THE AGE OF LEAD
A

This Canadian short story is about a woman, who through all of her youth believed in postmodern values and a life without consequences. Becoming an adult, she realizes more and more that there will be consequences if she acts. When her lifelong friend dies she accepts the consequences, but she can never live happily with them.
Jane is a war child, which she hears repeatedly from her mother. Her mother goes on and on about consequences in her entire teenage life. She makes very good friends with a boy from school, Vincent. Their motto is “no belts, no pins, no pads, no chafing.” You could say that they are two little postmodernists. They do not want the social hierarchy “freedom from the world of mothers” (line 88), they do not want gender roles “they made fun of going out” (line 77). They want a world without consequences. When they go to university, Jane concentrates her boy-time on Vincent and starts to fall in love with him but nothing happens. Even though they both want to live a life without consequences, Jane still wants to make love to Vincent. That would certainly put? emphasis on the differences between them, which was what they made fun of a few years earlier. It is as if Jane does not really understand Vincent’s approach to life. She does not think these postmodern thoughts as he does. However, when he lives them, she understands it. The same pattern continues when Jane moves back to Vincent after a period of years. He is still the same and he circles in a community of artists. Jane, on the other hand, creates herself a business of handling the artists’ money instead of handling the artists themselves excellent point!. She builds herself a hierarchy placing herself on the top, away from the community. The post modernistic outlook, which she wants to live by, is getting further and further away from what she really lives by. When she