Makeshift and Hunger March: Two Novels by Dot Allan

by Dot Allan, Moira Burgess (Introduction)

Confronting issues of class and gender, these two novels offer insight into city living for Scottish women in the 1920s and 1930s. First published in 1928, Makeshift deals with young Jacqueline's adolescence and early adulthood in early-20th-century Scotland. Her mother, a dressmaker working at home, is embittered about the state of her marriage and commits suicide. Jacqueline grows up and begins to write, struggling through difficult relationships.

Hunger March, first published in 1934, confines its action to a single day, the day of the great hunger march in Glasgow during the Great Depression. Intending to present a complete overview of the city, the novel interweaves stories of both working-class and middle-class characters. By alternately focusing on the failing merchant Arthur Joyce, his cleaner Mrs. Humphry and her unemployed son Joe, and a middle-class radical, this story heightens the interconnectedness of the classes.

412 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2010

About the author

Dot Allan was a successful novelist and freelance journalist based in Glasgow. She wrote several plays early in her career, contributed to a wide range of newspapers and magazines throughout her life, and published ten novels.

Reviews

[Connor Girvan · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 / 5 stars

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dot Allan’s MAKESHIFT (1928) traces a young woman’s development and growing awareness of sex in a male-dominated world. Most women’s lives of the era are makeshift because they never reach self-fulfillment. They simply follow the accepted path of unhappy marriage, children, and a lifetime of drudgery.

While MAKESHIFT deals with gender struggle, HUNGER MARCH (1934) deals with class struggle. In the latter novel, Allan chronicles a single day in Depression-era Glasgow. She closely follows 10 or 12 characters from different levels of society and shows how their lives interact in the course of the day.

Unlike many 20th-century Scottish literary works, both novels end on a note of hope. MAKESHIFT’s Jacqueline finally sees the light and has the courage, despite all odds, to forge her own path. Similarly, as the characters in HUNGER MARCH come to interact, they start to understand those around them and take the first tentative steps toward acting for the good of more people than just themselves.

Another difference from many modern Scottish works is that neither novel is written in Scots dialect, thereby making them more accessible to the general reader. I recommend this book highly to anyone interested in 20th-century Scottish literature.