The story ‘Your shoes’ written by Michelle Roberts is a monologue, spoken by a woman whose daughter has left home – the speaker reflects on her own past, her relations with her parents and the now vanished daughter. One of the changes occurring is also the movement from childhood to adulthood, and the pain it brings to members of the family. The story is written in the style of streams of consciousness. The mother is getting mad of her grief. She can not control her emotions of missing her daughter a lot. In the story a family member has fled from the family home. There is a reduction in the number of people in the family unit, ‘you’re not here any longer so how can I talk to you? You can’t speak to someone who isn’t there’. At the end of the story she seems to think that her daughter has returned, but this appears to be a fantasy. In the AQA Anthology, there is an illustration of a pair of trainers- we know that the shoes in question are white trainers with ‘white laces that’ the narrator has tied together so that ‘’they won’t get separated or lost’’ and that she has ‘’washed and ironed’’. We also know that the narrator bought them without her daughter’s approval or even involvement. Your shoe is very much about the ways in which parents and children communicate or fail to do so. Michele Roberts considers how parents can oppress children by trying to live through them, and how we confuse material gifts with real concern for others’ welfare. The story looks at ideas of self-knowledge and self-deception- but ends with an emphatic denial of what the reader sees to be true. The story is also, therefore, makes us question the judgement and truthfulness or sanity of the narrator. In this story the mother refuses to move on- where the old man lets his favourite pigeon go, the narrator of Your Shoes shuts herself, her memories and her daughters’ shoes away, locking out her husband, who might threaten her fantasy with an explanation of how things really are. The relationship between mother and daughter seems to have changed dramatically. The woman appears to think she knew her daughter deeply but in fact she doesn’t know her at all.
Sexual maturity plays a vital role in individuals’ people life. In ‘Superman and Paula Brown’s new snow suit’, it is the colour that helps to express the child’s state of mind and maturity. At the beginning, everything seems to be fine and bright. But in the ending of the story we find that the colour getting to fade away and getting darker and duller. In the story ‘Growing Up’ and ‘Superman and Paula Brown’s new snow suit’, we can see the most obvious way of growing up that is they become much more aware of the opposite sex. In the story of ‘superman and Paula brown’s new snow suit’ two of the children Jimmy lane and Paula Brown’s in time to time they noticed each other and it is clear that they liked each other and this was their first step of sexually maturity. In the story ‘Growing Up’ the two sisters are unaware that they are becoming sexually mature, they are beginning to practise although they are unknown about what they are doing. A father is the first person in the every women life who falls in love with. When the father gets hurt and wants to leave, the girls grave his attention by changing their way of act, they become nice and persuade him to stay with them and put the medicine in the wound too. This all shows the faster way of growing up. They are becoming sexually mature very faster in their parents eyes. At the end of ‘Growing up’ the father realises that her daughters are no longer the kid that he used to play with, they are now turning to adults and he should let it to be – ‘’she’s growing up – and so am I’’. Every parent wants their children to be the best and have a good relationship with them. Like in the story ‘Your shoes’ the mother thinks it is always important to have a good relationship with her daughter but she failed to have. ‘’ Daughters ought to be close to their mothers. I wasn’t to mine.’’ The woman is jealous of her daughter, who has just run away, because her own mother liked her more; ‘She loved you more than she loved me, it isn’t fair’. This shows that this woman never really had a happy childhood and had a bad relationship with her own mother. In the ‘superman and Paula brown’s new snow suit’, Sylvia Plath has kept the main characters name and age a secret. Just like in ‘Growing up’ and ‘Your Shoe’.
