History In Focus logo and homepage link

History in Focus

the guide to historical resources • Issue 1: The Victorian Era •


The Victorian Era

Book cover: A Woman's Place, an Oral History of Working Class Women

Author's response

Book:

A Woman's Place, an Oral History of Working Class Women, 1890-1940

Elizabeth Roberts
Blackwell's, Oxford, 1996, edn. 237 pps.; ISBN 0-631-14754-3
Reviewer:

Professor Sally Alexander

Goldmiths College, University of London

This is an excellent review that deals very fairly and thoroughly with my work. I should like to thank Sally Alexander most warmly for it. My only comment is that although the lives of the women in the book were hard and difficult as Sally suggests, if one hears their words, there is a life, strength and spirit there which has its own message and a different impact from the transcribed word. The respondents I was fortunate enough to interview were survivors and had been forged in the fire of very hard lives. They did not regard themselves as victims and I could not patronise them by promulgating this view.

March 1998

Original review

Back to reviews index

Back to top