The Rose Code

“Everyone was saying that now, Osla had observed. Milk run out? There’s a war on! Ladder in your stockings? There’s a war on!”

The phrase, “There’s a war on,” which recurs throughout the novel, serves as a frequent reminder of the ways in which the war touches the everyday lives of the novel’s characters. Typically issued as a call to accept a less-than-ideal situation, the phrase reveals the communal mindset taken on by English citizens united under a single cause. This powerful social pressure can also take a negative toll on those who, like Harry, contribute to the war effort in less visible ways.

“How many men who had fought in the war now sat reading their morning newspapers without realizing the woman sitting across the jam-pots from them had fought, too? Maybe the ladies of BP hadn’t faced bullets or bombs, but they’d fought—oh yes, they’d fought.”

Since BP staff are drawn from those not fighting at the front lines, women constitute a disproportionately high percentage of the workers. Their vow of secrecy, however, prevents them from public recognition for their work, exacerbating trends observed elsewhere in the novel of women’s contributions being underappreciated compared to those of men. This quote contextualizes the anonymity of the women who completed such essential high stakes work within a domestic framework.

“I take gels as my new recruits because they are far better, in my experience, at this kind of work. […] These young mathematicians and chess players in the other huts—they do similar work to what we do, rodding and cribs, but men bring egos into it. They compete, they show off, they don’t even try to do it my way before they’re telling me how to do it better. We don’t have time for that, there’s a war on.”

Here, Dilly explains his reasoning for not recruiting the flashy male academics preferred by the other section leaders. His confidence in female codebreakers is vindicated by the end of the novel, with his section matching, if not exceeding, the accomplishments of the so-called “boffins” from Cambridge and Oxford. This statement reveals Dilly as a rare character that can see past at least some of the prejudices of his day.

“‘I hate this book,’ she heard herself saying, suddenly and viciously. ‘Everything upside down and nightmarish, who writes a book like that? The whole bloody world is already like that!’”

Mab expresses her displeasure with Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, a sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Her comment raises the possibility that the realities of wartime life are in some ways comparable to the Alice’s disconcerting adventures. Quinn proceeds to draw parallels between Alice’s adventures and her protagonists’ wartime experiences throughout the novel, probing the relationship between life and literature, as well as the inversion of some social norms during the war.

“It’s the most important commodity of all, isn’t it? […] Information. Because it doesn’t matter if you’re fighting a war with swords, with bombers, or with sticks and stones—weapons are no good unless you know when and where to aim them.”

In this early comment by Harry, Quinn presents BP’s operations as crucial to military success. The relative value and merits of intelligence versus combat strength then play out in Harry’s struggle to enlist. While Harry is better equipped to help as a codebreaker, social pressure and his own sense of duty combine to send him to the front lines instead.

“‘Civilization isn’t an illusion.’ ‘Oh, it is. The horrors are real. This’—waving a hand—‘is all gossamer.’”

Francis, a veteran of World War I, expresses this cynical outlook while on a date with Mab. The world’s lapse into war so soon after World War I convinces him that war is cyclical, the possibility of war always lurking beneath the façade of civilization.

“The Café de Paris explosion seemed to have blasted a layer off her polished surface, left her easy prey not only to fear but to sympathy. […] Osla couldn’t stop thinking of them: English, French, her own fellow Canadians, Australians, Poles…yes, even Germans and Italians. They were enemies, but they bled, too. They died. When was it bally well going to stop?”

Though Quinn’s novel celebrates the achievements of the English codebreakers and mourns their losses, passages like this one serve as a reminder that the cost in human suffering was not unique to one side of the struggle. The relationship between Osla’s painful experience and her capacity for sympathy implied in this passage also links to Quinn’s broader exploration of grief and suffering, with some characters increasing in sympathy because of suffering while others grow more bitter.

“These have knelled your fall and ruin, but your ears were far away. […] English lassies rustling papers through the sodden Bletchley day.”

This historical couplet written by Dilly Knox memorializes the efforts of BP’s female codebreakers in poetic fashion. In addressing England’s wartime enemies, these lines constitute an example of apostrophe, striking a triumphant, defiant tone. The substitution of “rustling papers” for code breaking emphasizes the ironic source of the opposing force’s defeat.

