Isak Dinesen: “The Blank Page”

Isak Dinesen short story “The Blank Page” has many stories within it. We have the old story-teller woman and her story of how she came to learn her art from her grandmother. There is the story of the convent and the Carmelite sisters with their work and the production of the finest linen of Portugal. We also hear the story of the flax they use, which goes back to the Bible and the Crusades. But the most intriguing story is the last one, of the sheets produced by the sisters of the convent for the royal family of Portugal and that were given back to them with the stain that proved that a princess had been a virgin on her wedding night. The convent collects the pieces of the sheets in a gallery with the name of each princess, but in the midst of the row of stained white linen sheets there is one which is completely blank and without the name of the princess that owned it. The story teller does not clarify if the princess was not a virgin or if she did not marry at all. The old woman tells only that it was this framed piece of sheet that most held the attention of those old princesses of Portugal that visited the gallery as well as the nuns and we are left to wonder at the meaning behind it. Were them wondering at the disobedience of one of their ancestors? Were they wishing they were as bold as that one princess? The story finishes in a way that gives the reader leave to drawn their own conclusions and see this story as it may better fit them.