Analysis and Interpretation of "Mount Pleasant " by Mary Louise Buxton

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Engelsk studentereksamen A-niveau 2. delprøve August 2011. Assignment A. Mount Pleasant is a short story by Mary Louise Buxton, written in the year of 2005. It's about the everyday life of a little girl called Elizabeth. She lives with her mother, father, baby brother named George William and a sister named Lena. A boy called "Big Alec" is mentioned, but his role in the family does not appear in the text. It seems like he could be an older brother with a special status, based on his name and because his inappropriate behaviour is tolerated by the mother. "...Alec comes tearing down the staircase. If me or Lena ran down stair like that, Mammy would send us back up and make us walk down again properly. But she doesn't say anything to Big Alec" (page 2, line 71-73). Mount Pleasant starts, when the reader is being dumped right into an ongoing "crime". Elizabeth is up in the attic of their house, which she is definitely not supposed to. According to herself, getting found up there will result in a punishment involving a wooden spoon. In the attic, she reveals a picture from the muck. A picture of a boy, whose age she estimates to about 9 or 10 years, and follows up with the sentence "...not that much older than I am." (page 2 line 59). This means that she is just about 7 or 8 years old. Elizabeth tells us how she enjoys playing around with her sister, and her cousins Little Fran and Wilf. She also tells us how they can play for a little longer when being watched by their father instead of their mother. The mother is presented as the "evil" one, with a constant need for picking on someone. The father is the sweet one, who carries the kids around, plays with them and generally treats them nicely. Even though the father seems to be the sweet parent, he is still able to keep up his authority. This is shown when the picture, which Elizabeth brought down from upstairs, is

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