Peggy’s character arc in The Bookbinder is a journey of clashing with the divides that have structured her life in terms of gender, class, and profession. The novel examines how social boundaries are maintained or endangered, revealing the difficulties of crossing social boundaries.

Peggy’s greatest wish is to study at Somerville College and go from binding the books to reading them, discussing their ideas, and, ultimately, contributing her own ideas to the discussion. One of the greatest boundaries she faces is the divide between what the residents of Oxford call Town and Gown, as the University is perceived as a separate world from those who live and work within the city. The term Gown is a metonym for the scholars’ gowns worn by those who study and teach at the university. Though Peggy works at the Oxford University Press, which shares grounds with university buildings, she has only ever associated herself with Jericho, the working-class and industrial neighborhood, a polar opposite to the classically designed buildings of the school.

Peggy feels that the long-established division will work against her in two ways. First, she fears that her formal schooling, which ended at age 12, will not prepare her for college study. The second barrier she senses is the attitude of her fellow workers at the bindery that she exhibits pride, arrogance, or vanity to wish for college, and in attempting to cross this customary boundary, she shows that she thinks she is better than her bindery peers. In wishing for equal treatment and opportunities, Peggy invites scorn for attempting to move across these long-established social classes. Further resistance to this crossing of class boundaries shows in her work at the hospital. Peggy is considered an appropriate volunteer to assist regular enlisted men, but not officers, who typically come from upper social classes, as Gwen does.

Another example of boundaries emerges in the gendered workspaces of the Press, where the binding activities are assigned to the women, and the work with machines, heavy tools, or more specialized activities like repair are considered men’s work. These borders can be crossed at the discretion of men, such as when Mr. Owen enters the women’s area to ask for help binding Esme’s book. These boundaries are blurred by the war’s demands for soldiers and workers, which leaves it up to the women to move into men’s roles, such as when Peggy is offered a job as a reader or when Aggie leaves to work in the munitions factory. For the women, this is considered progress, but Gwen wonders if the level of respect for work done by women will ever change.

While a large-scale social disruption like war can upset long-held social boundaries, Tilda’s work as a suffragette shows an alternate method for changing these traditions—in this case, long-term activism and social pressure that eventually results in changes like certain women being allowed to vote or Oxford University granting women degrees. Gwen’s reflection on how women have proved themselves during the war raises the question of how these class and gender-segregated practices arose in the first place. Peggy suspects the answer to this question is one of value: Her example is the field of literature, in which works authored by men have long outnumbered (and have been accorded higher respect than) works by women. The outcome of the war and the social changes that follow suggest that these boundaries are largely upheld by custom or tradition and, when challenged or interrogated, can yield and allow progress toward equality.