The Address Characters and Summary
Short Biography of Marga Minco
Marga Minco (Born 1920) grew up in a
family of five in Breda. Unlike her sister, brother and parents, she went into
hiding during World War II. In 1957 she made her debut as a writer with Het
bittere kruid (Bitter Herbs), the laconic and devastating story of a young girl
who escapes through a back door when her family is arrested, and ultimately
discovers that she has lost everyone close to her. The book was a great success
at home and abroad, with over 400,000 copies sold in the Netherlands alone. New
work followed at irregular intervals: De andere kant (The Other Side, 1959),
Een leeg huis (An Empty House, 1966), De val (The Fall, 1983) and De glazen
brug (The Glass Bridge, 1986). In 2004, she published Storing (Interference), a
collection of stories. The following year, Marga Minco was awarded the
prestigious Constantijn Huygens Prize for her entire oeuvre. In 2018 Minco won
the P.C. Hooft Prize 2019, one of the most important Dutch literary awards. The
jury praised her as the author of a modest and intensely powerful body of work.
‘Without psychologizing, without resorting to pathos or pretention, she enables
us to understand and fully engage with an inconceivable reality.’
The Address Characters Names and Details
Daughter
The daughter(Marga Minco) was a
Jewish girl whose family has been sent to the concentration camps and killed.
She has suffered a lot and to cover those losses she thought to go to the
address to get back all those valuables to cherish her mother’s memories.
She goes to Dorling’s house and found
that the valuables have turned sour for her. So she made up her mind to leave
all those things along with those bad memories attached to it here itself and
move on.
Mrs. Dorling (Old acquaintance of Mrs. S)
She was an old acquaintance of Mrs. S
and lived in Macroni Street 46. When she came to meet her to get her mother’s
things. But Dorling behaved in a cold manner and thought she would have died
during the war. She was not the same as her mother told and with her daughter’s
wish she entered the house. Dorling flaunted the things and explained that
these all are antique. She was cold and a pestered woman who tries to fulfill
her greed through her friend’s valuables.
The Address NCERT Summary
The Narrator of the story is the
daughter of Mrs. S who went to her native place in times of war and after that,
she returns to collect her belongings after her death. She rang the doorbell of
Mrs. Dorling and felt bad when she welcomed her in cold response. She was an
old acquaintance of hers and even wearing her green cardigan.
When she asked about her mother
though she denied but didn’t want to talk to her. The narrator left the
place and remembers something thing about the past. When her mother was alive
she only gave her this address and when she went home for few days she learns
that her few things were missing.
Mother only told her about
Mrs.Dorling that she had taken all these kinds of stuff and promised her to
keep them safely and neatly. Every time she takes some or the other thing with
her. The girl visited her the second time and this time, a girl about 15 opened
the door to her. The daughter asked about her mother whether she is at home or
not.
She followed her and the first thing
that struck her was an old candlestand next to the mirror. When she went to the
living room, she was surrounded by the stuff she wanted to take a glimpse of.
She found herself in a room where all the stuff was arranged in a haphazard
manner which she did not like.
She didn’t have the strength to look
around and sat down and kept staring at the woolen table cover. She remembered
that burn mark on the cover that could never be repaired and soon she found the
hole. Dorling’s daughter was very nice by nature and poured tea from a white
pot that had a golden border on the lid and took out some spoons. The daughter
praised the box and the spoons and to her surprise, Dorling told her that it is
an antique piece.
Mrs. Dorling then told her that they
had many such things and the daughter knew w all this about. Then she moved
towards the side drawer to open it. The narrator felt emotional while linking
the objects with her mother’s memories. Initially, she was eager to and long to
see and feel those things as they had an attachment with them. Through these,
she can connect with her mother.
But now she lost interest in the valuables and it seems useless to her as she lives in a small rented room where these will not be fitted but kept somewhere else. She tried hard to forget that address and dong so she wanted to forget and leave those memories and decided to move on.
