Beginning of Essay
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. &qu ....

Middle of Essay
.... 475). At the present point in the story, Ma Parker arrives to work in the house of the literary gentleman after she buried the previous day her loving grandson, Lennie, who was 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 ....