest his nerves and instead be traumatized by a seemingly delusional woman and a conniving girl.

As psychoanalysis began to become more familiar —Freud’s The Psychopathology of Everyday Life was published in 1904 and On Psychotherapy in 1905— nerve cures and rural retreats started to look more like pseudo-science. It is in this kind of light that Saki presents Mr. Nuttel’s cure. Both in the way he describes Nuttel and in the fate he constructs for him, Saki pokes fun at the idea of a superficial social visit in the country curing anyone’s nervous condition.

Sources

Saki, along with his sister, Ethel, and his older brother, Charlie, was left in the care of his grandmother and his two aunts, Augusta and Charlotte, after his mother died in 1872. Saki’s father, Colonel Charles Augustus Munro, was stationed in west Burma as an officer in the British military police. “The Open Window,” like many of Saki’s short stories, involves a mischievous child rebelling against an aunt with whom the child lives. Many of the circumstances and characters in the story resemble those of Saki’s childhood growing up at his aunts’ estate. While Saki himself never admitted to any direct correlation between his fiction and real-life experiences, his biographers, including his sister, have commented on the similarities.

Saki planned many practical jokes to amuse himself and his sister when he was a boy, just as in “The Open Window” Vera plays an imaginative prank on her aunt and her visitor.

Saki’s sister, Ethel, may have inspired references in the story to Mr. Nuttel’s sister. Saki carried on a consistent correspondence with Ethel. And just as Mr. Nuttel’s sister does in “The Open Window,” Ethel Munro offered her brother plenty of advice in her letters.

Saki’s older brother, Charlie, was sent to boarding school very soon after moving in with his aunts. Augusta and Charlotte found him too loud and active to handle. Charlie sometimes returned for holidays. When his return coincided with visits from his uncle Wellesley Munro, the boys were taken out around the grounds by their uncle with a dog that was otherwise constantly tied to a post at the estate. In “The Open Window,” Vera describes her aunt’s husband and younger brothers going out to hunt with an eager spaniel. Vera says her aunt’s youngest brother, Ronnie Sappleton, used to sing loudly and got on her aunt’s nerves. It may be memories of the outings with his brother Charlie and Uncle Wellesley that inspired Saki’s depiction of boisterous Ronnie Sappleton enjoying the chance to roam the grounds with his brother and the dog.

In 1872 Saki’s mother was pregnant with her fourth child. Although all three of her previous births had been successful in Burma, her husband decided to send her back to England for her health and nerves. Walking along a quiet lane soon after arriving, she was charged by a cow and killed. The brutal irony of his mother’s death may have been the inspiration for many of Saki’s stories, especially “The Open Window,” in which a retreat to the country leads to crisis instead of relief.

Reviews

In 1912 Saki began regularly submitting his short stories to different newspapers and periodicals, including the Westminster Gazette and The Morning Post. In June of 1914, John Lane published a collection of these short stories. Entitled Beasts and Super-Beasts, the collection contained “The Open Window.”

Editors in the early 1900s were particularly impressed by the surprise ending. Another author, O. Henry, was famous for using this literary device. Certain publishers who worked with Saki began to nearly demand it of him after “The Open Window” was specifically praised for it in a review in the London periodical Spectator.

[Saki] has the complementary … quality of knowing how to leave off. Perhaps the best instance of this is to be found in that extraordinary fantasia, “The Open Window,” which we well remember reading in the Westminster Gazette. Here, after an almost intolerable situation has been suddenly converted into comedy with a jerk like that of a cinematograph, the strange conduct of the young lady is … summed up … in seven words: “romance at short notice was her specialty.” It may be added that it is a formidable specialty.

(Spectator, p. 60)

For More Information

Bentley, Nicolas. Edwardian Album. New York: Viking Press, 1974.

Haley, Bruce. The Healthy Body and Victorian Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978.

Hibbert, Christopher. Daily Life in Victorian England. New York: American Heritage, 1975.

Hynes, Samuel. The Edwardian Turn of Mind. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1968.

Langguth, A. J. Saki: A Life of Hector Hugh Munro. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981.

Moorhouse, Geoffrey. India Britannica. New York: Harper & Row, 1983.

Munro, H. H. “The Open Window.” The Short Stories of Saki. New York: Random House/Viking Press, 1958.

Spectator 113 (July 11, 1914): 60.