Describe, Examine and Analyse how Willy Russell uses dramatic devices to illustrate issues in "Shirley Valentine".

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Describe, Examine and Analyse how Willy Russell uses dramatic devices to illustrate issues in "Shirley Valentine"

The 1980's was a time of great change in Britain, but it was the changes to who worked,

where they worked, and how society changed. In this play "Shirley Valentine", by Willy

Russell, many different aspects of the change are shown on an average forty something

housewife. The changes included the privatisation of public companies and economic

growth, but the factors that would have impacted on Shirley the most would have been

the rise of women out of the home and into work, feminism and the package holiday. The

play also highlights stereotypes, which it then (in most cases collapses). Audiences would

have been able to relate to these issues and so would be able to understand and enjoy the

play more than if it had been about everyday life in somewhere like the Amazon

rainforest.

Russell himself was born in Liverpool in the 1940's to working class parents. His parents

wanted him to get on in life, and