Fearless THEME essay

• Fearless by Janice Galloway

  A small story set in a small town in Scotland
• In the story, Galloway saks about her childhood experiences of sexism and inequality in a small Scottish narrow-minded town
• The story


  • Focuses on the Jepannymous Fearless' aggressive and intimidating personality that makes clear the gender inequality in Sectland at the time, however still exists till this day
  • Speaks about sense of male-dominance
  • A patriarchy built upon their community that separates the men who save themselves as cuperior and above everyone else, and the women who were treated unfairly and felt as if they had to keep quiet
• Ignoring the issue of obtrusive misogyny that needed to be recognised
• The writers use


  • Setting
  • Language
  • Key incident
  • Helps to explore the blatant discrimination women and young girls had to face
• Galloway's use of change of narrative perspective


  1. Illustrates the pour treatment of women in a male-dominating community

  2. The narrator decides to reveal herself as a woman "I belonged to the world of women and children"

  3. This change of narrative calls attention to the different roles men and women were labelled with within their society
• Galloway uses


  1. Repetition

  2. List

  3. To emphasise the scale of the problem

  4. "I never had access to their private thoughts voiced in private places, the bookies, the barbers, the pub"

  5. The number of places women couldn't go to

  6. The use of repeating the word "private" heightens the idea of exclusion suggesting that these places were for men only
• The scale of the issue


  Allows us to understand both how sexism involves and the places that would be normal for women to go to know was strange back then
• Onama toporia is used to unravel the trauma and impact sexism had on Galloway
• At the end of the story, Galloway comes back as her older self and reflects on the memories that are still fresh in her mind. "But I still hear something like him; the crank and the drag." This shows us that Galloway still hears and feels his presence years later
• Galloway has a clear and vivid memory of Fearless' bullying behaviour that took a big toll in her life and impacted the way she looks at the world
• The affect of sexism doesn't just hurt you when you experience it, it stays with you for the rest of your life
• The key incident within the story


  • Makes the difference between how Fearless treats women compared to men
  • "He is didn't seem to touch their lives in the same way." Suggests that men did not experience the same, vicent and volative side of Fearless that women had to face
  • This allows us to understand that Fearless did not target men and chose to aim his hate at the women and children in town
• Fearless didn't think he'd get a reaction back other than the usual attempt to "adjust" to his actions. That was until Galloway fought back. "I remember Fearless limping away!"
• Galloway had kicked Fearless. A power move no one would've dared to try as women felt afraid and even shameful to speak up against the widespread issue of sexism
• Fearless limping away suggests how much of a coward he is. Now that he got the reaction he deserved but didn't expect, all that the walls of his rude, volatile aggressiveness comes down and reveals a cowardly man
• In conclusion, Galloway uses different a variety of language techniques, key incident and setting to take a deeper dive into what sexism involves, who it affects and what impact it can make on you