Chapter 13 — The Dear Departed

William Stanley Houghton (1881–1913), an English dramatist and a leading member of the Manchester School of realistic playwrights. The play was first produced in Manchester in 1908.

The play satirises greed and the breakdown of family values and filial duty in the British middle class. The daughters treat their father as a financial burden and rush to claim his belongings the moment they believe him dead, exposing hypocrisy and materialism over genuine love.

'Dear Departed' is a conventional phrase for someone who has died. The irony is twofold: grandfather Abel Merryweather is very much alive, so the family's mourning is false; and 'dear' also suggests someone precious — the daughters' behaviour shows they regard him as anything but precious, valuing his possessions more than his life.

The family — Mrs. Slater, Henry, and the Jordans — believe Abel has died in his sleep. They mourn superficially, argue over his bureau, clock, slippers, watch, and insurance money, and sit down to tea. Victoria then reports that grandfather is getting up, and Abel walks downstairs very much alive, having been in a drunken stupor, not dead.

Abel Merryweather (the grandfather, aged 72), Mrs. Slater and Mrs. Jordan (his two daughters), Henry Slater and Ben Jordan (their husbands), and Victoria Slater (a precocious ten-year-old granddaughter).

She instructs Henry to wear grandfather's new slippers and, while the Jordans are knocking at the front door, she and Henry carry grandfather's bureau and his mantelpiece clock downstairs to claim them before Mrs. Jordan can. Victoria candidly calls it 'pinching' them.

Victoria, aged ten, is the only character who behaves with genuine feeling. She openly says she is 'so glad' grandfather is not dead, blurts out that the family is 'pinching' his furniture, and innocently remarks that grandfather 'was drunk this morning' — her candour repeatedly exposes the adults' hypocrisy and provides comic relief.

Dramatic irony occurs when the audience knows something the characters do not. Here, once Victoria reports grandfather is 'getting up', the audience knows he is alive while the family continues to lie (inventing a dead brother 'Isaac' to explain their mourning clothes) and squabble over his property — making their behaviour appear all the more farcical and morally damning.

Abel announces three things he intends to do on the following Monday: alter his will (leaving everything to whichever daughter he lives with at the time of his death), pay his insurance premium, and marry Mrs. John Shorrocks, the widow who keeps the 'Ring-o'-Bells' public house — effectively removing himself and his estate from both daughters' reach.

After the bureau and clock are noticed by the Jordans, Mrs. Jordan publicly accuses Mrs. Slater of theft. In the ensuing argument, Mrs. Slater reveals that Mrs. Jordan had once refused to have their father 'at any price'. Abel hears the sisters' mutual accusations and realises neither daughter truly cared for him — they were competing only for his money and possessions.

The bureau is a symbol of the sisters' greed. Mrs. Slater moves it downstairs while grandfather is believed dead so Mrs. Jordan cannot claim it. Abel later reveals that his will was locked inside the bureau, and seeing it moved confirms that the family had begun dividing his things immediately after his supposed death.

'The Dear Departed' is a one-act satirical play. Key literary devices include dramatic irony (the audience knows Abel is alive before the family does), situational irony (a family in mourning is caught stealing from the 'deceased'), satire (Houghton uses comedy to criticise middle-class greed and moral hypocrisy), and comic incongruity (e.g., Henry wearing grandfather's slippers while grandfather is supposedly upstairs dead).

Yes. The official NCERT Literature Reader PDF for Class 10 English Communicative is available free of charge on the NCERT website (ncert.nic.in). You can also read or download individual chapters, including 'The Dear Departed', through the cbseprepmaster.com website.