Aspirations and ambitions
In Winifred Holtby's South Riding, published in 1936, Lydia Holly is the eldest daughter of a large and poor family living in a converted railway carriage. She is 'an untidy fat loutish girl in a torn overall' - but she shows evident signs of cleverness, and her mother sees this. "Her mother was a fighter; her mother had insisted that she take the second chance of a scholarship to Kiplington High School. When she was eleven she had won a place at Kiplington, but her parents had needed her to escort her small sisters to the village school, so she had missed her chance. Now Daisy was old enough to…
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