Virago Modern Classics discussion

In a poll for June 2025 won Gone to Earth by Mary Webb.

Who is going to read it? How do you like it?

If you have read it already, or you are reading it at another (later) time - write here what you think about the book too.

[Please keep in mind to hide spoilers in spoiler brackets.]

I've found this on Internet Archive, several other copies also available. I'll join in - shortly.
It's not something I would choose, but it's quite an interesting process reading outside of my usual topics, authors, style etc.

Initial response is that it is v Victorian and possibly quite sentimental - but let's see.

A gorgeous cover by Virago - from 1999.

I like this cover less - but it's a good reminder to us that the word "Earth" used in the title is not just the soil/earth but also the word used to indicate a fox's lair or home - in the earth. "Gone to earth" is an expression used by fox-hunters - so straight away we are alerted to the fact that the woman will be hunted.

I included this cover, because it is so interesting - to me anyway - that there is an introduction by John Buchan - author of the The 39 Steps. It's one of my favourite books - and film, with Sean Connery - and it's about a man being hunted over moors and wild places - I think mostly in Scotland. He's been framed for murder - and it's very exciting. But isn't it interesting that John Buchan was asked to write an introduction - how do we get hold of that intro - ladies ???

Does anyone else have an interesting or favourite cover?

This is the copy I have - eugh!! I hate it - that is so depressing and enough to put anyone off reading this book. Yeuchs, yeuchs, yeuchs!

Virago cover from 1982 - it shows a detail from the painting "Disappointed Love" by Francis Danby - Painting is in the V&A.

Mary Webb's book was originally published - 1917. This copy has an introduction by Erika Duncan, 1979. Anyone know anything about her?

I’ll definitely be joining in. This will be a re-read for me. It’s actually my favourite of her books. Laura -it is VERY sentimental. Not usually the type of book I would read. However, her descriptions of nature and her use of Shropshire dialect is so brilliant that I can forgive the syrup!

Hi Petra - OMG! - I hate sentimental stuff. What about your book - have you got an interesting cover or a great intro??

Started - and totally loving it. I love the dialect and Hazel's rough innocence. The comparison with the caged Goldfinch - much love of freedom and little care for comforts. She is truly a wild spirit - and the writing is raw, simple, fast.

I will try an audiobook from LibriVox.

This is reminding me of Bathsheba from Thomas Hardy's - Far From the Madding Crowd. The three men who pursue B - although Gabriel Oak doesn't because he loses his flock of sheep - he's the good guy - but there is Seargent Troy, and the Squire Boldwood - both of those pursue/demand her attentions.

I didn't enjoy this as much as Precious Bane although I felt the novel did pick up more in the second half.

Just felt that Hazel was too innocent, too naive to really gel with.

Just finished Gone to Earth, I've never heard of Mary Webb before but really enjoyed this and will be reading more of her work. The descriptions of nature and scenery were so vivid, it was really enjoyable to read.

Hazel is nature personified. Wild and untamed but maddeningly naive! I think that her extreme simplicity furthers the point that Mary Webb makes about the men who want to capture and tame her. As Hazel speaks of Foxy’s natural temperament - why are people so surprised when he acts like a fox? Why would God make foxes if he was displeased at how they act? The same could also be said of Hazel, her freedom and beauty and lack of societal manners are the very things that attract the men to her, yet they still want to tame her and squash the very essence of her, moulding her into something more ‘respectable’.

Rhiannon wrote: "Just finished Gone to Earth, I've never heard of Mary Webb before but really enjoyed this and will be reading more of her work. The descriptions of nature and scenery were so vivid, it was really e..."

We recently read Precious Bane, and if you liked the nature descriptions, you'll find that there as well. Opinions are divided, I love that book, though I also see how it (and comparable books from Thomas Hardy) became excellent satire in Cold Comfort Farm.

I'm on page 105 - just about to start chp 13. I found the whole debate that Edward wrestles with quite funny. And then the scene when Hazel sees the Crucifixion and other scenes of Christ's martyrdom in the shop in Silverton - a presentation of one of the main problems of Christian faith - as Hazel says we didn't ask Christ to die for us. Mrs Marston repeats to her son - 'she refuses to be died for.'

