Abstract:

Pat Barker with her first novel, Union Street, provides a realistic social panorama of her time and offers a significant vantage point to class and gender issues by focusing on overall characteristics of working class environment with the emphasis on women in such an environment. She draws attention to the problems that exist in working class houses and sees corruption and violence as outcomes of economic inequalities. In women’s case this situation is doubled as they both have to carry the role of the woman as a housewife and as a worker. “Among the working class family there has always been a tight-knit institution, a place where the gender roles have their fixed place, but in the post-war period when women started to work, the role of the woman as housewife seemed to exist alongside her role as a worker. Yet still the socially expected gender performances were to be fulfilled at home.

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