ABSTRACT
Towards the end of Andrea Arnold’s disturbing 2009 lm, Fish Tank, the central character, 15-year-old Mia (Katie Jarvis), wreaks vengeance on her mother’s boyfriend, Conor (Michael Fassbender), with whom she has experienced underage sex. Discovering that he has a secret life with another partner and child, she abducts his young daughter, Keira (Sydney Mary Nash), and attempts to drown her. Mia lives with her single-parent mother in social housing, leads a marginalised existence on the periphery of friendships and lacks appropriate maternal care – all factors that indicate poverty and exclusion. Writing in 2006, Eva Lloyd points out that deprivation leads to social exclusion, and this is measured by access to necessities of life – ‘both items and activities’ (2006, 315). Using the 1999 Poverty and Social Exclusion Survey, she argues that,
[l]one mothers are widely known to be amongst the poorest groups in society, and are frequently the target of government interventions and have higher rates of exclusion from common social activities. The poverty of lone mothers constrains their lives and social participation, and also, of course, constrains the opportunities that they are able to offer their children.
