A REINTERPRETATION OF THE FEMALE STEREOTYPE IN PAM GEMS'S SELECTED PLAYS

Abstract

Pam Gems was born in Christchurch, Hampshire in 1925. Her father died when she was only four and her mother worked in upper class households to support the family. Although Gems had won a scholarship to grammar school, her education was interrupted by the war. She left school at fifteen and took a variety of jobs in offices, shops and factories. She joined the Women's Royal Naval Service, served from 1944 to 1946, and served as a machine gun assessor during the Second World War. After her military service, she attended Manchester University (1946-1949) as an ex-service student. She studied psychology because "the line for registering for a place in psychology was shorter than the line for those wishing to learn to teach English" (Weintraub, 193). Although she did not work as a psychologist, her formal education has influenced her plays two decades later.

Pam Gems met Keith Gems in Manchester University and they were married shortly after her graduation. Keith Gems's work, a model manufacturer formerly an architect, took them to Paris during the 1950s and then to the Isle of Wight, where they remained until moving to London in 1979. In London Gems worked for the B.B.C., for which she had worked briefly before her marriage. In 1952, she gave birth to her first child and with the arrival of her second child she left her work. By 1960, she had three children and the family moved to the Isle of Wight.