High Wages by Dorothy Whipple5/28/2023 ![]() The magic here is how Whipple makes the rise of a lowly shop girl such compulsive reading. But the cotton mills are long gone, and the class structure is no longer as rigid, is it? It’s been so long since I left Lancashire that I no longer know. ![]() Lancastrians and human nature in general haven’t changed much. It mattered not that they were a few decades before my time. So I recognised a lot in Whipple’s Jane, and in the rest of her cast. I was also a (Saturday) shop girl, with my sights set higher. ![]() ![]() Well I did live only a hop, skip and a jump from Whipple (not that I knew it at the time), and so it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise if her characters end up frequenting the same places. This time, however, to Blackpool, the actual location of many childhood holidays. What are the chances? I just finish one nostalgic trip to the British seaside (R C Sheriff’s A Fortnight in September) when the very next read takes me back there. ![]()
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