The Beekeeper's Parentice Book Analysis

The primary setting in Laurie King’s The Beekeeper’s Apprentice is a Britain being agglomerated in the chaos of World War I, and King portrays the transformation of Britain’s culture and society over the course of the war synonymously in many aspects of the plot of the book. Mary Russell’s status as a detective in the novel and her attendance at Oxford University reflects Britain’s indifference towards workers being female and its proliferation of educated women due to the increase in the need of women workers with men being directed to war.

At the start of the 20th century, the effects of World War I inadvertently gave British women, such as Mary Russell from The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, a stronger role in society and allowed for them to receive

In addition, Britain’s societal transformation augmented women’s role in society, and according to Braybon in “Women Workers in The First World War,” “A completely different pattern of life was established … for women” and that society had “prevailing attitudes towards women as workers” (Braybon 16). The newfangled life given to women gave most women an enormous surge in recognition throughout society, as people valued women a lot more after they became the backbone of the production of nearly all British goods. Concurrently, King underscores this point in her novel, as throughout the novel, Mary is never discriminated against simply for being a woman. In preceding years and throughout history, society typically perceived women as naturally inferior to men, and women’s occupations were limited to taking care of the family and domestic occupations. Nevertheless, the overarching effect of the augmentation of the number of women employed in the British workforce was the society’s realization that women could perform at a level equal to men, and this helped facilitate the women’s rights movement in Britain, a leading factor in Britain’s evolution to a gender equal society. In the novel, throughout Mary Russell’s journeys across Britain, there is not a single time when

For example, further interviews recorded by White in “Remembrance, Retrospection, and the Women’s Land Army in World War I Britain” explained that “priority was given to [women] with agricultural experience” and those who had no experience were obligated to “complete six weeks of training [at] agricultural college” (White 165). As a result of this, the number of women pursuing education in colleges and schools skyrocketed. Furthermore, as war led to an increase in the number of injured men, there was a shortage of nurses, and women swarmed into medical universities to receive their educations so they could serve as nurses. In his “Universities, medical education, and women,” Watts states that when it was observed that women could “join the popular and increasing band of professional nurses … women were striving to gain university admission” (Watts 307). Since women during this time period were accustomed to working at home and taking care of a family, it did not take much time for a notable amount of stay-at-home women to transition to nursing. Since nurses were at such a shortage during a period of war, universities were extremely willing to provide women with education in the medical field. In addition, as men across the country were constantly being deployed to the battlefield, vacancies in