Context- Feminism and Marxism

1st Wave Feminism The first wave of feminism took place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, emerging out of an environment of urban industrialism and liberal, socialist politics. The first wave of feminism was generally propelled by middle class white women The goal of this wave was to open up opportunities for women, with a focus on the inequality between the genders. The wave formally began at the Seneca Falls Convention in New York, July 1848, when 300 men and women rallied to the cause of equality for women. Victorian America saw women acting in very "un-ladylike" ways (public speaking, demonstrating, stints in jail), which challenged the "cult of domesticity." (something Carter displays also) Discussions about the vote and women's participation in politics led to an examination of the differences between men and women as they were then viewed. Some claimed that women were morally superior to men, and so their presence in the civic sphere would improve public behaviour and the political process.

2nd Wave Feminism The second wave began in the 1960s and continued into the 90's, and the voice of the second wave was increasingly radical. The second phase drew in women of colour and developing nations, seeking sisterhood and solidarity and claiming "Women's struggle is class struggle." (Links to Marxism also) In this phase, sexuality and reproductive rights were dominant issues, and much of the movement's energy was focused on passing the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing social equality regardless of sex. This phase began with protests against the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City in 1968 and 1969. Feminists parodied what they held to be a degrading "cattle parade" that reduced women to objects of beauty dominated by a patriarchy that sought to keep them in the home or in dull, low-paying jobs. (something Carter explores and fights against in stories such as The Bloody Chamber and The Courtship of Mr Lyon) The second wave was increasingly theoretical, based on a fusion of neo-Marxism and psycho-analytical theory, and began to associate the subjugation of women with broader critiques of patriarchy, capitalism, normative heterosexuality, and the woman's role as wife and mother. (Debates on sexual difference and what defines a woman) Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique that sparked off the entire second wave of feminism. In the book, Friedan advocates for the economic independence of women, stating that for women to have full identity and freedom, they must have economic independence and Only economic independence can free a woman to marry for love, not for status or financial support (JANE EYRE AND ROCHESTER)

3rd Wave Feminism The third phase of feminism began in the mid-90's and is informed by post-colonial and post-modern thinking. An aspect of third phase feminism that mystifies the mothers of the earlier feminist movement, was the use of lip-stick, high-heals, and cleavage (proudly exposed by low cut necklines) that the first two phases of the movement identified with male oppression. "It's possible to have a push-up bra and a brain at the same time." (Beauty not being compared to Brains; Tigers Bride and Courtship of Mr Lyon) The "grrls" of the third wave stepped onto the stage as strong and empowered, defining feminine beauty for themselves as subjects, not as objects of a sexist patriarchy.

20th Century Marxism Marxism is the movement founded by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels which fights for the self-emancipation of the working class, subjecting all forms of domination by the bourgeoisie. The political curriculum of Marxism in the 20th century began, after the sheet lightning of the Russian revolution in 1905 The problem is rooted in the very centre of the Marxist cause, which concerns the position of working individuals within the relations of production. In Marx's terms: the State-socialist way to run the mode of production formed a structure of alienation, depriving the workers of their societal accomplishment. The task was to break the boundaries between civil and bourgeois society. Civil meant inclusive-participatory, bourgeois meant exclusive-private. (The difference in class was highly defined) A competitive struggle for jobs was created The Womens Liberation Movement (1960s) conducted its critique both of existing patriarchal society and the legacy of orthodox Marxism, and a number of significant leaders in the women's movement either abandoned Marxism or introduced Marxism into the concepts of women's liberation.

