Ma is an object of transaction among men, as she transfers from one male employee to another, until she is married. Now then, Ma was working for the literary man, as people advised him to "get a hag in once a week to clean up" (142, my italics). The literary man, insensitive to his surroundings and lonely as Ma Parker at the same time, dirties everything around him and leaves it all looking like "a gigantic dustbin" (142), but Ma "pitied the poor young gentleman for having no one to look after him" (142). Instead of thinking of herself, of her plight, her poverty and loneliness, Ma pities the gentleman she works for. At this point she does not stop to think of her troubles, of her grief, of her hard life. .

             While Miss Brill lives in a world of her own creation and is a mere spectator of life (much like the literary gentleman Ma Parker works for), Ma Parker is an active participant in the cruel and difficult reality of her time, and suffers the hardships of a working-class woman. Ma Parker realizes she has had a hard life and wonders to herself, "[w]hy must it all have happened to me?.what have I done?.What have I done?" (Mansfield 148-149). .

             Ma Parker, sadly, has grown "accustomed to the pain" (141). She and her husband "had thirteen little ones and buried seven of them. It if wasn"t the 'ospital it was the infirmary" (144). Her husband then dies of consumption and Ma Parker is left alone to struggle to bring up six little children and "keep herself to herself" (145). She must keep herself to herself, for "the gender-coded expectation [is] that Ma should swallow her suffering" (Lohafer 477) and keep on being strong for the sake of everyone concerned. She does not have the privilege of breaking down and actually feeling her pain. .

             "Mother, virgin, prostitute: these are the social roles imposed on women" (Irigaray 186).