[Vwoolf] Peacehaven

[Stephen Barkway]

Yes, I think you are right, that there’s a disparaging implication when the word ‘trippers’ is used (I recall that Stuart knows an old, amusing jingle about it) as well as caravan park holidays.

 

It’s very striking when you read SP’s descriptions of Benidorm, how much change has taken place; its quaintness evaporated.

 

Your understanding of the differences and similarities between ‘Caravan Site’ and ‘Trailer Park’ is mine too.

 

Stephen

 

From: Jeremy Hawthorn <jeremy.hawthorn at ntnu.no> 
Sent: 08 February 2021 13:47
To: Stephen Barkway <sbarkway at btinternet.com>; vwoolf at lists.osu.edu
Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] Peacehaven

 

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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