Sources http://www.globalresearch.ca/homophobia-and-misogyny-in-america-the-origins-ofsecond-wave-feminism/5315998 http://www.pacificu.edu/magazine_archives/2008/fall/echoes/feminism.cfm http://www.wolfgangfritzhaug.inkrit.de/documents/XXCenturyMarxism.pdf http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/help/marxism.htm

Angela Carter - Previous Work

Carters published works include various novels, short fiction, poetry, dramatic works, childrens books, and non-fiction books. In 1979 she published several works, including the collection of stories entitled The Bloody Chamber. The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography and Comic and curious cats link to stories within The Bloody Chamber (puss in boots, the bloody chamber, the tigers bride) and allow a further insight into her writing. Excerpt from Wise Children (1991) Good Morning! Let me introduce myself. My name is Dora Chance. Welcome to the wrong side of the tracks. Put it another way. If you're from the States, think of Manhattan. Then think of Brooklyn. See what I mean? Or, for a Parisian, it might be a question of rive gauche, rive droite. With London, it's the North and South divide. Me and Nora, that's my sister, we've always lived on the left-hand side, the side the tourist rarely sees, the bastard side of Old Father Thames. Once upon a time, you could make a crude distinction, thus: the rich lived amidst pleasant verdure in the North speedily whisked to exclusive shopping by abundant public transport while the poor eked out miserable existences in the South in circumstances of urban deprivation condemned to wait for hours at windswept bus-stops while sounds of marital violence, breaking glass and drunken song echoed around and it was cold and dark and smelled of fish and chips. But you can't trust things to stay the same. There's been a diaspora of the affluent, they jumped into their diesel Saabs and dispersed through the city. You'd never believe the price of a house round here, these days. And what does the robin do then, poor thing? Bugger the robin! What would have become of us, if Grandma hadn't left us this house? 49 Bard Road, Brixton, London, South West Two. Bless this house. If it wasn't for this house, Nora and I would be on the streets by now, hauling our worldlies up and down in plastic bags, sucking on the bottle for comfort like babes unweaned, bursting into songs of joy when finally admitted to the night shelter and therefore chucked out again immediately for disturbing the peace, to gasp and freeze and finally snuff it disregarded on the street and blow away like rags. That's a thought for a girl's seventy-fifth birthday, what? Yes! Seventyfive. Happy Birthday to me. Born in this house, indeed, this very attic, just seventy-five years ago, today. I made my bow five minutes ahead of Nora who is, at this very moment, downstairs, getting breakfast. My dearest sister. Happy Birthday to us. This is my room. We don't share. We've always respected one another's privacy. Identical, well and good; Siamese, no. Everything slightly soiled, I'm sorry to say. Can't be doing with wash, wash, wash, polish, polish, polish, polish, these days, when time is so precious, but take a good look at the signed photos stuck in the dressing-table mirrorIvor; Noel; Fred and Adele; Jack; Ginger; Fred and Ginger; Anna, Jessie, Sonnie, Binnie. All friends and colleagues, once upon a time. See the newest one, a tall girl, slender, black curls, enormous eyes, no drawers, 'your very own Tiffany' and lots of XXXXXs. Isn't she lovely? Our beloved godchild. We tried to put her off show business but she wasn't having any. 'What's good enough for you two is good enough for me' 'Show business', right enough; a prettier girl than little Tiff you never saw but she's showed her all.

In summary, this passage shows us a story that has a happy overtone, yet underneath the jolly good morning! we see world that has been destroyed by Marxism and patriarchy, highlighting the struggle of two sisters Dora and Nora, living on the wrong side of the tracks. Several online synopsis reveal parts of the storyline that are yet to unfold, and we can see Carter explores the relationship between parent and child (much like in the stories of the bloody chamber), show business, authenticity and falsehood, proving that upon first glance, nothing is as it seems.

