Year of Wonders

“The Puritans, who are few amongst us now, and sorely pressed, had the running of this village then.”

Puritanism, a branch of Protestantism, arose in England in the 16th century in opposition to the Catholic Church. Known for their austere lifestyle, Puritans shunned all worldly pleasures and lived by a strict moral code. Michael Mompellion, as an Anglican rector, signals a change in church leadership in Eyam.

“I left the children in their sleepy tangle, tiny Tom curled up like nutmeat in its shell, Jamie’s slender little arms flung wide across the pallet.”

The author uses a simile comparing Tom’s tiny body to the inside of a walnut, emphasizing his youth and vulnerability. The language conveys Anna’s deep love for her sons, depicting her as a devoted mother. These moments of familial calm will form a stark contrast to the loss and devastation of the plague that will shortly arrive.

“Then the purple thing burst all of a sudden open, slitting like a pea pod and issuing forth creamy pus all spotted through with shreds of dead flesh.”

The Bubonic Plague takes its name from the large bumps, called buboes, that arise near the victims’ lymph nodes, such as the neck and underarms. In this passage, Anna is horrified to discover that George Viccars is dying of the plague, heralding the beginning of the village’s crisis.

“The sun was bright that day, and strong shadows from the trees fell in bands across the path. Dark and light, dark and light, dark and light. That was how I had been taught to view the world.”

Anna comes of age in a fundamentally religious village where Puritanism taught her that there are no moral grey areas, only absolutes. As she experiences life, particularly as she comes to know Anys and Mem Gowdie, Anna reevaluates her strict religious beliefs, introducing the dilemma of The Intersection of Faith, Superstition, and Science.

“Those who move through the poorer parishes cover their faces in herb-stuffed masks contrived like the beaks of great birds.”

A man from London at Bradford’s table explains the curious costumes doctors wear when treating plague patients. The elaborate costume stems from the misconception that all illness is spread through bad air, or the miasma theory. The passage also underscores the misguided belief that the plague only affects lower-class citizens.

“This is not a vivid place. Our only strong hue is green, and this we have in every shade: the emerald velvet mosses, the glossy, tangled ivies, and in spring, the gold-greens of tender new grasses. For the rest, we move through a patchwork of grays.”

The color green can symbolize new life, and spring is typically the season of rebirth and renewal. Anna’s vivid descriptions of the beauty of Eyam in the spring are juxtaposed with the outbreak of illness in the village, which will bring death and destruction instead of new life.

“I could see a dead rat, a sorry little corpse, all wet and rheumy-eyed with a smear of bright blood about its muzzle.”

Seeing a pile of dead rats is an ominous discovery, as the fleas they carry contain the Yersinia Pestis infection, which causes plague. The fact that the little boys were playing with the diseased, dead rats foreshadows the disaster that is to come.

“The poor little soul was covered in squirming leeches, their sucking parts embedded in his tender arms and neck, and their round, slimy nethers flicking and twitching as they feasted.”

Much of medieval medicinal practices were based on the belief that humans were made of four humors—blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm—that must be balanced. Illness was believed to be a sign of an imbalance in the humors, and leeches were often used to bleed patients to bring their humors back into balance. Leeches have no efficacy against plague, but the practices of the male barber-surgeons are still regarded as more authoritative in the village than those of the local female healers.

“There were angels carved into the cross, but also strange creatures whose nature I did not know. Mrs. Mompellion had told me once that the cross came from a time when the Christian faith was new to Britain and had to vie with the old ways of the standing stones and the bloody sacrifices.”

Anna leans against a Celtic cross, overwhelmed with grief as she views the fresh graves of her sons and the other early victims of the plague, which have begun to herald The Effects of Disasters on Communities. Her reflections on the strange inscriptions on the cross, which speak of distinct conflicts between old faiths and new in the early days of Christianity, also imply that her own faith is becoming tested.

“She’s sinking! She’s sinking! She’s no witch! God forgive us, we’ve killed her!”

Mary Hadfield shouts this at the mob when the witch test “proves” that Mem is innocent. The mob’s violence towards Mem reflects both The Complexities of Gender Roles and The Intersection of Faith, Superstition, and Science, as the mob reject Mem for her independence and medicinal knowledge even though they are in desperate need of her remedies.

“Colonel Bradford’s ceremonial swords hung crossed above the mantle in a pair of gleaming arcs.”

Colonel Bradford hastily packs up his belongings and flees the village in fear, not caring about what will become of his community. Though symbols of bravery, his “ceremonial swords” are held fast to the wall unused, representing Bradford’s cowardice.

