Synopsis
The Bronze Statuette is a short story that revolves around Marian Hastings. Prior to the events at Denvers House, Mariam was shown to be a largely undeveloped woman. She enjoyed house parties, playing tennis, and exchanging below average wit with her fiance, Harold Menzies.
After Marian and friends arrive at Denvers, Lord Cranburn showed the party a "little bronze statue" which represented a young god. Marian accepts the offer to hold the statue and seems to have become entranced by the object, asking for Lord Cranburn to leave it in the room when he returns to his study.
At this point Marian is a changed woman, by turns silent and happy, but a shrill that was forced and sounded hysterical. She would not let Harold kiss her that night and later, Lord Cranburn, discovers her back in the smoking room, holding the statue. "What are you doing with my statue, Miss Hastings?" he saids, in a low and gentle voice so different from her own, she replied "It's not yours - it's mine -it's always been mine!".
The next morning the party visit the temple of Apollo at the end of the garden, which Lord Cranburn had brought brick by brick back from Greece - all apart from Mariam, who ragged and screamed at her friends before they left - an odd turn of events for a social lamb. She sits pretending to read, all the while gazing at the small greenish-bronze statue. That night she breaks off her engagement, without reason, with Harold.
Harold, understandably upset, is staring out of his window that night. He sees "a gold cloak slipping round the corner of the house". He recognises the cloak as Marian's. He follows her through a torrent of rain and lightning. She stops in front of the temple, speaks words of which we only receive broken fragments, apart from "Apollo".
We hear the final moments from Harold, at a later time, while talking to Cynthia, who he would marry a year later. He says that there was a flash of lightning, but he doesn't think it was lightning; rather a figure, which hovered over her. She seemed to have raised her arms and face to it. But this is all we receive, Harold cannot describe the rest, even to his dying day. Cynthia feels that it was very sad for Mariam, but Lord Cranburn simply replies "Was it?, I wonder".
Review
What I enjoyed about this story was the fullness in which the situation is set up in such a short story (seven pages) and the unreliable description of how it all ends. Mariam quickly turns from a happy-go-lucky girl, going with the flow; to an angry loner who only has eyes for this mysterious object that has suddenly entered her life. We are left to think what we like about this situation. We can go with the supernatural, or we could consider that Mariam is having a mental health episode - one that ends with disasterious consequences.
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