Society - news stories

In the years leading up to the release of Angela Carters The Bloody Chamber, various news stories rose to the publics attention. In 1976 the US supreme court ruled that death penalty is not inherently cruel or unusual and is a constitutionally acceptable form of punishment . This, in my opinion has been shown through the brutal violence within Carters The Bloody Chamber as in its purest form, the castle, and be extension the locked room, can be seen as a prison, and torture chamber. America celebrated its 200th anniversary of Independence day, acknowledging the freedom and prosperity within the country. In 1977 the first woman priest was ordained, showing the importance of female equality and religion within society. This positive role for women however was counteracted with another change within American government, saying that states are not required to spend Medicaid funds (insurance and help for the disabled or low-income patients) on elective abortions, meaning the disadvantaged and lower classes had to pay themselves, as healthcare was no longer free. Taking away the choice of abortion due to financial difficulty meant that some women were forced into motherhood during the 70s. Yet, in 1978 the first IVF baby was born, giving women who for medical reasons couldnt have children, the chance to make a family. Grease the hit musical appeared in cinemas during 78, creating an iconic look influencing the male gaze, featuring Olivia Newton John in a tight black jumpsuit and sexually promiscuous college girls. 1979 saw the rise of Margaret Thatcher as the prime minister of England, creating a strong female icon within the British Empire. Carter releases the bloody chamber and other stories, as well as a few other publications. Other releases by other authors include: Stephen King The dead zone, William Styron Sophies choice and Tom Wolfe The right stuff.

Reviews
An excerpt from, Helen Simpson: The Guardian, Saturday 24 June 2006 The stories in The Bloody Chamber are fired by the conviction that human nature is not immutable, that human beings are capable of change. Some of the most brilliant passages are accounts of metamorphoses. Think of "The Courtship of Mr Lyon", which ends with Beast transformed by Beauty - "When her lips touched the meat hook claws, they drew back into their pads and she saw how he had always kept his fists clenched, but now, painfully, tentatively, at last began to stretch his fingers"; or of the story with which it is twinned, "The Tiger's Bride", where this time Beauty is transformed by Beast - "And each stroke of his tongue ripped off skin after successive skin, all the skins of a life in the world, and left behind a nascent patina of shiny hairs. My earrings turned back to water and trickled down my shoulders; I shrugged the drops off my beautiful fur". contain heroines of these stories are struggling out of the straitjackets of history and ideology and biological essentialism. "There's a story in The Bloody Chamber called 'The Lady and the House of Love'," said Carter, "part of which derives from a movie version that I saw of a story by Dostoevsky. And in the movie ... the woman, who is a very passive person and is very much in distress, asks herself the question, 'Can a bird sing only the song it knows, or can it learn a new song?' Have we got the capacity at all of singing new songs? It's very important that if we haven't, we might as well stop now." The unnamed first-person heroine of The Bloody Chamber's title story appears at first to be a Justine-like sacrificial virgin in a white dress, routinely destined for immolation; however, she changes during the narrative, and finishes by escaping her inheritance - female masochism as a modus vivendi (and morendi) - after a full-scale survey of its temptations. The story is set in a castle on sea-girt Mont St Michel in fin-de-sicle France, with more than a nod to De Sade's cannibal Minski and his lake-surrounded castle with its torture chamber and captive virgins. This story is also a version of the Bluebeard fairy tale that appeared in Perrault's collection, where a new bride unlocks the forbidden room in her husband's castle to find the murdered corpses of his former wives. Perrault drew the moral that female curiosity leads to retribution, though in the France of his time, where death in childbirth was commonplace and four-fifths of the resultant widowers remarried, the bloody chamber might surely have been seen as the womb. In Carter's 20th-century version, the menace is located not in the perils of childbirth, but in the darker side of hetero-sexuality, in sadomasochism and the idea of fatal passion.

