Mr Wroe's Virgins

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Wroe's little household of women ended in sorrow when, after 9 months, several of them complained to the church elders of improper behavior on the preacher's part. Wroe then asked his wife to read a few chapters of the Bible to him, and after a while, he gradually recovered his bodily health, but his mental distress continued and he "wrestled with God" day and night for some months. Just the kind of book I'm after when I pick up an historical novel, one that introduces me to an aspect of the past I knew nothing about, like the Christian Israelites in England in the 1800's. Expressed in a sentence, Fort's principle goes something like this: People with a psychological need to believe in marvels are no more prejudiced and gullible than people with a psychological need not to believe in marvels. Down in the houseplace stands my uncle, with his back to the cold cheerless chimney, for they never light a fire on a Saturday.

Jane Rogers proceeds from that premise to give four of the virgins a chance to tell how they spent a year in the house of Mr Wroe. In 1993 Jonathan Pryce featured as Wroe, alongside Kathy Burke and Minnie Driver, in a BBC mini-series adaptation of the novel directed by Danny Boyle. This is the story of the nine months of their life together, until accusations of indecency, and the trial that follows, bring Wroe's household to a dramatic end. Sometime later, after a missionary tour in which the women accompanied him in his work, two alleged he had acted with indecency towards them and a trial by his elders subsequently followed.By what other means could they ever hope to be rid of me, an ill-favoured woman, entrusted into their care by my father on his deathbed, and lacking any other kin in this world?

S. Byatt and Margaret Atwood, Jane Rogers has given us novel of ideas that is not so much to be read as to be devoured. In the voices of 4 of them--one of them mentally disabled--we hear how their lives are transformed by this charlatan. fast to the hands of their elder two, sisters Rachel and Rebekah, while many a solemn tear of happiness and overwrought anticipation trickled down the cheeks of these two. that a seventh virgin was chosen, having been offered by her aunt and uncle when Ann's distressed state of mind became evident.Narrated by four of the seven women selected, the novel provides four different perspectives of the man. So, we know something of his belief system and his interpretation of the Bible, but nothing personal. Saint Joanna is gratified at the idea of bearing His child but shocked at the “angry leaping rod of purple flesh so terrible in its aspect” by which the deed is to be done. Rachel and Rebekah are both very young, sixteen or seventeen, I should say, dark-haired and shy, holding hands.

Rogers tells the story from the point of view of four of the seven virgins -- Joanna, Hannah, Leah and Martha -- and, since this is a novel and nothing is known about the real virgins (not even their names) other than the charges some brought, she goes all out with it, making her virgins as individual as possible and I admire her success in it. But I was broke and my sales were poor, and I was spiky about the literary world, which seemed to me to consist mainly of men, mainly in London. The way the book is structured into four different narratives allows the women’s characters to develop fully, as over nine months, the story of their lives unfold.

She has already appraised each of us, passing over me without concern, checking, testing, comparing. He becomes increasingly open to her and jokes wearily about one of the church Elders: “He would dispatch us all to hell, if he could, and reign alone himself with God. One by one the others follow suit, all except for a tall woman who remains leaning against the wall opposite me. Hannah's aunt and uncle are only too glad to be rid of her and, altho living in the preacher's house is not her ideal future, she's only too glad to leave her mean-spirited relatives.

This is a deeply haunting work, suitably complimented by an equally memorable and evocative score from Brian and Roger Eno. It is wonderful to watch her progression from ���savage’, as she is described by her sisters, into a ‘full’ person.

Through Hannah I also got to take part in the early times of workers unions and socialism, which I found very interesting, and through her intellectual relationship with Wroe, his view on religion gave me something to think about. This 1993 BBC production was directed by the English filmmaker Danny Boyle, who acquired a cult following in the United States with ''Trainspotting,'' his frisky 1996 film about Scottish heroin addicts.