ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how contradictory definitions both of legitimate womanhood and the conditions engendering it are dominant both in the penal discourses and in the extra-discursive practices of the Scottish women's prison. It explores how together they weave a fine web of penal control around women prisoners. Women prisoners are contradictorily defined as being: both within and without family and sociability; both within and without femininity; and, concomitantly with the two previous conditions, both within and without adulthood. The women who outside the prison are denied the legitimate pleasures of public conviviality and communality are yet again denied any real communicative experience once they get to prison. Several of the women spontaneously made the point that prisoners received little sympathy regarding pre-menstrual tension and even less recognition of their need for increased access to washing facilities during menstruation.