An Excerpt from, Maria Warner: The Scotsman The title story of The Bloody Chamber, first published in 1979, was directly inspired by Charles Perraults fairy tales of 1697: his Barbebleue (Bluebeard) shapes Angela Carters retelling, as she lingers voluptuously on its sexual inferences, and springs a happy surprise in a masterly comic twist on the traditional happy ending. Within a spirited expos of marriage as sadistic ritual, she shapes a bright parable of maternal love. Another tale from Perraults canonical collection, Le Petit Chaperon rouge (Little Red Riding Hood), is u nforgettably transfigured in The Company of Wolves and returns in The Werewolf, again with a fine twist, this time startlingly gothic. Carters version of Puss-in-Boots also takes off from Perrault, spliced and spiced with opera and pantomime and commedia dellarte motifs to create a far more exuberant, amorous and freewheeling tale than its source. The fairy tale of La Belle et la bte (Beauty and the Beast), first composed by Mme de Villeneuve and later reshaped by Mme Leprince de Beaumont, was roundly condemned by Carter: Beaumont was a French governess working in England, and she was bent only on house-training the id. But Angela also loved the theme of Beauty meeting Beast, and Jean Cocteaus La Belle et la bte (1946) remained one of her favourite films. The grace, shimmer and seductive innuendoes of Cocteaus vision suffuse two of Carters tales, The Courtship of Mr Lyon and The Tigers Bride, yet with a difference, because Carter wants us to feel what it is like to be Beauty from the inside. She warns of the greater danger of wolves who are hairy on the inside, but the knowledge of what it is like to be there, be on the inside, was her goal and her achievement, and it has enthralled her readers, discovering themselves to themselves. Alongside the aristocratic fairy-tale tradition, Gothic gives the stories in The Bloody Chamber their particular flavour. The beast of the courtly south meets the ravenous wolf of more northerly folklore in Wolf-Alice and The Lady of the House of Love, as well as The Company of Wolves. Many of these figures and motifs appear in the Grimms collection of Childrens and Household Tales (181257), and Carter sharpened the laconic chill of the Brothers cruel fairy tales like Snow White with her splintering fable of jealousy and incest, The Snow Child. But she also cast nursery fairy tale on the warp of American horror Edgar Allan Poe, whom she admired greatly, also conjured landscapes of ice and snow. Concurrently with writing these fairy tales, Angela Carter was making a translation of Perrault; she followed both books with her most contrary and uncompromising essay, The Sadeian Woman (1979), which forms a diptych with The Bloody Chamber. Carter once remarked, For me, a narrative is an argument stated in fictional terms, and her writing fulfils that unexpected definition. In this counterblast to the virtuous claims of feminism, Carter identifies the Marquis de Sade as an honest witness to the conditions of bourgeois marriage, the economics of sexual relations, and the collusion of women with their own enslavement and subjugation. While as a writer she clothes herself in sparkling ornament and sensuous fantasy, she continues to operate surgically, with Enlightenment fury against hypocrisy and modations

An Excerpt from Living in the Present by Timothy Mason There are those that detest Angela Carter's writings. Too Slick, they say, too precious, too meretricious. Sometimes, I'm tempted to agree ; the opening pages of 'The Bloody Chamber' seem to teeter on the edge of a facile pastiche of the True Romance novel - the appeals to the reader, the coy flutterings around the theme of lost maidenhead, the poor orphan who captures the heart of a titled millionaire. But I suspect that Carter herself may have had a sharp answer to such misgivings ; why should it be more uncomfortable to recognize the affiliation that links Charlotte Bronte to Mills and Boone than it is to draw the line that runs - for example - from Henry V to all those boozy Hollywood cops, saved from the bottle by the call of duty - and/or an eligible princess? If in recent decades we have recognized the permeability of the frontier that separates and joins the high and the low culture, perhaps we have hesitated and drawn back at some points along the border. Boys' games may be offered their entry tickets more easily than girls' games. Comic-book costumed heroes - Batman or the Silver Surfer - may be allowed to carry quite a load of cultural baggage, but the Karens, the Joans and the Sharons who flitted through the pages of Roxy or True Romance are forever condemned to inhabit that zone of the culture where, as one Romance publisher put it, the consumers can't read without moving their lips. It may be, then, that a part of the difficulty that some have with Carter comes from the fact that she worked on the permeability of a particularly feminine sector of the cultural frontier. She can be conceived of as attempting to recapture the lost lands of her sex, and as writing, for herself and her fellows, a kind of archaeology of the female psyche, in which the fairy tales of the little girl, the Romances of the teenager, and then the sharper tones of the young adult, are scrutinised with the cold eye of the boudoir philosopher. It is perhaps in the short pieces such as those collected in 'The Bloody Chamber' that this project can be most clearly perceived and is at its most discomforting. And it is also in these pieces that, as I shall try to demonstrate today, she made one her more remarkable stylistic experiments. I hope to persuade you that this is itself a part of her wider attempt to sap beneath the enemy lines - but not, boyishly, to plant bombs.

