Character of Katherine Bridges
Katherine Bridges was a young and beautiful girl of twenty-five. She had blue, flashing eyes, freckled cheeks and smooth straw coloured hair. She was a governess out of job. She gave the impression of being soberly beautiful and not aggressively glamorous (alluring or tempting) .Mr. Chips came across her during his visit to the Lake District. Before meeting her, Chips had never shown any interact in feminine charms and had never thought of family or marriage. But her sweet, free, frank, fearless and impressive manners won Chips heart. She was social and liberal. She was interested in the revolutionary ideas of the writers like Bernard Shaw, Ibsen and William Morris. She was a radical socialist. She was in favour of equality, fraternity and freedom of women.
She was revolutionary and was in favour of women’s right of voting. She was the most daring and the most modern woman in that old Victorian society of Brookfield. Being a woman did not bar Katherine from climbing hills and riding bicycles. Victorians frowned upon a woman visiting a man living alone, but Katherine did not hesitate to visit Mr. Chips when he was injured. In fact, she wanted woman to be having equal right like men by being admitted to universities and being allowed to vote.
Before his marriage, Chips was a dull, dry and neutral sort of person. . He had confidence, satisfaction, everything except inspiration. He drifted aimlessly through life and his teaching lacked orientation. Katherine became a star by which he was to steer his life Katherine made him a new man. With her impressive and charming personality, she induced a new life in the old mind and body of Mr. Chips. She broadened his views
and opinions, improved his discipline and sharpened his sense of humour. He was honoured and obeyed by everyone but after his marriage people began to love him due to great change in him.
Katherine gave a new dimension to the future of Brookfield. She entered like a gleam of modernity in the ancient surrounding of Brookfield. She was the centre of attention, wherever she went. In other words, like Caser, she came, she saw and she conquered. She persuaded Chips and other teachers to invite the football team of missionary school to play a match with the boys of Brookfield school. That’s why she was popular among the boys and teacher at Brookfield.
The sweeter the fragrance, the sooner it is wafted (vanished) away; similarly, Katherine’s life was short and beautiful. She died one year after her marriage on April 1“ 1898 during child birth. She appeared like a shooting-star on the skies of Brookfield. Though she died, yet she lived in the heart and mind of Mr. Chips. Her life left an everlasting impression on Mr. Chips life and behind the serious and sad demeanour (manner) of Mr. Chips, there was always embedded the vivacious(full of life) smile of Katherine Bridges.
The gulf between the past and the future is always unbridgeable. When they do come together, there is bound to be discord. Rarely, does it result in harmony; as with Katherine and Chips. In their case, love proved to be the binding factor. On the other hand, Chips and Ralston had a plain professional relationship which was liable to conflict. This conflict was mainly generated by the difference in their ages and ides.
Ralston was a young man of thirty-seven when eh joined Brookfield as headmaster. His academic record had been brilliant all along. He came to the job full of bright new ideas for the future of the school. Chips had to step down from the post of acting Headmaster, but this did not disappoint him at all. He was well into his fifties and had become an institution within an institution. The staff and students considered him an integral part of the school, and he felt himself above minor considerations of rank and posting.
After Katherine’s death, his attitude to life had become somewhat philosophical. The initial shock had slowly dissolved into a calm acceptance of the fact and her memory lived on like a soft glow in his thoughts.
Perhaps this and similar specific decisions, and not philosophizing, will become the highlight and trigger mechanism that will still lead us to a normal society and make intelligent beings out of modern primates. In my version of the test, the same is true. BUT a person or another computer (program) must determine with whom he or she communicates, with a real specific person, or with a copy of a person made on the basis of data collected from materials (creativity, communication, etc.) of a living person. Naturally, it is necessary to determine, exclusively, on the basis of meaning, and not on some indirect signs: voice, image.