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High Wages (Classic edition)

by Dorothy Whipple

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The Far Cry
A Well Full of Leaves
Regular price £11.00
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PREFACE BY JANE BROCKET
316pp
ISBN 978190646 2604

 ‘“Wanted: a young lady to assist in the shop. Apply within.” Jane’s heart beat faster. She straightened up. “Well…” she breathed. She bent down and read again. “Well…. I never…”’

When eighteen-year-old Jane gets a job in a draper’s shop in a small town in Lancashire in 1912, so begins a great adventure.

At first she delights in learning to cut fabric, getting to know the customers and making friends with the other shop-girls, but the terrible working conditions – low wages, too-small portions of kippers and bread, tidying up until late on Christmas Eve – lower her spirits. She spends her days off visiting the department stores of Manchester and London, which teach her as much about unwanted male attention as about the business of clothes, but before long an unexpected turn of events allows her, thrillingly, to open her own dress shop; amid struggles with the cleaning and cooking, trips to the local library, and a painful love affair, she continues to fight for the right to realise her own potential.

As Jane Brocket writes in the Preface: ‘In a delightful book full of details of clothes and furnishings, bust-bodices and gloves, Dorothy Whipple creates a powerful argument for the need for women to work, not for political or primary economic reasons, but for self-fulfilment and for the realisation of talent and potential.’ 

High Wages (1930) is a lively portrayal of working-class life in the shadow of World War One, as well as a fascinating glimpse into the history of fashion.

Also available as a Persephone Grey.

Cover painting

Detail from A Kitchen Interior (1918) by Harold Harvey (1874-1941) © Brighton and Hove Museums


Read What Readers Say

Catie L’Heureux, ‘The Cut’

Smart and delightfully funny and reading it felt like watching a Jane Austen movie — except rather than finding a man, the heroine is focused on opening her own dress shop… It’s a feminist novel without any mention of suffrage or politics, depicting an intelligent young woman who loves shopping and dissecting the design of a pretty window display as much as she enjoys daydreaming about her career, or reading H. G. Wells surreptitiously at work below the shop counter.

Daisy Buchanan, ‘You're Booked’ podcast

A fresh, funny, contemporary delight. It's 'Brief Encounter' meets ’The Secret Dreamworld of A Shopaholic'. I loved it. It put me in a really good mood for days afterwards.

Daniel Akst, ’Strategy and Business’ magazine

The interweaving of fabric and invention is the basis of ‘High Wages’, Dorothy Whipple’s irresistibly shrewd novel of business and love. First published in 1930, it’s about a plucky young woman who succeeds in the clothing business, in part by anticipating the huge changes about to wash over the industry as a result of mass production. The year is 1912. Seventeen-year-old Jane Carter, a Lancashire orphan who’s had to leave school to earn a living, gets a job at a draper’s shop called Chadwick’s, one of the better stores in the fictional town of Tidsley. She quickly distinguishes herself by her intelligence and ambition and Tidsley can barely contain her. On a trip south to Manchester on her afternoon off, she is in heaven, soaking up business insights and even appreciating the ugliness of the place as a sign of its dynamism, for ‘it was no feeble, trickling ugliness, but a strong, salient hideousness that was almost exhilarating.’ In the big city she discovers that some of the best shops dress their windows all in a single colour for maximum impact. Chadwick, not surprisingly, is unimpressed. ‘“The windows do very well, Miss Carter,” he said with dignity. “I have dressed them myself for twenty years, and I don’t think you can teach me anything about window-dressing.”’ Windows prove to be the least of Mr. Chadwick’s problems, as Jane foresees the ready-to-wear revolution. When she manages to browbeat Chadwick into some grudging changes in this direction, profits roll in even as her wages barely budge. But a kindly older friend offers to lend her the money to open a shop of her own and she jumps at the chance. Jane’s experience will be familiar to anyone who has started a business – especially women. DW chronicles all the enthusiasm and work and worry attendant to any start-up, but also unwanted sexual advances during a buying trip to London. ‘High Wages’ is a marvellous book and, for the most part, Dorothy Whipple writes with tremendous authority and restraint, spinning her tale with flawless pacing and thrilling emotional dexterity. It’s apt that her independent-minded heroine makes a success of a store selling ready-to-wear garments. The mass production of textiles and clothing, hard as it has been on its workforce, nonetheless created paid employment for countless women, opened opportunities for their advancement in retailing, and democratised apparel.

Leaping Life via Instagram

The narrative style of ‘High Wages’ is classic Dorothy Whipple: seemingly light and frothy from the beginning, while gradually drawing the reader in through incisive social observation, humour and wit, and brilliantly rendered characters. I started to mark up potential references but soon realised that I might end up noting the whole book. On every page is a fascinating socio-economic comment, a hilarious exchange of dialogue and/or a passing reference which makes one think ‘I really must get back to that/read up more about that’. As such, this is a novel packed full of interest on all kinds of levels. And as a bonus, the story is an absolute cracker! I loved reading this book and look forward to my continuing journey through the Whipple catalogue.

Categories: Classics Coming Soon

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