Maisie Dobbs

The various timelines of Winspear’s novel, 1910 to 1929, marked profound social, political, and cultural change in Britain and Europe. The prewar decades were a time of increased industrialization and urbanization. Maisie’s London roots and the poverty Maurice Blanche attempts to alleviate in the East End, largely made up of laborers like Frankie Dobbs, are emblematic of these trends. Lady Rowan’s interest in social reform mirrors the growth of liberal politics in the early 20th century, as does her participation in the suffrage movement, often perceived as radical and dangerous by conservatives. Maisie’s efforts to transcend the class system reflect the rigidity of Britain’s social hierarchies and the normally impermeable boundaries between British hereditary aristocrats and their servants. Maisie’s admission to Cambridge also reflects the limits placed on her by her gender, as she is not formally awarded a degree—Cambridge did not confer these to women until 1948.

The First World War, commonly known as the Great War at the time, erupted due to years of geopolitical tensions between Europe’s ruling powers. France and Germany had been at odds since German reunification and the defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War, while Austria-Hungary allied with Germany to oppose tsarist Russia’s ambitions in the Balkans. The Ottoman Empire’s increasing struggles with Balkan nationalism extended the geographic reach of the tensions. Britain allied with France in 1904, partly due to naval rivalry with Germany. When the archduke of Austria-Hungary was assassinated in Sarajevo in June 1914, this led to declarations of war between Serbia and Austria-Hungary that soon mutually obligated all the major European powers.

The war consisted of brutal battles for very small amounts of territory, as troops faced each other across opposing trenches. Novel weapons such as modern munitions shells, poison gas, tanks, and other technology produced new and devastating wounds. In Maisie Dobbs, wounded soldiers are marked by the resulting facial injuries and symptoms of what is now known as post-traumatic stress disorder. The mass conscription of men required women to enter the labor force in unprecedented numbers, in skilled jobs they could not previously occupy—Enid’s work in the munitions factory reflects this trend. By the war’s end in 1919, an entire generation of young men had been injured or killed in significant numbers. Britain mobilized nearly nine million soldiers, and approximately three million were killed or seriously injured. Winspear depicts this devastation in personal terms, bringing a human dimension to a conflict that dictated the course of the 20th century.