Mrs M is presented in her own way as simple as Hazel - with her beliefs in the Black riders with great hounds as the horses heels 'hounds with empty orbits in which a coal burns' - I keep thinking of Lord of the Rings when Hazel tells about 'Jeath and his hounds'.

Webb points out that Mrs M - in her sweetness never considers what might be Hazel's thoughts on marriage and children - just as her son romantises Hazel.

No doubt Hazel's fear of the quarry by Lordshill - which is a real place with a chapel and burial ground - I'm guessing Hazel will fling herself into this quarry at some point.

This novel follows the long tradition of English romanticism - which is suggested first in Wordsworth's poetry - and certainly continued with Hardy and D.H Lawrence. It is a longing for a return to 'nature' to natural things to a rejection of worldliness - and especially with Laurence and Hardy to a rejection of industrialisation.

My personal response - the narrative is fun and light - and I love Hazel's brazen but also innocent answers to everything - but the text is repeatedly injected with a sinister or bigger question - how all creatures including humans born, breed and die - and that we suffer in this process - Webb is asking over and over - who is right? The world of material, of wealth and manners and society has no greater right to exist than Hazel's love for all the small creatures and her daily enjoyment of all the plants and life that she sees around her - this is her world - of no lesser value than the world of possessions and comfy bedrooms.

Webb's book is about the continual assertion of one way of life as the only way - so far her protagonist could be a continuation of Hardy's Tess or even Tolstoy's Anna - women who refuse to confirm or in Hazel's case - one has no idea that she is not conforming.

Cider with Rosie - Laurie Lee
- is a book sunk in the beauty of the natural world.
But poetry is the best expression for English pastoralism - A.E Houseman, A Shropshire Lad (1896)

On Wenlock Edge the woods in trouble;
His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;
The gale it plies the saplings double,
And down on Severn fall the leaves.

This is probably the most famous from A Shropshire Lad. I was taught it in school.

Another I remember

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

A.E. Houseman - from A Shropshire Lad.

Of course English Romanticism - probably took its ideas from Chinese and Japanese poetry.
Chinese -Tang dynasty poetry - 600-907.

The scene - p. 123 - is so reminiscent of Hardy's - The Mayor of Casterbridge - the farmer sells his wife to the highest bidder at the cattle market. Isn't that exactly how Reddin bargains with Abel?

But as Webb says: "Both men (Edward and Reddin) saw her as what they wanted her to be, not as she was."

Edward’s and Reddin’s sexual attitude towards Hazel is very much in the woman either as ‘Madonna or Whore’ trope. Edward has sexual feelings for Hazel but puts her on a pedestal and can’t get past his ‘fraternal’ relationship with her. Whereas Reddin wants to have her regardless of her thoughts about it, and makes aggressive and over-bearing and presumptuous moves on her.

Do you get the feeling that Reddin doesn’t actually want Hazel as his wife, but just wants to own her sexually? And Edward just wants to own her as a pretty trinket?
Poor Hazel!

And the most interesting element is Hazel's attraction to the rough sexual energy that Reddin exudes. When we focus on this element it's astonishing the book wasn't banned.

Edward's "selfless" renunciation reminds me of St. John Rivers in Jane Eyre - he wanted Jane to accompany him as a missionary and she recognises the lack of passion in him, in his marriage proposal - I mean it's not an exact similar set up - but there is something.

Again - I have a nag in my head - and I suspect it's another Thomas Hardy character - Jude, from Jude the Obscure ?

The Victorians - I think were the first to put so much about sex into their novels - I'm practically shocked that sex is so forefront in this novel.

It's as if the "new theme" permits a remarkable lack of inhibitions - that it is discussed so seriously - and frankly. I mean having recently read Yael Van Der Wouden's - The Safekeep - which is full of sex scenes - that I found boring and tedious - the Victorians, including Webb seem quite open by comparison - they are intent on equating sex with love - which to me is both wonderful fresh and exciting. Van Der Wouden - reads like margarine on sliced white.

Laura - you’re making me want to push my Thomas Hardy to the top of my TBR pile!!

