The Rose Code

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2021

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Chapter 14

Chapters 15-29

Chapters 30-43

Chapters 44-64

Chapter 65-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Book Club Questions

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Themes

The Historic Undervaluation of Women and Their Work

Quinn’s novel highlights two key factors related to women in England during World War II. First, that their work was crucial to the nation’s military success; Second, that their capabilities and achievements were routinely undervalued.

At first glance, BP’s structure and workings seem to play into stereotypes about the division of labor between men and women. Women are assigned to secretarial positions or, due to a shortage of men, to semi-technical positions like Mab’s. The bulk of the rigorous cryptanalysis is left to Cambridge- and Oxford-educated men. However, whether due to the excessive amount of coded radio traffic, or simply Dilly’s unorthodox views, BP also houses a team of women who work as codebreakers, easily on par with their male colleagues. Despite their relative lack of education compared to the “boffins” that make up the other sections, women like Beth make a significant contribution to the success of multiple major military operations. After admitting that she is better at breaking codes than he is, Harry tells Beth that even BP’s military leadership is convinced by her work: “That was the argument that clinched Travis—the ladies here have proved they are perfectly capable of handling the work” (465). Even Beth’s exceptional work, however, is not enough to keep her from landing in Clockwell Sanitarium when a less skilled male colleague levies accusations against her.

Quinn also presents the other roles filled by women, though less visible, as necessary and worthwhile. When Mab is transferred from the relative tranquility of the Typex machines to the noisy clatter of the bombes, she reminds herself of the importance of her work rather than requesting a transfer: “But she hated begging out of a job that needed doing. Even a job she hated—and bloody hell, she hated the bombe machines” (214). Osla’s work is even less challenging, at least before she transfers to the translation team, but she, too, makes a unique contribution in the composition of her weekly gossip column that serves to elevate morale. Significantly, she publishes the column anonymously, allowing readers to evaluate her writing without any prejudice related to the identity of the author. As Osla notes, “If you were a man and you wrote funny pieces about daily life, they called it satire. If you were a woman and you wrote funny pieces about daily life, they called it fluff” (431).

By exploring the meaningful work completed by each of her protagonists as well as the prejudices and assumptions that keep them from receiving due credit for it, Quinn reveals the hypocrisy of the patriarchal institutions that rely on work performed by women while denigrating those same women and failing to adequately recognize them.

Obeying Rules Versus Acting Independently

The plot of The Rose Code hinges on two key choices, both of which pit an individual’s will against a set of established rules: Giles’s choice to sell classified information to the Soviet Union and Beth’s choice not to warn Mab and Osla about the air raid in Coventry. In examining these choices, their underlying rationales, and their consequences, Quinn probes the relationship between individual responsibility and social duty.

Giles’s choice to send information to the Soviet Union is not, in itself, particularly problematic. He is not the only one to feel that Churchill ought to share more information with England’s allies, thereby saving lives and expediting the end of the war. Though he receives a fee for his efforts, Giles claims that he would do the same whether or not he was paid. Quinn portrays the problem with Giles’s decision as being that he lets his own wellbeing take precedence over all other considerations. His relationship with the U.S.S.R. causes considerable collateral damage to Beth and compromises long-term security since, to keep the Soviets from revealing his treason, Giles must continue to feed them information, even after the second world war gives way to the Cold War, and the U.S.S.R. and the United Kingdom transform from allies to adversaries.

Beth, by contrast, stands by her oath to secrecy, not even breaking it for the benefit of her friends. Earlier, she does break the Official Secrets Act on one occasion, but her regret about that incident makes the choice not to warn Mab and Osla about the Coventry raid easier for Beth. Though her decision comes with a terrible personal price in the deaths of Francis and Lucy, the overall value of her decision remains ambiguous. While their deaths are tragic, the outcome if word reached England’s enemies that England was decrypting their communications could have been catastrophically worse. Osla and Mab assure Beth that they would have guarded her secret, but all it would take is one careless moment for a leak to spread. Quinn complicates Beth’s dilemma by giving the character a desire to resist institutions and traditional structures. Though Beth is eager to leave behind the oppressive social dynamics of her childhood home, she does not accept her personal motivations as sufficient to defying government secrecy.

While there are no easy answers for Beth or Giles, Quinn seems to suggest that, at least in assessing characters, it is intent that matters most. Both characters fail to foresee the full consequences of their actions, but Beth’s motives display greater integrity: Whereas she defends the safety and secrecy of BP as an institution, Giles shows himself willing to take risks but not to face the consequences.

Loss, Grief, and Healing

War brings loss, and Quinn traces her protagonists’ path to healing after each experiences significant losses before, during, and after World War II.

Among the protagonists, Osla is unique in that she is affected most not by the loss of a life but by the loss of a relationship. Walking away from the Philip immediately after they break up, Osla feels “like she was being torn apart inside by white-hot pincers” (462). For a time after separating from Philip, Osla becomes disenchanted and gives up on the idea of a passionate romance. Instead, she settles for Giles, whose patronizing terms of endearment rankle her even before she learns what he did to Beth. Osla’s reawakening comes both in her realization of Giles’s true nature, which serves as a warning, and in the reappearance of Major Cornwell, her “Good Samaritan” from the Café de Paris whose selfless act sets him apart from men like Giles. Osla’s arc through the novel emphasizes the grief over lost opportunities as a result of war and politics, rather than the loss of loved ones.

For Beth, Dilly’s death is the war’s most troubling loss, even though the cause of his death has nothing to do with the war. When he dies, Beth copes with her pain by holding imaginary conversations with him, or by replaying old ones in her mind. Though Beth’s strategy proves helpful to her both personally and professionally as she breaks codes, her one-sided conversations with Dilly are viewed as evidence of her suitability for admission to Clockwell Sanitarium. Despite this, Beth continues to draw strength from her memories of Dilly, and when she returns to Courns Wood for the first time after her escape from the psychiatric hospital, she “could feel Dilly so strongly […], she nearly burst into tears. I didn’t fail you, she thought” (555). Although the pain of Dilly’s death never fully fades, Beth finds solace in doing the things Dilly liked and abiding by the principles he exemplified, which is the reason she cracks the Rose Code in the first place. Through Beth, Quinn explores grief as a mode of motivation.

In losing her husband and daughter, Mab faces greater loss and grief than the other protagonists. The violent, shocking nature of their deaths and the fact that they could have been avoided add to her pain. For years afterwards, Mab suppresses her pain, becoming bitter, angry, and withdrawn. A tipping point in her healing comes when, in a moment of honesty, Mab admits to her second husband that she blocked him and Francis both out “in the same go” (591). She then allows herself to cry and feel both joyful and painful emotions again.

Taken together, these characters’ experiences suggest that, while every individual’s journey is unique, dealing with loss involves a balance between authentically mourning losses and moving forward a changed person.