My Mother and Her Sister

My Mother and Her Sister

My Mother and her Sister

a) Analysis and interpretation of: "My Mother and her Sister":

"My Mother and her Sister" is a short story which was written in 1996 by Jane Rogers. The story is written with a first person narrator. We're not told if the narrator is a male or female, but I would guess that it is a female, because she is taken care of her aunt, and she is thinking about food and grandchildren. This says female. Also, a man wouldn't care so much about serving a good dinner, but she is very absorbed in food and gets sad because she can't make a proper meal. The story is written in an informal language with direct speech, which gives the readers an opportunity to feel as if they were a part of the story - this makes the story reliable.

Lucy and the narrator are the main characters. Dorothy is the mother of the narrator and Lucy's sister. Lucy stays with the narrator because Dorothy is dead. Lucy is 75 years old, and after 49 years of marriage Lucy has become a widow. She has 5 children and she used to be the perfect mother. She didn't go to work, she stayed home making jam, knitting cardigans and making home cooked meals for the family. Now Lucy has become elder and she has in someway changed to the opposite of what she used to be. She now has the same routine every day: "she goes to bed at nine, gets up at half past eight, rests in her room from two till four each afternoon" (line 40) she no longer has a interest in talking and she prefers meals made in the microwave. The narrator is the niece of Lucy. We don't know much about her, but she is a caring woman, who concerns about others. This we know because she takes care of her aunt. The narrator had always seen her aunt, Lucy, as the bunny-mummy, but the narrator realizes that her aunt no longer is the woman she always thought of. "I always thought of her as an easy, chatty woman, good at small talk and making you feel a home but she's self-contained and silent, she's composed" (line 37). It now seems a lot more like she's more into her soap-operas than her children.

Since Lucy has arrived it has been raining. The rain is the symbol of the sorrow of the narrator. Since her mother died, she hasn't cried, she hasn't talked to anyone about it. But when the rain stops, she finally opens up, and talks to Lucy about her mother. The day the rain stops, is the day the narrator sees the true colours of her aunt. The narrator finds out, that the aunt never has believed in happiness - which is one of the themes in the short story. "You can't have it. That the thing you want - when you get it, it's spoiled" (line 112). She believes that the feeling of happiness is real when you long for it, and when you feel it deep inside, but when you get to