20th Century Restrictions on Women

In Ralph Glasser's (20) Growing Up in the Gorbals, the author provides an account of his years growing up in a Jewish community during the 1920s in a Glasgow tenement, a working class region known as the "Gorbals." In a similar manner, in Bad Blood, Lorna Sage (6) provides an account of her childhood and adolescence growing up in 1950s rural Hanmer, Wales, a town she describes as a "dead-alive dump...a muck heap" where women are rigidly controlled by their husbands or fathers. In both of these societies we see that social roles for women were restricted primarily to the domestic sphere and in their roles as daughters, wives, and mothers.

Despite the restricted social roles on women, we see that Sage's family does not adhere to the norms of mainstream culture in Hanmer. Sage's grandfather, a vicar in the Anglican church, repeatedly commits infidelity. His wife has nothing but scorn for men and tries to thwart her husband at every turn. Sage's own mother; however, is submissive and girlish when her husband comes home from war. Sage herself will become pregnant at fifteen. Ultimately, Sage will overcome the restrictions on women's social roles and graduate, along with her teen husband, from Durham University. In Glasgow, we see that Glasser is able to overcome the limitations of ethnicity and poverty, but social roles for women remain restricted in comparison to Sage's story. This analysis will compare and contras these two works

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; because to do so on your sleeve was not respectable." Being respectable was most often a burden laid at the feet of women in this society. In contrast to the rigidly adhered to roles in Glasser's world, Sage's family members violate social roles and norms in many instances. In Sage's world, Sage's grandfather is a vicar of the church but a hopeless womanizer and drinker. He opens the world of ideas to Sage through books and words. Her grandmother, rather than being a dutiful wife and housekeeper, fights her husband at every turn for control, including slashing him across the face with a butcher knife one night while drunk. Her view of marriage is that "a man signed you up to have his wicked way with you and should spend the rest of his life paying through the nose" (Sage 25). These individuals, unlike those who closely adhere to social roles and norms in Glasser's world, help propel Sage beyond these restrictions of gender and poverty to a world of success of her own making. In both Glasgow and Wales' working-class, poor communities, women primarily took care of the home, raised children, and served as an extension of their husband, fulfilling his needs and desires. Between raising children, shopping a

Category: Literature - 2