[Vwoolf] Peacehaven

[Jeremy Hawthorn]

On 08.02.2021 14:03, Stephen Barkway wrote:

> ‘I am sick of the bloody British sea with its toffee wrappers and 
> trippers in pink plastic macs bobbing in the shallows, *and caravans 
> piled one on top of the other like enamel coffins*’. – /Letters of 
> Sylvia Plath/, Vol 2, p. 811 (17 August 1962)
>
Nice one. "Trippers" and "caravans" share a snobbish disparagement of 
the lower orders I think. I remember the pink plastic macs. Worn in this 
instance I presume because it was raining rather than as a form of swimwear.

In contrast, in one of the letters in /Letters Home/, Plath writes to 
her mother about " . . . Benidorm (that lovely little Spanish town where 
we spent five weeks on our honeymoon)," adding in a later letter that 
"while Benidorm is just being discovered by tourists, except for the 
hotels, it is utterly  uncommercial." A decade or so later, Benidorm had 
developed in such a way as to make Peacehaven look positively genteel.

It occurs to me that "Caravan Site" (UK) is not quite the same as 
"Trailer Park" (US), as the former is a place where people go on 
holiday, and the latter where people live permanently (right?). But the 
class associations of both are not totally dissimilar. The class 
associations of many English seaside resorts seem to have remained 
relatively stable, although Eliot's "Brighton Beach" seems to have come 
down in the world from its days with the Prince Regent.

Jeremy


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