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Winsome Robinson
Penelope Halifax is Shirley’s coworker at the Peckham School. Penelope is old and jaded, and she regards the students with open hostility. Her low expectations for them are grounded in her racist beliefs about her low-income, Black students—beliefs that were passed down to her from her horribly racist mother, Margaret. At the same time, Penelope is a diehard feminist and has made significant strides within a male-dominated workplace. Penelope is angry that new teachers like Shirley fail to recognize the feminist progress she’s made at the school. Meanwhile, Penelope fails to see how her feminism suffers from its lack of intersectionality. After retiring, Penelope hires Bummi to clean her house, and she asserts her perceived racial superiority over Bummi by forbidding Bummi from speaking. Eventually, Bummi confides in her about the misfortunes of her life, revealing how white women often demand not only physical but emotional labor from women of color. Penelope was married twice, and both relationships ended due to the men’s misogyny. Penelope is adopted. Her adoptive parents broke the news to her when she was 16, and the news devastated. Years later, per her daughter Sarah’s advice, Penelope buys an AncestryDNA test. She’s when her results show that she is 13 percent African, and she’s even more surprised when her birth mother, Hattie, contacts her. Penelope travels to Greenfields to reunite with Hattie, and their loving reunion shows Penelope how wrong she was to harbor racist beliefs her whole life.
Penelope Halifax/Barbara Quotes in Girl, Woman, Other
The Girl, Woman, Other quotes below are all either spoken by Penelope Halifax/Barbara or refer to Penelope Halifax/Barbara. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 3: Penelope
Quotes
at first she’d enjoyed teaching the disadvantaged children of the area whose parents had an inter-generational history of paying taxes in this country, even though she knew most of them wouldn’t go on to great things
a supermarket till for the ones who were numerate, a typing pool for those who were numerate and literate, further education for those who could pass exams sufficiently well
she felt a sense of responsibility towards her own kind, and didn’t like it at all when the school’s demography began to change with the immigrants and their offspring pouring in
in the space of a decade the school went from predominately English children of the working classes to a multicultural zoo of kids coming from countries where there weren’t even words for please and thank you
which explained a lot
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
she loathed that feminism was on the descent, and the vociferous multi-culti brigade was on the ascent, and felt angry all the time, usually at the older boys who were disrespectful and the bullish male teachers who still behaved as if they owned the planet
…
Shirley was barely out of her teaching probation when she took a pot shot at Penelope at that staff meeting all those years ago – at the only woman in the school who dared stand up to the men
why didn’t Saint Shirley attack one of the male chauvinist pigs who pontificated ad infinitum instead of a strong woman who’d brought petitions into work for both the Equal Pay Act and the Sex Discrimination Act, both of which were eventually passed into law
improving the situation for all working women
she should be admired and respected by her female colleagues
Epilogue
Quotes
this metal-haired wild creature from the bush with the piercingly feral eyes
is her mother
this is she
this is her
who cares about her colour? why on earth did Penelope ever think it mattered?
in this moment she’s feeling something so pure and primal it’s overwhelming
they are mother and daughter and their whole sense of themselves is recalibrating
her mother is now close enough to touch
Penelope had worried she would feel nothing, or that her mother would show no love for her, no feelings, no affection
how wrong she was, both of them are welling up and it’s like the years are swiftly regressing until the lifetimes between them no longer exist
this is not about feeling something or about speaking words
this is about being
together
Get the entire Girl, Woman, Other LitChart as a printable PDF.
Penelope Halifax/Barbara Quotes in Girl, Woman, Other
The Girl, Woman, Other quotes below are all either spoken by Penelope Halifax/Barbara or refer to Penelope Halifax/Barbara. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 3: Penelope
Quotes
at first she’d enjoyed teaching the disadvantaged children of the area whose parents had an inter-generational history of paying taxes in this country, even though she knew most of them wouldn’t go on to great things
a supermarket till for the ones who were numerate, a typing pool for those who were numerate and literate, further education for those who could pass exams sufficiently well
she felt a sense of responsibility towards her own kind, and didn’t like it at all when the school’s demography began to change with the immigrants and their offspring pouring in
in the space of a decade the school went from predominately English children of the working classes to a multicultural zoo of kids coming from countries where there weren’t even words for please and thank you
which explained a lot
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
she loathed that feminism was on the descent, and the vociferous multi-culti brigade was on the ascent, and felt angry all the time, usually at the older boys who were disrespectful and the bullish male teachers who still behaved as if they owned the planet
…
Shirley was barely out of her teaching probation when she took a pot shot at Penelope at that staff meeting all those years ago – at the only woman in the school who dared stand up to the men
why didn’t Saint Shirley attack one of the male chauvinist pigs who pontificated ad infinitum instead of a strong woman who’d brought petitions into work for both the Equal Pay Act and the Sex Discrimination Act, both of which were eventually passed into law
improving the situation for all working women
she should be admired and respected by her female colleagues
Epilogue
Quotes
this metal-haired wild creature from the bush with the piercingly feral eyes
is her mother
this is she
this is her
who cares about her colour? why on earth did Penelope ever think it mattered?
in this moment she’s feeling something so pure and primal it’s overwhelming
they are mother and daughter and their whole sense of themselves is recalibrating
her mother is now close enough to touch
Penelope had worried she would feel nothing, or that her mother would show no love for her, no feelings, no affection
how wrong she was, both of them are welling up and it’s like the years are swiftly regressing until the lifetimes between them no longer exist
this is not about feeling something or about speaking words
this is about being
together
