Characters
The main character of the short story “Your Shoes” by Michèle Roberts is the narrator, a mother who is sad about her teenage daughter running away from home. Absent characters – yet equally important – are the narrator’s mother and father, the narrator’s husband and the narrator’s daughter. In what follows, we will analyse all of them, with a deeper focus on the narrator.
The narrator
The narrator is the main character in the short story and the one who renders the events to the readers. She is a developing character because she changes throughout the story and ends up acting like a mad woman.
Outer characterisation
Her outer characterisation reveals her to be a teacher, married, and to have a teenage daughter.
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Inner characterisation
In terms of inner characterisation, the mother comes across as a complex yet troubled woman. Initially, after her daughter’s running away from home, she comes across as worried that the girl might be begging or practicing prostitution in order to survive:
How do you feed yourself out there on the street? You’re too young to get a job, who’d have you and what could you possibly do? What do you have to do to be fed? Do you have to go with men, is that it? How else could you get the money if you don’t beg? (p. 30, ll. 9-12)
Then, she reveals that she is so distressed by the event that she feels she is on the verge of being maddened by pain: “If I imagine that you’re gone for good, that you’ll never come back, then this terrible wailing sound will begin and never stop, I might go mad.” (p. 29, ll. 29-21)
She even takes medication which helps her sleep and she does not go to work for a while (p. 31, ll. 9-11). Interestingly enough, she seems more concerned about her own psychological state than her daughter’s: “We have to be brave, we have to get on with living. The doctor told me: try to live from day to day. That’s what they tell dying people too…” (p. 31, ll. 17-19)
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The daughter
The narrator’s daughter is the second most important character in the story. As she is absent, she cannot give her mother proper explanations and the readers only find out what the mother reveals; we never find out the version of the daughter.
Outer characterisation
Her outer characterisation is done by her mother, who reveals that she is a teenager of fifteen (p. 34, l. 22) who has run away from home in the middle of the night.
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Inner characterisation
The daughter’s inner characterisation is done by the mother and she cannot defend herself, as she is absent. The mother depicts her as “spoilt” (p. 30, l. 34) and influenced by “her lot” (p. 30, l. 38), although she is supposed to be “innocent” (p. 31, l. 5), “trusting” (p. 31, l. 6) and “too kind” (p. 31, l. 6).
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The narrator’s husband
The narrator’s husband is important because his involvement is what made his daughter run away from home. He is not depicted physically, and we know that he was not the love of the narrator’s life:
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The narrator’s parents
Although they only appear in the narrator’s memories, the parents are very important because they have deeply influenced the way in which the narrator has grown up.
The narrator’s mother is depicted as being “stupid” (p. 32, l. 3), “fat” (p. 32, l. 7) and wearing “unsuitable clothes” (p. 32, l. 39):
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