The Paying Guests

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.