Lost boys free essay sample

I have chosen to write a feminist analysis of the short story â€Å"Lost boys†. â€Å"Lost boys† is a feminist short story written by Deborah Moggach. A feminist analysis of a text focus on the way men and woman are portrayed and the overall message, which I am going to deal with in this following analysis of â€Å"Lost boys†. The short story â€Å"Lost boys† is about a couple and their relationship to the narrator’s mother-in-law, Lily. The story starts in â€Å"in-medias-res†, which I can see because the reader is thrown straight into the story without any introduction. Lily’s son, Ewan, believes that Lily is an untrustworthy and abnormal mother, but the narrator doesn’t agree in that. Although Ewan has told a lot of bad things about his mother, the narrator believes that her mother-in-law, Lily, is a romantic and good woman. Ewan thinks he had a deprived childhood because he doesn’t feel that Lily took care of him. We will write a custom essay sample on Lost boys or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page The narrator changes her view of Lily when she was in Hampstead Heath to visit Lily with her children. The narrator went out for a swim while Lily looked after the children, but when the narrator went back, Alex was gone. Then the narrator remembered when her husband told her about his childhood; â€Å"We’d rented a cottage in the New Forest and a lot of the grown-ups went swimming, naked, in a river. Afterwards she sat down and painted the others and I wandered off. She forgot me. I was only five. I wandered down the stream and fell in and nearly drowned All for the painting. † (Side 34 – line 31). Then the narrator realised that it was exactly the same that happened to Alex and that Ewan was right. Lily is a selfish woman who doesn’t think of anything else than her paintings and that’s the reason why she forgets Alex and Ewan. The narrator never told Ewan about what happened that day. Ewan is the narrator’s husband and the father to their two children, Cassie and Alex. Ewans father died when Ewan was a child and ever since he had been alone with his mother, Lily. Ewan believes that he had a deprived childhood with his mother, because she couldn’t take care of him. The narrator is Ewan’s husband and the mother to their two children, Cassie and Alex. The narrator tells the story in 3rd person, because she is able to empathize with all the characters in the story. In the start of the story, the narrator likes her mother-in-law, but after Lily forgot she when she supposed to look after him, the narrator changes her view of her. Lily was a famous painter and model called â€Å"Lily Frears† and lived in a cluttered mansion flat opposite the British Museum. Lily had been thought two marriages, one to a young sculptor and the other to Ewan’s father, who died of pancreatitis. In her young days she was a beautiful girl with ruddy skin and bold bypsy eyes and it seems like she can’t stand the idea of growing up and getting old, which I can see in the following quote from the text: â€Å"She was always Lily, newer Granny. She wouldn’t let them call her that because she felt the wings of mortality brushing her face; she said this, toutching her rouged check. † (Side 35 – line 26). Lily doesn’t cook dinner by herself so instead of cooking dinner she ate in the sandwich bar downstairs and her fridge was always almost empty, except from her can of Kit-e-Kat and gin. Lily is a bad mother because she can’t take care of her son, Ewan. This short story is a typical feminist story because it describes how a woman doesn’t adapt to the gender norms. A woman should be able to take care of her own children and cook dinner by herself, but Lily doesn’t live up to that. Lily can’t cook dinner or take care of her children and therefore she doesn’t adapt to the gender norms. I think the reason why Lily doesn’t adapt to the gender norms is that there is no man in her life, and therefore I think Lily behaves like a man instead of a woman. In the gender norms it supposed to be the mother who takes most care of the children and that’s the reason why Ewan doesn’t feel that he has a natural mother who takes care of him. I have chosen to put this short story into perspective to the society today because we live in a society with different gender roles. Woman’s supposed to do all the domestic duty and take care of the children whereas men supposed to do all the heavy works. Many people believe that it is wrong to have gender roles; these people are called â€Å"a feminist†. Lily is a feminist because she breaks the gender roles.