Black Madonna

Oleksandra Sydorenko “The Black Madonna” by M.Spark

The extract under analysis is taken from the short story “The Black Madonna” by famous award-winning Scottish novelist Muriel Spark. The Times newspaper named Spark in its list of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945"
The extract is about a Catholic childless couple Raymond and Lou Parker. They live in their three-roomed apartment and try to cultivate their tastes in an aristocratic manner. But in the end of the story they are presented from the negative point of view, because they left their child in the asylum.
The short story belongs to the belles-lettres functional style, the main aim of which is to reveal the development of the conflict in which the characters are involved. It is told in the 3rd person narration from the point of view of an omniscient anonymous narrator.
As to the narrative compositional forms presented in the extract, it contains exposition, where the family of Parkers is introduced to the reader.
The direct temporal marker “in the twenties century” makes the readers know the time the story takes place. With the help of such indirect markers of time as “few who owned a motor car”, “television receiver”, “a course of injections” the reader can guess that the action is in the 60th of the 20th century. The spatial markers “three-roomed flat”, “the pictures” provide the reader with the information that the story takes place in a town. The indirect spatial marker “voted Labour” gives the idea that the place of an action is in England. The implying detail “the few tenants …who owned a motorcar” denotes that the couple is quite rich. But the Lou’s widowed sister with eight children is mentioned in the extract and the detail “they sent her a pound a week” describes the couple like mean people.
The narrator describes the couple using such details as “read two books a week”, “Queen”, “Woman’s Own”, “Life”, “Motoring” which provide the reader with the information of understanding the Parkers like an intelligent couple. The detail “Jane Austein’s books were too Victorian” gives the reader the idea that the Parkers are not profound readers.
The details “They voted Labour”, “they went to the pictures only when the Observer had praised the film”, “they applied the word “Victorian” to ideas and people they did not like” show, that the Parkers wanted to be modern.

The effect of anaphoric repetition in construction “ they considered…, they adhered…, they believed…” serves to emphasize the description oft he family.
The concept of the story is focused on the hypocrisy and racism of the protagonists which is revealed though an enantiosemy, the black becomes good and white-bad.
Раймонда и Лу можно считать счастливчиками, получившими трехкомнатную квартиру, несмотря на то, что у них не было детей. Семьи с детьми имели первенство, но их имена годами были в списках ожидания. Некоторые говорили, что Раймонд дал взятку одному из чиновников, который был директором авто компании.
Паркеры были в числе тех немногих жителей Крипс Хауза, у которых был автомобиль. Они не любили большинство своих соседей, имели телевизор, а отсутствие детей давало возможность расширять свои вкусы. Поэтому их привычки и развлечения немного отличались от соседских.