RARITY IN SENSUAL EXPRESSION OF MUNDANE MINUTIAE OF EVERYDAY LIFE IN MRS. BATTLE’S OPINIONS ON WHIST BY CHARLES LAMB.
Lamb carefully sculpts the everyday reality into an effervescent portrayal of monotonous life using his words. With the help of Sarah Battle, he allows us to experience how what we consider an insanely insignificant act of liking a game can tell us so much about the person and their life as a whole. Although authors often associate game play with men and express it as a masculine trait, Mrs. Battle is an unapologetically competitive woman. We have a line in the essay that goes like,
“She fought a good fight: cut and thrust. She held not her sword (her cards) “like a dancer”. She sate bolt upright:”
Lamb portrays Mrs. Battle as an opinionated woman who knows her way with the game. He even elaborates on her awe for the game of whist and how majority of her daily routine comprises of it. She even reads The Rape of the Lock for the epic card game battle and plays Ombre. She criticizes those who call the game of cards as a game of gambling. Mrs. Battle claims that a bet is necessary to spice things up. "To those puny objectors against cards, as nurturing the bad passions, she would retort, that man is a gaming animal."
Mrs. Battle alludes to the game of cards with every word she talks. Her obsession with the game is fascinating. Fascinating to the point where one would feel that she is trying to shut her reality down by obsessing over Whist. Mrs. Battle tries to fill the void of loneliness using fun and games. She even describes her love life as a game of cards.
“Quadrille, she has often told me, was her first love; but whist had engaged her maturer esteem".
The former is quick and unsettling whereas the latter is quite stable and slow paced- it is a soldier's game, according to her. "But whist was the solider game: that was her word. It was a long meal; not, like quadrille, a feast of snatches. One or two rubbers might coextend in duration with an evening."
Lamb mentions games as an escape from reality- "that cards are a temporary illusion; in truth, a mere drama; for we do but play at being mightily concerned, where a few idle shillings are at stake, yet, during the illusion, we are as mightily concerned as those whose stake is crowns and kingdoms."
The pervasive nature of a game being used as a metaphor for life is prevalent in literature. “Life is a game” is a phrase used in everyday discourse. We can witness Lamb introducing the metaphor in his essay Mrs. Battle’s Opinions on Whist too. Just like whist where two colours complete a suit, variety is the spice of life. When Mrs. Battle asks "Why two colours, when the mark of the suits would have sufficiently distinguished them without it?, the narrator replies “But the eye, my dear Madam, is agreeably refreshed with the variety. Man is not a creature of pure reason he must have his senses delightfully appealed to."
References:
https://www.bartleby.com/library/prose/3085.html