The Queens of Crime

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains discussion of gender discrimination, graphic violence and death.

Throughout the novel, parental sacrifice is a recurring motif related to the theme of Class Expectations in British Culture. When Dorothy becomes pregnant out of wedlock, she gives up her son rather than “damning his reputation and ruining my ability to earn a living for us both” (194) by raising him as a single mother. Although she misses John “desperately,” she’s willing to undergo “the pain caused by [their] separation” (194) to give her son a better life. The novel presents Dorothy’s willingness to “protect [her] child at all costs by keeping him hidden” (248) from the public as an example of parental sacrifice.

The relationship between Jimmy and Louis Williams is another example of parental sacrifice. Jimmy was “born a bastard to an unconscionably young housemaid and had to be raised by his grandmother” (165), but he has become an established insurance salesman and is determined to create a better life for his son Louis. Jimmy arranges a marriage between Louis and “the daughter of [a] broke baronet who could give him a tangential tie to the aristocratic class” (272), and Jimmy is willing to eliminate any obstacle, including May Daniels.