Background to the poem

Fanthorpe’s poem is a dramatic monologue written in the voice of a cleaner working at a university hall of residence. The cleaner performs a sort of choric role; outside of the main action (the world of the students), she provides a commentary on it, a seemingly neutral and impartial observer. As a cleaner, the narrator has, however, privileged access to the private world, the inside story of what really goes on in those student rooms.

How would you describe her tone? Sad, concerned, caring, judgemental, cynical?

In her own mind the cleaner is a realist, someone who has learned her lessons from the University of Life: ‘I’ve seen it all, you know. Men.’ The cleaner’s knowledge and experience is contrasted ironically with the innocence of the female students, ‘They don’t know what it’s all about.’

Is the cleaner a comic creation, a dully conventional woman with stereotypical ideas about men and women, unable to appreciate the value of an academic education? Can we just dismiss what she says? Or is there something more troubling in her comment that ‘a girl/Can get hurt’?

About U. A. Fanthorpe

Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the first woman to compete for the post of Professor of Poetry at Oxford University, U.A. Fanthorpe was a much‑loved, popular poet. Her wry, witty verse was always accessible to the non-specialist reader, amassing for her a wide and loyal readership.

For sixteen years she worked as a teacher at Cheltenham Ladies’ College before becoming, in her own words, a ‘middle-aged dropout’. She started writing only after resigning from her teaching post, taking up instead employment as a secretary, receptionist, and, most significantly for her writing, as a hospital clerk.

A debunker of pretension, Fanthorpe had a satirical, Larkinesque eye for the absurd, the pompous and the foolish. However, her manner was gentler, more humorous, warmer and more humane. And even when sticking her elegant knife in, Fanthorpe maintained the poise of her civilised, understated, very English style.

Read more about U. A. Fanthorpe in the
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography