Her books are usually set among the middle and upper classes of
Northern England, who are gentleman farmers, businessmen or professional people…
and she is in a quiet way a feminist.
One of her other novels was “High
Wages” which is about a young woman who starts work as a shop girl in a dress
shop, and ends up by owning her own small business.
“Because of the Lockwoods” is one of her mature works and is also a
feminist novel. The story starts in the 1920s,
when a middle class widow, Mrs Hunter, finds herself left very badly off when
her husband suddenly dies. Richard Hunter
had not been able to work as an architect during World War One, and was not fit
to serve as a soldier. He exhausted most
of his capital, providing for his wife and 3 young children. They live in one
of the cotton mill towns that used to be so prominent In the North of England,
but by the 1920s, the trade was dying and people who had become rich
through the mills were often selling up and moving out…
Mrs Hunter is a ladylike shy woman who has never fitted in very well in
the mill town. Her only real friend is Mrs
Lockwood, wife of a local well to do solicitor…
Mrs Lockwood also has 3 children all daughters (Beatrice Muriel and Clare) while there are three young
Hunters, 2 daughters, Molly, and Thea, and a son Martin...
Mrs Lockwood is a domineering rather unfeeling woman, who has a kindly impulse
and offers help tot Mrs Hunter... and gets her husband to give the widow legal
and financial advice. He is a ruthless man…
End Part I
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