It’s interesting that Webb allows Reddin to feel flashes of remorse about his treatment of Hazel. But they are just flashes - he doesn’t know what to do with these feelings because they’re not ‘manly’.
Can you imagine how guilt-ridden Edward would be if he did actually try and have sex with Hazel, even though she’s his wife?

This quote tells a lot about Edward’s reticence towards sex:

Pg 174 “The attitude of civilisation and the Churches towards sex is not one to help a girl in such an hour. For while approving of, and even insisting on children, they treat with a secrecy that implies disapproval the necessary physical factors that result in children. Tacitly, though not openly, they consider sex disgraceful.”

It's Sue in Jude the Obscure - she loves Jude but Jude is tricked into marriage with the evil Arabella and Sue marries another from apathy, sorrow etc. Then Arabella disappears off to Australia and Jude is free; Sue asks for her freedom but is unable to have sex with Jude out of a sense of shame - because they cannot marry. But also most likely from enduring sex with the other man - that's not stated.

As I said a lot of sex - in Hardy's novels - or rather a lot of focus on sex.!!

Yes - I like the quote above - not there yet, but Webb is tackling - what later DH Lawrence tackles - taking sex out of the closet - first step.
Recognizing it as an instinctual drive "animal/ natural" - separating it from the religious associations - as only to be done for reasons of procreation etc.

It's part of the women's movement also - the concept that women also might enjoy/need/desire sex - but as always dampened by lack of reproductive control.

Step 3 - removing guilt from desire and sexual relations. Again that was Lawrence's big issue. That man should be free to enjoy his natural inclinations and not hemmed in by social/cultural constraints - such as marriage/monogamous partnerships etc.

Webb is tackling all the big issues - which is what makes her book exciting - even when it's bogged down with ethereal questions of Life, the Universe and Everything. :)

And yes - The Catholic Church - the absolute pits for all that - Ireland only recognised mutual divorce in 2019 !!

Abortion legalised in Ireland January 1st 2019.

Unbelievable - yes !

I am struggling with the book. I want to listen to the end, but sometimes I am so annoyed or uninterested...

I think a lot of readers - especially women nowadays dislike Lawrence - but I think he is misunderstood. His focus on man being free - outraged the feminists because they pointed out MEN have always been free to f *** who they want - but they clearly didn't read Jude the Obscure. And I think Lady Chatterley's Lover is far more about freedoms of the upper classes - it's interesting also that Lawrence's make is crippled in the 1st WW - and it is Lady Chatterley who is free to look elsewhere albeit under the guise of producing an heir for the Family!!

Lawrence liberates the female to sexual pleasure - but the feminists also object to this - why should it be a man giving etc?

He can't win - but I've always loved Lawrence and like Webb he aligns the natural world with sex and procreation and pleasure - Lawrence always advocating for the animal/instinctive nature of humans.

Books represent thought developments which quite often go in loops and backwards as well as forwards but it's always interesting - to me - to look at book connections.

I mean Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights - is all about sex. It's never mentioned but that's what is driving the whole plot the sexual attractions and the imposition of social convention making certain attractions unrequited. Heathcliff cannot marry Cathy because he is not of her class - even Cathy refuses to recognise her class until she is seduced by the refinement and ways of the Lintons..

Hazel connects to Tess, to Cathy, to Anna Karenina, to Anna Bovary - all the great females in literature but Hazel stands out by refusing to be defined by the male and His need, His sexual attraction to her.

I think we need to identify more heroines like Hazel !!

Mela - how does the audio book handle the Shropshire dialect? That would be interesting to hear it spoken by a narrator.

Every time I read Mary Webb I can’t help bringing some of her language into my home (probably to the irritation of my family).
“I munna make dinner - the family is clemmed!” 🤣

Hi Mela - let's hear why you are annoyed?

And the so annoying: "What for not?" asked Hazel 😂

'What did you swear?'
'To marry the first as come. That's Ed'ard. If I broke that oath, when I was jead, my cold soul 'ud wander and find n'er a bit o rest, crying about the Mountains, and about, nights, and Ed'ard thinking it was the wind.'
'If you chuck him, he'll soon get over it; if you chuck me I shan't. He's never gone after the drink and women.'

