ABSTRACT
The dominant cultural storyline for the lives of women is one of marriage and family relationships. Indeed, it has been argued that the narrative or storied nature of romance is one of the most compelling discourses by which western subjects are inscribed (Jackson 1995). Women who are on their own have to do rhetorical work that deals with this cultural storyline in presenting a positive account of a life and relationships. The previous chapter gave a number of examples of how women draw on common interpretative repertoires to work with their identity. This chapter focuses mainly on extracts from just one interview, in order to examine in more detail the kind of narrative and rhetorical work undertaken by a participant in explaining her life and relationships. The extracts form a `self-narrative' (Gergen, K.J. 1994). Chapter 5 continues with a focus on the stories that my participants told, but features a wider range of narratives from different participants.
