Analysis of Exiles by Carolyn Kay Steedman

A detailed Summary of Analysis of Exiles by Carolyn Kay Steedman

First impressions of Steedman's "Exiles" left me feeling as if the woman had a lot of sour grapes to deal with. The overall flavor of the piece leans toward the negative, the cynical and sometimes even the sarcastic. She seems particularly critical of her parents, who probably did their best with what they had, but nowhere do we see much in the way of compassionate empathy on her part. The title she chose for the piece, Exiles, emphasizes the alienation that she felt from her parents, as well as the social/economic alienation which she felt her parents had endured. If I had to place a particular definition on this interpretation, it would be that Steedman suffers from a lack of objectivity.

One such example of this cynicism appears in the last paragraph of page 649, wherein Steedman goes out of her way to describe in detail how her mother lied to her about her past:

As a teenage worker my mother had broken with a recently established tradition and on leaving school in 1927 didn't go into the sheds. She lied to me though when, at about the age of eight, I asked her what she'd done, and she said she'd worked in an office, done clerical work.

My reaction to all of this is "What a complainer!" Good grief, usually poverty and hard times draws people together and helps them appreciate the better things in life. This is particularly true with those who endured the depravations of WWII and the depression, such as her parents. But seeing how Steedman appears to have been one of the first baby-boomers on the scene in the late 40's, one can see how wealth and prosperity probably surrounded her in the community. It's amazing how greed sets in so quickly upon a people and develops within them a "Gimmie! Gimmie!" mentality that can never be satisfied.

. . .Now I can feel the deliberate vagueness in her accounts of those years: "When did you meet daddy?"-"Oh, at a dance, at home." There were no photographs. Who came to London first? I wish now that I'd asked that question.

But we were forced to choose, early on, which side we belonged to, and children have to come down on the side that brings the food home and gets it on the table. By 1955 I was beginning to hate him-because he was to blame, for the lack of money, for my mother's terrible dissatisfaction at the way things were working ou

Some common words found in the essay are:
Steedman's Exiles, Gimmie Gimmie, steedman goes, , top page, alienation parents, little bit, page 650,

Approximate Word count = 779
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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