“And just like that, like a knee or an elbow receiving a blow on the wrong spot, her heart was jangling. How grief could catch one out, still! She had to stand at the foot of the stairs while the fit of sorrow ran through her.” 

The Paying Guests is haunted by the losses that the Wrays have experienced. Noel and John Arthur died in the war; Mr. Wray died of grief shortly after. Frances and Mrs. Wray, Like much of their country, are still suffering from the loss of the men in the lives. With no men in the family and dwindling finances, they are in a precarious situation.

“‘How are your paying guests?’ she asked. She was too polite to call them lodgers.’” 

Frances’s neighbor, Mrs. Hillyard, skirts the issue of the Wrays having taken in lodgers. Becoming landladies is indicative of financial problems; therefore, the subject is somewhat taboo. However, this does not prevent the residents of the upper-class Champion Hill neighborhood from being inquisitive. 

“‘It seems to me that ‘Victorian’ is a word that’s used nowadays to dismiss all sorts of virtues over which people no longer wish to take the trouble.’” 

Mrs. Wray’s reaction to Frances accusing her of being mid-Victorian is evidence of a generational conflict at play. World War I marked a break from the more traditional values of the preceding era. The youth, like Frances, Christina, and Stevie begin to take on more rebellious, independent attitudes.