An excerpt from an article found on The Free Library by Farlex I wish to argue that Carter's use of intertextuality in The Bloody Chamber moves the tales from the mythic timelessness of the fairy tale to specific cultural moments, each of which presents a different problem in gender relations and sexuality. Although she recounts the plots of the same fairy tales--"Beauty and the Beast" twice, "Little Red Riding Hood" three times--Carter changes the cultural context from tale to tale, and, as a result, each retelling generates a different narrative. The outcomes for her protagonists can be tragic or triumphant, the tone can be serious or farcical, depending on the historic and cultural circumstances. To demonstrate the range of the collection, I will consider two tales with the same scenario, a young, powerless woman under the domination of an older, powerful male figure who is not only a threat to her virginity but a threat to her life. "The Bloody Chamber," a retelling of "Bluebeard," is set in the world of decadent turn-of-the-century French culture, among the operas of Wagner and the fashions of Paul Poiret. "The Snow Child" is set in medieval Europe, deep in a forest, and is based much more closely on its original, a version of "Snow White." "The Bloody Chamber" is a tale of feminine courage triumphant, while "The Snow Child," as its chilling title suggests, is a stark, uncompromising tale of sexuality as a function of overwhelming male power. The lengthiest and perhaps the paradigmatic story of the collection, "The Bloody Chamber" explores the sexual symbolism of the secret room, making explicit the Freudian interpretation given by Bruno Bettelheim in The Uses of Enchantment that the "bloody chamber" is the womb. In addition to making the tale's latent sexual symbolism manifest, Carter also addresses in this story what she calls in The Sadeian Woman the "mystification" associated with the womb. The "bankrupt enchantments of the womb" led, she writes, to the segregation and punishment of women (109); in "The Bloody Chamber," Bluebeard, the connoisseur of women, makes his womblike secret chamber into a museum of tortured and murdered women. "The Snow Child" is a stark, two-page version of "Snow White," reducing the fairy tale to its skeletal outlines as a fable of incest. Carter uses, rather than the Grimm Brothers' version, in which a queen wishes for a child, another version, quoted by Bruno Bettelheim in The Uses of Enchantment, in which a count wishes for a daughter (200). The girl appears, just as he imagined her, but he is forced to abandon her through the jealous stratagems of his wife. Bettelheim argues that all versions of Snow White are myths of Oedipal conflicts between mothers and daughters, but certainly the harsh simplicity of this version heightens the Oedipal tension. Its opening paragraphs in exact parallel with the traditional tale, Carter's version veers away as the Countess's stratagem for leaving the girl behind is intercepted by the Count: "The Countess dropped her glove in the snow and told the girl to get down to look for it; she meant to gallop off and leave her there but the Count said: 'I'll buy you knew gloves'" (92). From this point, the tale becomes a fable of the struggle between masculine power and women's sexuality. In the traditional tale the Count must choose between the Countess and the Child. In Carter's version the Count, who has all the real power, does not have to choose; he can have both Countess and Child. The Countess, in fact, is as powerless as the Child, since both are held in the tyranny of the Count's desire. He has granted a subsidiary power to his wife, signalled by her title and indicated by her horse, furs, boots, and gloves, but as a sign of their

