"My Marbles Are Many-Coloured". The Colours of Age in Jackie Kay’s "These Are Not My Clothes"
Description:... Essay from the year 2020 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1.0, University of Freiburg (Englisches Seminar), language: English, abstract: In 2012, Jackie Kay published her third collection of short stories Reality, Reality, which was immediately considered ranking amongst the best of the genre. This essay seeks to explore the meaning of the colours of age in the short story "These are not my Clothes". Margaret is an elderly woman living in a retirement home where inhabitants are treated awfully – both physically and mentally. However, through the story’s witty and unreliable first-person narrator and the use of colour, the collection questions the societal concept of "the elderly" and the concomitant fear of age and growing old.
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