Rettelse af stil!:)

Heej, det virker til at man får mere ud af at ligge stilen herind:) Så det gør jeg nu: Står og skal aflevere min sidste stil i engelsk i aften, og det er bare super super vigtigt at jeg får en god karakter for den, da den ellers vil trække min årskarakter ned:( Min lærer jorder mig LATID for små dumme fejl, som jeg ikke selv kan se når jeg sidder med det, og er ved at være rigtig godt træt af det,da jeg faktsik selv synes jeg er "god" til det...


Derfor vil jeg meeget gerne have en til at rette den igennem.. Nogen der har tid og overskud til at gøre det inden den skal afleveres senere i aften!? Pleease pleease please! Det er kun grammatisk jeg kan have problemer, indholdet skal i ikke tænke over...

The short story “Life of Ma Parker” is written by Katherine Mansfield, and published in 1921. The short story is about an elder woman, Ma Parker, who has been working all of her life, trying to support herself and her family.
In the short story we get an idea of how the relationship was between the upper-class and the working- class in the 20th century of England. In the 20th century it was normal that the working-class, in order to survive, had to work for the middle/upper-class, as well as the middle/upper class needed the working-class to do all of the “dirty” work for them.
The short story begins in medias res, where we meet Ma Parker who is, at this time, a typical working-class citizen. Ma Parker has had a very sad life, full of tragedies. Even though she managed to get married and give birth to 13 children, her husband later on dies along with 7 of her kids. Latest, it is Ma Parkers grandson who passed away, which Ma Parker is deeply touched by.
Ma Parker grew up in Stratford, but we get the impression that she is without any form of education, as the short story tells us she didn’t even know William Shakespeare, even though he was from the same city as her. As she grew up, and in her early adult life, she worked several jobs for the upper/middle class, all of them providing her only a small and unfair salary. This was the life of most working-class citizens in England in the early 20th century, as they were forced to work blue collar jobs for the middle/upper class, in order to make money to support their family and themselves.
When we meet Ma, she is currently working for a literary gentleman, as a house cleaner every Tuesday. A job she clearly doesn’t enjoy, but a job she desperately needs.
Ma Parker definitely knows her place in the society, as she speaks very polite to the gentleman she is working for, even though she probably is aware of how the man sees her. From years and years of hard work, her body is not what it used to be, and especially her feet are marked. Besides this, we also get the impression that Ma Parker suffers from psychologically problems. She hasn’t cried for many many years, as she hasn’t allowed herself to become weak, and to “break down” as she calls it. This has lead to a kind of coldness in her personality, where she is trying so hard to look tough on the outside. Nevertheless, Ma Parker, allows herself to cry in the end of the story, as the loss of her grandson apparently was the last straw to break the camel´s back for.
The literary gentleman, who owns the house Ma Parker comes to clean that day, is a typical middle/upper class bachelor of the early 20th century. From the very beginning, we see that the author tries to make the difference of these two characters very clear. We see that the gentleman’s language is very different from Ma Parker´s. He speaks formal British English; whereas Ma Parker´s language is much more colloquial-language, where she uses a number of contractions of words. This shows us, that the gentleman indeed is well-educated, and that Ma Parker is not. This is just one way for the author to once more emphasize the difference between Ma Parker and the gentleman, who both represents each social class. We also see very early in the short story, that the gentleman has a clear understanding of how the people of the working-class behave. “The because these people set such as store by funerals”; where “these people” is a reference to all of the people of the working-class. He is well-educated himself, so therefore he thinks he knows exactly how the non-educated lower-class people think. We see several times in the short story that the gentleman feels raised above the people of the working-class, when he, amongst other things, calls Ma Parker “a hag” and “a poor old bird”.
He never had to deal with poverty, poorly-paying jobs or anything like that, as he was born into the middle/upper class, and had the money and education-opportunity, from the very beginning. It is likely that he has had white collar jobs, but he can’t put himself in people like Ma Parkers place, as he never had to work in order to survive. It is also obvious, that this man is used to having people around him doing the jobs he finds too demanding or “dirty”. Why should he clean his house everyday, when he can afford someone to come in once a week, and do it all for him at once? The way he runs his house is also the authors way of telling us, that the bachelors of the middle/upper class couldn’t take care of them selves, and that they actually needed the working-class to do several things for them.
You might call the gentleman a snob, but this was very normal to think that way, if you were a gentleman of the middle/upper class in the early 20th century of England.
You might also say that the middle/upper class and the working class live in a kind of symbioses. The working-class needs the jobs the middle/upper-class can offer them, in order to earn the money for survival; as well as the middle/upper class needs the working-class, in order to do all the work they don’t feel they ought to do.
Besides the awkward situation where the gentleman cant figure out what to say about Ma Parkers deceased grandson, their relationship is actually quite relaxed. They are both aware about each others social status, as the gentleman knows he is raised above his servant, and Ma Parker knows she is a subject to him. Ma Parker always refers to her employer as a “gentleman” and calls him “sir”, while the gentleman uses much less flattering words about Ma Parker as explained earlier. However, besides the fact that their mutual relationship is marked by the fact that they come from two different social statuses, they both seem to have some form of respect for one another, as they are aware of the fact, that they need each other. Especially we see Ma Parker being very conserned for her employer when she anonces that she feels sorry for him not having anybody else to take care of him. This also tells us, that Ma Parker actually is a very caring person. We don’t hear the gentleman speak of Ma Parker that way, so it is not difficult to know whos side the author is on. The author is clearly on the working-class side, as she uses this short story to tell how hard it was to be a working-class citizen at that time.
The ending of the short story is very important, as we learn that Ma Parker is finally letting her parades fall, as she gives in to the sorrow of her deceased grandson, and looks for place to cry in private. Even though she is going to cry for the first time in many years, we don’t get the feeling that she is about to give up, but more that she is finally allowing herself to be a human being and show her feelings. The story is very open, but as a reader of this story you cant help thinking that after this, she might be able to have a happier life.
Ma Parker and the gentleman are two stereotypical representatives of two social classes; the middle/upper class and the working class. We learn through this sad short story, that in the early 20th century of England, there was a big difference between these social classes, and that the difference had a huge affect on how people treated each other. More sadly, the difference also had the affect that the two classes had a very clear view on how they ought to be treated. This led to cocky attitudes among the people of the middle/upper class and suppression among the working-class.