In the short story The Geranium written by Patricia Grace the theme is control.
The story is about a woman callled Marney who is a stay at home mum who spends her entire day cleaning her house. She continues to clean when her friends Sandra and Joe come over and places paper on the ground to stop them from getting the floor dirty again. They try to get her to go to the shops with her but she refuses because she is too busy cleaning.
When they return back from the shops they give her the small red geranium plant that she wanted. When Bob who is her husband comes home he demands to know what she has been doing all day and when she brought up that they had run out of clothes pegs he groipped her arm so hard that it was bruising her and said “stop grizzling about pegs.
If I want pegs then I will get pegs.
” He then asked who had been over she said that it was just Sandra and Joey called in on their way to the shops so he said “so you all went off to the shops, I sppose?” when she explained that she didn’t he said “you’d better not be lying” and “I better not found out different.” which shows that he dosen’t trust Marney.
Also when he sees her geranium h e demands to know where it came from and when she explained that Sandra got it for her he tightened the grip on her arm and twisted it.
Bob then ordered that she “chuck that thing out” and she did without arguing even though she really wanted to keep it. This is an example of control because she does whatever Bob wants her to because she is scared that Bob