of poor black communities living on inner-city estates. The creative component of this thesis attempts the same feat for white working-class communities living in comparable conditions. As with the characters depicted in the Society Within, creative component works to individuate the white working-class characters, most specifically Dean, the protagonist, in order to force a re-evaluation of the hegemonic social order that posits the white working class as a culturally inferior group, whose socio-economic exclusion is a lifestyle choice, rather than a result of systemic inequality. Given the construction in media, politics and literature of white working-class lifestyles and behaviours as culturally inferior (see Chapters One and Two), the creative component consciously acknowledges, and works to counter, assumptions about white working-class characters held by the imagined middle-class reader. As Wayne Booth claims in an author wants intense sympathy The Rhetoric of Fiction: ‘If for characters who do not have strong virtues to recommend them, the psychic then vividness of prolonged and deep inside views will help’ (Booth, 1983, pp377-378, original italics). In other words, the individualisation of a marginalised voice moves the character beyond the sociological and into the psychological, the point where representational meaning can occur in narrative, in the sense that psychological ‘the impulse tends toward the presentation of highly individualised figures who resist abstraction and generalisation, and whose motivation is not susceptible to rigid ethical 2006, p101; see also Currie, 2010 and Jameson, 2010). et al, interpretation’ (Scholes The conscious attempt to shift perceptions from a typified reading of white novel’s working-class characters to a de-homogenised, individuated reading, works to exploit concept of rewriting texts through the interpretation process (See Jameson, Jameson’s 2010 and Chapter Two), where the assumptions about the lifestyles reader’s ‘real-life’
of poor black communities living on inner-city estates. The creative component of this thesis attempts the same feat for white working-class communities living in comparable conditions. As with the characters depicted in Society Within, the creative component works to individuate the white working-class characters, most specifically Dean, the protagonist, in order to force a re-evaluation of the hegemonic social order that posits the white working class as a culturally inferior group, whose socio-economic exclusion is a lifestyle choice, rather than a result of systemic inequality. Given the construction in media, politics and literature of white working-class lifestyles and behaviours as culturally inferior (see Chapters One and Two), the creative component consciously acknowledges, and works to counter, assumptions about white working-class characters held by the imagined middle-class reader. As Wayne Booth claims in The Rhetoric of Fiction: ‘If an author wants intense sympathy for characters who do not have strong virtues to recommend them, then the psychic vividness of prolonged and deep inside views will help’ (Booth, 1983, pp377-378, original italics). In other words, the individualisation of a marginalised voice moves the character beyond the sociological and into the psychological, the point where representational meaning can occur in narrative, in the sense that ‘the psychological impulse tends toward the presentation of highly individualised figures who resist abstraction and generalisation, and whose motivation is not susceptible to rigid ethical interpretation’ (Scholes et al, 2006, p101; see also Currie, 2010 and Jameson, 2010). The novel’s conscious attempt to shift perceptions from a typified reading of white working-class characters to a de-homogenised, individuated reading, works to exploit Jameson’s concept of rewriting texts through the interpretation process (See Jameson, 2010 and Chapter Two), where the reader’s ‘real-life’ assumptions about the lifestyles