Poldark Saga - Winston Graham discussion

Have you written a review for this book or read a particularly good one? Post a link here!

Here's the link to my review
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Here's the link to my review. After a second reading, this is one of my very favorites.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/edit...

I was confused by the author's comment in chapter 8 book 1 of TS.
When the author says "Ross approved of the result; .....he was able to prove his approval when he got her home......It was many years since had had been out of love with his wife, but now he fell in love with her all over again" did he mean Ross had not been in love with her for many years or that it had been a long time ago that he had not been in love with her? Not sure of his meaning b/c of way it is stated. Wondering what others thought.

I too was very confused with that passage and read it so many times and came to the conclusion that it meant (just like you said) it had been a long time ago that he had not been in love with Demelza. I think what made it confusing is the sentence that followed.....but now he fell in love with her all over again. The word now made that passage confusing.

Thanks!

Good topic! That is one of my least favorite lines in the entire series. After some reflection I took it to mean that for many years Ross was not passionately IN love with Demelza. But that does not mean that he did not LOVE her. Like a lot of marriages, the sparks were no longer flying. It was a period of marriage when child raising and daily responsibility can suck the passion out of a marriage. And as often happens, with a change of scenery, wardrobe and the perspective of others the flame is reignited.

That makes sense. He could have made that clearer though!

I would really love to get a man's perspective on that passage. I had thought about asking my husband but then reconsidered. I don't think I want to hear the answer coming from him, LOL.

Agree with that!

That's a good comment from Mara. For me however the spark in their relationship is always there. There are many instances in the books that indicate that. In the book Stranger from the Sea, Ross came back home after a long absence and he and Demelza were in bed and they were talking and both commented that it is amazing that it is still the same for both of them. Miller's Dance the scene when Ross came back from horse race anf found Demelza sitting in the bed and he said something about abstinence to which Demelza replied she was not ready for that. There are some more in that book and other books. The spark waned I think in book 12. Demelza reached a milestone in her life and I also believe she is getting tired of Ross to the point that their youngest son Harry asked her if she and Dad are no longer in love. Although Ross made a nice little speech while they were in a train on their way to London, somehow what he said did not make an impact to Demelza.

Sadly, I agree with this last comment. I wasn't convinced by Ross here or by Demelza having faith in him. I don't want to say this as I have thoroughly enjoyed the books but I will as I'm interested in what others think. Ross seems to fancy a 'tumble' with Lady Harriet and Demelza is worried by this unconsciously and by the fact that Ross is getting too close to Selina who is his 'daughter-in-law'! I don't think their relationship is secure at all which is a great shame at the end.-John David.

I have felt for a long time that Bella, the last book, does not end happily, especially for Demelza. Why would Winston Graham leave the situation as he does when he had decided this would be the last book. He died a year after it was published. Demelza comes across as unhappy and Ross seems unaware of this. It's very sad. The ghost of Valentine and George's existence hangs over Demelza's future. I haven't picked up on Selina getting too close to Ross so will have a look at that. At the very end, when they get back to Nampara, I felt Demelza's overwhelming feeling of sadness with Ross apparently either unaware or unconcerned.

I agree that the line about it being "It was many years since had had been out of love with his wife, but now he fell in love with her all over again" was confusing, but I think it was a case of awkward wording. He always loved Demelza, and the spark was still there, but here he was experiencing a resurgence of that first flush of attraction - a reminder of the early days. As for his dancing with Harriet , I don;t for a minute believe that he wanted to have a fling with her. Demelza encouraged him to dance with Harriet because she knows Ross is a man who has a need for adventure and excitement in his life. She sees the opportunity for him to flirt a little with an attractive woman, while annoying George, as a harmless way to satisfy that need - plus she finds it amusing. I don't think Bella ended unhappily. Ross and Demelza have built their lives and family together, and love each other very much. Ross has a dark, introspective side, which bothers Demelza, and he wants to keep it to himself to avoid upsetting her, but their relationship is strong.

Joanne wrote: "I don't think Bella ended unhappily. Ross and Demelza have built their lives and family together, and love each other very much. Ross has a dark, introspective side, which bothers Demelza, and he wants to keep it to himself to avoid upsetting her, but their relationship is strong. "

I'm with Joanne on this one. *I* was sad at the end of Bella, because it was the last one, but I didn't feel that the characters were sad.

In Bella Ross & Demelza go through something very sad: valentine's destructive effect on their relationship. At the end of the book they're only just coming out of it and are barely just beginning to process it. Yet, they've survived. Their marriage is in tact. The hopefulness of it is Ross' resolution not to allow his "malaise" to ever come between him & Demelza again. Also, he decides that he doesn't have to fear for Georgie. He also displays a sense of shame in hoping that Bella was too young to hear the whispers about Valentine's parentage. So, yes, the series does ends with "a lingering trace of a gap" in Ross & Demelza's relationship, but there are signs that Ross, at least, is becoming more self aware about how his actions affect his loved ones. That's cause for hope.

