Related questions with answers

How is the setting of the story’s frame, a woman standing at an ironing board, critical to the story’s themes?

The “you” the narrator addresses at the beginning of the story refers to a teacher concerned about Emily’s welfare. At first the narrator seems somewhat defensive (as in the third paragraph, when she sarcastically responds to the teacher’s request). How does the relationship between the narrator and the teacher evolve over the course of the story, so that by the end the narrator beseeches, “Only help her to know — help make it so there is cause for her to know” (para. 56)? To what extent might the narrator be addressing the reader as well as the teacher?

What does the speaker mean by her description of her daughter as “my blighted child, this wary aristocratic mole” (l. $14$ )? What specific details further on add to the speaker’s perception of her daughter?

Question

What structural purpose do the interruptions in the narrator’s interior monologue serve in the story? For instance, “Ronnie is calling. He is wet and I change him” in paragraph $43$ . Notice, too, how the speaker’s use of run-on sentences and made-up words — such as “four-year-oldness” (para. $16$ ) — contrasts with short declarative sentences such as “She was a beautiful baby” (paras. 5 and 8), “I was nineteen” (para. $9$ ), and “She was two” (para. $12$ ). What is the effect of this juxtaposition?

Solution

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There were several interruptions in the narrator's monologue in the story, and one example was in paragraph 43 that says, "Ronnie is calling"(p.270) and that the mother needs to attend to him. Another one was when her daughter Emily kept on asking her when she'll finish her ironing. These interruptions illuminate the realities of motherhood, where tasks keep on piling up no matter how hard she tries to maintain the pace in order to accommodate everything.