Laminex and Mirrors

by

Cate Kennedy

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Wealth and Class Identity Theme Analysis

Themes and Colors
Joy and Drudgery Theme Icon
Wealth and Class Identity Theme Icon
Death and Dignity Theme Icon
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Wealth and Class Identity Theme Icon

The narrator of “Laminex and Mirrors,” a young Australian woman who has just turned eighteen, has set her sights on traveling to Europe when the summer is over. She calculates that working at her new job as a hospital cleaner until that time will allow her to save up just enough money for her trip. Because the narrator considers her job temporary, she sees herself as different from and better than the working-class employees at the hospital, who are older and more permanent fixtures of the hospital’s staff. However, after spending more time around her new colleagues, the narrator begins to understand that her method of associating identity with class status oversimplifies her peers and diminishes the value of their contributions.

At the beginning of the short story, Kennedy’s narrator clearly defines herself apart from her new job duties. She also leans upon her confidence that she is not intended to remain a hospital cleaner to avoid staying present in the unpleasant situations that her work presents her with. “Laminex and mirrors, that's me,” the narrator says by way of introducing herself, and then qualifies the statement: “Or at least that's meant to be me.” The suggestion here is that though she thinks she is “meant” to be defined by her daily task—cleaning the laminate and mirror surfaces of the hospital—she does not see herself that way. Likewise, when the narrator is faced with an unpleasant task or interaction, she thinks about how she will soon be in London, and therefore distanced from the daily routines and connotations of low-wage work. While cleaning the rooms of patients who are recovering from elective surgeries, for example, the narrator remarks, “Like these girls, I'm filling in my own allotment of time here, except that when I leave, it'll be to buy that plane ticket to London, and be gone.” In other words, the narrator’s brief job as a hospital cleaner is a mere stepping stone on her way to bigger and better things.

Though the narrator disassociates her identity from her low-wage job, she is not the only one at the hospital to do so. Both her coworkers and a hospital patient evaluate her as someone who is not destined to remain a hospital cleaner, a phenomenon that initially appears to validate her class-based biases. Mr. Moreton, one of the patients whose rooms the narrator is charged with cleaning, remarks that he didn’t perceive her job at the hospital as a permanent one. He says, “I didn't think you were the kind of girl looking for a lifetime career cleaning tables. Not that there's anything wrong with cleaning. It's all work, isn’t?” Here, it is clear that although Mr. Moreton does not think the work of a hospital cleaner is unworthy of respect, he thinks that the narrator comports herself in a way that suggests that she might find the work unfulfilling. Similarly, after seeing her reading a novel for pleasure, the narrator’s colleagues Dot and Noeleen begin jokingly calling her “the scholar,” which the narrator initially finds annoying. Her frustrations stem from the fact that this teasing assumes that she is still in school rather than reading for pleasure, a habit that she assumes her coworkers cannot understand due to their working-class backgrounds.

After spending more time with her coworkers, the narrator begins to understand that the classist biases she had formed about them were misguided. As a result, she modifies both her perceptions and her behavior toward those around her. Though the narrator breezes through her first work tasks and finds her coworkers “glazed and unhurried,” she soon begins to learn that they have a lot to teach her. Noeleen shows her how to use the floor polisher by “using her hips” to stabilize it, and Dot teaches her how to use newspaper to more easily clean the mirrors for which the short story is named. In this way, the narrator learns that they are not the incompetent, sluggish employees she first imagined them to be, but rather smart, capable women who handle their tasks with ease because of their experience.

When she witnesses the poor condition of Dot’s purse, as well as the careful way in which her coworkers handle their coins, the narrator's perception of her coworkers begins to shift even further. She is no longer bothered by the way in which her fellow employees tease her about her education. She also spends two shifts’ worth of salary on Dot’s jewelry and body care merchandise so that Dot can obtain a “Christmas Gift Bonus” through the catalogue company. This act not only emphasizes that the narrator feels guilty about her previous arrogance, but it also is an equalizing moment between the two women, as the narrator uses her funds to elevate her coworker so that she can receive a bonus.

By getting to know her coworkers, the narrator learns that the line she has drawn between her identity—which includes a bright future and travel in Europe—and theirs, which sentences them to a lifetime of working-class drudgery, is too harsh, and does not reflect the complexities of human experience. Although at first her belief that her background makes her different than her peers is validated by both Mr. Moreton and her coworkers themselves, the narrator comes to see that she has a lot to learn from these women she assumed were beneath her.

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Wealth and Class Identity ThemeTracker

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Wealth and Class Identity Quotes in Laminex and Mirrors

Below you will find the important quotes in Laminex and Mirrors related to the theme of Wealth and Class Identity.
Laminex and Mirrors Quotes

“I know you're a friendly girl,” says one of the nurses in low, embarrassed tones when she stops me in the corridor a few minutes later, “but it's best not to fraternise too much with the patients. If you're a cleaner, I mean.”

“Right,” I say. “Sorry.”

“Just do your work.”

“Sorry, I will.”

I trudge, my face burning, down towards the corridor of elective surgeries. It's OK, I tell myself. At the end of the summer holidays I will have saved enough for three months in Europe, where I will walk the streets of Paris and London, absorbing culture and life and fraternising with whoever I like.

Related Characters: Narrator (speaker), Mr. Moreton
Page Number: 37-38
Explanation and Analysis:

Each idle post-op girl, surrounded by hothouse flowers, watches me with the same bored, incurious gaze as I move about their rooms, spraying and wiping. I pump mist over the immaculate mirrors, catching sight of my own reflection there—my unreconstructed nose and studiously neutral face. Like these girls, I'm filling in my own allotment of time here, except that when I leave, it'll be to buy that plane ticket to London, and be gone. My hand holding the yellow cloth rises and falls, cleaning pointlessly, searching for a splash of toothpaste or cup ring mark on the laminex's spotless, glossy surface.

Related Characters: Narrator (speaker)
Page Number: 39
Explanation and Analysis:

His uniform's blue and mine's an ugly mauve, clearly designating our status in the hospital pecking order, but he's still asked me to the staff Christmas party. The other cleaners, when they hear this, behave as if it's a doctor-nurse romance from Mills & Boon. They speculate on what table we'll all sit on, what they'll wear, whether there'll be door prizes this year. When I say I'm not sure if I'll go, they look at me flabbergasted. “But it's free,” Dot says,” and there's a whole three-course meal!”

“That nice young man asks you to go, I reckon you go,” says Noeleen. “He's from overseas somewhere, isn't he? Play your cards right and you might get a trip OS!”

Related Characters: Narrator (speaker), Dot (speaker), Noeleen (speaker), Tony
Page Number: 41-42
Explanation and Analysis:

Here's another mistake I make: I think Len will be chastened, satisfyingly disconcerted, forced to eat his words. When he hears, though, he is radiant with pride. As he congratulates his wife it strikes me for the first time that, with their odd shifts, this fifteen-minute tea-break is one of the few times the two of them see each other all day.

Related Characters: Narrator (speaker), Dot, Len
Page Number: 48
Explanation and Analysis:

Down in the kitchen the other cleaners will be pouring their cups of tea out of the urn now, Marie remarking coolly on my absence, and Matron will be waiting for us, I am certain, at the nurses' station, in the no-man's-land of the hospital's thermostatically cool interior, its sterilised world of hard surfaces, wiped clean and blameless. Someone else's jurisdiction now.

Related Characters: Narrator (speaker), Mr. Moreton, Dot, The Matron, Marie, Noeleen
Page Number: 55
Explanation and Analysis: