The Beekeeper's Apprentice

Set between 1915 and 1919, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice unfolds against the backdrop of World War I, a conflict that profoundly disrupted British society. The number of soldiers called up for duty and the subsequent immense loss of men on the Western Front created an unprecedented labor shortage, compelling women to enter the workforce in traditionally male roles. As Russell observes, “Necessity dictated that women work outside the home […] and so women put on men’s boots and took control of trams and breweries, factories and fields” (43). For example, the Women’s Land Army, established in 1917, recruited over 250,000 volunteers to work in agriculture, while hundreds of thousands more became Munitionettes in armament factories (“Women in WWI.” Teignmouth and Shaldon Remembers WW1). 

This societal upheaval accelerated the pre-war push for women’s rights, culminating in the Representation of the People Act of 1918, which granted suffrage, or the right to vote, to women over 30 who met property qualifications (“Representation of the People Act.” The National Archives). This era also gave rise to the archetype of the “new woman”: educated, independent, and resistant to conventional domestic roles. Mary Russell embodies this figure through her intellectual ambition at Oxford, her physical competence, and her self-identification as a “feminist.” King further highlights Russell’s independence and competence with actions that set her apart from gender expectations of the time, such as buying a car and acquiring her driver’s license. The wartime suspension of rigid social proprieties also provides the crucial space for her unconventional, unchaperoned partnership with Holmes to develop, making her a plausible protagonist for her time and a symbol of a generation of women redefining their place in the world.

King also contextualizes the novel in World War I through Russell’s Jewish heritage and connection to Palestine. The Middle Eastern theater of the war began in 1915, when the Ottoman Empire, in alliance with Germany, invaded the Sinai Peninsula, which was occupied by the British at the time. Over the next three years, fighting ranged throughout the region, and in 1918, the Ottoman Empire was defeated and split into several new entities, including Palestine, which Britain took occupation of as part of the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire. With Britain’s support, the Zionist movement to establish a sovereign Jewish state, which had been building since the turn of the century, gained momentum, and European Jewish immigration to Palestine increased dramatically. In the novel, Russell’s idealization of Palestine as a Jewish homeland reflects the prevalence of this movement at the time.