Bexford

Bexford is the fictional London neighborhood where nearly all of the novel is set. Jo is the only character to briefly live outside of it when she is in America, but she eventually returns. The static of nature of this setting should prompt the reader to search for sources of movement in the novel outside the context of location. The narrator directly prompts the reader to consider the nature of Bexford in Ben's dying moments: Ben lived in Bexford, "always on the same streets. Only not in a circle, more like round and round in a spiral, rising in place, because didn’t he in the end prove to be going somewhere?" (312).

The reader should notice that it is not movement relative to place, but rather movement relative to time, that qualifies the characters' development. Bexford is described as a working-class neighborhood that is even in some respects...