ABSTRACT
As the previous chapters have shown, Vernon Lodge has developed through a variety of guises and purposes over the past 180 years. As stated in Chapter One, it is the main intention of the book to draw together various themes of continuity and discontinuity between the institution as an early nineteenth century reformatory and the institution as a late twentieth century bail and probation hostel. This was to be achieved through the pursuit of three main objectives. First, it was the intention to identify the meaning of the term 'semi-penal institution'. Second, the nature of the ideological discourses that underpinned the practices and regimes of the institution throughout its long history, and the way those discourses attempted to 'normalise' and regulate the female residents to an appropriate standard of femininity, were to be explored. The final objective was to examine the way in which women adapted to, endorsed or resisted this construction of femininity and the regulatory regimes imposed upon them. I have dealt with these objectives, in an historical context, in Chapters Three, Four and Five. Utilising a series of interviews conducted with staff and residents, and a period of participant observation carried out in the hostel from 1992 to 1994, it is now my intention here to conclude the analysis by examining the three main objectives outlined above in a contemporary context.1
