ABSTRACT
While women often talk about migration in more passive terms, stressing their roles as wives and carers, in other parts of their narratives they may also describe themselves in highly active terms, indicating their autonomy and the degree to which they have exercised individual choice in their lives. Not surprisingly, national and international histories as well as more personal ones play an important role in the accounts that both elders give. These histories are not narrated lineally, but recounted in fragments, and often in response to other questions; one therefore learns of the past through a gradual piecing together of information. There may be other important themes underlying women’s narratives of sickness in Britain. As Wilce has suggested, grumbling about illnesses is safer than attacking the structures that produce them, yet even the most somatic complaints tend to be commenting on a world-view. Even if unconsciously produced, these narratives can therefore be interpreted as veiled protest.
