SUMMARY, by Aurora Ledesma.
Ma Parker lived a
hard life. She left Stratford-on-Avon at the age of sixteen and started to work
as a kitchen-maid with a cruel woman, the cook, who would not let her read her letters
from home and threw them away. She also worked as a “help” in a doctor’s house.
After two years, she got married to a baker. This was also a very painful
experience. She had thirteen children, seven of them died very early. Her husband
also died and left Ma Parker to raise the remaining six children all by herself.
When they started going to school, her sister-in-law came to her house, to take
care of them. One day, her sister-in-law had an accident and injured her spine,
and Ma Parker had to look after this woman who behaved and cried like another
baby.
Two of her
children, Maudie and Alice, left her and fell into bad ways. Her two other sons
went to live in another country, and young Jim joined the army and left for
India. Her youngest daughter, Ethel, got married to a worthless, little waiter
who soon died, leaving behind a newly born son, Lennie, to be taken care of by
Ma Parker.
The story begins
when Ma Parker arrives at her work as a maid in the house of a literary
gentleman. She had buried her loving Lennie, who was the only ray of light in
her sad life, the previous day. After opening the door, the gentleman asks her
about her grandson. She informs him that he had passed away the day before. He
enquires about the funeral, but Ma Parker doesn’t say anything about it and
walks to the kitchen to do her work. After changing her clothes, she puts on
her apron in preparation for her duties. While she is cleaning the pile of
dishes in the kitchen, she remembers her small grandson persuading her to hand
over a cent. She recalls Lennie’s tribulations. He had had a chest infection
that he seemed not to be able to get rid of. Even though she has suffered a lot in her
life, she has never complained and never broken down, but now, the day after
Lennie’s burial, she is overcome and finally wants to cry.
Suddenly, she puts
on her jacket and her hat and walks out absent-mindedly, lost in thought. She is
unaware of her destination. She really wants to cry. It becomes difficult for
her to postpone it any longer. She couldn’t cry anywhere, not at home or on a
park bench. She couldn’t cry in the gentleman’s flat. She couldn’t find any
location where she could be alone and cry. There is nowhere for Ma Parker to
cry. It starts to rain, and she has nowhere to go. The rain can mask her tears,
and she no longer has to hide and find a place to cry.
SOME REFLECTIONS
The story mixes
the past with the present. The past is not a separate entity. Another literary
device that Mansfield employs is interior monologue like “Why must it all have happened to me?” The most important, themes
are social position and isolation. On the one hand, we see the
literary gentleman who does not seem to understand how hard Ma Parker’s life
is. He accuses her of stealing and discredits her as “a hag”; on the other hand,
we have Ma Parker, a poor, uneducated woman. She pities the poor young
gentleman for having no one to look after him.
QUESTIONS
-What are the things we have to say in a funeral? Do
we have to tell only how nice the dead person was, or you can also talk their dark
side?
-Why do you think the literary gentleman doesn’t have
a name?
-In the paragraph “The result looked like a gigantic
dustbin. […] or dark stains like tea.” There is a mixture of ideas: the dirty room
next to the sad-looking sky. What is the relation between these two pictures?
-The literary man makes a “product called Life”. When
do you think literature is Life?
-Katherine Mansfield died of consumption. What do you
know about consumption and literature? Can you give us more examples of
writers?
-What is the meaning of this sentence: “Then young
Maudie went wrong and took her sister Alice with her”?
-Do you trust in the remedies appeared in newspapers? Do
you have any anecdote?
-What kind of invalid are you: patient, angry,
worried…?
-What would have to be the master’s attitude in front of an
ill servant?
-What deeds do you consider that you have to do in
private: crying, laughing, coughing…, but also brushing one’s teeth…?
VOCABULARY
parding, huskily, hobbled, marmalade, twinge, squashed,
deadened, pail, roller towel, hag, area railings, chimley, range, beedles, sold
up, loaves, chock-a-block, putting it on, bottils, postal order, stifled, counterpane,
fitting by, as like as not