Gender Dynamic In Macinnes's 'Absolute Beginners'

A similar gender dynamic, but this time within the white community, is shown in the final part of MacInnes’ Absolute Beginners. It is during part IV of the novel that the reader gains an insight into the Notting Hill riots and the anxiety surrounding topics such as race and immigration. In John McLeod’s Postcolonial London, he points out “MacInnes was already writing Absolute Beginners when the riots occurred, and events came to preoccupy his fiction and political activities.” It was towards the end of August and the start of September of 1958 that white youth gangs and ‘Teddy Boys’ began attacking and assaulting black people in Notting Dale. As a result of around two thirds of his novel already being written, these types of attacks were
As well as gender intersecting with race, the narrator also appears to see gender intersecting with age. The teenage narrator appears to be so concerned with age that he has developed his own terminology which embodies this. Throughout the text he constantly refers to adults as “tax-payers”. Through using language that vastly differs from how the wider population talks, it effectively roots him in the subculture and inner circle that was shared by white teenage boys. By doing this, MacInnes has somewhat given these teenagers their own private language which has the effect of alienating the reader. On multiple occasions, the narrator describes various men and women in relation to their age. It is during these moments we are able to see that the narrator is an individual that views and understands people through their age and gender equally. One key moment in the text where this happens is in the section entitled ‘In September’ where the narrator witnesses a racist attack on a black teenage boy. As a white mob runs after this black teenager, he seeks shelter in a corner shop where an “old girl inside locked it from within”. The narrator, playing the role of the spectator in this scene tells the reader “Picture this! This one old girl, with her grey hair all in a mess, and her old face flushed with fury, she stood there surrounded by this crowd of hundreds, and she bawled them out”. The phrase “Picture this!” along with the exclamation point gives a sense of the narrator’s surprise at what seems to be, an elderly woman having the power to stand up against others. The repetition of “old girl” reflects the notion of gender and age intersecting, particularly in regards to women. Our naïve narrator appears to be unable to comprehend how a woman, particularly an elderly one could possibly have the courage to stand