Broken Country

Clare Leslie Hall positions the Meadowlands estate and Blakely Farm on opposite sides of a deep rural class divide that defined much of mid-20th-century England. Meadowlands, the big house with a private lake, servants, and a wine cellar, embodies the landed gentry whose fortunes survived both World Wars. Gabriel is reared to expect Oxford, country-house weekends, and London literary parties, and his mother, Tessa, casually writes a four-figure check to quiet Beth’s pregnancy, illustrating disposable wealth that can literally erase “inconveniences.” In contrast, Blakely Farm is a smallholding that lives from season to season, where Frank, Jimmy, and Beth measure prosperity in lamb yields and milk quotas. Jimmy’s resentment bursts out whenever Meadowlands infringes on farm life: He calls Gabriel a “posh nob” and accuses him of ruining honest people’s livelihoods.

The division is not simply economic; it shapes language, manners, and opportunity. Beth notices it at 16 when Gabriel’s “curt, cut glass accent” rebukes her for trespassing and again in 1968 when journalists refer to her as a “lowly ‘farmer’s wife’” (8, 237). Frank’s refusal to retaliate against Gabriel after the affair shows a deference that often accompanied perceived lower-class status, while Jimmy’s violent anger channels postwar working-class frustration at estates that still dominated thousands of acres yet employed few locals.