'The L-shaped Room' by Lynne Reid Banks'The narrator's views of social prejudice are conveyed through the experience of Jane the main character.

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Afia Aslam                                                                Eastwood High School

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                        'The L-shaped Room' by Lynne Reid Banks'

The narrator's views of social prejudice are conveyed through the experience of Jane the main character.

"My father and I hadn't said a word to each other when I went home for my things. He's told me to go and I was going; he didn't care where and so why should I tell him?"

     

The above opening quotation is from 'The L-shaped Room' written by Lynne Reid Banks. It captures an insight into the attitudes of the time. The author mainly focuses on reflecting the journey Jane faces through her "unwanted pregnancy," coping with emotional difficulties and the dilemmas that face her. I feel the novel made me sympathetic towards Jane, as the novel kept me captivated; with many twists and turns and several situations came across, each with a unique moral; but I focused throughout towards Jane. I cared about her and wanted to know how she fought through her struggles and eventually gained strength. I intend to examine how the social morality of the time made Jane's life a misery responding to use of figurative language and the highly developed writing techniques used by the author.

The novel is set in 1960s due to the changes in society when few opportunities were given to woman to experience some freedom, but still not as equal to men. The narrative is told from the point of view of Jane who is in her mid-twenties. This helps me to sympathise with her as she explains her personal feelings of how she copes as a young single woman. She was turned out her comfortable middle class home by her father, who is shocked, hearing that she is pregnant. It is a narrative that follows Jane through her journey of pregnancy to self realisation and fulfilment. 'The L-shaped Room' is her room where she buried herself to sink into her miseries; but on the other hand she did not care about the room or neighbours. Yet these neighbours eventually draw her back to life.

At the start of the novel Jane realised it was morally wrong in her society to be pregnant but she tries to be strong to admit the truth to her father:

“‘I’m pregnant' I said. These two words shocked even me with their crudeness. I instantly wished I'd said the softer 'I' m going to have a baby.' The blunt statement of the biological fact had the same after- echoes as a slap across his face."

The writer has made me feel that Jane thought some weight would ease of her mind by being strong and telling her father, as he may understand as she is the only child with no mother. However the sharpness of the truth hits Jane at the same time as she admits the truth because she realises she is in the situation and she is not generally stating something that will have no affect on her. I think the dash reveals extra feelings, of how she now feels after admitting the truth but in addition to this the sentence before and after the dash is a vivid contrast. Before the dash it suggests what she said was simple and straightforward words but it compares the effect of the words after the dash which shows the words are shocking. 'Echoes as a slap across the face' shows how forceful the words actually sounded. This phrase is a simile which compares her words as being worse than a slap. In my opinion the word choice of ‘echoes’ expresses how the admittance of the truth must have been a horrifying moment as 'echoes' suggest the repeated words reflected repeatedly. The simile may also reveal the awkward moment, as Jane is unaware of how her Father reacts to this.

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Jane thought that even though it was unacceptable within her society but if her father understood it would help her cope:

"...he'd turned to me with a sort of shaky, fumbling anger and told me to clear out his house, that I was no better than a street woman."

The words 'sort of shaky, fumbling anger' are effective as I can imagine how Jane's father could not take it in as he is shocked that he becomes upset and begins to tremble as he can't bear the truth. His words seem to hold all his anger as ...

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