Her negative attitude towards marriage and housewives could be because of her view upon her mother. Her mother worked very hard when Jade was a child and Jade was brought up by au pairs. She looks at her mother as a taut figure who is very controlling. Jade thinks she has forgotten how to relax. I think she feel kind of neglected or slighted because in page 3 lines 58-59, the text says:
Thought Jade viciously, standing stock-still, outraged; like be there with us. For us.
It shows she got a strained relationship to her mother and it can explain why Jade doesn’t want to be like her or other housewives when she “grow-up.”
The mother, with the child who’s stuffed a lentil up her nose, is actually all that Jade never want to become. Her description of the mother is very negative she uses words like ostrich, flabby and overweight which emphasizes her negative attitude towards people of “the woman’s kind.”
Inside the house she sees a lily on its last legs. I believe it symbolizes the woman. As young she was like Jade, beautiful and full of hopes and dreams, but after many years of marriage and childcare she is now tired and withered. The lentil, which is stocked in the child’s nose, maybe symbolizes all the trouble the woman has gone trough or it simply symbolizes all the problems everybody has to go trough during their life.
She turned with relief back into the shinning spring morning and started to sprint, fast and light, a quick off the blocks as Atlanta.
Jade is still very young an she is relieved to get away from the troubles the reality can give and the comparison to Atlanta indicates her young nature and her view of marriages, she need a husband who can keep up with her.
Although it seems like there has happened a development or a change in Jades opinion about housewives or at least her mother.
“My mother’s got four,” said Jade censoriously. “And a job. Goodbye.”
This is Jade’s reply to the woman’s complains and it indicates that Jade maybe doesn’t despise her mother as much as at first sight. It actually sounds like she is a bit proud of her. Maybe she realizes that her mother actually has done a good job compared to the woman or that there is a good reason for housewives to act like they are acting.
So maybe Jade will, despite all her prejudices, end up like her mother and other housewives who blossomed as young, full of beauty and dreams but because of all the problems (lentils) in life they ended up as dully, bourgeois, solitary, withered Lilies.
Opgave C.1.
I find the upper secondary school in Denmark very different from the primary and secondary school (the elementary school) especially in the relation to responsibility. In the upper secondary school students are treated much more as responsible individuals than in the elementary school. The explanation for this could be because the students show more responsible behaviour. This makes perfect sense as they are older and more mature and I believe responsibility comes with age. Another reason for the students to act more responsible, and in that way be treated as responsible individuals, is also because of the consequences in the upper secondary school. Consequences are missing in the elementary school, it is not as important to act and be responsible, in the elementary school, because it is decided by law they have to be taught and the teacher can’t do anything else then treat pupils in the elementary school as children, whereas students in the secondary school will be excluded if they don’t take any responsibility.
