The War I Finally Won

Jamie Smith is the vivacious younger brother of Ada. He is six years old at the beginning of the novel and nine at the end. Jamie was certainly malnourished in their mother’s home (Ada remembers him being dirty and skinny), but he was not traumatized to the extent that Ada was, perhaps due to his younger age.

As a result, Jamie finds it easier to adjust to life in Kent. Jamie loves living in the cottage. He adores his cat, Bovril; he also enjoys caring for the chickens, Penelope and Persnickety, and the pig, Mrs. Rochester. Compared to Ada, Jamie finds it far easier to show and receive love and affection. He quickly takes to calling Susan “Mum” and loves her with easy and unselfconscious abandon.

Jamie, like many children who grow up in wartime, must show significant resilience to endure the deaths of so many friends and relatives. He is devastated at the loss of his mother, his best friend Billy, and his role model Jonathan Thorton. Fortunately, Jamie endures these losses and remains high-spirited.

Susan is the embodiment of a kind and patient mother, and Ada and Jamie love her dearly. She appreciates the gravity of the trauma that Ada and Jamie have experienced and knows how to support them. Susan intervenes when Lady Thorton tries to force Ada to eat the expensive lamb chop meal after the household argues, understanding that Ada’s stress is caused by past trauma. Ada notices that Susan’s voice has an uncharacteristically sharp edge when she curtly tells Lady Thorton, “Ada is my responsibility” and the children “may be excused” (152). This illustrates Susan’s love for the children, her intuitive understanding of what they need, and her determination to advocate for them.

Susan is intelligent and highly educated, having studied mathematics at Oxford. When Lord Thorton learns of this, he allocates Susan to tutor Ruth, a duty she takes on in addition to teaching Ada and Jamie. Susan does not judge Ruth, a 16-year-old girl, for Hitler’s actions like so many of the other villagers do. She appreciates that doing so would be small-minded and unfair. Instead, she welcomes Ruth and treats her courteously. Susan encourages Ada to treat Ruth with kindness and respect, and sets an example by organizing a seder celebration for Ruth. She explains to Ada, “It’s not much but at least Ruth will know we are thinking of her” (207). This illustrates Susan’s open-mindedness and her compassionate nature.

Susan still struggles with her grief over Becky’s death. Ada often describes her becoming quiet or listless, or sinking “into gloom” (295). Susan describes Becky as her best friend, but it is clear that the two were in a romantic relationship. This relationship caused both women to be estranged from their families and perhaps from the town; Lord Thorton describes Susan as “the spinster who was Becky Montgomery’s friend” (88). Susan explains to Ada that her own family “truly hates [her] for things that [she] can’t change” and that Becky’s father was never friendly toward her (289). It is implied that Becky’s mother’s acceptance of Susan, and their plans to spend time together as family, will provide important closure and healing for Susan.

Lady Elanor Thorton is initially depicted as an archetypal aristocrat: snobbish, aloof, and ignorant of the struggles of the less fortunate. Ada describes Lady Thorton as an “iron-faced woman” who is “sharp like an ax” (5). Thorton House, which Ada perceives as grand, decadent, and intimidatingly aristocratic, acts as a metaphor for Lady Thorton herself.

Susan urges Ada, and by extension the reader, to sympathize with Lady Thorton, saying, “try to imagine how she feels […] her husband, children, servants, all gone” (116-17). Lady Thorton is distressed and sick with worry when Jonathan leaves to fight in the war; she feels she also must send Maggie away to boarding school to ensure her safety. She finds it initially impossible to show kindness and sympathy to Ruth—a German—when her son is risking his life fighting Germans. Furthermore, her husband is away doing war work, and she must live in a “former gamekeeper’s cottage” on her large estate with an assortment of unlikely tenants (262).

Lady Thorton is a dynamic character who undergoes significant character development. She comes to terms with her own ignorance and must learn from the children how to contribute in the unfamiliar wartime world. Through this process, she learns humility. Lady Thorton helps Ada do the shopping and comments that “she never thought of shin bones as something people actually ate” (178). Lady Thorton is shocked to learn that Ada’s family “could never afford beef shin” when they lived in the London slum (181). Ada and Susan have to teach Lady Thorton the basics of cooking and cleaning. Lady Thorton admits to Susan, “I’m beginning to learn how much I never realized I didn’t know” (182).

Lady Thorton eventually treats Ruth with more kindness and compassion. It is significant that Lady Thorton asks Ruth to ride Oban, the deceased Jonathan’s horse. This shows that Lady Thorton, through her wartime experience, has developed more empathy. She has also come to understand the practicality and frugality that wartime living necessitates, and she chides her husband for spending a month of ration tickets on a can of spam. She says to Susan, self-deprecatingly, “it’s like the lamb chops again” (374).