'The Man Who Loved Children
Commentary on a section of 'The man who loved children' by Christina Stead.The passage depicts a family and their move into a new home. The main character is Henny, the mother, a depressive and lonely character. The extract focuses on Henny's emotional descriptions of the new surroundings. Henny feels an instant dislike for the house; she refers to it as a 'tenement', suggesting decay and that it is falling apart. Her anger and hatred are implicitly stated throughout the piece, yet never explicitly. She describes the sink as 'leprous' as if this decay is somehow infectious. The overwhelming disrepair of the house seems to encourage a 'curious, dull...new sensation'. This seems to be a description of
The second stanza (so to speak) is the first conversation we hear. She has seen what she has become, and the way she is. The family may have moved house from the city so that she would become happier and healthier. If so, Henny is rejecting this charity; she feels uncomfortable in these new surroundings, a stranger in what is supposedly her own home. This, in accordance with many cases of depression is followed by angry and uncalled-for outbursts: '"stop that rot," she cried madly to Louie'. It is symbolic of her life which is also going through constant change - most obviously, the move. It is interesting that this change is marked by a definite break in the text where we move from long vivid sentences to short choppy dialogue. As Henny shouts at her daughter, it is remarked that Louie was not 'at all offended'. After this she sits silently viewing the 'plump girls in skin-tight satin' the man ploughing through the water in a 'suicidal rowboat'. But this time, (unlike previous times we suppose) it breaks 'for good and all'; there is a sense of loss and also a change in her actions. The way she sits in the rocking chair and people wait on her suggests that she is very ill and frail. She then seems to recognise the problem, and know what is happening: 'her heart was breaking'. It is also interesting that Henny is so influential over Louie, who: "(observed) more closely the many defects of the old house" but only after her mother has criticized it.
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