Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.

Through the experiences of Constance and other female characters, as well as the opinions expressed by several male and female characters, the novel highlights society’s problematic insistence on female “respectability” and the notable lack of such a standard for men. This theme is part of the novel’s historical setting and its exploration of gender equality and roles through the lens of the early 20th century.

This theme presents and explore the challenges experienced by women at this time. Many of the novel’s female characters chafe against English society’s postwar insistence that women leave the workforce and return to their families—or start families themselves—because they enjoyed the financial independence that their work afforded. Constance observes, “It mortified her that still—after a world war, after her own service to the family, after her precious certificates earned via correspondence school—even the most well-meaning of friends and family continued to see marriage, any marriage, as her preferred future” (31). Suddenly, it becomes a great deal less “respectable” for a woman to work, and the key to a socially acceptable life is to return to the domestic sphere that middle- and upper-class women used to inhabit.