Mara - I want to believe your perspective on this so will have to re-read the book for a third time I think. I read it not long ago and was desperately hoping for Ross and Demelza to be able to talk it all through and remove the barriers between them getting close again. My memory may be faulty but I recall that I felt Demelza had given up on having the closeness they once had. Can you point me to the part of the book where I might find some solace and some hope?

I felt the same kind of discontent after my first reading and also thought WG had dropped the ball on Demelza's character. It took me 3 readings (not consecutively) to come to my final conclusions. The problem is that we don't get a happily-ever-after MOMENT. There's no one single section in the book where we get a sense of closure. There are only fragments here & there, as the ones I mentioned above. But by stepping back & piecing them together we can see a positive future course. My perspective also comes from being about Demelza's age and married for about as long. She's not letting Ross off easily because, unlike when she was younger, HIS contentedness is not the only thing that matters anymore. Her upset comes from warning him at the beginning of the book that Valentine could lead him into danger, and at the end of the book Valentine almost getting him killed. So, rightly, she turns her focus on the rest of the family (the Christmas party) for now and let's Ross stew in his own juices a while. The distance between them allows Ross to reflect and make the decisions he finally comes to: drop Georgie, Harriet, the malaise over Valentine. The future for Ross & Demelza is the world that their children open up for them, Bella's world renown career, Clowance and Edwards' social standing and whatever Harry does, together.

Your reply is very comforting Mara and I am so grateful for it. I don't want to feel as I do about the ending so I shall keep your post by me and re-read Bella for a 3rd or 4th time and make notes as I go. My hope is to be able to see it as you do although even then there is some sadness in Ross not listening to his wife's words of wisdom yet again.

Mara, I agree with your analysis. Demelza has grown in wisdom, Ross, not so much! :) But I love Winston Graham's books because his characters feel like real human beings to me. There is no perfect, happily ever after ending.
Neither Ross nor Demelza was ever the same buoyant person after Waterloo. I think they are still striving for acceptance and balance in their lives. They are still healing. Bella gave them a gift: her own joy and determination to reach for the stars, her appetite for life and adventure and risk-taking. I think the final book ended on a positive and uplifting note: Cornwall is where their hearts are, and life can still be rich and warm and offer hope.

I think Ross and Demelza had a tragic grandeur at the end of TS. They were trying to cope with, and adjust to, Jeremy's death. I still felt that there was clear hope here.

Some contributors on this website's section for 'Bella' have said that it's possible that a ghost writer was used for this twelfth book. The 'writer' may have been under the supervision of WG and been guided by him. At times I felt that I couldn't hear WG's authentic voice. Does anyone have a definitive answer on this?

For the last seven months I feel as if I have been living in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. I also watched 'Taboo' on the television. I have thoroughly enjoyed the books and I am going to miss these characters. WG-you got me well and truly hooked! John/ John David.

John wrote: "For the last seven months I feel as if I have been living in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. I have thoroughly enjoyed the books and I am going to miss these characters."

John, I so agree! There have been other comments throughout this Poldark focus group about how we miss the characters when we are not immersed in the books. I recall an exchange in which someone had to remind herself that the stories took place long ago and the characters were all passed away, and then had to remind herself they were characters in novels and not real people! I do think that well-written book characters have lives of their own, and we readers are just privileged to peek through a window in the universe and observe them.

I like your comment, Mara - that the future for Demelza (I am not including Ross because he will do whatever he wants anyway even if he gets killed or whatever) is a world that her children open up for her. Maybe you can help me understand a passage in Blackmoon. I posted it under Discussion. Thanks.

Stella wrote: "Mara - I want to believe your perspective on this so will have to re-read the book for a third time I think. .... Can you point me to the part of the book where I might find some solace and some hope? "

Stella, I have prepared a running account of Demelza and Ross's love for each other after Hugh. I think it answer the question about when he may not have been in love with Demelza and his views later. In my mind there is no question of their enduring loving bond. I think the lingering gap is just WG playing with us.

Ross and Demelza’s Love After Hugh

When Ross first returns from London after become an MP:
“‘I had no idea when I came home how we were to meet. I have no idea at this moment whether we shall ever laugh together again – in that way. I want you, I want you, but there’s anger and jealousy in it still, and they die hard. I can’t say more. I can’t promise that tomorrow it will be like this between us or like that. Nor can you, I’m sure. You’re right in saying I’m a stranger. But I’m a stranger who knows every inch of your skin. We have to go on from there – in a sense to start again.’” (TAT, p. 40). Pan Macmillan. Kindle Edition.

