Mount Pleasant
”Mount Pleasant” is a short story written by Mary-Louise Buxton. It is written as a first person narrator, as a child called Elizabeth. It is written quite unstructured, mostly describing the life of Elizabeth and her family in their home in Mount Pleasant, not showing the stories twist until the end. The narrator uses a very childish language using expressions like “Mammy”, “babby brother” and “Eeny meeny miny mo”. As a short story, the plot and character descriptions are quite simple, but this story is written in a way where you can interpret a lot, without reading it. It is not told where the family comes from, or who the owners of the old house were, but it leaves hints, by the details of the story. It doesn’t say
When Elizabeth’s father sees the picture he puts it on their mantelpiece with their other photographs saying “He can be one of the family”. The morning after Elizabeth and Lena hears the mysterious noises, it has fallen off the mantelpiece, which means that the boy might have appeared from the photo, haunting at night, but going back in the picture at day. While most of story is quite simple and descriptive, this is the twist of the story, adding some mystery, though seeming like a small thing. This might symbolize the mind of a small child, Elizabeth in particular, their mind seeming simple, but has more to offer than by first glance. In the end where Elizabeth and her sister Lena goes to bed, they hear mysterious noises and Elizabeth feels as if there is someone sitting on her bed, but she can’t see anyone, indicating that there is a ghost haunting the house, the boy from the photograph.
The message of the story could be that there is more than meets the eye. The title “Mount Pleasant” indicates that this is a carefree happy story, which maybe it can also be interpreted as, but it seems there are some secrets and mysteries in this house, that you can’t really tell without thinking about it. The same goes for Elizabeth, which might just seem like a silly child, but if you look closer she seems like a intelligent, imaginative girl, which might can discover a lot of things that her parents and other adults