OK, Luddites, listen up. I'm going to explain to you why Cora just might be telling porkie pies about Ava being dead.
Long, long ago in a universe far, far away called the Sixties (sometimes called the Fifties too), it was a great shame for women to have sex before they were married. Nice girls didn't do that - or, rather, they didn't get caught. If you got caught and got up the duff there were few things you could do about it.
You could:-
(a) have an abortion, but that was illegal and dangerous and you could die
(b) you could marry the man/boy who porked you (This is what Jim and Reenie Branning had to do when Jim got Reenie pregnant with April/Derek, depending on who is currently considered the oldest Branning)
(c) you could go to a home for unwed mothers, have the baby and the council would take the child and put it up for adoption. Adoptions were closed then, and you didn't know where your child went. It was considered "for the best."
(d) you could keep the baby, but if you did, you were a source of great shame for your family. This option was doubly shameful if you had had sex with a black man and had a mixed race baby. Things were different then.
The way Cora described the "hospital" where she was, how it was very strict and how the sister wouldn't allow visitors sounded very much as though Cora, who was eighteen at the time, had to go to one of these homes for unwed mothers. Also, even though Cora reiterated at the beginning and end of her story that Ava had "died," the way she described the people "taking" the baby and her not being allowed to say good-bye, had all the trappings of the way Social Services would come for such an infant being put up for adoption and taken to an orphanage to await new parents. There were orphanages about in those days as well.
I would also imagine that Cora told silly Tanya that Ava had died, basically to get her to shut the fuck up about her sister and why she wasn't told; but also, I suspect Cora's told herself every day for the past 47 years that the child died, because that was an easier way of dealing with the situation, of having to look at every woman of a certain age and wondering if that woman were she.
Maybe the child did die, and maybe this is a reasonably well-written piece of character development. Maybe Tanya will go off to find the missing sister, if she somehow discovers Cora was lying or maybe .... Shirley is Cora's daughter.
Long, long ago in a universe far, far away called the Sixties (sometimes called the Fifties too), it was a great shame for women to have sex before they were married. Nice girls didn't do that - or, rather, they didn't get caught. If you got caught and got up the duff there were few things you could do about it.
You could:-
(a) have an abortion, but that was illegal and dangerous and you could die
(b) you could marry the man/boy who porked you (This is what Jim and Reenie Branning had to do when Jim got Reenie pregnant with April/Derek, depending on who is currently considered the oldest Branning)
(c) you could go to a home for unwed mothers, have the baby and the council would take the child and put it up for adoption. Adoptions were closed then, and you didn't know where your child went. It was considered "for the best."
(d) you could keep the baby, but if you did, you were a source of great shame for your family. This option was doubly shameful if you had had sex with a black man and had a mixed race baby. Things were different then.
The way Cora described the "hospital" where she was, how it was very strict and how the sister wouldn't allow visitors sounded very much as though Cora, who was eighteen at the time, had to go to one of these homes for unwed mothers. Also, even though Cora reiterated at the beginning and end of her story that Ava had "died," the way she described the people "taking" the baby and her not being allowed to say good-bye, had all the trappings of the way Social Services would come for such an infant being put up for adoption and taken to an orphanage to await new parents. There were orphanages about in those days as well.
I would also imagine that Cora told silly Tanya that Ava had died, basically to get her to shut the fuck up about her sister and why she wasn't told; but also, I suspect Cora's told herself every day for the past 47 years that the child died, because that was an easier way of dealing with the situation, of having to look at every woman of a certain age and wondering if that woman were she.
Maybe the child did die, and maybe this is a reasonably well-written piece of character development. Maybe Tanya will go off to find the missing sister, if she somehow discovers Cora was lying or maybe .... Shirley is Cora's daughter.
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