Changes and Ceremonies

Changes and Ceremonies

                  The section of the book holds many new happenings for Del. Some of these changes are good and bad but both help her grow as a person. This section of the book could also be considered in part, her bildungsroman time of her life as well. It is a tie when she is in middle school, which is about the age when young girls and boys begin to go through puberty and start seeing each other as more than friends. Naomi and Del begin talking about boys they have crushes on and daydream ideas about these boys together. This is especially different for Del because up until this point, her main future she sought out in life was a future of schooling and learning as much as she could like her mother wanted her to. But not only her mother, Del wanted this for herself. She saw her future as a scholar and the thought of men being in her future was out of the picture. Until now. When the students begin the operetta and Del offhandedly gets a part, the girls talk about which boys they would choose if they could. Del decides that she actually is interested in Jerry Storey, a boy who is also in the operetta. She imagines him walking her home after the whole show is over, and he even said he would like to if it wasn’t so far away (because he thought she still lived out on Flats road). Just the very fact that Del begins to have these ideas about a boy actually being in her life is a big change for her. She had always been disappointed hearing about her mother’s own trials in her life to become stronger and smarter and improve her education, only to be let down by the fact that she settled for being a wife and mother. I think Del sees how her mother is, too, disappointed, not in the decisions she has made because she loves her family, but that she didn’t expect more out of herself anymore. So her mother is attempting to live that through Del. At this point, I don’t think Del has fully been set on any ideas that her life will go the way of her mother’s, but there is at least the possibility that a man may be in her life one day. Which we see especially in the next section of the book when Del meets Garet French and after her encounter with Mr. Chamberlain. I think this part of her life is what sets her up for the next chapter in her life which includes growing apart from Naomi, having more of an interest in men, choosing to go with Mr. Chamberlain, and giving up her chance at a scholarship by being with Garet French all the time. This section of the novel is her stepping into position before the gun is fired in the race of her growing up. It isn’t quite the taking off, but the leading up to it.

Slammerkin Class

Sydney Bushnell

Women Studies 309

Blog #1

Slammerkin Blog

                  For discussion, it is suggested that the novel Slammerkin is just as much about class as it is about gender. Surely, we see as we are reading the novel the surface level issues of both gender and class: women’s rights in the world (especially in finding jobs and making a place in the world) which can both be an issue of gender and class. It is hard to find many issues with class or gender that don’t overlap one another. But the whole time I’ve been reading this novel, I can’t help but thinking of the underlying issue of her class and how she’ll never be able to get out of it. Which isn’t unusual because most people struggle moving up classes, especially if they are in the lower class. It is just the irony of Mary Saunders, who is attempting to use the “job” she takes on as a prostitute to give her freedom and money so that she can move up in the world, when the job itself will almost never let her leave her lower class conditions. Because she is a prostitute, it would be almost impossible, even while making more money than most women in her class, to move up because society still just sees her as a prostitute and nothing more. There are cases where prostitutes can make it in the world, and move up in class, but in all of the people we hear about in her life and that live the same lifestyle as Mary, we only hear of one such instance. Even the men in higher classes than her refuse her good services to her face. I do think that, for her class, prostitution will be the job that would make her the best money of all, but it is just unfortunate that prostitution basically strands her in the lower class position, with very little opportunities to move up.