A Great Deliverance

“At last I understand what you Catholics mean by purgatory.”

The woman on the train takes offense at Father Hart’s lack of etiquette, likening the experience of sharing a space with him to time in purgatory. Not only does this hint at a cultural marginalization of Catholics that informs the identity of the people of Keldale, but it foreshadows The Corrosive Nature of Guilt, which prompts Father Hart to seek out police involvement.

“Their relationship was one of those quirks of fate in which two men find themselves locked together in a number of ways which are generally better not discussed between them.”

The relationship between Hillier and Webberly demonstrates the complexities of social class in Britain at this time. Though they are nominally from the same class background, they have different levels of success. Hillier is upwardly mobile, to the point that he has been knighted, whereas Webberly seems stuck in a rut, much to his wife’s annoyance. The competitive, tricky nature of social class is shown through the theme of The Dangers of Class Bias in Great Britain that the novel explores.

“At thirty years old, Barbara Havers was a decidedly unattractive woman, but a woman who appeared to be doing everything possible to make herself so.”

Havers lives in a patriarchal society, where women are judged on their looks in a way that men are not. Rather than cede to these gender expectations, however, she actively rejects them. She has internalized the misogynistic expectation that women’s worth should be linked to their appearance and has decided to increase her unattractiveness as a political statement.