to the lowest level of society Gordon takes a furnished bed-sitting-room in a filthy alley parallel to Lambeth Cut. Both Julia and Rosemary, "in feminine league against him", seek to get Gordon to go back to his 'good' job at the New Albion advertising agency. Rosemary, having avoided Gordon for some time, suddenly comes to visit him one day at his dismal lodgings. Despite his terrible poverty and shabbiness, they have sex but it is without any emotion or passion. Later, Rosemary drops in one day unexpectedly at the library, having not been in touch with Gordon for some time, and tells him that she is pregnant. Gordon is presented with the choice between leaving Rosemary to a life of social shame at the hands of her family—since both of them reject the idea of an abortion—or marrying her and returning to a life of respectability by taking back the job he once so deplored at the New Albion with its £4 weekly salary. He chooses Rosemary and respectability and then experiences a feeling of relief at having abandoned his anti-money principles with such comparative ease. After two years of abject failure and poverty, he throws his poetic work 'London Pleasures' down a drain, marries Rosemary, resumes his advertising career, and plunges into a campaign to promote a new product to prevent foot odour. In his lonely walks around mean streets, aspidistras seem to appear in every lower-middle class window. As the book closes, Gordon wins an argument with Rosemary to install an aspidistra in their new small but comfortable flat off the Edgware Road. Characters Gordon Comstock – a "well-educated and reasonably intelligent" young man possessed of a minor 'talent for writing'. Rosemary Waterlow – Comstock's girlfriend, whom he met at the advertising agency, who lives in a women's hostel and who has a forgiving nature, but about whom little else is revealed. Philip Ravelston – the wealthy left-wing publisher and editor of the magazine Antichrist who supports and encourages Comstock. Julia Comstock – Gordon's sister, who is as poor as he is and who, having always made sacrifices for him, continues to do so: "A tall, ungainly girl [–] her nature was simple and affectionate." Mrs. Wisbeach – landlady of the lodging house in Willowbed Road who imposes strict rules on her tenants, including Comstock. Mr Flaxman – Comstock's fellow lodger, a travelling salesman for the Queen of