The Typing Pool

Text 1: Dear Sir, by Cecily Varnham

An original novel extract.

Forty typewriters, forty girls, forty heads bent at the same angle, and above them all the clock with its thick black hands that moved, Joan was certain, more slowly than any clock in England. The noise never stopped. It was like hail on a tin roof, like rain that had decided to fall for ever.

Miss Hargreaves walked the aisles in flat shoes that made no sound. You only knew she was behind you by the smell of lavender water and the sudden prickle at the back of your neck. She did not shout. She did not need to. She would stop, and lean, and lay one finger on a single wrong letter, and move on, and the girl would sit there scarlet while the whole row typed faster, as if speed might make them invisible.

Joan typed. Dear Sir, further to your letter of the fourteenth. Dear Sir, we regret. Dear Sir. Outside the high window a pigeon sat on the ledge, fluffed against the cold, free to leave whenever it liked. At ten past three it did. Joan watched it go, and her fingers kept moving, on their own, as though they belonged to someone else.

How does Cecily Varnham use language and structure to show how oppressive the typing pool is for Joan?

You should use relevant subject terminology to support your answer.