The American Working-Class Short Story

Abstract In Katherine Mansfield’s short story ‘Life of Ma Parker’, the old, widowed charwoman is plagued by ‘unbearable’ thoughts of her deceased grandson Lennie: ‘Why did he have to suffer so?’ Lennie’s unfortunate death in the story is not a solitary instance of tragic portrayal of working-class childhood in Mansfield’s short fiction. In several of her tales she empathetically explores the marginalized existence of such children, occasionally juxtaposing their deplorable existence with their elite counterparts’. From social exclusion, child labour, parental rejection, infant and child mortality on the one hand to physical and verbal abuse, bullying in the school and appalling living conditions on the other; Mansfield's exploration of the working-class childhood in her short fiction is not only psychologically complex but sociologically significant. Focusing on the relevant short stories in her oeuvre, this brief analysis intends to closely examine such depictions of marginalized childhood experiences, particularly in light of the oppressive societal conditions that validate their repressive alienation and sufferings. Tracing various biographical circumstances that may have fostered Mansfield’s deep empathy with the children’s’ predicament, this analysis also draws attention to her subtle oblique narrative strategies that effectively represent the plight of working-class children in a convincing and an ingeniously nuanced manner.

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La Scuola di Francoforte in esilio: storia di un'inchiesta sull'antisemitismo nella classe operaia americana

MEMORIA E RICERCA ◽

10.3280/mer2009-031008 ◽

2009 ◽

pp. 121-140

Author(s):

Catherine Collomp

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

World War Ii ◽

Working Class ◽

Social Research ◽

Third Reich ◽

Columbia University ◽

Anti Semitism ◽

The Third Reich ◽

American Working Class ◽

Working World

- Between July and December 1944 the Institute for social research of Columbia University made known the results of a survey on anti-Semitism in the American working class carried out by the Jewish Labor Committee of New York. The results of the research confirmed the rooting of a few stereotypes and prejudices on Jews in some specific segments of the American working world: more widespread among "blue collars" rather than "white collars" and among the white population rather than the black. This form of anti-Semitism involved, paradoxically, also the workers of factories producing weapons to fight against the Third Reich. A form of anti-Semitism which did not stop with the end of World War II but turned, using the same mechanisms analyzed by migrant German sociologists, into a discrimination against communist militants.Parole chiave: Scuola di Francoforte, esilio, classe operaia, antisemitismo, razzismo, comunismo School of Frankfurt, exile, anti-Semitism, working class, racism, communism

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