Life Class

Pat Barker was born Pat Drake during World War II to a working-class, unmarried mother in the North Riding of Yorkshire. After her mother married Barker’s stepfather, Barker was raised by her grandparents. In 1965, she graduated from the London School of Economics with a degree in international history, and in 1969 she met David Barker, an older academic who left his wife to be with Pat Barker. She began writing fiction after the birth of her first child in 1970, and she published her first novel, Union Street, in 1982. Union Street is one of several novels Barker wrote about working-class women in Yorkshire. She is also the author of the critically-acclaimed Regeneration Trilogy and the 2018 novel The Silence of the Girls. Barker has received a CBE and an honorary Fellowship of the British Academy for services to British literature.

Life Class takes place in the buildup to and early months of World War I, which began in 1914 and ended in 1918. World War I, also called the Great War, was a global conflict; fighting took place across Eurasia and involved soldiers from all over the world. World War I was the world’s introduction to industrialized and chemical weaponry, as well trench warfare, and these new military developments led to a massive death toll that altered the way the public thought about war. Life Class, which follows English characters, emphasizes the way the war impacted England and its citizens even though no fighting took place there: every man is expected to volunteer to serve in the war, and every woman is expected to do her part for the war effort at home.

Life Class shares similarities to Pat Barker’s Regeneration Trilogy, a series that takes place at the end of World War I and also concerns themes of class and trauma. World War I had a significant impact on literature of the early 20th century. All Quiet on the Western Front, written by Erich Maria Remarque in 1928, explores how the trauma of war can hinder a return to civilian life, which mirrors Paul’s experience at the end of Life Class. Virginia Woolf’s 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway depicts the trauma of World War I, as well as the difficulty for women to make lives for themselves within England’s repressive, sexist society, which reflects Elinor’s storyline. Other notable novels about World War I include Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms (1929) and A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry (2005). Contemporary novels that share Life Class’s focus on the arts in wartime are The War Artist by Jan Casey (2024), The Curse of Pietro Houdini by Derek B. Miller (2024), Victorine by Drēma Drudge (2019), and The Village Idiot by Steve Stern (2022).