The character sketch of Lilian Matfield
At the very beginning of the book M. makes an impression of a snooty and condescending secretary, indifferent to what’s going on in “T &D”, possessing neither outstanding appearance nor character, just a usual out-of-the-crowd woman. She is supported by her father’s monthly payments and lives in a residential club for girls from middle-class homes in the country compelled by economic conditions to live in London as cheaply as possible. The place is so unbearable and the institution atmosphere so oppressive that the only thing M.M. wants is to get away. She never ceases to curse the place where she has to share life with all kinds of shadow and inferior people: young naïve girls and old spinsters. The whole sight seems too depressive and cheerless and resembles a cage for Miss M.’dreams and fantasies. She wasn’t pretty, but her voice, manners, all pointed to that she nursed some huge overwhelming grievance against her life, “but though she gave tongue to a thousand little grievances every day, she never mentioned a monster”
The idea of a man warms strongly her secret heart. If she married him she might want to domesticate in a beautiful old country house in which she has spent so many imaginary Christmases. She longs for love and attention, looking forward to start a new life, tired of dullness and shabbiness of everyday life and office routine. She hates it and wants to run away from it all to a deserted island and spend the rest of her life in isolation with a handsome man from her fantasies. She wants to evade reality and escape from her secretly imaginary world. Her feelings have already been hurt by a “monster” and it’s immensely difficult for her to revive faith in love and romance.
Miss M. is a young, energetic, good-looking woman, deeply dissatisfied with her present life and oppressed by the surrounding atmosphere and people, waiting for her savior, her prince. As soon as the first candidate turns up, Lillian readily jumps at the chance and throws herself upon new experience, no matter how improper and indecent it seems to look like. She creates an idealistic image of Mr. G. and falls in love.
For sure she has doubts about her relationships but now it’s too late. She patiently waits at the station for her man, full of hopes and expectations and inevitably gets disillusioned. Finally when Lillian realizes that’s it’s all in vain and that her savoir isn’t going to come, she feels uncomfortable, foolish and develops disdain towards herself, her dreams and her imaginary world.
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The character sketch of Turgis
One of the main characters of the book is Turgis - “the clerk, who was in his early twenties, a thinnish, awkward young man, with a rather long neck, poor shoulders, and large, clumsy hands and feet”. His appearance lacked colour and bloom that “suggested that all the food he ate was wrong, all the rooms he sat in, beds he slept in, and clothes he wore, were wrong” and that he lived in a world without sun and sweet air. His babyish mouth was usually open; all his clothes were baggy and scrappy. “Any sensible woman could have compelled him to improve his appearance almost beyond recognition within a week, and it was quite clear that no sensible woman took any interest in him” You would not have noticed him in a crowd, but if your attention had been called to him, you would have given him one glance and decided that that was enough.
Turgis was not lazy and while he was in the office he preferred doing something to doing nothing, but he never regarded himself as one of the firm
J.B. Priestley points out that “Turgis was by temperament a lover”. The real world was illuminated for him by the bright glances of girls. Actually he was ugly, didn`t stand out of the crowd, but in spite of his shabbiness and unprepossessing looks, the shiny baggy suit, the open mouth, slight spottiness, he imagined himself different. There were two figures of him- this lonely lad seeking sympathy in that crowd in which he was lost and the figure of furtive lusts. “He knew that he had little to offer on the surface, was nothing to look at, nobody in particular, but he felt that inside he was different” He knew that he was wonderful, and sooner or later a girl, a beautiful and passionate girl, caring nothing for the outside show, would recognize this difference, this wonder, which in within Turgis. She would cry then “Oh, it`s you!”, and the love would immediately follow. What he really wanted was Love, Romance, a Wonderful Girl of his of His Own
He rented a room that was so small that seemed uncomfortable crowded with furniture and fittings and there was no place to feed.
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Turgis liked to go to the pictures that give him a feeling that he the lover entered his dream kingdom. Usually it was on Sunday when he washed; brushed, consciously shaved as his Saturday night programme offered him a chance of pick-up. He could spin over the whole evening on the edge of adventure all the time surrounded by many a girls. He went to teashops, picture theatres alone, for he had no friends, only a few acquaintances, so in every event he preferred to hunt in solitude longing for the miracle to happen. He was sitting in the darkness watching some film and pretty girls were welcome to occupy the neighboring seats so as to flirt and perhaps to continue the evening somewhere else. But they wouldn`t for so ugly, shy, awkward he was with his mouth wide open and his shoes rotten. As a matter of fact everything he ever bought turned out to be rotten.
His father took no interest in him, hadn`t done for years, and he had no near relations. They didn`t care much about him in the office, they took him for granted in not despised. He was just a chap in the crowd. His existence was noticed only when he bought something, when he turned himself into a customer.
But it was all up until he met a girl with large brown eyes, a smiling scarlet mouth, the prettiest girl he had ever seen – Lena Golspie. Then Arabian nights in his life began and changed his outside world. He began brushing his clothes, bought a few collars, and even ironed his trousers. Now he shaved carefully every morning, had his hair cut, cleaned his suit. All in all he smartened himself up. He was convinced that something is bound to happen. And it did happen.
Once he brought the money for Lena he was not merely invited in, but had a meal, went to the pictures with the beautiful girl. They spent some time together, he was happy buying expensive tickets for the concert for which he had even to ask for salary payment in advance, but it was then when Lena decided not to show up. Just because she was no longer bored and had some other guy to go out.
And it was exactly at the time when Turgis jumped into a part of a new splendid chap and has become a Man distinguished in the crowd. It was a real disaster, he was desperate and his outside world - his appearance- became even worse. Nobody in the office liked the look of him: he slouched about, looking like nothing on earth. He was a shabby young wolf, he couldn’t forget. There were dark rings under his eyes and his eyes themselves have a queer red look. He could thing of nothing, nobody, but Lena. At first he realized, with wonder and humility, that he was nothing in particular, with nothing very much to offer. But she changed that. She kissed him into being somebody, and now he had a great deal to offer – his love, his life
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Somewhere inside he felt he had a right that Lena by doing him down was trying to escape the very condition of life itself. But it happened just because she felt sorry for him once and hadn’t anything much to do and was nice to him. He didn’t want to realize it because it would mean open his eyes and admit how miserable his life was and how humiliated he was. Probably it was this subconscious resistance to admit his misery that made him put his hands round her soft white throat. He wanted to be a Somebody no matter in which particular part – of the Maida Vale Flat Murderer-or of somebody else’s. What is important is that he would be recognized and distinguished in the crowd.
Fortunately for him Lena didn’t die and then somehow it came to his mind that Lena was a little flirt, who had happened to be bored when her friends were away. Yes, he realized the worst. Moreover, he lost his job. He even couldn’t commit a suicide for so poor he was not having money for the gas in the lamp. It seemed his life finished. But it didn’t. On the contrary it threw him a life boat – Miss Poppy Sellers – who happened to bring him his money. Perhaps it was worth bearing this humiliation and realizing who he was – real Turgis – to grab the chance and to live the rest of his life happily.
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