“The right side of Maggie Cantwell’s face looked like a smear of clay that an impatient potter had likewise disfigured.”

Maggie has a stroke, which leaves part of her face paralyzed. Anna doesn’t have language for Maggie’s medical condition, using figurative language to compare her paralyzed face to that of “disfigured” clay. Anna’s recognition of Maggie’s condition foreshadows her increasing interest in medicine and eagerness to tend to others as the novel progresses.

“Why, I wondered, was God so much more prodigal with his Creation?”

The longer the plague rages and the more suffering Anna bears and witnesses, the more she begins questioning her faith and Mr. Mompellion’s promise that God will reward their suffering. Chiefly, Anna wonders why God would create man at all if he were only meant to suffer a life full of pain and misery, invoking the theme of The Intersection of Faith, Superstition, and Science.

“Time turned into a rope that unraveled as a languid spiral. One strand widened into a broad, swooping curve on which I could glide, drifting easily like a breeze-borne leaf.”

Anna describes the hallucinogenic properties of opium after dosing herself with the poppy. Her weightless bliss is a welcomed relief from the crushing pain of her reality. Anna’s desire to withdraw from the world reflects The Effects of Disasters on Communities.

“The wind whipped around the house, its sighs and whispers like a hundred haunting voices.”

The author employs pathetic fallacy as the weather mimics the story's mood. The town of Eyam begins to feel haunted by all the dead, as well as the murmurings and superstitious fears of the survivors.

“All those ancestors who stared at me from their portraits when I was a girl—all those silken ladies and beribboned men—I wonder what they’d say about their descendant if they could see her now?”

Their mining adventure solidifies Anna and Elinor’s steadfast friendship and marks them as brave, revolutionary women who aren’t afraid to subvert traditional roles. Elinor mocks her aristocratic upbringing—here represented by austere paintings of her relatives who taught her to abide by a code of ladylike behavior—illustrating The Complexities of Gender Roles.

“And when I finally find a way to make summat from me sweat, you come ‘ere trying to tell me what I can and cannot be taking for me toil!”

Joss is defiant in the face of censure when he is criticized for his exploitative practices towards plague victims. Joss’s greed and utter lack of empathy while performing his grave-digging services reflects The Effects of Disasters on Communities, as people like him attempt to gain from the crisis.

“A tumble of fluffy, tufted clouds covered the whole from horizon to dome, as if a shearer had flung a new-shorn fleece high into the air.”

Nature becomes a place where Anna finds solace as the plague ravages the village. The author compares the clouds to the bright, pure fleece of the lambs. The newborn animals represent new life and the ability of nature to persevere.

“Sometimes the sight of those tiny creatures moved me, their clean fleeces so dazzling white against the lush new grass, springing on all fours in their joy to be alive.”

The lambs represent innocence and purity. Anna’s herd of sheep provides for her financially and throughout the pandemic; caring for them gives her a sense of purpose. The newborn lambs represent nature’s ability to continue even in disaster and the promise of new life.

“[T]he objects in the heart of the blaze lost their singularity and became dark shapes merely, foils for the swirling brightness. For a moment, the black areas within the flames fell into a form that resembled the voids in a skull.”

Mompellion’s bonfire is his last attempt to convince the townsfolk that they can change their fate. Seeing the skull shape in the flames is foreshadowing that more death and grief are to come.

“The mind of a healer, I thought, should not brim so with images of death. And yet some memories cannot be rooted out like weeds, no matter how much one wills to do it.”

Anna here reflects on the paradox that she is a “healer” and yet her mind is full of “images of death,” reflecting her own traumas in the face of the plague. Anna wishes to help others and to survive the pandemic, yet her emotions remain complex, reflecting The Effects of Disasters on Communities.

“We live, we live, we live, said the hoofbeats, and the drumming of my pulse answered them.”

Anna rides Anteros freely across the moors, symbolizing her independence and the beginning of a new life (See: Symbols & Motifs). Whereas Anteros is Mompellion’s horse and once represented his status and authority over the townspeople, Anna is now the one in control of both the horse and her own fate.

“They were jagged crags from the landscape of a nightmare. Ravines one instant, soaring cliffs the next, not rooted in the earth but tossing and leaping and never still.”

Anna describes her ocean journey and the perilously rough seas. Since Anna had never left her village before, she knew little about the ocean. This passage’s imagery, full of expansiveness and a sense of motion (“tossing and leaping and never still”), reflect the expansion of Anna’s own personal horizons as she breaks free of the constraints of her old life.