“There are two things needed in these days; first, for rich men to find out how poor men live, and second, for poor men to know how rich men work” quoted by Edward Atkinson.
It has been the nature of humanity, even before, to define a
man base on how much he has and not who he is, or to identify who a man is,
based on how much he has, and often times the authority to do something is
limited in regards to one’s social class, such a depiction can be read and seen
in the short story of Katherine Mansfield entitled the Doll’s house.
The doll’s house by Katherine
Mansfield shows the difference between rich and poor and how these social
classes lived, depicted by the two families; the Burnell family and Kelvey
family. Burnell family is rich in which they afford to have a big doll’s house
for the three children, “It was so big that the carter and Pat carried it into
the courtyard, and there it stayed, propped up on two wooden boxes beside the
feed-room door”, and it was elegant and a perfect house which described as “a
dark, oily, spinach green, picked out with the bright yellow house. Its two
solid little chimneys, glued on to the roof, were painted red and white, and
the door, gleaming with yellow varnish, was like a little slab of toffee. Four
windows, real windows, were divided into panes by a broad streak of green.
There was actually a tiny porch, too, painted yellow, with big lumps of
congealed paint hanging along the edge.” while the other family is poor which
has two daughters, “They were the daughters of a spry, hardworking little
washerwoman, who went about from house to house by the day.” In the story, the
Burnell family downgraded and bully the lower class. They see the poor people
as worthless, that even the teacher treated the Kelvey daughters so low, “Even
the teacher had a special voice for them; Kelvey's daughters, and a special smile
for the other children when Lil Kelvey came up to her desk with a bunch of dreadfully
common-looking flowers. ”
Obviously, the rich family exploits its power over the poor family. That being said, the story shows the big relation between power and wealth to society. The wealthier you are, the more you are obeyed and respected which are the attributes of having power. Wealth can be your power and not to mention power can give you more wealth as George S. Clason stated that “Wealth is power. With wealth many things are possible.”
The division of social classes in the story is identified through the parent’s job or income and life situations as a whole. As for the Kelvey family, they are considered poor since they Mrs. Kelvey is a washer-woman and her husband is rumored to be in prison, which affects how other students treated her daughter Lil and Else, which might be continued in the future because it was assumed that they would remain powerless due to their situations, “Lil Kelvey's going to be a servant when she grows up” said Emmie Cole. On the other hand, the power of the Burnell family would remain constant expectedly. However, the character of Kezia and with the doll’s house, most especially the lamp, shows that even if wealth and power can ruin one’s life, there are still rich people who see equality and that we still have something in common. A poor man can still see what the rich man sees and vice versa as Jean Bertrand Aristide said,
“We
are all equal, rich and poor, and we need a society where the people enjoy
their rights.”
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