Demelza tells us how things are going between her and Ross:
“Never since Hugh Armitage’s death had there been total ease between them. Love and laughter, she had discovered before this, could exist on a plane which was not at all superficial but which did not penetrate to the depths of one’s being. It had been so five years ago; it was so again now. She longed more than anything for the total submersion in each other that had occurred at other times. Only when it was withdrawn did one observe the tremendous gap that existed between that and the next stage.”
(TATp. 207). Pan Macmillan. Kindle Edition.

Note she is longing for Ross not Hugh. This is what she says.
“That was gone for ever, and she did not want it back, with its pulling at her heartstrings, the agony of divided loyalties.” (TATp. 371). Pan Macmillan. Kinddition.

By the time they get to London things are good, but old thoughts die hard :
“‘Ross, what are you thinking of? You are not serious in supposing . . . Because – because once something happened, because once I felt deeply about another man; do you think, do you suppose I am like to do that again – with the first such who comes along? Am I condemned – because of – of Hugh Armitage – to be suspected of feeling the same for every man who pays me some special attention?’
… ‘Sometimes, Ross, you try me hard. You really do. I am – I am in London for the first time. It is a new society. I am your wife – truly, truly in more than name again, in more than mere act again, after so long. I am happy, excited, living in a new way.
… ‘but one cannot always contain or order one’s feelings, and when I see you in the company of another man – being touched and pressed by him – my mind – or something in me – turns up old feelings, old thoughts, old resentments. Which aren’t so very old.’ She lay against him, saying nothing for a long time, but not so sleepy now." (TAT, p. 411-412). Pan Macmillan. Kindle Edition.

After the duel and Ross returns from London he admits there were times when he was not in love with Demelza:
“They had reached the heart of the issue. ‘This time,’ Ross said, ‘I’m the chief offender – maybe the only one. At least I plead no excuse.’ ‘Oh, Ross, it is not—’ ‘Perhaps in the end one measures the quality of one’s forgiveness by the quality of one’s love. Sometimes my love has been lacking. Is yours now?’ ‘No,’ she said. ‘Nor ever will be. Tisn’t (your) love I lack, Ross, but understanding.’ ... ‘Perhaps we must just go on living – and learning, Ross.’ ‘And loving,’ said Ross. ‘That most of all.’" (TAT, p. 566-567). Pan Macmillan. Kindle Edition.

After ten years—12 years since Hugh died—we are told:
“The first decade of the century had been a good one, her relationship with Ross back to the early days, warm and full of laughter, intermittently passionate, always friendly. Into that sort of companionship they had been able to draw their two eldest children so that, in spite of occasional disagreements, the accord in the house, the outspokenness, and the unstressed affection was notable. (TSFTS,p. 73). Pan Macmillan. Kindle Edition.

When Ross is a captive in France:
“… having refused to be made a JP, why had he been willing to be elected an MP? Chiefly because of Demelza’s defection, her infatuation with the young sailor-poet Hugh Armitage, her unfaithfulness in thought – and he suspected deed – her straying away from him in sympathy and understanding and compassion and love. God, how it had hurt at the time! It had burned in him like an acid, corroding the linings of his stomach and heart. The effects of it, even after Hugh’s death, had gone on for years. Perhaps it had been salutary in a way to discover how much, among all the thousands of women in the world, he depended upon one woman for his happiness – and she something he had picked up casually as a starving brat, barefoot and ragged and with lice in her hair, to work in his house and kitchen. And for so long the other shadow on their lives had been the existence of his first love, Elizabeth, to whom once he had been deeply, it seemed irretrievably, attached. Now she was indeed a shadow, a shade, like Hugh Armitage, long gone, long dead; yet thoughts of them both still brought pain, a dull reminiscent glow among the ashes.” (TTS,p. 217). Pan Macmillan. Kindle Edition.

Demelsa, talk to her daughter about Ross and her relationship:
“‘Clowance, I do not greatly enjoy seeing your father flirting with some handsome woman, any more than he would take too kindly if I flirted outrageously with some handsome man, as has happened now and then in the past. But we have been together for a very long time, him and me, and except for one dire event on his side, and one dire event on mine – of which you already know much and need have no expectation of hearing more from me now – we have been a veritable Darby and Joan to each other.’ ‘Who were Darby and Joan?’ ‘Oh, folk in some old ballad. But mark you, we still feel as much for each other, your father and me, as we have always felt. In our lives, and I’m serious now, we have had so much loving, so very much loving. It has not staled. It varies from year to year, but it keeps always to a constant pitch of – of being deeply and truly involved. And desirous. Against this – if you put this against your father having a frolic on the dance floor with the beautiful second wife of his oldest enemy – this frolic is as important as a ball of fluff.’ ‘It’s lovely to know,’ Clowance said, embarrassed now that she had brought up the subject. ‘Of course, I have always known. The whole family knows it.” (BP, pp. 249-250). Pan Macmillan. Kindle Edition.

