Precious Bane (Virago Modern Classics)

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Despite some success and fluctuating sales of her novels, her health was deteriorating and the Webbs’ marriage was failing. Henry had become infatuated with one of his young pupils, whom he married after Mary’s death. Mary returned to Spring Cottage alone. She died on October 8, 1927, at St Leonard’s-on-Sea, with her old governess Miss Lory at her bedside. She was 46. The critic G. K. Chesterton wrote that the characters in this novel "live a hard life; they probably on occasion live a hungry life; they are quite capable in some circumstances of living a gross or ferocious life. But they do, in a very deep sense, live a full life." [3] I think, times, that in our mortal language there are no words for the things that are of most account."

And finally, it is the story of Kester Woodseaves, whose steady love for all created things leads him to resist people's cruelty toward nature and each other, and whose love for Prue Sarn enables him to discern her natural loveliness beneath her blighted appearance.

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Her cottage on Lyth Hill (not open to the public) can still be seen. In September 2013, plans were submitted for its demolition. [17] Gideon and Jancis were handfasted, and Jancis had a love-spinning, even though her father swore that she could never marry Gideon. At the love-spinning, Prue first saw Kester Woodseaves, the weaver. When Kester came into the room, it seemed to Prue that a beautiful mist surrounded her. Then she turned sadly away. Gideon had told her often enough that no man would love a girl with a harelip. After several months, Jancis ran away from the Grimble farm. Because Gideon had a good crop of grain coming up, he promised to marry her after the harvest. Wizard Beguildy still swore that there would be no wedding, and Prue was afraid.

However the passing of time seems to have led to a new appreciation of its merits as the online movie database IMDb gives it a respectable score of 6.9 out of 10. Mary Webb The experience, which takes place in an attic, occurs before the arrival of romantic love. For all its profundity and mysticism, this is a novel that will satisfy lovers of unabashed romance, with scenes that, updated, would not be out of place in a modern romantic comedy (fans of the lakeside firefly scene in Disney’s Robin Hood may be particularly gratified). There are echoes of Cyrano de Bergerac’s letter-writing, and Shakespeare’s mistaken identities, and some excellent flirtation in the vernacular (“Not so daggly, neither!”). What is the effect of local superstitions and folklore on the villagers’ trust in, and relationships with, one another?

Gideon, in contrast with good natured Prue, is as ambitious and severe as he is handsome. He works hard (and slaves Prue to do the same for him) to be wealthy and prosperous and his pride prevents him from marrying the girl he loves, fair Jancis, because he wants to be well-off before he gives himself that pleasure, not caring if others suffer because of his material whims. We see Prue in contrast to her brother Gideon, who works relentlessly in pursuit of getting rich--the “precious bane” of the title. What also had me bothered for some time is the subtle way in which Mary Webb implies that no one is naturally evil , what the characters (and ultimately what WE) become is the uncontrollable combination of fate, desire and chance altogether with their skill in taking the right decision at the right moment. This way to view life as a running river whose course we don't have the power to change produced a kind of claustrophobic feeling of impotence, with this constant foreboding, lurking behind my consciousness, that something gruesome was going to happen and that no one would be able to stop it, and I'd sink along with all the characters.

The story is set in rural Shropshire during the Napoleonic Wars. It is narrated by the central character, Prue Sarn, whose life is blighted by having a cleft lip and cleft palate. Only the weaver, Kester Woodseaves, perceives the beauty of her character, but Prue cannot believe herself worthy of him. Her brother Gideon is overridingly ambitious to attain wealth and power, regardless of who suffers while he does so. Gideon is set to wed his sweetheart Jancis, but he incurs the wrath of her father, the cruel and scheming self-proclaimed wizard Beguildy. An act of vengeance by Beguildy makes Gideon reject Jancis and tragedy engulfs them both. Prue is wrongly accused of murder and set upon by a mob, but Kester defies them and carries Prue away to the happiness she believed she could never possess because of her deformity. But Prue's peace of mind crumbles down when she meets the new weaver, Kester Woodseaves, whom she starts to worship in secret not believing herself worthy of him. It's up to this Prince Charming to perceive the real beauty of Pruedence Sarn and free her from gossip and hateful stares. Gideon Sarn argues that “We canna make the world, for it’s made already.” Is Precious Bane a fatalistic novel?But Mother cried and moaned all night after. And when the Sexton said 'Be there a Sin Eater?' she cried again very pitifully, because Father had died in his wrath, with all his sins upon him, and besides, he had died in his boots, which is a very unket thing and bodes no good. So she thought he had great need of a Sin Eater, and she would not be comforted.

Precious Bane tells the touching story of the young Prue Sarn, coming of age in the early 1800’s, part of a hard-working farm family in the West Midlands of England. She’s considered afflicted, due to being born with a cleft lip, and told she’ll never have a lover or children.

Now it was still the custom at that time, in our part of the country, to give a fee to some poor man after a death, and then he would take bread and wine handed to him across the coffin, and eat and drink, saying-- I'd unhesitatingly recommend this novel to any reader who appreciates well-written serious fiction, in the real meaning of the term. And I give Webb high marks for having the guts to create a heroine with a birth defect, who isn't lessened or defined by it. (But is Prue really doomed to lifelong spinsterhood because of it? Is there ANY guy at all in 19th-century Shropshire with two good eyes and even half a brain? Well ...I'm not telling; you'll just have to read the book. :-) Prue, considered disfigured, nevertheless at one point adopts the image of a naked Venus. What kinds of questions does the novel ask about the notion of “beauty”? I cannot tell whence, a most powerful sweetness that had never come to me afore. It was not religious, like the goodness of a text heard at preaching. It was beyond that. It was as if some creature made all of light had come on a sudden from a great way off, and nestled in my bosom…I cared not to ask what it was.