SOURCE: Lohafer, Susan. “Why the ‘Life of Ma Parker’ Is Not So Simple: Preclosure in Issue-bound Stories.” Studies in Short Fiction 33, no. 4 (fall 1996): 475-86.

In the following essay, Lohafer recommends a “storiographical” approach to “Life of Ma Parker,” contending that a close analysis of this type reveals otherwise unappreciated complexity in the story.

She's a widowed charwoman. Yesterday, her loving little grandson, the light of her dreary life, was buried. As servant, wife, and mother, she's the generic British working-class female at the turn of the century—cowed by drudgery and burdened by loss. Her husband, a baker, died of “white lung” disease, and those children who survived the high rate of infant mortality fell victim to other ills of the late-Victorian underclass: emigration, prostitution, poor health, worse luck. This is the “life” of Ma Parker, who comes to work after her grandson's burial, stunned by a grief...