Turbulent Waters in Post WWI London

Sarah Waters’ The Paying Guests has been getting a lot of good press since its release last month, and the praise for this novel is much deserved. It really is a masterful work. Waters creates a suspenseful and heartbreaking love story against the backdrop of post-WWI London. Its rigid moral climate and deteriorating social and economic situation contribute to an almost suffocating environment that limits opportunity for women and criminalizes unconventional sexual desires. Waters stands shoulder to shoulder with Edith Wharton and Kate Chopin in both the subject matter of her novel and in her superb depiction of the psychological impact of this repressive society on those who try push beyond its confining boundaries. And there is some rather thrilling courtroom drama as well.

The novel is set in 1922 and told from the point of view of Frances Wray, a 26-year-old woman from what was once a well-to-do family. Her brothers died in the war, and her father has also died, leaving behind debts that neither Frances nor her mother had suspected. Having fallen on hard times, the Wray women must take on lodgers, or “paying guests” as they are called in polite society, in order to meet household expenses and pay off debt. They let their upstairs rooms to the Barbers, Lilian and Leonard, newlyweds of the “clerk class.” As one character says of this class, They look tame. They sound tame. But under those doilies and antimacassars they’re still rough as hell. Frances is both fascinated and repulsed by the Barbers — fascinated by Lilian, who has an artistic flair, and repulsed by Leonard, who seems vaguely crude and brutish. They are outsiders from the Wrays’ class, and yet Frances does not fit well either. She had been involved in the suffragette and pacifist movements during the war, and she had been involved in a lesbian relationship before her mother put an end to it. Frances and Lilian become friends and then lovers, hiding their affair from Leonard and Mrs. Wray. Leonard’s violent death leads to a police investigation, arrests, and a trial that reveals some astounding secrets.

To give away more detail would spoil the novel for others, but Waters researched trials from the period as well as social and economic history, and it shows. Her attention to detail is impressive. The prevailing view on “what’s wrong with society” is expressed by Mrs. Wray’s friend and neighbor Mrs. Playfair:

No, nothing had been the same since the War. Civilised behaviour had gone out the window. It was all very well to blame lack of employment, but the plain fact was there were jobs aplenty; it was the men who put themselves out of work work by insisting on unrealistic wages. They had had to be conscripted into defending their country while the sons of the gentry had willingly laid down their lives….

Veterans are men whose lives have been completely shattered, either living in poverty and begging or living ghost-like in society. The view on lesbianism was that it was … something indecent … something a hard society woman might do …. Lilian tells Frances that she is lucky to be single, that her own marriage was a mistake that she cannot escape because Leonard would never allow it. Views on class, wealth, sex and sexuality set the mood of despair and highlight the intensity and danger of the passion between Frances and Lilian.

Waters also has a flair for describing violence. There are a couple of scenes involving physical violence and its bloody aftermath that left me reeling. They weren’t gratuitous but rather contributed to the overall impression of strife, discord, and desperation in society. As the jury trial progresses, Frances thinks, They had no idea how decency, loyalty, courage, how it all shrivelled away when one was frightened. Questions of morality, of justice and rightness, become murky, complicated and terrifying. No one is heroic here; each character demonstrates his or her own humanity, with its weakness, pain and occasional bravery.

This is one of the best books I’ve read this year. While it runs over 550 pages, Waters’ writing and her brilliantly crafted plot will keep readers engaged and racing to find out what happens. This is another writer whose previous works are now on my “must read” list.