Morgaine Davidson, University of Chichester One of the most gripping reinventions of the Little Red Riding Hood tale, Angela Carters The Company Of Wolves is an extraordinarily beautiful story of female sexual awakening and transformation. Each of the stories in the renowned collection The Bloody Chamber is a reinvention of a classic fairy tale or folk story. In Carters hands, they grow rich in symbolism and seductive, with her typically poetic use of language and her often intricate patterns of imagery. The collection includes a moving depiction of Beauty and the Beast, an urban Puss In Boots, and the title story is a reworking of the old Bluebeard folk tale. Even as they seduce us, Carters stories reveal the primal and bloody core of old tales that were once designed to frighten children into doing what they were told. They take us into the dark corners of the human psyche and explore that which is often taboo. She confronts convention and gender stereotypes in a no-holds-barred verbal fistfight, and emerges clutching this alluring yet unsettling collection in an undeniable victory. By taking the Red Riding Hood myth and modernising it, Carter turns traditional gender roles on their heads. The first part of her story sets the scene in an unnamed settlement; the phrase one beast and only one howls in the woods by night is a chilling opening. The reader is instantly bombarded with line after line of powerfully evocative imagery. She piles metaphor upon simile until we almost begin to buckle under the weight, but the picture painted in our minds is vivid and unequivocal. In this world, the wolves are grey members of a congregation of nightmare; they belong to the night and to terror. The werewolf is even worse. Carters wolf-man is symbolic of sexual appetite, of danger and desire; he is something against which women have been sheltered in one form or another for centuries. However, we quickly become aware that this is a more mature heroine than the fairy story offers us; she is described as being in that period of limbo when a girl becomes a woman, with pale cheeks and flaxen hair. She is innocent and virginal, but she is also armed with a knife and unafraid. En route to her grandmothers cottage, the wolf appears to her disguised as a handsome huntsman bedecked in the green of the forest symbolic of course of life and of rebirth. After accompanying her part of the way through the wood, the wolf-man makes a bet with Little Red: that by using his compass he can navigate the perilous forest and arrive at the cottage before her. His prize, should he win, will be a kiss. She agrees, and the seduction begins. But in the final dramatic encounter between Little Red and the wolf, the girl displays a maturity and wisdom unknown to his previous victims. By abandoning the safe preconceptions taught to her in childhood, she saves her own life and turns the tables on the ravenous carnivore. Here, the wolf-man is the forest, he is the night, he is all that people are supposed to fear. But she gives him the kiss she owes him, and more. They are opposites, dark and light, man and woman, beast and innocent, yet the seduction has been reversed, the power has shifted, and the young girl-turned-woman trusts in her own powerful sexuality for protection. Through her use of the wolf myth, Carter was able to show that a girl who took her power into her own hands and used it without shame or fear was the only one to tame the savage beast and survive. It is a story of female empowerment, one that enthrals the mind and engages the senses, and for that reason that The Company of Wolves is a compelling read.

Problems with Marxism and Feminism

Marxism: If the economic base determines its superstructure, writers will not have that much freedom in their work Marxists do not have a great knowledge on history, and sees it as a collective, rather than separate defining events It rarely discusses the details of a specific historical situation, traditional Marxist criticism tends to deal with history in a fai rly generalised way lack of facts or true knowledge Capitalism, Marxism tells us, thrives on exploiting its labourers what they do not know however is how capitalism alienates them from themselves they are objects rather than human beings. The mode of production generates the view of the world, focused on profit. Something that Marx didnt see.

Feminism: Extreme or radical feminists seek to reverse the power balance completely, having women literally rule the world. However, real feminism only searches for equality, so within feminism there is a chance of crossing a line and becoming too involved with the subject. The theory ultimately disempowers women accepting they are not equal gives more power to men? Modern feminism has become about celebrities and whether or not real feminists should wear makeup and high heels, as they are contraptions used to subjugate women into behaving and looking how men want them to.

