Can you help me understand the short story "On Her Knees" by Tim Winton?

"On Her Knees" is about dignity: about maintaining dignity
and understanding the true meaning of dignity. The narrator supposes his mother's
dignity is devalued, perhaps destroyed, because she works on her knees cleaning other
people's houses. This is especially true since she used to have specialized employment
in a medical office.

The narrator is himself pursuing his
dignity at law school, feeling that externals, like employment, provide the basis for
dignity. In connection with this feeling, he loathes to see her lower herself and
disregard and degrade her own dignity. He equally loathes to lower his dignity to help
her.

One day her dignity--and his understanding of
dignity--is put to the test when she is accused of stealing a pair of $500 earrings from
a householder form whom she cleans.

Metaphorically yelling
and screaming all the way, the narrator helps her do an all-out four-hour cleaning job
for the angered householder's home. The missing earrings are found when he vacuums under
the bed. His mother deduces what must have happened so that the earrings were carelessly
tossed to the floor with candy wrappers, and she cries silently when his back is turned:
"I heard her blow her nose."

The narrator finally
understands true dignity when his mother refuses the money offered by the householder.
As proof that he understands that dignity is from one's inner being and not related
directly to one's knees, he digs the earrings from the kitty litter box where he has
tossed them and leaves them "beside the unstrung key and the thin envelope of money."
All these are left behind and rejected by the mother's inner dignity. Further proof the
narrator understands true dignity is given in the symbolic closing lines: "It seemed
that the very light of day was pouring out through her limbs. I had my breath
back."