SOURCE: "Susan Hill Focusing on Outsiders and Losers," in English Language and Literature: Positions & Dispositions, edited by James Hogg, Karl Hubmayer, and Dorothea Steiner, Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik der Universität Salzburg, 1990, pp. 91-101.

In the following essay, Schubert discusses the ways Hill's marginalized, often female characters illuminate the main themes of her fiction, especially in Gentleman and Ladies, A Change for the Better, and I'm the King of the Castle.

The problems of women as an underprivileged even an oppressed section of society are almost inevitably a subject for female novelists today. In her novels and short stories Susan Hill too comes up against questions of female independence and individuality and makes them part of her preoccupation, but the circle of her sympathy is wider, more inclusive. The focus of her attention is on the weak links in the social chain generally, on the outsiders...