Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?: Chapter 10 Summary & Analysis

Jeanette decides to apply for an English degree at Oxford University “because it [is] the most impossible thing [she] could do.” She knows few women with real jobs, and even Mrs. Ratlow, a widow, still cooks and cleans for her two sons and never takes vacations. Feminism has not reached Accrington. As a working-class woman who loves other women, Jeanette forms a personal politics based on “chang[ing her life beyond] all recognition.”

Jeanette obtains an interview at Oxford, and travels there on a bus. She feels that she “looks and sounds wrong,” and does poorly in her interviews. Weeks later, she finds that she has not been accepted. Though Mrs. Ratlow encourages her to consider other options, Jeanette feels there are “no other options.” She and Janey travel to Oxford and camp at a camp-site outside town. Jeanette secures an appointment with a senior tutor, and though she once again finds herself babbling in the interview, explains the details of her life and her desire to write her own books. She realizes during the interview that there are both “pleasures and prejudices” at Oxford, and, after her meeting, wonders whether as a woman she will forced to be “an onlooker and not a contributor.” Jeanette is given a place at Oxford, deferred for one year. 

A year later, as Jeanette drives out of Accrington toward Oxford, she comes across Mr. Winterson in the street. She does not stop to speak to him.