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Year of Wonders

“Year of Wonders”, Freedom of Choice, Morality and Times of Hardship

Geraldine Brook's "Year of Wonders" is a gripping historical

fiction story. It chronicles the life of the villagers of a small British town

named Eyam. Its portrayal of this small town is both grounded and

intriguing and conveys themes of religion, human resilience, and

freedom of choice. In this story, Brooks examines this freedom in a

town without proper law, in a time of shared hardship, and how it

depends on the individual's morals and beliefs.

When the plague hits the town of Eyam, over the course of the

pandemic, the townspeople are faced with different choices, to which

different people respond differently in accordance with their morals and

beliefs. In accordance with the time period and its location, Eyam is an

Anglican town, with presumably everyone regularly attending church

and believing in the faith. So, their decisions are largely dependent on

their faith, as there is no official governing body in the town. When the

presence of the plague in the town becomes undeniable, the people

face the choice of whether to stay in the town or leave. The town's

priest, and its unofficial leader, Michael urges people to stay as to not

put other settlements in danger of the plague. While most people

reluctantly agree to stay, the Bradford family, the town's gentry, quickly

storm out of the church and get ready to leave, and despite Michael's

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best efforts to convince them to stay, his efforts are fruitless, and they

leave. The people listen to the reasonable arguments of their religious

leader and decide to stay, while the Bradfords, who are characterized

as stingy and cowardly, leave with their best interests in mind. It should

also be mentioned that some people do not have the choice to leave,

because they do not have a family outside of the Eyam etc. As the Law

of the Land does not want to bother with the Eyam, due to the plague,

there is no official law enforcement in the town to prevent people from

breaking quarantine, and people are technically free to leave if they

want, but presumably everybody sticks to the quarantine rule and does

not leave.

However, on the other hand, there are also people taking

advantage of a lack of proper law, and make some immoral choices,

perhaps as a way to go against the rules or as a way to deal with the

stress of the plague. One example is the parents of the narrator of the

story, Anna. Anna's parents, Aphra and Josiah, are both characterized

as bad parents. Josiah is abusive towards Anna, and a drunk, and

Aphra, while smarter than Josiah, refuses to stop his abuse, and both

are negligent of their children. As Anna puts it, "they enjoy the act of

making children, more than actually caring for them.". Both exploit and

capitalize on the townspeople's panic and fear. Josiah starts charging

preposterous prices for digging graves and even attempts to bury a sick

but alive man, and Aphra takes advantage of the uneducated to sell

them useless trinkets that supposedly, heal the plague, while acting like

she is the ghost of the town's doctor who was murdered at the

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beginning of the plague. Despite the lack of law, both get punished in

some ways when Josiah is put on trial by his colleagues and is left to

die, and Aphra becomes deranged as a result and ultimately kills her

baby daughter, the priest's wife, and herself. Another example is John

Gordon, who lives on the outskirts of Eyam with his wife Urith. John

adopts an extreme form of self-castigation known as flagellating, where

he forces himself and his wife to give up their possessions, fast, and

wanders around almost fully naked, and covers their house in crosses.

John's beliefs have led to them being alienated from the town, made

both of them very frail, and despite Anna and Michael's quick

interference, ultimately leads to John dying when he falls of a cliff while

wandering and Urith shortly dying of the plague, most likely due to her

body becoming very weak. In both cases the people disobey Michael's

rules and partake in unreasonable acts due to their morals and beliefs

and pay the price for it and even lead to other people losing their lives

as a result.

As mentioned before, Michael becomes the unofficial leader of

Eyam, and this places an important responsibility on his and his wife,

Elinor's, shoulders, which leads to them having to make important

choices, that are unsurprisingly driven by religious ideals. This is also

apparent in both of their backstories. Elinor comes from a rich family

from Derbyshire, and when she was fourteen, she was courted by their

much older neighbor to marry her. The neighbor slowly starts backing

away from the marriage but still tricks Elinor into having sex with him,

despite premarital sex being a grave sin, and then he abandons her.