“You don’t know how men sometimes use women. […] How they use and then leave women they never intended to marry. Nice boys do that. Gentlemen do that. Even princes.”

Mab’s warning to Osla reflects her own painful past and fits within a broader examination of male abuse of and violence toward women. Quinn contrasts men such as Geoffrey and Giles with those who are more respectful and committed, such as Harry and Francis. Mab’s suggestion that men of all economic backgrounds are potentially dangerous hints at the way that male violence is often linked to patriarchal power structures, such as the British military.

“Nothing here surprises us anymore. A gaggle of Wrens singing madrigals by the lake, attacked by the meanest swans in Bucks? Old hat. A group of naval section boys sunbathing nude on the side lawn, shrieking women fleeing the sight of all that pasty skin? Yawn. General Montgomery spotted in the dining room at three in the morning, poking at a plate of corned beef and prunes? Pass the salt, General.”

This excerpt from the September 1941 edition of “Bletchley Bletherings” highlights Osla’s knack for wringing wry humor out of the goings-on at BP. While some criticize her as a socialite who writes fluff pieces, Osla believes that her work serves a greater purpose: the improvement of morale during a strenuous ongoing war. He efforts dovetail with the book club meetings to suggest the value of escapist or humorous release.

“It was one bright, beautiful moment in the middle of a hideous world, and when I went back to the trenches, I pulled that moment up and slept on it every night until the war was over. The girl in the hat, in the moment of her joy.”

The memory of the girl in the hat plays a key role in Francis’s life, serving as a reminder that goodness and joy exist. Figuratively, Mab becomes the girl in the hat as she awakens a newfound appreciation for life in Francis. When Francis and Lucy are killed, Mab must work to find her own reawakening.

“Why is it immoral if it isn’t hurting anybody?”

When Beth draws on her religious upbringing to object to Sheila’s offer that she have an affair with Harry, Sheila counters with this question that shifts focus away from authoritative religious ethics to a more utilitarian, outcome-oriented approach. The evolution of Beth’s views on God and morality reflects a similar change, as she lets go of the strict rules of her childhood. She does adhere, perhaps to a fault, to BP’s rules restricting the sharing of information, showing a residual rigidity to her thinking and behavior.

“She’d always thought of being a good wife in terms of keeping a tidy house, setting a good table, warming a welcoming bed…how did you return this? This quiet, devastating riptide of devotion? How did you earn it?”

Mab has a clear-cut notion of what it means to be a wife, but her relationship with Francis turns out to be much more complicated than she expected. Instead of the transactional relationship she planned on, Francis offers her deep affection and devotion. Still struggling with the effects of an earlier abusive relationship, Mab slowly opens herself to Francis, but in doing so, she becomes vulnerable to greater grief when she loses him. Her arc illustrates the cyclical nature of love and loss, as well as the alternate path of detachment, which she takes for a time.

“Mab felt herself smiling mirthlessly. The smile hurt. She welcomed the pain, dug into it, ate it raw and sopping red. ‘I can blame everyone.’”

For Mab, forgiving Osla and, later, Beth for their roles in the death of her husband and daughter is hardly a possibility, let alone an appealing option. Instead, she revels in the pain of her loss and even spreads it by blaming others. Though her actions bring a certain satisfaction to her, they also leave her isolated and emotionally exhausted.

“Our brains work a certain way—a way that makes us useful. And yes, we save lives. But it is colossally goddamned arrogant to look down on those lives we save because their brains don’t work like ours.”

When Harry and Beth argue over whether he should enlist, Harry points out that, whatever his intellectual gifts, his life should not be valued more than that of any other soldier. His strong desire to enlist reveals his keen sense of fairness, since he desires to take on some of the danger associated with protecting his loved ones from harm. Harry’s desire to assume a fair portion of risk takes on ironic undertones, however, in light of the fact that he and his son are often treated unfairly because of their skin color.

“If Philip had taught her anything, it was not to trust passion. Far better to settle for reality.”

