male figures in her life; she’s a victim. Hamlet himself uses her to wreak revenge. I think she suffers because of how the men in the play view women; even her father and brother rule her life. Do we think it’s the guilt she feels at Hamlet’s supposed madness and her father’s murder that sends her insane?’
Kate paused and looked around the room, her palms upturned, inviting interaction.
Jojo sat forward. ‘I can’t believe that even in the olden days, like Hamlet time, women were still treated like dirt. It’s like nothing has changed in hundreds of years.’ She shook her head.
Kelly was not going to accept this. ‘Speak for yourself, Jojo. I’ve never put up with shit from a bloke. It’s weak, man. If a bloke treated me badly, I’d leave, every time. Ophelia should have done a runner.’
Kate was used to this, the meandering from the text in hand to real life and back again. She could never have envisaged such rich and current debate. It was wonderful.
‘Every time, Kelly?’ she prompted. ‘What if there are circumstances that stop her leaving, other factors?’
‘Like what? There’s nothing that would make me stay with some fucking shit-head bastard, nothing.’
‘Okay, let’s try and cut the language a bit – although Shakespeare was a big lover of cussing! I guess we are talking about two different things. Ophelia was trapped both by the time in which she lived and by her circumstances and you are saying that in today’s world you wouldn’t have to put up with that level of oppression, is that right?’
‘Yep.’ Kelly nodded. That was exactly what she was saying.
‘What I’m asking you to think about, Kelly, is what if you had reasons to stay, whether others thought those reasons were valid or not. They could be self-imposed reasons, like guilt or duty. Or practical reasons: nowhere else to go, poverty, no roof over your head…’
The girls stared at her. Kate realised that many if not all of them had themselves faced poverty and homelessness; these aspects of life were accepted, to be expected, even. The bar was set so low. She decided to change tack.
‘What if you had kids; what if you needed to stay to take care of them?’ She pictured Lydia and Dominic at seven and eight, tucking them into bed, kissing their foreheads, switching on their night lights.
‘You’d have to be some sort of moron to have kids with a bloke that’s no good in the first place!’ Kelly wasn’t done.
Jojo piped up, looking directly at Kelly. ‘I had kids with someone like that. Trouble was he was all right at first, suckered me right in, but he turned out to be a really bad man, class A shit, a liar, total bastard.’ Jojo instinctively wrapped her arms around her torso, administering a self-soothing hug.
Kate smiled at Jojo. They had more in common than the girl could ever have guessed. She thought she might have found a kindred spirit.
‘Did you stay because of the kids?’
‘No, I stayed because of the drugs. My kids were in care within a year of him moving in. I don’t see them no more.’
Jojo spewed out her words with bravado. But Kate saw the flash behind her pupils and the flush in her cheeks at the mention of her children. She had noticed the way Jojo unconsciously and momentarily cupped the left breast that had fed those children. It told her she would have loved to have been a good mum had circumstances been a little kinder.
Kate looked at the book in front of her: ‘Frailty, thy name is woman…’
She sat in the chair at the front of the class, aware that all eyes were upon her. It broke her heart, the very idea, the waste. Kate felt a sense of futility; what would teaching these girls about Shakespeare achieve? Would it bring back Jojo’s kids, help Kelly reach stability? Of course not. Was it more about her stupid, self-indulgent desire to teach?
Kate was aware she had to do something. She swallowed hard and closed the text. Her voice was soft.
‘Sometimes it’s easy to judge others in the cold light of day or to say how you would react in a certain situation, but I think the one thing we all have in common is that we know how hard it is to make the right decision when your mind is so scrambled with tiredness, fear or drugs. We judge Ophelia just like people will be judging us, all of us,