Year of Wonders, Research Paper Example

Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague

“Why do you let yourself love an infant so? I warned you, did I not, to school your heart against this? It was true. Aphra had seen three of her own babies into the ground before their first year, one through fever, one through flux, and one, a lusty boy, who had just stopped breathing in his bed, with nary a mark upon him. I had stood with her through all these deaths, marveling at her dry eyes. (Brooks, 2002)”

Historical fiction is a popular book genre that takes real events and mixes these events with fictional situations and characters in order to make the story interesting. This is true of the book, “Year of Wonders,” by Geraldine Brooks. This book is loosely based on an outbreak of the plague in 1666, in the village of Eyam (Brooks, 2002). This was a disaster for this village, as it was for much of England. This book is trying to convey the devastation of this outbreak through fictional characters and situations.

Anna is our heroine in the novel. She is tested throughout the book, but continues to stay strong. She loses both of her sons, but continues to help the sick throughout the book and prevails in the end (Brooks, 2002). She lives through this terrible time to tell her story. Anna Frith is a servant to the village priest and cares for the Priest because his wife is dead (Brooks, 2002). She is an emotional yet level headed character who continues to be caring though she has lost all that is dear to her with the death of her sons. She uses her time to comfort the sick within the village in a time of complete panic and horror with the plague running rampant and infecting many of the villagers.

Ring Around the Rosies is a common nursery rhyme as well as the title of the second chapter of Year of Wonders. , this rhyme has been linked to the great plague of the 1660’s (Ring Around the Rosie Rhyme, 2009). The Bubonic plague, a horrible, life threatening disease that ravaged London. This nursery rhyme is supposed to represent the stages of the plague. This important chapter title is named for the beginning of the spread of the disease in the village. It all began when George Viccars, a visiting tailor receives a box of cloth from London (Brooks, 2002). It is implied that this box from London carried with it the dread disease that is soon to ravage the quiet village. George is the first to be sick which Anna realizes when she kisses him and he is flushed with fever (Brooks, 2002).

Though it is unlikely for the plague to reach such a remote place, because it can easily be passed through fleas that have bitten the rats of London, it is easy to assume that the plague was carried in the package received from London. An actual account from London:

Samuel Pepys, a naval administrator and Member of Parliament, wrote of the plague in his famous diary. He describes a melancholy visage of desperate people searching for relief from the plague which they were ravaged by (The Great Plague of London, 1665, 2013). In July of 1665 he wrote, “The sad news of the death of so many in the parish of the plague, forty last night, the bell always going, either for deaths or burials (The Great Plague of London, 1665, 2013).” He also wrote of the survivors burying the dead during the day, as there was not enough time in the night to do so (The Great Plague of London, 1665, 2013).

The plague reached the small village where Anna lived in 1666 and ravaged the community for one year (Brooks, 2002). During this year, 2/3’s of the villagers are lost to the Bubonic Plague (Brooks, 2002). The true personal account of Pepys is very similar to Anna’s account of the plague in regard to the easy spread and significant death toll.

This particular village was shown in the book to be a simple place where most people were illiterate, extremely superstitious, and very religious (Brooks, 2002). As the plague progressed, the healers within the village were seen as witches and were killed as such. Mem Gowdie is bound, beaten, and taken to the river and drowned in the superstitious paranoia that has enveloped the village (Brooks, 2002). After Mem Gowdie, the healer of the village is killed for causing the plague, Anna, and another prominent character, Elinor, take over the practice of healing (Brooks, 2002). Anna and Elinor take all herbs and medicines that may help with the suffering and illness of the plague from Mem Gowdie’s cottage after she dies (Brooks, 2002).

Though many of the herbs and practices in this time period were irrelevant to curing the plague, many of the herbs could be used to comfort the sick. Easing the pain helped the sick to die more comfortably. They were more at peace if they were able to be pain free at the end.

Anna is lead by Elinor. Elinor is considered scholarly and Anna has a special way with people that allows her to become close to and comfort the sick (Brooks, 2002). Elinor observes that that dying can be made more comfortable, though few recover from the plague (Brooks, 2002). Though the pair also discovers that the healthier a person is, the less likely that they will be infected by the disease (Brooks, 2002). They developed two practices to help with the healing which are to fortify the healthy rather than cure the inflicted and also to offer balms of comfort to the dying (Brooks, 2002).

As Anna is walking home from her father’s trial she trips over a rock (Brooks, 2002). This makes her think of the plague and how it is just nature (Brooks, 2002). She thinks that maybe that should focus on finding out how it is spread rather than thinking that it is a curse from God (Brooks, 2002). If they could stop the spread of infection, then they could possible also learn the cure. She feels that having the right tools is imperative.

Anna and Elinor are a work of fiction; however these two characters do share similarities with a few prominent people of the actual time at hand. In the firsthand account of William Boghurst’s, Loimographia, written in 1665, he most accurately described the symptoms and causes of the plague (The Great Plague of London, 1665, 2013). He was a physician who had a firsthand account of the inflicted. He attributed the causes to filth, inadequate disposal of sewage, and poor nutrition among the destitute within the town (The Great Plague of London, 1665, 2013). This was the main cause of the infestation of black rats that carried the fleas that carried the plague (The Great Plague, 2013). Boghurst also criticized the physicians at the time for using standard treatments such as bleeding, purging, and fumigating houses, as well as quarantine infected households, since all of these means had been tried and failed to work (The Great Plague, 2013).

