On pale green walls

The short story, ”On pale green walls” is written by Clare Wigfall and published in 1997.
The story is about a mute girl named Violet, who lives in a religious family. One day she notices Virgin Mary, as a statue in the church, a beautiful woman in a blue dress and white shawl over her head, and she strongly catches Violet’s attention. Violet begins noticing her in many different places and immediately feels very connected to this woman. As Violet is just a little child she has no idea, who Virgin Mary is and her relations to Jesus and God. One-Day Violet notices her on the front page of the newspaper that her father is reading, only this time she is holding a baby in her arms. She gets very jealous and mad to see the love and affection Virgin Mary seem to feel for this baby, and Violet reacts by perforating the baby’s eyes and drawing red out of its mouth to look like blood stains. When her parents see this they get very angry and concerned to see their daughter’s, almost sadistic, behavior.
The misunderstanding leads us to the main themes in this short story, which is the lack of communication between a little child and adults. Violet’s mother can’t see why she would want to hurt the baby, who in this case, is actually Jesus.
We are not told the age of Violet, but implicit we can tell that she is very young. An example is when she gets frightened by an old man and hides between her mother’s legs. In this sentence; “Frightened by his wrinkles, I shrank into my mother’s legs.” (page 8, line 11) we can tell that she is a child. As a child, we find protection and comfort by hiding behind our parents and she can’t be very tall, as she is able to hide behind her mother’s legs.
In the middle of the story Violet, finds a dead bird on the ground, and it is explained how her fingers are itching to pick it up and that shows a childish and curious mind.
Violet is an innocent, honest and naive little girl who still has a lot to learn, just like every other child. She reacts by how she feels, and she does not know about unwritten rules, which her parents think she does.
In the story, we see everything from Violet’s point of view, as she is the first person narrator. Even though Violet is mute, we anyhow get an insight of her thoughts and feelings. It is clear that there is a communication problem between Violet and her parents and that is not just because she is mute. In one part Violet learns that “you must never draw on newspapers”(page 9, line 72). Violet thinks her wrongdoing is to draw on the newspaper, but really, the problem her parents is seeing is that she acted very disrespectful against this religious icon. I interpret that Virgin Mary reflects a calm and loving female and she misses those values from her own mother. An example is the way her mother impatiently deals with her, “.. my mother was irritable and kept grabbing my sleeve and pulling me along so that I couldn’t help but let my feet fall on the gashes between paving stones.”(page 9, line 75). Her mother takes Violet to the church to get advice from the priest and they worry about her behavior. On the way to the church Violet picks up a dead embryo bird, she takes good care of it and hides it in her mitten. The way Violet is taking care of the dead bird can be seen as a compensation. Violet takes care of it the way she would like her own parents to take care of her, instead of always being misunderstood and annoying her mom. In addition, of that Virgin Mary is an example of how loving and caring a mother should be and that is why Violet gets frustrated to see that she already has a child to take care of. In the church Violet, see a picture of some tribal men standing next to white stiff-looking men. This is a symbol of Violet’s relationship to her mother. The men are not able to understand each other because they don’t speak the same language and comes from different cultures. It is the same between Violet and her mother, they are in different places in life and Violet’s mother is not able to put herself in Violet’s position as a naive and curious little child. The fact that Violet is mute and can’t express herself makes the problem even bigger.