This too was, for the older people, a process of estrangement. Vona Groarke, in her poem ‘The Lighthouse’, contrasted the promises of modernity with the image of three elderly women suddenly thrown out of their familiar world: In the village, a crowd of overcoated men sent up a cheer for progress and prosperity for all … And in the length of time it took to turn a switch and to make light of their house, three women saw themselves stranded in a room that was nothing like their own, with pockmarked walls and ceiling stains, its cobwebs and its grime: their house undone and silenced by the
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