Hop, Step, Jump

In the beginning, the love story of Jenny Dennet and Bert Murray ran the appointed course of all similar love stories in their neighbourhood. It differed in the end because Jenny had character as well as charm and Bert had only charm.

Jenny wants more. Much more. Born into poverty in a small industrial town in the north of England, she is determined to find a way out. After taking up with Bert, a handsome rotter – "the catch of his neighbourhood" – who works in the same factory as her, it’s not long before she gives in to his pleas to marry him. But he turns out to be a drunk and a philanderer with an occasional propensity to violence and she soon walks out on him (the ‘hop’ of the title). "You can’t leave me. Where’ll you go?" asks Bert. "I’ve got my hands an’ I’ve got my brains and I can work," Jenny replies.

Sure enough, Jenny quickly gets a job as a housemaid. She falls into an affair with her employer's son, Hugh (the "step"), but, finding herself both morally compromised and – even worse – bored, she borrows some money from him to open a bakery (the "jump"). But will running her own business be enough to fulfill her? And what about love? Hop, Step and Jump weaves together a number of fascinating themes including female desire, domestic violence, and working-class life in the 1930s.

This spirited tale of upward mobility, written in Winifred Watson’s distinctively direct style, was first published in 1939 in the same week as the outbreak of war. The Guardian described it as "unusual and entertaining" while also lamenting the difficulty of reviewing books just as war was being declared. "Subtle and romantic" was L P Hartley’s verdict in the Observer and, according to the Sketch, "Without being hard, Miss Winifred Watson is a matter-of-fact writer and endows her heroine with these qualities. She reminds one a little of Arnold Bennett." Certainly, there is an explicitness in Hop, Step and Jump that in some ways makes it more akin to the novel of realism. For example, the impoverished surroundings in which Jenny and her husband Bert have to live are described in great detail, as is the way they are virtually imprisoned because of their circumstances. The novel is brutal at times and doesn’t gloss over squalor or poverty. Yet at the same time, it is extremely entertaining and flows along like the best kind of light fiction, or what is sometimes referred to as a Mills and Boon.

So Hop, Step and Jump should be read on several levels. It is an extremely good read in the romantic novel tradition; it dissects moral values and makes the reader think hard about what is involved in Jenny’s search for freedom and love; and it is fascinating about an ordinary working class woman’s life in 1930s England. As Rowan Pelling writes in her Persephone Preface: "What elevates the story is the odyssey through Britain’s social classes, the candidness about sex, and the exploration of female self-determination. Jenny may freely acquiesce to love and erotic adventures, but she evades ownership." A seemingly light novel turns out to be curiously radical.