The Good Fortune Mall

The good fortune mall

• By Pippa Dougherty

Is richness and being the wealthiest really that important, and why? Sometimes people with a lot of money have a lonely life where work and money Is too important. Sometimes the benefits of richness and a good social life can be hard to combine. In some Danish articles it has been written that people who earn around 44.000 kroners per month is the happiest people. But is it possible to change the ways, and combine both richness and social wealth.  

The story takes place in England, in a wealthy environment.

Daphne Gulver-Robinson is an English lady, and lives with her husband Rollo. Rollo is a business man with ambitions. As the people from Rollo’s work is invited to a business trip to the far east – Rollo of course have to bring his wife.

Daphne is not excited about the trip, and she mostly want to stay home and look for the animals.

On the business trip, they are gathered with a lot of rich people. But the social environment doesn’t match the physical environment. Near the mall is police officers who is there to make sure that no “wrong” people enters the mall. The social environment outside the mall is completely different, it is dominated by criminal and poor people. A place Daphne is not familiar with.  

Daphne is older and bigger than the rest of the wives in the group. But mainly because of insecurities Daphne decides to loose 10 pounds. “most of the wives are elegant, with silk suits and silky legs and exquisitely cut hair.”^[1] Even though Rollo and Daphne is quite wealthy, Daphne still feels different and misplaced between all these rich and beautiful ladies. Daphne doesn’t seem to get along with the other women, that can be because of her age, but on the other hand – her relation to her husband is not great. She doesn’t really have any relations made of live and friendship, but only because if her financial status. Daphne is often misunderstood, she is the kind of girl who likes privacy and she is more an animal kind of person. She is not that much into shopping and other people. She is a good person, but she has a hard time being social.

“the ladies pack into the cars. Daphne Gulver-Robinson is next to the driver of her Daimler, a place of both comfort and isolation”^[2] Daphne is physically isolated in the car, but this also shows her physical isolation from the rest of the group. She distances herself from the rest of the group.

Daphne is a round character; she changes psychologically throughout the story. She is wealthy and comfortable in her home.  On the trip her mood changes, because of the many people around her, that makes her sad because she likes her own company the best. At the end of the story Daphne get to feel like a poor and disrespected person, she is really not that important without her papers.