The Gillyvors

Fülszöveg

A century or so ago there lived at Heap Hollow Cottage, on the outskirts of a village no great distance from the town of Fellburn in County Durham, a man and a woman and their six children: four sons and two daughters. To a visitor from the outside world they would rightly have suggested a particularly close and loving family group, well endowed with the domestic virtues, industrious and lively of mind. Yet across this happy façade lay a shadow that had lengthened and darkened with the passing years. For the father and mother were not husband and wife. In an enlightened society the very circumstances which had kept them from marrying would surely have won them compassion and understanding, but these were not qualities readily to be found in a Victorian rural community. To their narrow and bigoted minds the offspring of Nathaniel Martell and Maria Dagshaw were outcasts, a bunch of base-born gillyvors which, in country parlance, meant they were bastards. Anna, the elder daughter, was... Tovább

Fülszöveg

A century or so ago there lived at Heap Hollow Cottage, on the outskirts of a village no great distance from the town of Fellburn in County Durham, a man and a woman and their six children: four sons and two daughters. To a visitor from the outside world they would rightly have suggested a particularly close and loving family group, well endowed with the domestic virtues, industrious and lively of mind. Yet across this happy façade lay a shadow that had lengthened and darkened with the passing years. For the father and mother were not husband and wife. In an enlightened society the very circumstances which had kept them from marrying would surely have won them compassion and understanding, but these were not qualities readily to be found in a Victorian rural community. To their narrow and bigoted minds the offspring of Nathaniel Martell and Maria Dagshaw were outcasts, a bunch of base-born gillyvors which, in country parlance, meant they were bastards. Anna, the elder daughter, was entering womanhood resolved to face the legacy of her birth and the challenges it must continue to bring her. Like all the family, she owed much to the friendship of Miss Netherton, a rare spirit among the local gentry, whose generous heart and sturdy good sense could have profited most of her neighbours both high and low in the social scale. She would play an important role in setting Anna along the right road, but the journey would not be an easy one and only Anna s inborn courage and zest for life would in the end sustain her quest for fulfilment and happiness. Vissza