Girls Of Slender Means :: essays research papers

Joanna’s and Jane’s lifestyles.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The Girls of Slender Means by Murial Spark is a novel about the girls who lived in the May of Teck Club during the year of 1945. There are many characters involved, but the one’s who caught my attention the most are Jane Wright and Joanna Childe. They represent different aspects of ideas, lifestyles and, also, have different perspectives on the “World of Books.';  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Joanna Childe was the daughter of a country rector. She was very intelligent, had “...strong obscure emotions'; (8), and “...religious strength'; (165). She was very well build. “Joanna Childe was large...'; (9), “... fair and healthy-looking...'; (22). She had light shiny hair, blue eyes and deep-pink cheeks. She never used a scrap of make-up because she didn’t really care about her looks and she wasn’t looking for a husband either.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Jane Wright, on the other hand, was very fat and felt miserable about it. She tried to blame her work for her appetite. “...[she] was miserable about her fatness and spent much of her time in eager dread of the next meal, and in making resolutions what to eat of it and what to leave, and in making counter-resolutions in view of the fact that her work at the publisher’s was essentially mental, which meant that her brain had to be fed more than most people’s'; (35-36). Unlike Joanna, Jane “...was on the look-out for a husband,...'; (32) since she was only twenty two years old.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Joanna’s and Jane’s occupations evolved around the world of books. However, they had different perspectives about it. Jane worked for a publisher and Joanna attended a school of drama to be a teacher of elocution. Jane thought of the publishing business as “...essentially disinterest[ing]'; (39), while Joanna chose her profession because of her love for poetry. “...poetry, especially the declamatory sort, excited her and possessed her; she would pounce on the stuff, play with it quivering in her mind, and when she had got it by heart, she spoke it forth with devouring relish'; (8). Joanna was highly thought of for it and Jane “...was considered to be brainy but somewhat below standard, socially, at the May of Teck'; (19).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Both women were similar in that they did additional work besides the one’s mentioned above. Joanna had students of her own whom she taught how to speak properly, with no accent. “Joanna’s method was to read each stanza herself first and make her pupil repeat it.'; (21). Jane had several kinds of “...brain-work'; (41). “First and secretly, she wrote poetry of a strictly non-rational order, in which occurred, in about proportion of cherries in a cherry-cake, certain words that she described as ‘of a smouldering