TL;DR: A social novel masterpiece. Highly recommended.
My mentor, Lucy, recommended this book to me; otherwise, I never would have heard of it. I gather that it has been popular, especially perhaps among British women, since it was first published in 1960.
The novel tells the story of Jane, a 27-year-old middle-class only child who finds herself pregnant out of wedlock and disowned by her father. She rents an L-shaped room in a run-down house in Fulham. The book is partly about her journey to cope with her situation as a single, unwed mother in the 1950s (not an easy situation), and partly about the lives of Bohemian Londoners in post-war Britain, seen through a much less romanticised lens than, say, the lives of Bohemian New Yorkers in the 1980s in Rent. The discussion of fleas alone would put this book in the gritty category.
Jane’s journey to cope with her situation is remarkable. At the beginning of the book, she is a petulant, romantic girl whose actions are a form of self-punishment. She projects society’s (sometimes imagined) judgement onto herself and punishes herself by moving into the dilapidated room, not contacting the father, and refusing any money anyone offers her. Arguably, even her decision to keep the baby is taken as a form of “paying the bill” for her “sin”.
What I loved about the book was the distinctive discussion of responsibility. Jane accepts responsibility for her actions from the beginning—even excessively so. But her journey leads her to accept responsibility for her motives. She becomes aware that moving to Fulham and not accepting help, and even the way she had fought with her father have all been motivated by a romanticised view of what unwed pregnant women should look like. Banks’ discussion of responsibility moves further still when Jane refuses to let Toby take responsibility for her situation and—more subversively—she refuses to take responsibility for his happiness or lack of creativity. With that, she manifests as a fully grown person, not managed by her situation but rather managing it.
The room itself serves as a womb, allowing Jane to mature within it throughout her pregnancy. As unlikely as it is at the beginning, it becomes a safe space for Jane to think and see herself for herself, not as society sees her. Slowly, she strips the room of what she dislikes—what was forced on her by the landlady, Doris (brilliant characterisation, by the way), and brings herself—in the form of a Persian rug and a spare pair of curtains—into the room and the world.
Writing for women in the 1960s, Banks lays out the social issues of the day through Jane’s story. The chasm between middle- and working-class people, the living situation in which working-class people find themselves, and the lack of options that drive them to—at times—compromise their values are all subtly raised through descriptions of shared meals and conversations. What I liked about this is that Jane is portrayed as quite ignorant at the beginning. She discovers throughout the book, to her shock, that Black and Jewish people, as well as prostitutes and queers, are, in fact, people. Unfortunately, her racism, classism, and ageism are depicted as ignorance, and there’s no discussion of the systemic biases. One book can’t do all the work, it would seem.
Particularly exciting is the divergence from the classic women’s romantic fiction, where the solution to the heroine’s problems is finding a man. Jane’s problems are solved by a convenient great aunt, who lives alone in a cottage, which Jane inherits upon the aunt’s unfortunate (but predictable) death. While the men around her—her father, her boss, Terry, and Toby—try to give her money to assuage their conscience, her great aunt is the one who provides Jane with true independence, between the cottage and the typewriter which Jane quickly turns into a stream of income. Resisting the “happily ever after”, Banks concludes the book with Jane knowing that she and Toby will end up together once he completes his journey to becoming a fully fledged person and artist.
What makes "The L-Shaped Room" endure beyond its time is Banks' refusal to offer easy solutions. The novel's brilliance lies not just in depicting a woman's journey through social stigma but in showing how true independence requires rejecting both society's condemnation and its romantic alternatives. Six decades later, Jane's transformation from a self-punishing girl to a self-determined woman remains as relevant and revolutionary as ever.
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