Page 76 - White Lives The Interplay of 'Race', Class, and Gender in Everyday Life

Narrating the self 69
a worrier. I was never a worrier before I had them [laugh]’ (Interview 14).
When Rosemary compared herself with her own mother, there was, for the
first and practically only time, a sense of the past and of Rosemary as an ac-
tive subject. She presented a picture of herself as a child as a strong person,
independent and even feisty and fearless. This is, in many senses, the impres-
sion that Rosemary continued to give me when I interviewed her, although
it is not the way she spoke about herself.

Rosemary: Yeah, I mean at the age of eight, I was on the bus to the shopping
centre, I was. I was so, do you know what I mean, I was really
street road worthy. I mean from the age of four, I don’t know if I
told you that on the last one, I walked from the park on me own.
Because my mum thought I was mucking about. I said ‘I’m going
down Tracey’s’. She said ‘all right then’. Because me cousin, we
was all up the park. She just thought I was mucking about. And
I’m trolling down the park and these street markets. And that
was what, I weren’t even five then, I was crossing major roads
and everything. I remember doing it.
BB: But you wouldn’t let yours do it?
Rosemary: No!
BB: Are there other kind of differences about the lives that they lead
and the life that you led as a kid?
Rosemary: Yeah, really I suppose. More that I was more outgoing, I was,
my mum was forever standing outside crying her eyeballs out
[laugh] ’cos I was always out with my friends. She was out cry-
ing. But there wasn’t that fear that there is now, you know, of
being abducted and letting your kids out. But it’s not only . . . it’s
the roads and that. I mean even with me crossing the road. I’m
out crossing in front of one car and there’s another one tak-
ing over. And with kids, if a car stops, they’ll run. You know,
but there’s another car behind it taking over. And if they’d run,
when I walked, they’d be up in the air. When I think of that . . .
But they’re as good as gold really. It’s not them, it’s the people
out there. I mean I’d let them play outside downstairs. It’s the
people out there.
(Interview 32, emphasis Rosemary’s)

The interviews with Rosemary left me with a sense of a gap or an untold
story. It was difficult to get a sense of her subjectivity. Here was a cheerful,
friendly and active woman who gave no sense of who she was or how she
had come to be in the course of these conversations. This is not to suggest
that Rosemary lacked a sense of self. But it may be that, through her strong
identifications with others, particularly her mother and children, the inter-
view and narrative form did not offer her the means to account for her self.
She simply was as she did and there was little more for her to tell. Rosemary