Personal Life
Charles was born in the fishing village of Pointe Michel in Saint Luke parish, to a "coloured bourgeoise" family. She attended Convent School in Dominica, the island's only girls' secondary school, and became interested in law while working at the colonial magistrate's court. She worked for many years as assistant to Alastair Forbes. She attended university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, before moving to the United Kingdom to attend the London School of Economics. She was a member of the sorority Sigma Gamma Rho. She passed the bar and returned to Dominica, where she became the island's first female lawyer, establishing a practice specialising in property law.
Charles never married nor had children, which caused friction for her in the male-dominated sphere of Caribbean politics. In 1991 she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
Read more about this topic: Eugenia Charles
Famous quotes containing the words personal life, personal and/or life:
“The dialectic between change and continuity is a painful but deeply instructive one, in personal life as in the life of a people. To see the light too often has meant rejecting the treasures found in darkness.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“I was not at all apprehensive about ... disease ... [it] had no terrors for me. The thing I most feared in the world was hunger. That was something of which I had personal knowledge.”
—Madeleine [Blair], U.S. prostitute and madam. Madeleine, ch. 4 (1919)
“City people try to buy time as a rule, when they can, whereas country people are prepared to kill time, although both try to cherish in their minds eye the notion of a better life ahead.”
—Edward Hoagland (b. 1932)