I mean that reply/coercion by Reddin is hilarious 😂
He's just provided the exact reason why she should stay with Edward.

And Hazel's depiction of her ghost wailing in the wind if she breaks her oath to Edward SCREAMS - ha ha - Cathy from Wuthering Heights.

I'm at p. 178 - what Edward realises here is really the mystery in this story - and in life generally.

She lifted a childish mouth, grateful and ready to be affectionate. Too ready he thought. He looked so eagerly for shyness - a flicker of the eyelids, a mounting flush. He was no fool, nor was he in the least ascetic.
Edward understands that there is no attraction, no desire for him from Hazel. He consoles himself deciding that if he waits then something will change.

I think that's really the heart of the book - how sexual desire and love for another do not necessarily coincide. Sexual attraction complying with a love or marriage relation - is a very modern concept.

It's a strange question for me at this stage of my life because at 58 - I've almost completely forgotten the power of sexual attraction - this happens between young people - it is often very physical - but can also be an emotional combination with the physical. I think this question also of physical attraction and an overlap with emotional attraction is also different between the sexes. Men have traditionally been more interested in purely physical. Whereas being interested in a man's character/personality have nearly always been a necessary requisite for female desire to work. Cultural conditioning of how men and women "should" experience desire.

I like that Webb insists on Hazel's physical attraction to Reddin - she is insisting on the instinctual attraction between male/female - something even they don't understand and are unlikely to consider anyway.

I remember a lot of novels dealing with this instant attraction. But I think Webb's story is much more interesting because Hazel knows morally, and emotionally that her attraction to Reddin should not be pursued and yet she cannot stop this instinctual compulsion towards Reddin.

I maintain that after 50 - menopause removes all your sex hormones and you are free for the first time in your life to make rational decisions regarding relationships.

Randi Epstein - Aroused: The History of Hormones and How They Control Just About Everything (2018)

Page 179.
Ah !!!! The Spiritual connection. Edward wants that one with the divine blaze of love - and he wants Hazel to feel it also. He's daft.
Hazel feels divine enchantment in the natural beauty - something Edward never appears to consider.

I mean Edward wants physical love within the divine blessing of marriage which means spiritual connection with Hazel - based on religion - I suppose.

Edward is an idiot.

Actually I think Webb intends her story as a parable - and I keep thinking of John Bunyan's - The Pilgrim's Progress (first part finished 1677) it is about Christian's which is a journey from his home - this world to the Celestial heaven - that which is to come.

There are many many links in Webb's "novel" - Edward reading psalm 23 - the sleepy mother, the mountains and meadows - all appear in Pilgrims Progress.

Edward represents - the Christian path to salvation
Hazel represents - pagan beliefs - everything that opposes Christian belief. She lies outside the parameters or maybe embodies the pitfalls that Christian must overcome?

Re - pagan beliefs.
Rural areas would have still heavily relied on country lore and ‘superstitions’ (as Hazel shows). Priests like Edward Marston would have been sent to areas such as these, almost like missionaries to foreign lands, to try and bring locals into the teaching of God and under ‘the care’ (or rule) of established religion.

Despite being the Minister’s wife, Hazel makes moral decisions based on the ‘old ways’ of the countryside - through her gypsy mother’s handed-down charms and country lore. As well as a lot of references to Shropshire Folklore, Mary Webb also brings a lot of the old belief in Faery into her work.
For all Edward’s and Mrs Marstons attempts to bring her into Christian respectability, it seems far too at odds with Hazel’s own beliefs to make a lasting impact on her. The natural world is her Church.

Hi Petra - I'm on p. 187, just about to start chp 25.

For me this is no longer a novel. It looks like a novel but I'm thinking far more an allegorical tale - using Bunyan's - The Pilgrim's Progress as reference.

Yes - about Marston - he's similar to St. John Rivers in Jane Eyre - off to convert the poor pagans. So we have a lot of Victorian archetypes.

