著者

NAKAGAWA Yoshimi

出版者

大東文化大学大学院英文学研究会

雑誌

Paulownia Review (ISSN:18807496)

巻号頁・発行日

no.24, pp.21-30, 2018

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The narrator of The Pure Gold Baby (2013), Eleanor, is an elderly woman, a widow and mother of two sons, a neighbor friend of a protagonist, she has started to write clandestinely about her friend and single mother, yet intellectual Jessica Speight. She is an anthropologist and her career is interrupted by her disabled daughter, Anna, who requires special needs. Eleanor calls Anna the pure gold baby throughout the novel. This novel is written in the form of retrospection by Eleanor. At the present moment when Eleanor starts to write this story she is in her early sixties, widowed and her two sons have married and she has lived alone in her own house in North London, which is a typical middle-class residential area. The narrative point of view becomes an important key. These are some features in Eleanor's own narrative. Her narration is based on her secret observation of the life of Jess and Anna, while her own family affairs are not discussed. Her narrative is repeated and meandered with persistence. One of the significant points with regard to Eleanor is a fact that she is about to retire from her job, which makes her consciousness of her aging. Instead the object of Eleanor's interest is directed to Jess's life. Eleanor claims that Jess is too close to her daughter and therefore she only does "desk-bound" work to keep their life style. Anna who was born with cognitive and developmental problems, and yet is branded as "pure gold baby" and supported by her mother and the neighbors. Eleanor employs euphemism in order to avoid direct and realistic expressions of Anna's condition by means of using the phrases like "special needs" and "a warm woolen glove". Eleanor's attitude towards Anna shows that she is concerned with society's sense of discrimination against physicall and mentally handicapped children through the indirect phrases. Eleanor repetitively criticizes that Jess is very protective of Anna, but Anna is loyal to her loyal mother and Jess has become an indispensable person for her. Eleanor's narrative points out that Jess is an overprotective mother. Eleanor repeatedly conveys a message of selfless love of a mother for a child by branding Anna "the pure gold baby". Drabble attempts to make Eleanor confirm the relationship between Jess and Anna throughout her narrative. Mother gives a constant devotion and love to Child, even if God is dead.