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Chapter 34
Themes and Colors
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Life Class, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
War
The beginning of World War I disrupts the lives of the protagonists of Life Class, who are studying art at the Slade in London until the war calls them to action. One student, Elinor, believes that she can simply ignore the war and that, by doing so, the war won’t be able to affect or harm her. In contrast, her friend and lover, Paul, feels a calling to defend Britain. He tries…
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Art
The main characters of Life Class are artists, and their perspectives on their art shift over the course of the book. Paul, the protagonist, begins the novel unsure of himself as an artist and is especially unconfident in drawing human subjects, which his professors at the Slade art school insist he must master to be a good artist. By the end of the novel, he finds a niche depicting scenes from his time as…
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Gender
Life Class takes place in the early 1910s and emphasizes the misogyny of English culture at the time. The Slade’s life classes are divided by gender, and the men’s life class takes the form of a group of male students observing nude female models. Many of these students, and even some of the professors, consider the models easy targets to take advantage of sexually, highlighting the imbalanced power dynamic inherent to the class—and, the novel…
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Love and Relationships
The young protagonists of Life Class navigate a series of messy romances. Though Paul enters a romantic relationship with Teresa, he longs for Elinor. Elinor, meanwhile, is entangled with Kit Neville, who refuses to accept Elinor’s rejection of his marriage proposal. During the war, Elinor and Paul begin a relationship, but Elinor believes Paul is incapable of truly loving a woman. The central love triangle among Elinor, Paul, and Neville is complicated…
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Class
Life Class’s protagonist Paul comes from a working-class town in northern England, and he feels keenly the difference between himself and his wealthy classmates at the Slade art school. He views art as something that can escape from his lower-class roots, but due to his class status, he struggles to attain that escape. To Paul, “art had always been Somewhere Else.” Put differently, he views art as a privilege that was not accessible to…
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