Also the book is very funny. When Reddin spots Hazel wandering the meadows - like a faery:

He had seen Hazel wander down the road, white limbed and veiled in tawny hair. He thought there must be something wrong with his sight. Bare legs! Bare arms! Hair all loose, and no hat! As a squire-farmer, he was very much shocked. As a man, he spurred downhill at the risk of a bad fall. p. 166

Or Mrs Marston:

'These here be proper stockings,' she said, complacently- 'these with holes in 'em as Edward bought me. Holes as ought to be there, I mane. They show my legs mother-naked, and they look right nice.'
'Don't say that word, dear.'
'What 'un?'
Mrs Marston was silent for a moment. 'The sixth from the end,' she said; 'it's not nice for a minister's wife. p. 173

I mean that is really funny. And I couldn't understand the holes situation at first, and then I realised that 'the holes' must be a fancy pattern in the stockings. 'Holes as ought to be there.' Hazel constantly blundering because she is out of her natural element. That is both funny and poignant.

Mrs Marston - again:
'Foxy's a bad dog!' came Mrs Marston's voice from upstairs. 'She bit the rope and took the mutton!'

Foxy like Hazel is not safe here either.

And the last charm - the 'Angel' that Hazel sees in the night. It's an old tree, the fungi glows with phosphorescence in the night.

Next morning she asked Edward.
'Could folks see angels now?'
'Yes, if it was God's will.'

So even the rotting tree glowing under the moonlight is given an affirmative by Edward's complete lack of comprehension as to Hazel's world. He never thinks to ask her what she means - his lack of curiosity, his assured superiority in his own beliefs makes him blind to anything and everything Hazel sees and feels and experiences.

And also Petra - as we have just read A Glass of Blessings - Barbara Pym. Don't you want to compare Hazel with Wilmet?

Doesn't Wilmet do exactly the same thing? She's married to one man, but is erotically attracted to another. Wilmet is brought safely back into the bounds of marriage?

It seems that marriage is often a painful path - for women; and men (Edward, Reddin, Abel - Jude). And I think Novels are always dealing with this tension between individual freedom and expression and societal constraints/conventions, rules.

Mrs Marston is a great source for comedic moments. My favourite was when they were walking to the Quarry and Martha the maid was pulling on her mantle like a horse, to stop her from careening down the track! That procession was hilarious, especially that Edward had to carry a chair so she could rest till she got her lift in the lorry!

I’m not quite thinking of Hazel and Wilmet as too closely bound. They are both sexually attracted to other men, which I guess is quite animalistic at its base level. But Hazel’s just feels far more raw than Wilmet’s need for ‘something more exciting’.

You’ve mentioned a lot of classic novels that I haven’t read, but it’s interesting to hear how many connections you are making.

YES - Martha holding on to the skirts of Mrs Marston - too funny - you can just see her about to pitch forwards down the hill. !!

I suspect there's quite a lot of Charles Dickens in these character sketches, but I've somehow managed to avoid Dickens - my whole life.

Yes indeed - Wilmet and Hazel are completely different types - but they've found themselves in a similar scenario. Wilmet's marriage to Rodney is safe, conventional - within the bounds of social norms and expectations. And even Hazel understands that Edward is safe; - she will never lack for anything or be mistreated in anyway with him. And yet she cannot resist the pull of Reddin - the sexual attraction.

It's as if men need to dominate women sexually - there is that little quote when Edward says something like - "tell me if you would ever like me to change from brother to husband (and lover he thinks)". And our narrator says something like - Hazel would have liked the change but like any woman she would never ASK for it.

I have to go find that passage. !!

I'm having fun with this - I hope others join in - and point out their favourite moments.

Even Reddin reading the newspaper under the yew tree - as he stalks the Marston household - it's funny !! And telling Vessons to make him sandwiches - because he knows it's going to be long seige. And Vessons enjoying the commands - because he knows his master has a fire burning under him...

I know I'm referring to a lot of other books/classic works - but no book is ever written in isolation of any other. Mary Webb will have read the Brontes and Hardy and Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress - and I've seen references to Shakespeare. The whole comic side is very much reference Shakespeare's fun characters - it's as if the great writers know that entertainment is key in any piece of writing - and they slip the serious stuff in sideways. I think this what I'm really feeling as I read Webb's book - that's she has mastered the balance between comedy and tragedy.

