Sarah Waters 2014 (May 2015)
It has Sarah Waters’ characteristic awareness of the roles
of women and class in society, with its focus on an upper middle class lesbian
in 1920s England. Written as an interior narrative, it shows the point of view
of Frances, an anti-war lesbian of a privileged middle class, supporting her
mother in reduced circumstances after the death of her brothers in the War and
her father in its aftermath. She feels the personal loss, but also the social changes
that the war has brought to England. Both of these changes are reflected in the
fact of having to do her own housekeeping and take in boarders after she and
her mother can no longer afford servants to maintain their large house.
Nevertheless, she expects and receives deference from lower orders such as the
police, and is conscious of the difference between her family and her boarders,
who are of the rising “clerk class” but who are rooted in the even lower retail
trades and manual workers.
Waters also gives a strong sense of time and place, with Frances
and her mother struggling to adapt to their restricted financial and social
circumstances. From Waters’ concrete details of housekeeping chores, I can appreciate
much more the work that goes into maintaining a household before modern
appliances, and Waters’ concrete details, such as the path to the outdoor
privy, will stay with me. She also shows clearly the life of a young educated
woman living in London in the early-1920s. The language and point of view are
an insight to the times, and seem to me to be quite apt.
Waters also turns around the conventional police novel by
showing the events of an investigation from the point of view of one of the
subjects of the investigation. While the police do their slow, careful work,
Frances knows what the truth is, and she agonizes about what they will
discover. Her emotions as she is part of the investigation, and then in the subsequent
trial are drawn out in exquisite detail – so detailed that the reader can feel
the tedium and the crazy desperation of just wanting to get through it and
waiting for it to end.
It’s interesting to see Waters’ portrayal of the Frances’
life as a lesbian – she feels no moral ambiguity, just some natural fearfulness.
She knows the social consequences of coming out in the 1920s, as well as the
condemnation she will face from her mother. Nevertheless, she secretly
maintains her friendship with a former lover and her lover’s new partner, and
when she is drawn to her new upstairs boarder, she joyfully seduces and initiates
her into an emotional and sexual relationship. The detailed interior description
of Frances’ growing connection is very natural, with its hopes and contradictions.
Unfortunately, I just did not find Frances a very
interesting person. The story was fine as long as it was showing new details
about the society of post-war London. But the despondent moping as Frances
tries to figure out what to do about her relationship and then the
investigation begin to seem endless. She struggles within her limited point of
view, but sees no way out (probably a realistic assessment). We never get to
see anyone else’s point of view, which might restore some interest. With a few
hundred pages to go, I was counting down to the end of the book, hoping
something would happen to pick things up. Possibly Waters wanted her readers to
experience the frustration and tedium of Frances’ situation, but it just gets
to be too much, for me at least.
I like Sarah Waters, and will read her again, but I don’t
think I could go back to this book.
