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key influences and themes
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"I
suppose the lives of women, the patterns of women's lives
鈥� but sometimes you notice that whole areas of female
experience are missed out and its just fun then to think
"ooh that's fresh, that's good, I can do that ...
"I think before you have children in our society
you don't really see them very much, it's perfectly possible
to get to the age of 30 and never to have held a baby.
And then when you get to the sort of age when maybe you
have a child or the first one of your friends does, it's
all completely new, it's absolutely foreign country. And
when I had my first baby it was such fresh material, I
thought I can't let this go to waste - it was so funny
lots of it."
Helen Simpson |
She
says she doesn't like to write about her own life - 'autobiographical
writing' - because she worries it would affect her friends and
family. But her work always includes themes that are important
to her and her contemporaries. Themes like the biological
clock or having children...
| "A lot of women, the more education they get, the more they think 'I'll wait a little while. I want first of all to make sure I get a job and perhaps I can find somewhere decent to live before I have a baby' and they're waiting for the right time. But perhaps the right time never comes. But certainly there's not the feeling that babies just come unbidden, that you have them in your late teens or early twenties. You have more choice now and people tend to be putting it off - But the trouble is that then the biological clock, when you're in your early-mid 30s you think maybe if I wait too long maybe I won't be able to have babies - and that's the biological clock saying tick tock, come on, are you going to have them or aren't you..."
Helen Simpson |
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