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31/8/2016 0 Comments

Working-class women writing

Love this writer. Same autobiographer as before, but different book.

i. 'She couldn’t quite reach the corners of the glass and was stretching on tiptoe across the dressing-table when Geoffrey put his arm round her shoulders. It wasn’t an accident; he was breathing too hard. She was about to shrug him away when she thought of Meredith.. Rehearsing with Geoffrey would make it easier when the time came for Meredith to claim her. Penetration, from she had gathered from library books, was inescapably painful unless one had played a lot of tennis or ridden stallions, and she hadn’t done either…
She began to stroke Geoffrey’s harsh hair. It was a womanly gesture witnessed often enough on the screen at the cinema. She supposed it was maternal rather than sensual; it was what women did for babies, to make them feel secure and stop their heads from wobbling. Squirming, she left off cradling Geoffrey’s head and bought her hand down to separate her stomach from his.
Something with the texture of an orange, peeled and sticky, bumped against her wrist. She couldn’t suppress crying out her distaste, any more than she could help envying Geoffrey his lack of inhibition. On occasions, when visiting the doctor for some minor ailment, she had even felt it immodest to stick out her tongue. She didn’t dare look down in case she glimpsed that object bobbing against her overall.
It’s no use, she thought. I’ll have to practise on someone else. It would be fearful enough to be up against something as dreadful as that belonging to a beloved, let alone attached to a person one despised.' 

ii. 'There was something wrong with her hair; she had too much forehead and her neck wasn't long enough. When she wasn't concentrating her eyebrows shot up and her mouth fell open. But then, when she willed her face to remain immobile, her mind stopped working. When she had first met Meredith she had noticed how he controlled the muscles of his cheeks, even though his eyes showed curiosity. She suspected it was education and breeding that enabled him to keep his face and his feelings separate. Bunny, who plainly came from the same sort of background as herself, hadn't mastered the trick. Under pressure, .. he grimaced like a gargoyle.'


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    .Author

    I recently completed an academic research project (MPhil) about working-class women’s autobiographies. Now I’m writing my own...

    To cut a long story short:

    My dad and both my grandads were coal miners. I was born in Coalville. I belong on this website. 
    I returned to education as a mature student: got a couple of A-levels, went to university; got a BA, an MA, a PhD, and an MPhil. It was not as easy as that. It was not as quick as that. But I did.
    I have spent most of my adult-life studying something. Generally something to do with English literature: mainly something to do with working-class women. My MA is about Women and God – inspired by and emotively written through my experiences as a pupil at Catholic primary and secondary schools. My PhD and MPhil projects are about working-class women writers – inspired and emotively written through my experiences as a working-class woman in a materialistic and class-ridden society. When I was an undergraduate at university, there wasn’t a module about working-class writing. There just wasn't. I didn’t study any working-class texts. I just didn’t. I once gave a research paper about my PhD (ie: talking about my work) and I remember someone laughingly said, ‘Was there a recession in the 1980s? I must have missed that.’ That just about sums it up.
    I have had no working-class peers. I found them in my reading and writing. In my reading and writing I found myself.

    Welcome to my blog.
    It's basically about me.It’s called ‘My Travel Blog’ (because I’m time travelling through my memories of the past). See what I did there?


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