The short story “Mount Pleasant” by Mary-Louise Buxton is about a little girl, who tells about her family. They have just moved to an old big house, Mount Pleasant – her, her parents, her sister Lena and her brothers, big Alec and George William. The story shows how a child sees and experiences different situations, and how they separate good and bad. Childhood and parenting are clear themes in the text. In the essay there will be analyzes of the setting, the narration and point of view, the language, make a characterization of the main character, and write about the structure. I will focus on the narrative techniques and the narrator’s language. At lasts an interpretation in the conclusion.

The setting of the story is happy, but still with a scary atmosphere. The kids love to play at the surroundings of the house, but can’t get dirty because of the mother. The narrator finds it exciting to be up at the attic, but she has to be careful. If her mother finds out she is there, she will be very angry. “If I was a boy like my big cousin Wilf or like my babby brother George William, I could get filthy dirty. But I don’t want Mammy to shout at me again today –and when I get mucky, she rubs me red raw in the bath...” (p. 1 lin. 28-30).
It is cold in the rooms, maybe because they are poor.

The narrator in the text is a first person narrator. The narrator is the little girl, Elizabeth, and she is the “I” in the story. This makes the story personal, but also subjective, because we only hear the story from her point of view. We also hear her thoughts. “I think I’ll leave the door open. The lacy collar of my frog is too tight around my neck and it scratches and I can’t reach the undo button. I’m all blowed up like an old frog.” (p. 1 lin. 10-12)
The events are not presented in a logical order, which makes the story seem random and disorganized.

The language of the