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Charlotte's Row

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Like some of H E Bates's other works such as "The Feast of July", "Charlotte's Row" it is set in an industrial town in the East Midlands, probably in his native Northamptonshire. The town is dominated by a single industry, shoemaking. Some of Bates's later novels clearly show the influence of Hardy; the plot of "The Feast of July", for instance, bears a certain similarities to that of "Tess of the d'Urbervilles". In "Charlotte's Row", however, a stronger influence appears to have been Arnold Bennett, especially the Bennett of "Anna of the Five Towns", another book set in a single-industry Midlands town (in that case pottery) about a young woman desperate to escape from the influence of a tyrannical father.

The domestic tyrant in this case is Quintus Jabez Harper, a drunken, bullying shoemaker, and the heroine his daughter Pauline. The "Charlotte" of the title is not a character in the novel: "Charlotte's Row" is the name of the street of terraced houses where the Harper family live. The main plot deals with Pauline's love for Masher Jonathan, an older man unhappily married to a foul-tempered wife. (We never find out his real Christian name; Jonathan is his surname and "Masher" presumably a nickname). There is also a subplot dealing with Adam, a young orphan boy who lives with his elderly grandmother.

As in many of Bates's other works, the author's vivid powers of description are put to good use. Bates is sometimes thought of as a rural writer, especially by those who only know him from his "Larkin Family" novels and the television series that was made from them, but while "Charlotte's Row" does contain some rural scenes it is more notable for its descriptions of the industrial town and the poverty-stricken lives of many of its inhabitants. The countryside only serves as the backdrop for the brief, idyllic interludes in which Pauline and Masher escape from the grim reality of their everyday lives. Although the novel was written in 1931, it is probably set a few years earlier in the 1920s as there are no references to the Great Depression or to the mass unemployment which resulted from it. Bates possibly wanted to make the point that life was hard for the industrial working-class even during times of relative economic prosperity.

The novel is more overtly political than many of Bates's others. Pauline is drawn to Masher by his gentle idealism and his belief in a more just and equal world. Masher once believed in violent revolution and still considers himself to be a revolutionary socialist, but since witnessing death and suffering at first hand in the Great War he has come to think of revolution in terms of a peaceful transformation of society rather than in terms of violent insurrection. Pauline's father Quintus also considers himself to be a socialist, but his interpretation of socialism is very different to Masher's. Whereas Masher's socialism is rooted in an idealistic altruism, Quintus's is rooted in his attitude to the wealthier classes, a mixture of resentment and envy. He is less interested in improving the lot of the working class than in improving his own social standing; he follows the local Hunt, for example, and throws an expensive twenty-first birthday party (paid for on credit) for Pauline, against her wishes.

The novel appears to be reaching a climax at the end of chapter 10, when Masher has left his wife for Pauline, the two have departed for London and Quintus has been given a jail sentence for assaulting the shrewish Mrs Jonathan. And then in the final three chapters Bates simply allows the tension to dissipate; the focus abruptly shifts to Adam and his grandmother and we never really find out what befalls Pauline and Masher in London. At the end of the book the emphasis is very much on Quintus, now released from jail and improbably transformed from a vicious bully into a likeable, larger-than-life rogue. (Bates had something of a weakness for such characters, like Pop Larkin and Uncle Silas).

"Charlotte's Row" was one of Bates's early novels (he was only 26 when he wrote it), and it shows many signs of early promise. Besides his powers of description, he also shows that he had a gift for creating strongly-drawn and believable characters and for writing fluent dialogue. The novel is, however, let down by the weak structure of the ending. (A weakness in plot construction is also apparent in some other novels by Bates that I have read, such as "The Jacaranda Tree"). Had the final chapters been of the same standard as the first ten my rating would have been higher.