At
the beginning of page 84, the conversation on society’s negative attitudes
towards women is continued. Timms states “it’s not our fault, miss. It’s just
the way it is”, the use of the inclusive pronoun “our” places Timms as a voice
for all men, stating a reason that men don’t take responsibility for how women
are negatively portrayed. The use of the declarative sentence “it’s just the
way it is” shows Timms is accepting of how women are treated and is not willing
to change this view. Lockwood adds a quote from a famous philosopher “the
world is everything that is the case” then he states “Wittgenstein, miss” this
shows arrogance when he talks of the status quo and is very patronising towards
Mrs Lintott, as if she isn’t smart enough to know who Wittgenstein is. Mrs
Lintott becomes very dismissive and replies with “I know its Wittgenstein,
thank you”. Lockwood has tried to challenge her power and now her being
dismissive shows her trying to maintain that power. Mrs Lintott uses a
euphemism to reply to Lockwood “did he travel on the other bus?” She creates
inappropriate humour here, a coded way of stating Wittgenstein is gay, then
humour is added when Hector is lost within the conversation, the repetition of
“bus?” shows he doesn’t understand Mrs Lintott’s euphemism. Mrs Lintott begins
to speak her mind and states “’the world is everything that is the case’ seem
actually rather a feminine approach to things… a real man would be trickier
‘the world is everything that can be made to seem the case’” Mrs Lintott changes
the quote and adds “made” and “seem” implying men manipulate the situation,
life and society to be on top. This links to Irwin as a man, he manipulates the
situation to be on top. She is the opposition to Irwin when it comes to History
and gender issues. Mrs Lintott uses polysyllabic lexis such as “dispiriting”
and “masculine ineptitude” to describe men in history and in general as
useless.
Within this paragraph she uses a lot of interrogatives like
“can you?” and “why do you think?” to question the boys on how women are
treated negatively. Timms starts to add humour by rudely replying to Mrs
Lintott’s question “no tits?” and Hector adds to this by saying “hit that boy”.
The men add humour because they love to play games; they see all of it as a
game. This takes the focus off of Mrs Lintott however she regains control of the
conversation by being very assertive within her speech “I’ll tell you why.” In
her speech you can see Mrs Lintott has strong views about how women have been
written out, these may be Bennett's views but are shown through Mrs Lintott, as
she is the only female character. The use of the adjective “bow-wow” and the
verb “frolic” creates imagery of a puppy dog and shows she believes the reason
why women are not historians is because women don’t act like little puppy dogs.
She is derogative about men, as she feels they get carried away with things and
she uses more negative lexis about men “continuous incapability’s of men”
within her speech; she is very dismissive to the whole subject. Mrs Lintott
continues to focus on women using feminine lexis such as “flowers”, “frolic”, “gracefully”,
she also states how “they never get round the conference table” this quote has connotations
of discussion, male power, decision making and meetings, something women are
never involved in. Most people in power are men, and back in the 80’s to now
women are still being written out. Mrs Lintott uses imagery when saying “history
is women following behind with the bucket” it states a clear picture of how
women pick up the pieces of men’s mistakes.
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