One of the sub-themes I enjoyed was the running, rather snarky, commentary on culture, the arts, literature. I'm still trying to get my thoughts into coherent form about it. But I'm mentioning it here because I do agree that at times I thought Fitzgerald was arguing against herself, or taking both sides of a position.
Here's an example. Florence said to Mr. Keble:
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"Culture is for amateurs. I can't run my shop at a loss. Shakespeare was a professional!"
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Entirely true in itself, except that Florence didn't evidence a focus on profitability when running her shop, even though culture wasn't her focus, either (the widget issue). Yet, again, earlier in the same conversation Mr. Keble:
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"My point is this. If over any given periods of time the cash inflow cannot meet the cash outflow, it is safe to predict that money difficulties are not far away."
Florence had known this ever since her first payday, when, at the age of sixteen, she had become selfsupporting.
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Yet, if she'd know this at sixteen, when and why did she lose that discipline? Surely it was behind her disastrous decision to move to Hardborough. But she lost her wits once she started the shop, it seems.