The behaviour of the woman in ‘Your shoes’ is that of the mad woman, ‘’at least this paper has ruled lines so my writing can’t fall off’’. She is in fact mad with grief at the disappearance of her only daughter. The story is written in the style of streams of consciousness, which I think is very effective as it helps convey the emotions of the woman. She has written in the style of streams of consciousness to spread her feelings and emotions, the pain she is suffering to the readers which she is carrying alone. The woman is trying all her best to be a good and responsible mother, and the day that her daughter runs away, the mother buys her daughter a pair of new shoes. She holds on to these shoes as if they will give her some sort of clue as to where her daughter is, but obviously, they don’t. At the end of the story the mother says, ‘you’re so small and pale. Let me hold you while you cry’. She talks with the shoe because her daughter has not returned yet and she imagines the shoe to be her daughter. Just the same case is in ‘Superman and Paula brown’s new snow suit’, the young person mother has always been overprotective of her child, ‘mother believe that I should have an enormous amount of sleep, and so I was never really tired when I went to bed’, and tried to protect her child from what is going on in the world around them. At Paula browns Birthday, they decide to go to the movies. The main character tells us that ‘Mother had found out that the main feature was snow white before she would let me go, but she hadn’t realised there was a war picture going on’. But this time she was not protected by her mother from changing to adulthood. In the movie the young person sees the real world moving around. The death of the people in war. She realises there is no superman like things in this cruel world and superman has never been exist in this world. No one was able to save her from nightmares. The death of childhood is more of a figurative death, and occurs in both ‘Your shoes’ and ‘Superman and Paula brown’s new snow suit’. When children grow into adults, it is like a part of them inside dies. The mother in ‘Your shoes’ does not accept the reality that her daughter has run away. She thinks it’s all her fault that she ran away. She blames herself for not becoming so close and caring to her, so she ran away.’’ Now I realise how you kept yourself from me, how I didn’t really know you at all’’ Now she wish to be close with her daughter but its too late. Her daughter has run away from her and she doesn’t where she has gone and is very worried about it. She believes that everybody thinks that she is a bad mother and that everyone is laughing at her –‘’People pretend to be kind but they are ghouls. They ring up to see how I am and I can hear them gloat. Its not their fifteen-year-old daughter who’s left home and gone off God knows where.’’ She is now mentally and physically sick. All her power is loss dreaming and thinking about her daughter. ‘’I’m sure you’d never have left if you realised I’d be this upset. I thought I knew you as well as I know this house’’. She thinks her daughter still to be a child and she is showing her childish action running from home, mother is unknown about the nature process that her daughter is no longer child she has turned to an adult and has ran away from home. ‘‘You’re too young to get job, who’d have you and what could you possibly do?’’ she locked herself inside her daughter room to feel the warmth of love of her daughter and she too is afraid about her husband and don’t want to get disturb by anyone.’’ I’ve unplugged the telephone so that I can concentrate on you and we shan’t be disturbed ‘’.
In ‘Growing up’ the father learns quickly that he must let his girls grow up and explore their womanhood, and he must accept that they are no longer little girls anymore. The part where they want to watch children’s programs and play silly games with funny hats on, and the art where they are not embarrassed by the strange things their parents do. This death of childhood is what scares parents the most. His two daughters, 12 year old Jenny and Kate, who is a year older, appear to be mysteriously quiet at the very beginning of the story. But to their father this silence is not a normal one, ‘There was no answer. And he stopped, in surprise’. At the beginning he was feeling like something is strange today so at the end of the day and the end of the story he realises that they are now turning to adults. At first when he was been attacked by girls he was totally unknown what they were trying to show and do, he thinks are the mad who is attacking their own father. Then he somehow began to realise. I think that these girls do not know how to control their emotions, showing early signs of growing up, and becoming adults. They go from soft and quiet, to loud and very aggressive in a short space of time. This shocks their father, as he thought he knew his girls and didn’t know that they had their aggressive side also. He was shocked. Then again he found his daughters mindful and loving side.’ she looked down at him with an expression he did not recognize. What was the game, medical maternal? Was she going to laugh? But the child frowned. She was also struck by something new and unexpected. Now only he was sure and realises that it was their changing time from child to adult’. Now only he realises that all that stuff that was going around was a sudden change from childhood to adulthood. They are now turning to become a woman not a child, they are now becoming an adult and he shouldn’t be the one to block their way rather help them and let them grow in peace and good environment.