61 pages • 2 hours read
Sarah WatersThe Paying Guests
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Dissolving Social Class Hierarchy in Postwar England
The return to peacetime was a difficult transition for England. On the battlefield, trench warfare and long, drawn out military campaigns united men across class lines. In The Paying Guests, this is evidenced by the solidarity between its veteran characters. The English economy suffered with Britain losing much of its male workforce and incurring high levels of national debt. Many social changes occurred in the aftermath of the war. Enfranchisement expanded to men 21 and up and women 30 and up. Female enfranchisement came not only at the hands of reformers and suffragettes, such as Frances and Christina in their younger days, but also due to the fact that women were largely left to run the country in the absence of men, allowing for greater reform.
Strict class lines began to dissolve. In the novel, the upper-class residents of Champion Hill are intermixed with the clerk class, such as the Barber family, the working class, such as Lilian’s mother and sisters’ families, and the lower class, such as Spenser Ward and Billie Grey. Because Champion Hill is a holdover from the earlier Edwardian and Victorian eras, in which the social hierarchy was strictly maintained, it is significant that it is the locus of class-mixing.
Longtime residents such as Mrs. Wray and Mrs. Playfair have antiquated notions about class and rules of propriety. Though Frances has ideas of equality and unrestricted class relations, she herself carries prejudices against lower classes that she cannot shake. For example, when she is drinking and smoking with the Barbers and Leonard shows her that her chair reclines, she thinks, “Well, that was the clerk class for you. They might be completely without culture, but they certainly know how to make themselves comfortable” (125). The clerk class, the relatively new working middle-class comprised of white-collar, rather than blue-collar, workers have money but no ties to aristocracy. They are less entangled with proper social mores than the residents of Champion Hill.
Classism is present in the trial of Spenser Ward. Much of the cases against him is based on the circumstances of his life. Frances points out to her mother and Mrs. Playfair that it is postwar society that has produced young men like Spencer. He is, in a way, a victim himself. Frances realizes that profiling and prejudice leads to Spenser’s arrest. She thinks during the trial that “The surgeon, the lawyers, the police—they were all working backwards from their own idea of what happened to Leonard and tailoring everything else to fit” (412). Rather than find the man that fits the crime, the make the crime fit the man.
Guilt and Moral Culpability
In the days of Leonard’s trial, Frances is frequently afflicted by guilt, anxiety, and “debilitating terror” (389). While Frances did not kill Leonard, she did arrange most of the cover-up of the crime. This makes her accessory to murder, and this fact wreaks havoc on her conscience. Frances feels as though she is as responsible as Lilian and imagines them being punished equally (usually hanged) when she thinks about them turning themselves in.
However, guilt, more than fear, proves to be the greatest motivating factor in Frances and Lilian’s behavior during the trial. Frances’s guilt drives her to attend the police inquest hearing. She “had to be there, she had to know. If the boy were committed for trial, how would she prevent it?” (390). Turning themselves in proves to be beyond the scope of what their fear will allow them to do. They extend the goalposts for what will make themselves do it, and when Lilian decides not to reveal herself after the police inquiry, the extra seven days of freedom makes Frances giddy. This giddy feeling persists during the interim between the inquest and the trial, though Frances is “convinced that if she once let a day go by without thinking of Spencer Ward, without giving him her anxious attention, he would be lost” (407). This shows the depth of Frances’s guilt has taken on an almost superstitious aspect. Frances’s attention does Spencer little good if she does nothing to free him.
Leonard himself is guilty of adultery, and while adultery was not a crime at this time, it is easy to see why Spenser Ward was the ideal suspect for the murder. For Inspector Kempe and Sergeant Heath, his guilt is a foregone conclusion. He fits the profile of a jilted lover seeking revenge, and he has the criminal past to convince the officers that he is the killer. However, circumstantial evidence—his mother and neighbor’s establishment of his alibi, and the fact that the blood on the cosh could not be proved to be human—does not allow the jury to prove him guilty. There is enough doubt to free him, and the jury, in making this decision, acts on the guilt of their collective conscience.
The novel ends on a morally ambiguous note. Leonard is dead, but there is nobody to answer for it. Lilian walks free, and she and Frances can presumably begin their new life. However, it will always be marked by the guilt of having caused a man’s death. While Leonard himself was not innocent, he did not deserve to die for his adultery; if he did, Lilian would deserve the same fate. Spencer Ward gets off free. Lilian does not decide to turn herself in, and neither does Frances. In this way, they resolve to share the moral culpability for as long as they can bear it.
Illicit Love: Lesbian Love and Adultery
In the United Kingdom, homosexuality was punishable by varying degrees (from chemical castration, to imprisonment, to death) until 1967; however, lesbian acts were never punishable. Despite this, in 1921, there were attempts in Parliament to make lesbian relationships illegal. Though this failed to pass, society generally agreed that homosexual acts between females were indecent. In addition, adultery was not a crime in the United Kingdom in 1922, the year in which The Paying Guests takes place. However, it could still be considered grounds for a divorce.
Despite the lack of legal proscription for lesbian acts and adultery, the two forms of sexual relationships demonstrated by Lilian, Leonard, and Frances drive the plot. The three form a complex love triangle. Lilian and Leonard are trapped in a loveless, bitter marriage. Lilian carries on an adulterous, lesbian relationship with Frances. Leonard has an affair with Billie Grey, a woman who shares many similarities with Lilian.
Frances navigates a complex web of deception, keeping her relationship with Lilian a secret from her mother and Leonard. Leonard in particular has never wronged Frances; on the contrary, the two have moments of friendship and closeness throughout the novel. Based on Leonard’s behavior, he likes Frances a great deal. Consequently, this adds an element of betrayal to Frances’s relationship with Lilian, though Lilian feels justified.
Leonard’s infidelity is hinted at through various flirtatious remarks he makes to Frances throughout the novel. Frances considers it part of his personality, “the little innuendo, as reliable as a cuckoo coming open-mouthed out of a clock” (50). While this may be indicative of his lack of class, it is more likely that he was flirting with Frances. Lilian begins to suspect him of cheating when she finds theater tickets on his person
In the three times Frances comes out in the novel, twice she is treated as an aberration. Her mother has known about her daughter’s sexuality for years, and she openly ignores and represses it. When Frances receives a telegram from Christina, Mrs. Wray tells her, “‘I don’t like your friendship with her, I don’t understand it, I don’t respect it; I never shall’” (348). Her commitment to traditional social values causes her to deny a fundamental aspect of her daughter to try to shame Frances into falling in line with her social values.
Frances knew her mother would react like that if she were to find out about her continued friendship with Christina. Her family’s reception of her when they found out about the relationship made her feel like a vampire, something evil and unnatural. It is not until Lilian takes the metaphorical stake from her heart that she is actually able to open up and love wholeheartedly.
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