Life Of Ma Parker
Katherine Mansfield’s "": Women’s Plight Katherine Mansfield’s "" presents the plight of Ma Parker as a working-class woman at the turn of the century, in terms of her position in the sphere of the family and in the sphere of society. "" is a story of a widowed charwoman. Like Miss Brill, Ma Parker is a very lonely woman, but their equally painful story is told quite differently, mainly because Mansfield supplies no background to account why Miss Brill’s Sunday passes as it does. As the title of the story denotes, we receive the story of Ma Parker’s life, which explains her current situation. "As servant, wife, and mother, she’s the generic British ...
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the only ray of light in her dreary life. According to Irigaray, "all the systems of exchange that organize patriarchal societies and all the modalities of productive work that are recognized, values, and rewarded in these societies are men’s business….[t]he work force is this always assumed to be masculine, and ‘products’ are objects to be used, objects of transaction among men alone" (171). Ma Parker has to play the role of an object circulated among masculine employers as she has to support her children and herself. Ma begins working as early as the age of sixteen as a "kitching-maid" (143). Later on, "[w]hen that family was sold up she went as ‘help’ to a doctor’s house, and after two years there, on the run from morning till light, she married her husband" (144). Ma is an object of transaction among men, as she transfers from one male employee to another, until she is married. Now then, Ma was working for the literary man, as people advised him to ...
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up six little children and "keep herself to herself" (145). She must keep herself to herself, for "the gender-coded expectation [is] that Ma should swallow her suffering" (Lohafer 477) and keep on being strong for the sake of everyone concerned. She does not have the privilege of breaking down and actually feeling her pain. "Mother, virgin, prostitute: these are the social roles imposed on women" (Irigaray 186). As Ma’s children are grown she is left alone and is "robbed" of her social role as an active mother. She has no place in the patriarchal society therefore unless she assumes a role to play. Ma Parker feels emptiness as a result therefore ...
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"Life Of Ma Parker." Essayworld.com. March 21, 2006. Accessed April 25, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Life-Of-Ma-Parker/43104.
"Life Of Ma Parker." Essayworld.com. March 21, 2006. Accessed April 25, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Life-Of-Ma-Parker/43104.
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