News stories - Marxism

Rail fare rise of 2.8% comes into effect An average 2.8% increase in rail fares comes into effect on Thursday, pushing the cost of some commuter travel to more than 5,000 a year. The increase is the smallest rise in four years, according to the pan-industry Rail Delivery Group. Chancellor George Osborne said in last month's Autumn Statement he would keep fares in line with July's Retail Price Index (RPI) inflation rate of 3.1%. But campaigners say that fares are rising three times faster than incomes. 'Concerns' recognised Some regulated tickets, including season tickets, anytime and off-peak tickets, have risen on average by 3.1%. The increase pushes the cost of some annual season tickets to more than 5,000 a year. Transport Minister Stephen Hammond told the BBC: "Fares are

rising but at the lowest they've ever done in the last decade and that's because this government recognises the concerns that people have about rail fares. "Also this government is investing 16bn in the maintenance and upgrade of our railways over the next five years to ensure that there will be benefits for passengers like extra capacity." Shadow transport secretary Mary Creagh said: "David Cameron's cost-of-living crisis continues as fares rise this week by up to 5%, while season tickets have gone up by 20% under this government, costing hard-working commuters hundreds of pounds. "Over the last three years David Cameron has failed to stand up for working people, allowing train companies to hit passengers with inflation-busting fare rises of up to 9%." Passengers travelling to London from Deal and Dover Priory will have to pay 5,012 annually, up from 4,864. And the price of an annual season ticket from Basingstoke to London will now go up from 3,952 to 4,076. Unregulated fares are not capped. But a number of these, typically off-peak leisure tickets - including some on the East Coast route - have gone up by much less than 3.1%. In Wales, season tickets will go up by less than inflation in January. But the Welsh Transport Minister Edwina Hart said future average price rises would have to stay in line with the RPI inflation rate, instead of the earlier formula of RPI plus 1%. The Scottish government says increases in regulated peak fares will be capped at RPI in January 2014 and January 2015. Meanwhile, regulated off-peak fares are frozen after 2013, provided that RPI remains below 3.5% per annum. There are no planned rises in Northern Ireland. A Department for Transport spokesman said: "As a result of the economic policies that this government has put in place, the most recent forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility are that by around 2015, fares will be rising in line with wages and salaries." 'Prohibitively expensive' The chancellor announced in his Autumn Statement in early December that the regulated fare price cap of RPI inflation plus 1% was being changed to RPI plus 0%. Jason Torrance, policy director of sustainable transport organisation Sustrans, said commuters would still feel the effects of the rise. "The chancellor's move to bring an end to the inflation-busting fare rises we've seen over the last decade shows a recognition that rising transport costs are a barrier to economic recovery," he said. "But commuters will still feel the pinch this new year because salaries aren't increasing by anywhere near the level of inflation. "If transport remains so prohibitively expensive, we will continue to restrict travel choices and opportunities to access essential services and employment." Transport Minister Stephen Hammond also commented on a plan to boost capacity by converting some first class carriages into standard class. Earlier this month, First Great Western confirmed it was in talks with the Department for Transport about converting first class carriages on some of its services. Mr Hammond said: "There are some new ideas we are looking at. This is one of them. Is it going to happen? It may. It may not."

News stories - Feminism

Serious sex attack on woman in Edinburgh A 21-year-old woman was the victim of a serious sexual assault in Edinburgh at the height of the New Year celebrations. The incident happened in the Canongate area of the Old Town between midnight and 02:30.Forensic teams have been carrying out a search of the Canongate Kirk grounds. The suspect was described as white, in his late teens or early 20s, of medium to heavy build with dark spiky hair and a gap between his front teeth. Busy area Police have appealed for witnesses to come forward. Detective Inspector Alyson Brown, of Police Scotland, said: "The Canongate would have been busy with members of the public out celebrating Hogmanay and we are particularly interested in speaking to revellers or locals who were in the area after midnight and remember seeing or hearing anything suspicious. "I would urge anyone who recognises the description of the suspect to come forward immediately. "Officers continue to provide a high-visibility presence within the Canongate to conduct further inquiry, engage with the public and offer reassurance to the public." Coronation Street: Plotline A drunken Kylie puts her children in danger Gail and David are concerned about Kylie - she seems to have just given up. When Gail urges Kylie to spend quality time with her children, Kylie dismisses the idea. Alone in the house with Max and Lily, she cracks open a bottle of wine. Passed out on the sofa, does she have any idea of her children's impending danger?