Before Breakfast (Question-Answers)

 

Q1.Who is sleeping in the next room. Why does Mrs. Rowland want to wake him up?

Ans In the next room, Mrs. Rowland’s husband Alfred is sleeping. It is morning and he is still sleeping. Mrs. Rowland wants to wake him up because she is preparing breakfast.

Q2. What does Mrs. Rowland say about the breakfast which she has prepared?

Ans Mrs. Rowland has prepared a simple breakfast because there is no money in the house. She says that if she does not work, they cannot afford this even simple breakfast.

Q3. According to Mrs. Rowland where does her husband pass most of his time?

Ans Mrs. Rowland husband, Alfred has no job. He is an artist. Mrs. Rowland thinks that he passes most of his time in bar rooms with his artist and poor friends.

Q4. Why does Mrs. Rowland ask her husband to shave?

Ans She asks him to shave himself as he looks shabby. She says that no one will give him any job in this condition.

Q5. Mrs. Rowland hears the sound of something falling heavily. What has happened?

Ans Towards the end of the play, Mrs. Rowland hears the sound of something falling heavily. She looks in and finds that her husband has committed suicide by cutting his throat with a razor.

Q6. Who is Helen? What makes Mrs. Rowland think that she may be an artist or a poet?

Ans Helen is the girlfriend of Mrs. Rowland’s husband has read her letter written to her husband. From that letter she has judged that she is an artist or a poet like her husband.

Q7. What did Alfred do with the money that he got by pawning his watch?

Ans Alfred is out of work. He doesn’t do any job. He has no money. One day Alfred pawns his watch. He purchases wine with that money & gets drunk.

Q8. Why is Mrs. Rowland frustrated?

Ans Mrs. Rowland is frustrated because her husband Alfred does nothing for a living. There is poverty in the house. In order to run the household, she has to do the menial job of sewing.

Essay Type Questions

The characters of Mrs. Rowland and Alfred become evident through Mrs Rowland monologue. Explain.

Ans. Before breakfast can be called a dramatic monologue the entire play is spoken by one character that is Mrs. Rowland .her husband is present in the bedroom, but he never speaks anything at one point he puts his hand out of the room and takes a bowl of hot water from his wife’s hand. At that point, the dramatist comments’ It is a sensitive hand with slender fingers. This is a positive comment . It is believed that artists have hands with slender fingers. In the play, we come to know Alfred is an artist. He spends his time in the company of artists and poets. This play reveals the characters of Alfred through the sharped tongued criticism of his wife. He writes poems and short stories which do not sell. He is a sensitive man who is sadly mismatched with his wife. Alfred is unable to sell any of his writings and spends the money he has in order to forget his misery. In this play, Mrs. Rowland drives her husband to suicide. The sensitive artists are troubled by the realities of life. He is already on the edge her wife’s sharp tongue provides the last push. However, Mrs. Rowland has her own problems. She married Alfred who belongs to a rich family. His father was said to be a millionaire. But it was only after marriage that she found the supposed wealth of Alfred’s father was only a millionaire. She also found that Alfred does not do anything to earn his livelihood. She has to do the sewing work in order to run the household. But she is a sharp-tongued and nagging wife. Instead of understanding the sensitive soul of her husband, she quarrels with him. She passes sarcastic comments about her husband. Thus, the play reveals the characters of both Mrs. Rowland and her husband Alfred.