Latchkey Ladies

 

Latchkey Ladies / Marjorie Grant 
Malvern, UK: Handheld Press, 2022, c1921.
302 p.

This was the first novel of Canadian writer Marjorie Grant, but it's based in England, focusing on the "latchkey ladies" of wartime. I'm very glad it was republished by Handheld Press, as that's how I heard of it. 

The story follows four main characters, Latchkey Ladies all. This means that they are living in London in small flats, working for their livings, dependent on their latchkeys - no home ownership, no family or spouse. Sometimes sharing flats though, as they move around the city looking for a liveable spot. 

It opens in 1918, at the Mimosa Club, a kind of gathering spot for working girls and down on their luck older ladies too. Some of the young women, like Maquita, put the older women's teeth on edge, with her loud voice and laughter. But the old women do the same to the younger in turn, with their sour prissiness. Maquita is one of our focus characters, alongside Sophy, Anne and Petunia. Maquita is jolly, seeming to enjoy this life. Sophy is bland, so much so that even her own mother favours Anne. Anne Carey really is the favoured one, and the story really becomes her story. Petunia shows up a little later on, and she's beautiful but the gossip is that she is half Indian, which still matters to a lot of people. (Grant included; she seems to hold a lot of those class opinions). Anne provides the viewpoint to the story; she is working in a wartime office with Canadian soldiers and they are rough and not quite at the level of Englishmen, which is funny considering Grant is herself actually Canadian. The colonial viewpoint has been thoroughly absorbed!  

In any case, Anne hates her work but she has the level of privilege to just quit, without having another job lined up. Among her four friends, she has the most financial flexibility, but they all seem to have a lot more fun. She flounders a bit but then meets Philip Dampier, a writer (married with children) who has a bit of glamour for her. She is working for her aunt at a girl's school at this point, but spends time with Dampier when she can. And then she finds out she has let herself in for some trouble indeed. Fortunately she has another aunt who takes care of her at this juncture. 

The story is uneven in pacing and characterization - some people appear to shortly disappear completely, and storylines are given different emphasis at different times in the book. And Anne, for all that she's the main character, isn't very engaging. She's a bit selfish and spoiled in some ways. 

But this is still very worth reading for its description of life in just barely post WWI England. And it focuses on women, and the ways they scraped their livings if they weren't married. It looks at the details of life for the Latchkey Ladies themselves, or older spinsters and companions, or Anne's aunts, one of whom becomes a reclusive scholar and the other an active schoolteacher (albeit one who is openly in a loving female relationship). This relationship in particular was interesting; the two women are instructors at a girl's school, and the only thing they are mocked for by the students is their old-fashioned-ness and love of the classics, nothing more. But the book, while not using direct language, makes it clear that it's a long-term partnership. 

The story also delves into class, money, marriage, women's options, various occupations that single women could find, the attitudes of many men toward single working women, and much more. It takes on the daily experiences of post war England, written contemporaneously. It does fall into a bit of melodrama and romanticism, like many popular books written in this era, and definitely shows the edge of racism when talking about Petunia or even Anne's Irish landlady. But I was surprised at how candid it is about many so-called taboo subjects at that time. Really interesting read, I enjoyed it overall.