Personal View of 'A Manual for Cleaning Women'(Lucia Berlin)

Title: A Manual for Cleaning Women

Rate: 8.0/10

    Maggie, the protagonist of the story, is a cleaning woman whose husband died. To live with her four kids without a dad, she has to live harshly, even though she is educated well. Unfortunately, the education that she had cannot help her get a job as a cleaning woman.

    In several workplaces(lots of houses), she met a lot of people. The similarity that I want to point out between the house owners is that they lack of something. Mrs. Jessel does not know her husband is having an affair with someone, because she is very forgetful(I think she is having Alzheimer's disease). Blum is very sensitive, Burke's house is always the same as time stopped, and Johansen's husband, Johnson, died six months ago.

    When she goes to different houses, she can get some encouragement. At first, she collected many sleeping pills, and it looks like she wanted to follow her husband, Terry. However, at the end of the story, she thinks that she does not want to die. It can be seen in the sentence, 'Ter, I don't want to die, actually.' Then, she cried. She recovers her humanity by meeting different people who have different stories. At last, she can sympathize with Johansen, and that can be a reason why she cried.

    Even though it was hard to read because it was boring, I can give at least 8 points to this story because the process in that Maggie recovered her humanity and the change of her attitude was impressive.