Analyse af Doris Lessings 'The Mother of a Child in Question'

The Mother of the Child in question, written by Doris Lessing, is a short story of a social worker, Stephen Bentley, who has to persuade the mother of ten years old mentally retarded girl called Shireen, and to let her little daughter go to a special school which is for mentally ill kids. The mother, Mrs Khan, refuses the fact that her daughter is abnormal. She simply refuses this opinion of the social worker, Stephen Bentley, about a special school, and she reacts like nothing is wrong with Shireen and she is a normal kid just like her other siblings.

There are a few more characters in this story, such as Shireen’s older brother Hassan, an important subordinate character, who translates Urdu to English and back for his mother. Mr. Khan is Shireen’s father. He did not show up for the meeting with the social worker, even though he had promised him on the phone.

The protagonist, Stephen Bentley takes us through his points of view during the whole story, where we follow his footsteps. His purpose in the story is to get Shireen admitted into a special school, but he fails exactly in the same way as the earlier social works did.