A Married Man’s Story( Mansfield)
IT is evening. Supper is over. We have left the small, cold dining-room, we have come back to the sitting-room where there is a fire. All is as usual. I am sitting at my writing table which is placed across a corner so that I am behind it, as it were, and facing the room. The lamp with the green shade is alight; I have before me two large books of reference, both open, a pile of papers … All the paraphernalia, in fact, of an extremely occupied man. My wife, with her little boy on her lap, is in a low chair before the fire. She is about to put him to bed before she clears away the dishes and piles them up in the kitchen for the servant girl to-morrow morning. But the warmth, the quiet, and the sleepy baby, have made her dreamy. One of his red woollen boots is off, one is on. She sits, bent forward, clasping the little bare foot, staring into the glow, and as the fire quickens, falls, flares again, her shadow—an immense Mother and Child— is here and gone again upon the wall . . .
Analysis.
- Who is speaking and where are they speaking from? Consider their role within this domestic setting and how the rhythm of the description communicates their state of mind and their power or powerlessness. Think about the way in which the setting also operates as a form of psychological defence or camouflage, perhaps implying that the speaker is an outsider in his own home. Why should a narrator be so concerned with territory do you feel? Are they estranged from their family? Does this passage reveal more about the narrator than his family? Does his home life appear ritualistic and therefore habitual? Is this technique particular to the first-person narrator’s point of view?
- Are the descriptive details vividly expressed in this passage? Are the details made vivid through their particularity and position? What is the effect of this precision? How far are the senses subdued or do you feel they are heightened through the overriding sense of claustrophobia? Are we aware that the geography of this room is uneasily familiar to the narrator? Could we even talk about the familiar being defamiliarized? Why are personal pronouns so important in this description? What do these pronouns communicate about intimacy or the lack of it within this domestic situation?
- What aspect of the passage strikes you as being the most unusual? Why do you believe this? Think about the way a narrator creates a world that we can lose ourselves in, even though we may feel alienated by the voice of the narrator? Remember this applies to Macbeth when he suddenly transforms from an arrogant, tyrannical monster into a suffering human being once again after the announcement of his wife’s death. ( Act Five)
