Hunger March

Confronting issues of class and gender, these two novels offer insight into city living for Scottish women in the 1920s and 1930s. First published in 1928, Makeshift deals with young Jacqueline’s adolescence and early adulthood in early-20th-century Scotland. Her mother, a dressmaker working at home, is embittered about the state of her marriage and commits suicide. Jacqueline grows up and begins to write, struggling through difficult relationships. Hunger March, first published in 1934, confines its action to a single day, the day of the great hunger march in Glasgow during the Great Depression. Intending to present a complete overview of the city, the novel interweaves stories of both working-class and middle-class characters. By alternately focusing on the failing merchant Arthur Joyce, his cleaner Mrs. Humphry and her unemployed son Joe, and a middle-class radical, this story heightens the interconnectedness of the classes.