the natural way of things by charlotte wood

The Natural Way of Things evolved into a dystopian fable, both gripping and lyrical, in which 10 young women who have been through different sexual ordeals are dumped on an isolated property behind electric fences with two male guards and a female 'nurse'. Another young woman who worked at DJ's told Wood, 'We all hate her. And the David Jones employee who complained she had been sexually harassed by the chief executive. There was the news of an army cadet who became known as 'the Skype slut' after she reported being secretly filmed having sex. I started having my ears and eyes open for every political sex scandal and scapegoating of women.' One of the things I found heartbreaking about that place was the girls were blamed for something that was done to them, that weird, sick psychology of a culture that says, 'You've been assaulted so let's lock you up'. 'It started to come alive: the writing had an energy and there was material there. To stir herself up, she tried writing it in the near future.

She began a story set in the '60s but found her writing was dead on the page, 'that awful sludgy feeling where nothing is working'. Wood did not want to write a literal story about the Hay Institution, which had been covered in memoirs and a play by Alana Valentine. One reason many of them were there was they had been sexually abused or assaulted in some way and they told someone about it, so then it was 'they are promiscuous'.' The girls were talked about as sluts and 'they deserved to be there'. 'Nothing that happens in my books is anywhere near what happened to those girls. 'The people in Hay could hear great screams at night,' Wood says. The Natural Way of Things by Charlotte Wood.

The natural way of things by charlotte wood