Ive finished! Feeling quite bereft! I’ll wait to give my final thoughts till everyone else has finished.
Laura - I’ve never read any Austen (please don’t kick me out of the group!!🤣)

Oh - I have finished also. I knew she would end up in the ...

The ending is like - Dr Zhivago and Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence. I suppose it's like all tragic novels.

Edward having to leave the ministry and his home - no job, no prospects and Hazel pregnant - is exactly like Jude the Obscure.

And the righteous men who have come to pillory Hazel and tell Edward how to redeem himself are exactly like the pack of hounds outside and the huntsmen - all eager to rip the little fox into pieces.

That's exactly how the world is - people are unbearably cruel and stupid.

“You are not a man. You are nothing but sex organs”.

I jumped from exasperation with Edward to feeling so sorry for him. His love was ineffectual with Hazel before Reddin ‘bespoiled’ her. But after Mrs Marston leaves and Hazel steps up as the type of wife he dreamed of, he’s struggling with thinking of in that way anymore, it’s really quite heart breaking.

But I also started to respect him. His dressing down of the village men was far more ‘manly’ than any of Reddin’s claims to that title.
“I have become an unbeliever, not because I am unworthy of your God, but because He is unworthy of me”. Go, Edward! I could have stood up and applauded!

Hazel’s loss of love of nature and Edward’s loss of faith seem terribly harsh prices to pay. Reddin seems to have lost nothing. He ‘thinks’ he loves Hazel, but nothing in his actions show that he knows what a love like Edward’s really is.

So, the ending? Even though I’ve read the book before, the ending still shook me. I felt quite emotional.

The full title of Pilgrim's Progress -
- The Pilgrim's Progress from This World, to That Which Is to Come.

I think Webb is expressing through the characters of Hazel and Edward - that there is another world - which only very few of us can pass to.

There are countless references throughout the text which refer to this duality.

Page 192/3

So they sat beneath the black, slow-waving branches under the threat of the oncoming night, weeping like children. They cowered it seemed beneath a hand raised to strike. All that they did was wrong; all that they did was inevitable. Two larches bent by the gales kept up a groaning as bole wore on bole, wounding each other every time they swayed. In the indifferent hauteur of the dark steeps, the secret arcades, the avenues leading nowhere, crouched these two incarnations of the troubled earth, sentient for a moment, capable of sadness, cruelty, terror and revolt, and then lapsed again into the earth.
Forebodings of that lapse - forebodings that follow the hour of climax as rooks follow the plough - haunted them now, though they found no words for what they felt, but only knew a sense of the pressure of night. It appeared to stoop nearer, blind, impassive, but intensely aware of them under their dark canopy of leaves. Some Being, it seemed, was listening there, and not only listening, but imposing in an effortless but inevitable way its veiled purpose. Hazel and Reddin - he no less than she - appeared to be deprived of identity, like hypnotic mediums. His hardness and strength took on a pitiful and dolt-like air before this prescient power.

That has to be one of the most strange and powerful aspects of Webb's text - and this sense of a Being watching is present throughout.

And your quote Petra - where Edward says: " . . . I am unworthy of your God because he is unworthy of me . . ." is a continuation of the above; Edward recognises the creed he has followed is nothing but man-created. His prayers and sermons are empty - Edward like Christian in Piligrim's Progress is leaving "this world" behind.

It's such a powerful book in so many ways. I'm so pleased to have read it. I have a review to write and I have no idea where to start or what to highlight - I think there is a strange magic in it. One chapter has us laughing - the Misses Clombers - and then in the next - I can hardly sit and read because Edward has finally demanded answers to his questions but then he is so wrought he can't focus on a thing Hazel is saying - and she has to say both Yes and No - and both are true. Her words cannot explain adequately how it happened.

Me - I have to jump up and pace up and down, because I am so infuriated with Edward blundering after Hazel's purity.

And yes - both lose what is most precious to them - Hazel's innate understanding of the living, natural Green World. And Edward's spiritualism, Church and God (and his livelihood and his mother) - but these losses allow them to find love for each other.

Petra wrote: "Mela - how does the audio book handle the Shropshire dialect? That would be interesting to hear it spoken by a narrator..."

I can't tell you, I can't distinguish dialects. But the lector spoke differently when she read as Hazel.