The story under analysis is written by a novelist, a poet, a short-story writer Muriel Spark. She was born in 1918 and was educated in Edinburgh. Before World War II she spent several years in Central Africa. M. Spark's first novel `The Comforters' was fallowed by `Robinson', `Momento Mori', `The Ballad of Peckham Rye', `The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie', `The Girls of Slender Means' and others. Her writing is unique and intriguing and always thought provoking. The most obvious characteristic of her style is that she succeeds in crafting an interesting group of characters. All M. Spark's stories are distinguished by beauty, elegance, wit and shock value. No other writer commands so exhilarating a style - playful and rigorous, cheerful and venomous, hilariously acute and coolly supernatural. Some of these characteristics may be found in the story under analysis.
Let's start from the structure of the text. Several forms of presentation interrelate in it. They are a piece of narration that takes the greater part, a piece of character-drawing, some dialogues.
The narration is done in the first person. The narrator Lorna is her own protagonist. She tells us how she lives, about people she meets, places she works and about things she likes or dislikes. Her first job was a junior in a solicitor's office. She didn't like it because everything there was far from clean. But Lorna liked her second job in a Publisher's agency because the place was clean and light and people there were more or less educated. Then she tells us how she got acquainted with Mr. and Mrs. Darby. She spent a lot of time with them and visited even Jim's mother's place. But the thing she didn't like about them was their mess. She says also that she met Willy, she liked him very much but his house was always unhygienic, that's why she made up her mind to live with her parents in the place she got used to live.
Well, though it is a complete story I didn't manage to find all elements of the plot. I think that the greater part of the story is the development that goes almost up to the end of it. The climax coincides with the last paragraph where Lorna tells her parents that she can't change people; she will not marry Willy and wants to stay at her sweet home.
The story is written in a mocking cheerful mood which is revealed with the help of mostly syntactical stylistic devices. Thanks to a great amount of syntactical stylistic devices we see the girl's attitude to cleanliness. M. Spark resorts to some cases of repetition, framings and epiphoras in order to underline that any dirty cracked thing gives her a surprise or even a shock.
Framing: `you should have seen the mess.'
`...it gave me a surprise.'
Epiphora: `...offices were far from clean.'
`...who was far from smart in appearance.'
`...facilities were far from hygienic.'
`...sheets were far from clean.'
`The furniture was far from new they were far from houseproud.'
Repetitions: `window ledges were chipped'
`the paintwork was all chipped'
`the cups were all cracked'
`cracked lino'
`Jim's mother's place was very cracked and old'
Anadiplosis: `There were shelves all round the room, with old box files on them. The box files were falling to pieces...'
Having read a lot of words with negative meaning it seems that the main character is not satisfied with anything. But it is not so. We can see two different attitudes to the jobs that are shown on the contrast with the help of several syntactic stylistic devices.
Epiphora: `The worst shock of all was the cups. It was my duty to make tea, mornings and afternoons.'
`It is a modern block, with a quarter of an hour rest period, morning and afternoon.'
`Mr. Grasham, who was far from smart in appearance.'
`Mr Marwood is very smart in appearance.'
The characterization is done mostly indirectly. Thanks to the stylistic devices we can learn some information about Willy.
Simile: `He had a nice way, and he took me out in his car, which was a good one, but dirty inside as his place.'
`He would not change his shirt very often, or get clothes, but he went round like a tramp, lending people money, as I have seen with my own eyes.'
Epiphora: `I said he had not done so, which was almost true, because he did not attempt to go to the full extent.'
`He gave me several gifts over the period, which I took, as he would have only given them away, but he never tried to go to the full extent.'
As for Lorna, it is clear that she is a pedantic woman but the problem is that she doesn't understand that all the people are brought up in different families, with different rules and it is impossible to change everybody in the way you like. I think that the author wanted to hint that such people as Lorna live their own lives, they do not want to get used to something new and my opinion is that it is very difficult to find a wife or a husband if you are a pedant.