The town did however decide that quarantine was an important aspect of the plague; though the reason for quarantine was not the same as it was in 1665. The quarantine was justified by Priest Mompellion, the priest that Anna cared for (Brooks, 2002). It was a religious justification in which he stated that the goal of human existence was salvation. God sends hardships to be tools of purification. If the villagers accepted the disease as sent from a kind and loving God and in accepting this they would be purified and be more likely to attain everlasting life (Brooks, 2002).

The quarantine suggested by Boghurst was not an effort at salvation, but an effort to contain the plague so that it did not spread beyond already infected areas. This type of quarantine was also tried and failed to be effective, so Boghurst ridiculed this answer to plague.

At the time that Mompellion had to convince the villagers that a quarantine was necessary because the villagers were beginning to think that the only way to avoid becoming infected was to leave the village. This can be compared to the outbreak in London in that as the common treatments for the plague proved ineffectual because the causes were mainly the filth of the lower class individuals, the wealthy, who were rarely infected in this instance of outbreak had fled the city in distress, leaving the poorer, infected citizens behind (The Great Plague of London, 1665, 2013).

Though the characters in the book are fictional as are there feelings, it easy to understand their feelings of distress based on actual accounts of the outbreak in London. The disease was deadly. By September of 1665, it was estimated that there were nearly 8,000 deaths per week (The Great Plague of London, 1665, 2013). This was worst outbreak of the plague in London since 1348, and 15% of the population was lost (The Great Plague of 1665-6, 2013). The number of recorded deaths reached 68,596, while there were more likely to be over 100,000 in total (The Great Plague of 1665-6, 2013). It is understandable that Brooks used feelings of despair paired with little hope to enhance the personas of her characters.

This can be easily seen in a scene within the book. After the plague continues to spread Priest Mompellion asks the villagers to burn their belongings and clean their houses thoroughly (Brooks, 2002). After this is accomplished no new cases of the plague are reported for two weeks (Brooks, 2002). As the villagers rejoice, Aphra, a character that has gone insane due to the loss of her daughter, carries the rotting remains into the church brandishing a knife (Brooks, 2002). She wants to know why she should be thankful and as she lashes out in anger she slits Elinor’s throat and then takes her own life (Brooks, 2002). Though the plague eventually recedes, there is so much lost and so much devastation that those effected will never completely recover. This can be inferred from the actual situation as well as the story.

Along with death, epidemics bring a fear, panic and a breakdown of society (The Black Death and Early Public Health Measures, 2013). As London was not prepared for the outbreak in 1665, though the plague had struck numerous times since the original outbreak of 1347, the town resorted to disturbing manners of treating the sick (The Black Death and Early Public Health Measures, 2013). Drinking poisons laced with arsenic or carrying sweet smelling flowers to purify the air where small ways of dealing with the disease (The Black Death and Early Public Health Measures, 2013).

It could also be said that the outbreak in Anna’s small village lead to panic, fear, and a breakdown of society. The characters turned against each other, blaming others for the devastation in the panic of the epidemic. It was difficult for the villagers to watch the disease take their loved ones from them, as it was for actual people to lose their loved ones in one of the worst plague epidemics in history. They turned to religion as well as superstition to try to solve the mystery of the plague, as did the people of London.

The plague is an awful disease that spread quickly throughout an area in earlier times. There are many stories that have been written, both fact and fiction, that want to convey the actual devastation of the disease. Brooks, Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague is no different. Brook’s wrote this book with the idea of informing the reader but also made changes to the actual story to hold the reader’s attention. Many times it can be boring to read about history, but when reading about history through provocative, interesting characters it is more likely that the reader will take something away from the story. Brook’s characters are structured to elicit emotional responses from the reader that makes the reader want to continue to read the story as well as invoking a want to learn more about the time period and the actual people who dealt with this hardship.

Though Year of Wonders: A Novel of the plague is a fictional story there are many instances of truth in the novel in regard to the plague. Though the thoughts, ideas, and feelings of the characters and the characters themselves are fictional these aspects of the story can be related to those thoughts, ideas, and feelings of the people who endured this horrible epidemic in London. This can be seen in the actual accounts, treatments, and causes of the plague discovered in the 1660’s.

References

Brooks, G. (2002).  Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague. New York: Penguin Books.

Plague: The Black Death. (2013). Retrieved May 6, 2013, from National Geographic: http://science.nationalgeographic.com

Ring Around the Rosie Rhyme. (2009). Retrieved May 6, 2013, from Nursery Rhymes Lyrics and Origins: http://www.rhymes.org.uk

The Black Death and Early Public Health Measures. (2013). Retrieved May 6, 2013, from Science Museum: http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk

The Great Plague. (2013). Retrieved May 6, 2013, from Historic UK, History Magazine: http://www.historic-uk.com

The Great Plague of 1665-6. (2013). Retrieved May 6, 2013, from The National Archives: http:www.nationalarchives.gov.uk

The Great Plague of London, 1665. (2013). Retrieved May 6, 2013, from Contagion Historical Views of Disease and Epidemics: http:ocp.hul.harvard.edu