Indledning
Does it really matter if it is your real child or if it’s your stepchild? Is the love and affection you can feel any different? These are the kind of questions that we see in the short story “the meaning of clouds”, that are written by Natalie Cox in 2019.
The story is about a woman and her stepdaughter trying to get through everyday life and get used to each other and develop a bond that is strong like a mother and a daughter.
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Uddrag
The main character of the story is Mags. She has recently lost her job and is spending the day with Bella, her stepdaughter. Mags appears to be at a turning point in her life, where she is uncertain about her purpose and plans for the future.
When she is fired, she feels that her life “has ground to a halt.” Here Bella plays an important role because Mags is seeing things more clearly when Bella goes missing:
“only what the child thinks of you. That is what being a stepparent is at the start, it is waiting for them to decide.
And then it is the trying to keep their affection close, hold it tightly, keep it safe despite what the fairy tales tell them to think about stepmothers.”
In these lines, Mags cracks the code of being a good stepmother and realizes that even if she loves Bella, Bella also needs to choose her back. Which she has done “Her falling asleep on me”.
This is the situation where Bella chooses Mags too, Bella sleeping on Mags has the meaning of trust and feeling safe. So, in this way, they begin to develop trust and feelings towards each other.
Mags, therefore, develop throughout the story. In the beginning, she appears undecided about her purpose in life
but at the end, she discovers her attachment to Bella, whom she would “kill to keep safe.” She realized that simply taking care of Bella brings a kind of fulfillment to her life.
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