A Mother In Mannville

Gloves symbolize warmth and protection—particularly in the story’s relatively impoverished setting, where they likewise indicate status and good fortune. When Jerry describes running errands in the cold, he explains that he, unlike many of the boys at the orphanage, has gloves he can use to shield not only his hands but his face.

In part, because they protect and warm the wearer, gloves also symbolize love; a parent, for example, might remind their children to take gloves before going outside in cold weather. Jerry doesn’t have the love of a family and perhaps invents the story about his mother to fill that void. Notably, however, Jerry’s fiction involves providing gloves for his mother rather than vice versa, as this is what he says he will buy with the narrator’s money. Further, the gloves he imagines getting her are implied to be lady’s formal gloves rather than knit ones—i.e., a relative luxury rather than a necessity. Even in expressing his own desire for a family, he is therefore selfless, providing for someone else’s desires at his own expense.