Mr Wroe's Virgins

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When God told Prophet John Wroe to comfort himself with seven virgins, his congregation gave him its daughters. So begins this provocative and immensely powerful novel, set in nineteenth-century England and based on actual events. Mr. Wroe’s Virgins] leaps headlong into the most ambitious and risky territories: faith, love and existential meaning.” — The New York Times Book Review In 1819 Wroe became ill with a fever and two doctors who attended him considered his life was in serious danger. Wroe asked for a minister to come and pray with him. Although his wife sent for four church ministers, each refused his request. Wroe then asked his wife to read a few chapters of the Bible to him, and after a while, he gradually recovered his bodily health, but his mental distress continued and he "wrestled with God" day and night for some months. [ citation needed]

Mr Wroe’s Virgins is based on a true story. The original Mr Wroe was born in Bradford in 1782. During an illness he had a vision in which he was instructed to convert to Judaism. Instead he joined the Apocalyptic Southcottian Church. He styled himself and his congregation as Christian Israelites. His followers called him a ‘prophet’. In 1822 he received a ‘message’ that Ashton (in Lancashire) was to become the New Jerusalem. Later, in 1830 he received a further message, that God wanted his followers to provide Mr Wroe with seven virgins ‘for comfort and succour’. They did. Nothing is known about these seven women. With this book Rogers tells their story. A short time later, Wroe started having visions, and often became blind and unable to speak — on one occasion remaining blind for six days. During these periods, Wroe said, many remarkable events were foretold and revealed to him: the Spirit told him to relinquish his worldly employment, so he devoted his life to travelling and preaching, where he gained many followers and persuaded them that he was a messenger of God. [ citation needed]I remember watching a television adaptation of this book some years ago, with the excellent Jonathan Pryce and a stunning performance from Kathy Burke. It was only when I tried to find that series on DVD that I realised it came from a book and, as the series hasn’t been released, I decided to read the book. Wroe’s life was the basis of a novel, Mr Wroe's Virgins by Jane Rogers. [5] In 1993 Jonathan Pryce featured as Wroe, alongside Kathy Burke and Minnie Driver, in a BBC mini-series adaptation of the novel directed by Danny Boyle. [6] Wroe was born, on 19 September 1782, in the village of East Bowling, near Bradford, West Yorkshire to a worsted manufacturer and farmer, and baptised in the town. [1] After a rather scanty education, he entered his father's business, but later took a farm. He married and brought up a family of seven children. [ citation needed]

In the end I had to narrow it down to four stories, with each of my four women pursuing a different desire. And in the years it took me to research and write the book, life intruded to alter and colour it – most significantly in the sudden illness and death of my father. My loss became Hannah’s loss, and her grief gave me the key to her character. It’s a successful attempt to put flesh on the bones of these characters, but only to a certain extent. Joanna, Hannah, Leah and Martha are given a voice each, and for me these are successful. We see each of them grow from their point of entry into the narrative, and although the development isn’t always in a positive direction it’s very believable. As to the other virgins however, Dinah and the sisters Rebekah and Rachel, we never go inside their heads. Why is that? Beyond the facts that Dinah is ailing and the sisters rather young the information provided is scarce, but it does suggest an interesting tale to be told about one of them, at least. We weren’t promised detailed information about all seven virgins, it’s true, but it’s rather frustrating to not get their take on the events of which they are a part. Mr Wroe is a self proclaimed prophet who leads a church of Christian Israelites in Ashton near Manchester and has managed to persuade the local population that the world will end and only by following him can they go to heaven when the world ends; which is imminent. To show their devotion they build him a temple called the Sanctuary and it is big and needs manpower for cooking and cleaning hence his requirement for seven virgins, not as sexual partners but as housemaids.

There is nothing documented about the women, so Rogers creates entirely fictitious characters. For her seven, Rogers chooses: a cripple, a badly beaten mute, two under-age sisters who can barely read, a virtuous saint, a girl donated by her aunt and uncle who does not belong to the congregation and doesn’t believe, and a girl with an illegitimate son.

John Wroe (19 September 1782 – 5 February 1863) was a British evangelist who founded the Christian Israelite Church in the 1820s after having what he believed were a series of visions. Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.In the 1820s, Prophet John Wroe settled his Christian Israelite church in Lancashire, England, where he and his followers awaited the end of the world. And when God told Wroe to find “comfort and succour” with seven virgins, his followers supplied him their daughters. This is the story of those seven young women—faithful, cynical, canny, and desperate—and their charismatic leader, as they move headlong toward the historic trial that brings their household to its dramatic end. I knew what I wanted to write about next; that perennial question which has never been better put than by Chaucer: “What thing is it that wommen most desyren? ” My own instincts told me that if set in the present, such a book would be all too easily placed in the 'women’s ghetto' It still strikes me as extraordinary that it’s based on a true story: that there was a man called John Wroe who founded the Christian Israelite Church in Ashton Under Lyne, Lancashire in the 1820s, where he predicted the world was about to end. Perhaps most strangely of all, he professed that God had told him to take seven virgins from the local congregation for his ‘comfort and succour’. We know little of who these women were, but Jane Rogers has given them poetic life from her imagination and in doing so created a historical document of the world in which they and many other working class women might have experienced the society of their time. Rogers chooses four of the ‘sisters’ (as they are known in the household) to tell the story. As with Darwin’s The Mathematics of Love, the characterisations and voices are so cleverly written that it is easy to tell whose story you are in. No sign posting is required. Martha (the mute) is a particularly interesting character. When we begin to focus on her she is unable to construct sentences. It is wonderful to watch her progression from ���savage’, as she is described by her sisters, into a ‘full’ person. At the start Martha’s focus is directed purely on where she will get her next meal. She doesn’t trust the others or Mr Wroe. She then begins to think and value herself. We watch her transform and by the end she probably acts the most sensibly out of all the sisters. Wroe died in Melbourne, Australia, in 1863, aged 81, leaving the church affairs in the hands of his trustees.