“The St. Alwynn Girls at Sea”
by Sheila Heti
from the January 27, 2025 issue of The New Yorker
I know Sheila Heti primarily from her 2022 book Pure Color, though I’ve seen some of her work in The New Yorker at other times. I look forward to another opportunity to explore her work.
Here is how “The St. Alwynn Girls at Sea” begins:
There was a general sadness that day on the ship. Dani was walking listlessly from cabin to cabin, delivering little paper flyers announcing the talent show at the end of the month. She had made them the previous week; then had come news that the boys’ ship would not be attending. It almost wasn’t worth handing out flyers at all—almost as if the show had been cancelled. The boys’ ship had changed course; it was now going to be near Gibraltar on the night of the performance—nowhere near where their ship would be, in the middle of the North Atlantic sea. Every girl in school had already heard Dani sing and knew that her voice was strong and good. The important thing was for Sebastien to know. Now Sebastien would never know, and it might be months before she would see him again—if she ever would see him again. All she had to look forward to now were his letters, and they were only delivered once a week, and no matter how closely Dani examined them, she could never have perfect confidence that he loved her, because of all his mentions of a girlfriend back home.
Sorry this is going up late! But if you have some thoughts to share about this story, please do so in the comments below.
This story seems like a British boarding school girls and boys sent away during World War II story although with some of the more modern references like Kurt Vonnegut included, it is just as though it is happening “during” some sort of wartime.
It is a fascinating study of how boarding school girls and boys perceive each other and it shows a wariness or distrust with what is said and done and what is meant.
Each gender wants to make all the right moves to have made a good choice of a handsome boy or beautiful girl though not sure what to expect so being guardedly optimistic in some ways and pessimistic in others yet hopeful.
A girl named Dani has met a boy named Sébastien, who she’s become infatuated with but she is not sure if she should be.
It’s great to seeing any fictional letters or poetry in a short story because good ones tell you a lot about the characters, their emotions and feelings and the stakes of the situation.
The girls are all very different and approach learning, life and boys through certain weighed out factors, some being more important than others type of system. Bad and good implications are observed and examined and each character tries to figure out what to do or not to do in order not to make any huge mistakes (like one’s parent(s) may have made).
One searches for clarity but nothing is clear, just a lot of possibilities that will somehow have to be gone through. I admire how very realistic the texture of this story is though fictional.
The best line of this story is nicely affirmative: “Silly girl, there is more to life than what the man you marry — or your father — gets up to. There is a whole world outside the shame a man brings upon a woman, a world far from that. Ignore the man, forget about him, he’s smaller than a bug. You are bigger than he is. You are beautiful and bright and shining and tall.”
Well said and very true.