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What did Osla, Mab, and Beth each hope to achieve at Bletchley Park? Do you think codebreaking helped or hurt them in their lives? What do you think their lives would have been like if they hadn’t met and been at Bletchley?
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I think all three women were trying to achieve self worth, some kind of independence.
Mab’s approach was the most cynical as she was still angling for a husband for security for her sister, Lucy, but that reason becomes far more understandable when we learn Lucy is actually her daughter. I really liked that she unexpectedly found love with Francis Gray. Her marriage to Francis wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t gone to Bletchley but also the tragedy at Coventry wouldn’t have happened either. So her experience at Bletchley was both healing and devastating at the same time. She has a somewhat more hopeful, happy outlook by the end of the novel with being able to share her secrets/work with her second husband, Mike. I really don’t think Mab would have achieved the financial freedom she craved or met either Francis or Mike had she not been at Bletchley. But then, she may not have healed from her rape or gotten Lucy away from her mother either. And who knows if they might not have been bombed in London.For Osla, codebreaking helped Osla gain her self confidence, despite continually being taken for granted and dismissed as a “silly woman.” Her work on the Bletchley Bletherings newsletter paved the way for her success as a columnist at the Tatler newspaper. But one could argue that her experience hurt her personally the most (some may disagree, what with Beth’s 2 years in an insane asylum). The reason I say this is that Osla has to give up her personal happiness with Prince Philip as demanded by her BP superiors. What an unfair position to be put in. They don’t think twice about ordering her to do so. And then there’s that terrible twist with Giles, whom she meets at Bletchley. So her experience at Bletchley, although it somewhat rewarded her ambition for a career, she never fully earned the respect she was owed.
Also, she never shared her secrets about being bombed in London with anyone she was close to, which I think does harm her friendship with Mab later on. She does share her personal experiences in her confessional letters to the man who helped her after the shelling, JPEC Cornwell, but I didn’t think too much of it. So I was quite delighted that it turned out to pave the way for a happy ending for her.
Beth’s impact of joining Bletchley Park is profound as well, in the sense that her immense intellectual talents would never have come to light and helped the war effort if she had not met Mab and Osla. She would have, I think, continued to be ruled by her abusive mother and died a spinster and alone. Certainly, Beth is the most physically and psychologically threatened – being sent to the sanatorium and at risk of a lobotomy! But she also had the strongest mind to endure the terrible experience and retain her sanity because of her experiences with her mother. But the betrayals – the one she does and others do to her – are definitely the most dramatic. Ultimately, her potential is best realized by having met her friends and gone to Bletchley.
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