Deadlock is the sixth of thirteen novellas in Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimage series, which follows the life of an English woman at the turn of the 20th century. In the early chapters, Londoners are excited about seeing a comet which, presuming it is Halley's Comet, sets this novella in 1910. Miriam Henderson is still working as a sort of business manager in a dental surgery, and living in Mrs Bailey's boarding house. She is an established, independent woman and while not well off, has shed some of the financial worries that plagued her in earlier books. She has also developed strong opinions on social issues. When she discovers a book called Lovely Woman lying open in the dentist's office, she launches into a most enjoyable inner monolog:
Because women had corns, feminine beauty was a myth; because the world could do without Mrs Hemans's poetry, women should confine their attention to puddings and babies. The infernal complacent cheek of it. This was the kind of thing middle-class men read. Unable to criticize it, they thought it witty and unanswerable. That was the worst of it. Books of this sort were read without any one there to point thing out. It ought to be illegal to publish a book by a man without first giving it to a woman to annotate. But what was the answer to men who called women inferior because they had not invented or achieved in science or art? On whose authority had men decided that science and art were greater than anything else? The world could not go on until this question had been answered.

This was all well and good as long as Miriam kept these thoughts to herself; later in the novel her strong opinions get her into hot water, which further illustrates her point about women's place in society.

In Deadlock Miriam also finds companionship in Mr Shatov, a Russian boarder. Their relationship begins with Miriam teaching him the finer points of English, but progresses steadily to companionship based on intellectual give and take, and then to something more. There were long passages of philosophical discourse which I found hard to follow, not least because Richardson doesn't make clear which party is speaking and I tired of trying to keep up. But there were also moments of joy and sadness for Miriam that provided emotional depth that was lacking in previous books. ( )