Shrines of Gaiety

Chief Inspector John Frobisher is Nellie’s foil. While Nellie runs clubs that are home to illicit activities, Frobisher wants to dismantle this seedy underworld. Frobisher is the antagonist to Nellie’s protagonist which Atkinson imbues with irony since his moral aims epitomize the aims of a traditional protagonist. However, in the end, the two characters unite against an even greater antagonistic threat, Maddox and Oakes—who are running a sex work ring that targets at-risk girls. Frobisher stands out as one of the few characters in the book who proves incorruptible: “Dirt never slept, so neither would Frobisher until he had swept it away” (29).

Frobisher is painted as a mundane character: “Crime paid, fighting it didn’t. Frobisher felt his law-abiding bile rising while he had to quash a pang of envy for the Bentleys. He was in the process of purchasing his own modest motor, an unshowy Austin Seven, the Everyman of cars” (9). He hence exhibits the qualities of an antihero, since his characteristic mundanity and boredom subverts the attributes of a traditional hero. However, he saves lives, including his own wife’s and Freda’s. In a book in which many characters seek fame and fortune, Frobisher is the counterpoint. Even his death—getting run over by a cabbage delivery cart—is mundane. It’s thus ironic that Frobisher is the only character who performs grandiose, heroic acts—acts that are worthy of the fame and fortune some of the other characters, like Ramsay, seek.

Nellie’s empire includes her clubs and her children, who help her manage those clubs. The Coker children have varying roles of significance in the narrative. Betty, Shirley, Kitty, and Edith are significant primarily from a plot perspective. For example, Kitty’s near-abduction is an action point, while Edith’s romantic connection to Maddox builds tension. Niven’s interactions with Gwendolen’s character result in a romantic subplot that enriches the book’s main plotline. Edith and Niven both have opportunities to betray their mother but maintain their familial loyalty. Niven knows “that blood would win. It always did for the Cokers” (210). As a whole, Nellie’s children represent the importance of family loyalty, something that is underscored by Atkinson’s references to classical epics such as the Aeneid which alludes to ruling dynasties.

Ramsay carries more thematic significance. His character speaks to The Corrupting and Dangerous Nature of Ambition. Ramsay’s motivations are fame and fortune: “Ramsay hoped for fame for himself, not as an adjunct of his mother’s celebrity” (7), yet he is ultimately known in his obituary only as “[t]he son of the notorious nightclub owner Nellie Coker” (504). His connection to his mother suggests that Nellie’s children function in the text as part of her empire, inextricable from her in death. In a printed obituary, Ramsay is immortalized as part of her “paper.”

One of the book’s most significant themes is The Corrupting and Dangerous Nature of Ambition. Maddox and Oakes exemplify this theme, as they try to overthrow Nellie’s nightclub empire. These are law enforcement officers whose actions are juxtaposed with their occupations. Their horrific ends met by Maddox and Oakes speak to the dangers of greed and ambition. Maddox is stabbed to death by a roomful of women, while Oakes is publicly hanged. Oakes’s ending lends the book its cyclic structure since it returns to onlookers outside Holloway asking about hanging. They are two cautionary tales in the book’s thematic treatment of ambition.

Freda Murgatroyd’s character likewise speaks to The Corrupting and Dangerous Nature of Ambition. However, Freda is an innocent girl without malicious intent (unlike Oakes and Maddox); she simply wants to be a “star.” Innocent as her ambitions may be, Freda’s dreams are still dangerous. She ends up in risky situations, such as her supposed “audition” which results in her being sexually assaulted by the man with whom she meets. Freda fears for her life, realizing herself “a martyr to fame and fortune” (223). This language is key to her characterization since Freda, imagining herself as a star, narrativizes her troubles using the grandiose language of martyrdom.

Atkinson explores the theme of Expectations and Subversions of Gender Roles through Freda’s character. Although she’s threatened more than once, Freda ultimately survives. Only once does she need saving literally—when she’s thrown into the Thames, and Frobisher fishes her out. In every other instance, Freda relies on herself to escape danger. Freda also refuses to take the roles that men carve out for her, including when she refuses Oakes’s attempts to convince her to become a sex worker.

Gwendolen Kelling is another female character who subverts gender norms. Like Freda and Nellie, Gwendolen doesn’t need a “man’s” help. She was a nurse in WWI, an experience that toughened her, though her short experience as a librarian as a “balm for her war-weary soul” adds to the irony of the supposed “gaiety” of the postwar period (60). Gwendolen’s subversion of gender norms is especially evident in her relationship opposite Niven. When Niven tries to pay for Gwendolen’s hotel room, she insists on paying for it herself. Although Nellie is the most significant example of financial independence for women in the novel, Atkinson also uses Gwendolen to explore this concept; through direct reporting of Gwendolen’s thoughts, the reader learns she does not “want to be beholden” to a man (274).

Gwendolen’s character also speaks to some of the class issues explored in the book. It’s important to note that Gwendolen’s character can be self-sufficient in part because of the trust her father left her. This plot point—that she did not earn her relative wealth—underscores the theme of The Arbitrary Nature of Social Class. Gwendolen’s character also speaks to some of the book’s darker hints of the aftermath of World War I. The money she’s inherited is technically “dirty,” as it was profit from the war. Her background hence reflects the links between pleasure and suffering throughout the novel.