The metaphor of the tree for Hugh’s impact on Ross and Demelza’s love:
“that foreign tree from the Carolinas, which Hugh Armitage had brought and they had planted against the protection of the house wall, still clung obstinately to life though making little progress in this unsuitable soil.” (BP,p. 259). Pan Macmillan. Kindle Edition.

Ross explaining his actions after Valentine’s death before they leave to see Bella in London:
“‘I cannot explain more why I have been driven on without touching on painful subjects.’ ‘Painful who to?’ ‘To you. The – the parentage of Valentine has been gone into far too often."
(BP,p. 630). Pan Macmillan. Kindle Edition.

Demelsa expresses her concern:
"Your concern is all for Georgie and not at all for Selina?’ ‘Oh God, of course it is! I care nothing for her. You – you must understand how I feel about Georgie?’ ‘Yes. Yes, I do.
…. Demelza took a deep breath. ‘Maybe it is not the fear of losing three thousand pounds that worries me the most.’" (BP, p. 633-634). Pan Macmillan. Kindle Edition.

Demelsa saying how she would answer Harry’s question, and Ross’s surprise at her answer:
“Ross said: ‘If you had been compelled to answer that first question of his, what would you have said?’ She bit her lip. ‘I would have said, I suppose, that we still loved each other, but that things had not run too easy between us of late.’
‘As bad as that?
…
'I should have said that in my life I’ve loved only two women. Right? The first married my direst enemy. The second married me. She has been my lover, my companion, my housekeeper, the mother of my children, the – the keeper of my conscience. She is comparable in my eyes to no other woman. I would not be a human being if I had not sometimes developed other sorts of affections, other mild fancies, other but not contrary loyalties. Sometimes they have been unnecessarily strong, especially maybe towards the difficult young man I suspected of being my son. I expect a feeling of guilt came into it too! But following that and building on that supposition I shall continue, whether I wish it or not, to have a strong interest in the fortune of his son. It can be no other way, but unless my wife demands that my every interest shall be exclusive to her, then she has all my steadfast support, interest, concern, sympathy, love and loving kindness. If I have in any way neglected my true family these last few weeks I ask their pardon and will try to do better. That do?’ After a minute she said in a low voice: ‘I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.’ ‘Why do you want to laugh?’ ‘Because it was a lovely speech which fetched tears to my eyes but spoken in a light tone that made me wonder if you were being – what is the word? – cynical about it. Are you, Ross?’ He stared at her for a long moment, looking straight into her eyes. ‘The answer is no. But you should not need to be told it.’ It was strange, thought Demelza, that while such handsome words should bring a complete reconciliation nearer, a lingering trace of the gap was still there.” (BP, pp. 643-645). Pan Macmillan. Kindle Edition.

Bernie - I am very grateful to you for taking the trouble to set this out so clearly and with references. It is something I need to keep by me and to read when the television series goes way off the books. I dread each episode of series 3 and this has not happened in the other series. Yet I cannot stop watching.

Sella, You might want to look at the post under TV adaptation.
At this point in the books Ross and Demelza are completely reconciled. On TV there is a lot of hostility still between them. I think DH is setting us up for a rational for Demelza's affair with Hugh as being payback for Ross's with Elizabeth. But we will have to wait and see what DH does with it.

Stella wrote: "Bernie - I am very grateful to you for taking the trouble to set this out so clearly and with references. It is something I need to keep by me and to read when the television series goes way off th..."
I added a few items to my previous post.

Bernie - Thank you again for clarifying that at this point in the books they are reconciled. Sometimes I wonder if my memory of the books is faulty as series 3 is way off the books. I have seen the post about DH setting things up for Demelza to pay back Ross. It seems to me that is pandering to an audience that she thinks will want answers to the question why. As you know, the books do not explain Demelza's reasons which leaves us readers to wonder and ponder. I don't buy the 'payback' reason because Demelza loved Ross and didn't want to lose him. For it to be a payback, surely Ross would have to know. As we all know, there is no clear answer for Demelza's motives but I don't think Demelza wanted revenge and If DH portrays it that way it will spoil the production even more.

Could I trouble you ladies to copy and paste the Hugh, Demelza, Ross discussion to the Hugh Armitage thread? I'd like to make sure others find out where out makes sense. I can copy and post, but then out looks like it came from me.