After her years-long romance with Philip fails to play out the way she hoped, Osla abandons the idea of a marriage for love, instead settling for an amicable arrangement with Giles. Her experience contrasts with Mab’s, who went into her marriage with Francis expecting a practical arrangement, only to discover Francis’s simmering passion. Other couples in the novel, such as Harry and Sheila and the Finches, shed further light on the way that marriage relationships can work out, for better or for worse.

“Oh, plug it, if I can’t bend a rule just a little for you of all people, what am I good for?”

Here, after some hesitation, Osla decides to help Beth find the information she seeks about Harry, which contrasts with Beth’s rigid decision not to warn Mab and Osla about the Coventry air raid. This comment from Osla reveals the thought process with which she rationalizes her decision, including minimizing the severity of the infraction and recalling her friendship with Beth. Beth, on the other hand, is more obsessive and less socially motivated; her focus on her work at the expense of all else sometimes causes her to undervalue her friendship with Mab and Osla.

“How much she hated being a woman sometimes: underpaid and underestimated and betrayed by your own body. […] So many men seemed to think women were crazy when they were bleeding.”

As a woman trying to bring justice to BP’s then-unknown traitor, Beth faces many obstacles, including skepticism from authority figures and the bodily pain of menstruation. Here, she notes that the latter compounds the former; when men become aware that a woman is on her period, they discredit her even more than usual. For all the reasons that Beth has difficulty making progress, Giles is able to frame her with ease.

“The day she recited her wedding vows for the second time, she had been pierced by a huge irrational terror that if she let this man into herself the way she’d let Francis in, the world would smash her into pieces all over again.”

Though Mab enters a second marriage without much hesitation, she remains wary of emotional intimacy, believing that closeness comes with the risk of greater loss. She begins to open up again once she realizes that, by closing herself off from pain, she also limits her ability to feel love and other positive emotions.

“‘It wasn’t our job to decide what the right thing was.’ ‘It’s every thinking human being’s job, especially in war, and don’t tell me differently.’”

Beth and Giles disagree over the degree to which they had any right, or even responsibility, to function as individual agents during the war, as opposed to mere pawns of the state. While Giles’s argument that everyone must think for themselves is easy to justify on a personal level, Beth’s more obedient approach provides greater stability and security. Osla’s somewhat lenient approach strikes a middle ground and may represent the best of both positions.

“All the helpless rage of the last three and a half years boiled up her throat and roared when it met the coppery tang of the man’s blood in her mouth. She tasted more than blood; she tasted the chalky flavor of sedative tablets and the antiseptic tang of nurses’ fingers thrusting into her mouth to force her jaws apart. She tasted shame and despair and the urge to wind a bedsheet round her throat and hang herself. She tasted bleak stony hatred for Giles and a blunter, smaller venom for the nurses and orderlies who bullied the inmates; she tasted the metal of the drill that would have cut her skull open and the tensile snapping of her brain’s strands as her codebreaking mind was mutilated.”

Beth’s anger accumulates over years of abuse in the psychiatric hospital. Here, Quinn catalogues Beth’s feelings and experiences in a series of taste imagery, emphasizing the visceral nature of her experience, including her loss of bodily autonomy. Her attack on the man who requested a sexual favor from her in exchange for information coincides offers some poetic justice.

“I thought for a while that I’d never let myself grow so fond of anyone again. But one can’t really do that either. Being cut off from life is like being dead.”

Mrs. Knox offers this advice to Mab after learning that Mab’s first husband passed away. Her words reflect the realization that, while loss is inevitable, it is possible to move on despite it. Otherwise, as Mrs. Knox suggests, the tragedy of death ironically causes those who are not dead to live in a state of metaphorical deadness, as Mab does following Francis’s death.

“We still belong here. All of us. Look how everyone answered the call, even people we barely knew […] That’s a kind of family.”

Osla’s recognition of her friends and colleagues from BP as “a kind of family” constitutes a homecoming for someone who never had a stable home environment. The sense of belonging and community that emerged at BP encompasses a wide variety of backgrounds and represents the kind of communal experience that could only take place in a time of social upheaval. Even after the war ends, many BP alumni respond immediately to Beth’s call for help, suggesting that the bonds formed in wartime will endure in peace as well.