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When she goes back to her family, she realizes she is pregnant and in

order to not make her family worried, she performs a dangerous

abortion on herself and barely survives, permanently damaging her

womb. Meanwhile, Michael comes from a poor family and works for

Elinor's father to support his family. While working there, he and Elinor

get to know each other and educates her spiritually and eventually they

marry and move to Eyam. While the two clearly love each other, Anna

ponders on their intimacy. After Michael gets over his depression,

resulting from the death of Elinor, he, and Anna sleep together and

Michael opens up about their relationship, and explains how he

abstained himself from having sex with Elinor, even after they got

married, because he sees this act as a punishment for her abortion due

to religious reasons. Anna sees this as very unfair to both parties and

finds it unjustified. In present times, however, Michael is faced with the

choice of quarantine or not. As mentioned before, he urges people to

quarantine, justifying it by saying it is a test from God and that God has

singled out Eyam for this challenge. But despite his efforts to

quarantine, he still regularly organizes Sunday service, putting more

people at risk of spreading the plague, which to us obviously seems like

an unreasonable move and could be seen as hypocritical but it stands

to reason that it is more likely to show that he is letting his religious

duties take priority rather than being logical. Lastly, there is the proposal

from Michael regarding the burning of everyone's possessions towards

the end of the novel. Inspired by a religious vision he had while getting

rid of the belongings of John Gordon, Michael proposes to the entire

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town that they burn their possessions as a sacrifice to God, which in his

mind will symbol a rebirth for the town. As the town is mostly very poor,

made even worse by the plague, everyone is very reluctant to do it but

in the end they agree to do it, which symbolically gets rid of the plague

as people stop getting sick.

The narrator of the story, Anna, seemingly has the most freedom

of choice. While she abides by the rules and helps people, she is mostly

indifferent to religious ideals and is the person who achieves her own

freedom in the end. Unsurprisingly, her choice to leave Eyam is the

most obvious portrayal of freedom of choice in the novel; however,

Anna makes a lot of other choices also. As mentioned before, she and

Elinor decide to fill the void left by the murder of Anys, and Mem

Gowdie, the only healers in town. Anna is characterized as altruistic,

and the deaths of her husband and children have made her indifferent

towards her faith; meaning she is more likely to throw herself at danger

in order to save other people's lives. She is also one of the most

progressive characters in the novel, disliking the class inequality caused

by the gentry, and the sexual inequality of the times, and she even gets

the chance to stand up to her abusive father. Her standing up to Josiah

is one of the most important events in the novel for her arc, as it is an

important step in her goal of breaking away from her past life, which at

that point in the novel has not even yet been recognized by her. While it

is an empowering and important moment as it can be seen as

somewhat morally gray. When Josiah is on trial, Anna is the only

person called up to testify, and his fate is ultimately left in her hands,

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and she does not say anything. Even though, he is one of the most

dislikable characters in the novel, most people could agree that he did

not deserve such a brutal death. Anna is easy to sympathize with at this

moment, especially after hearing the history of abuse and

acknowledging her father's crimes, it is hard to justify him being left to

die, not to mention his death inadvertently leads to Aphra's, Anna's

baby sister Faith's and Elinor's deaths. She is also one of the most

emotionally charged characters in the novel as she cannot control her

desires when she sleeps with Michael, which obviously is not inherently

a bad thing, however, it does go against Michael's religion, as it is

premarital, leads to the revelation of the secrets of Michael and Elinor's

relationship, and ultimately her leaving town. And her leaving town is

obviously another important choice, but in regard to freedom it is

questionable. Firstly, this is initiated due to Bradfords needing her help

as a midwife due to the mother needing help with childbirth. She

accepts the job, despite disliking them because they are gentry, which

shows her altruistic nature once again. She helps out, but the father of

the family, Colonel Bradford, wants it dead because it is an illegitimate

child, and Anna decides to adopt the baby to save its life on the spot.

Now, under the threat of Colonel, who is currently on his way to Eyam

to see if the baby is dead, with Michael's advice, she sets out to Elinor's

hometown, before ultimately getting on a ship and traveling to Algeria

and dedicating herself to medicine. Now, this could be questionable

because, for her and for the baby's safety, she basically has to leave

the town. But she justifies it by claiming it is her chance to break free

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from her past, but also, while unlikely, it is possible that there could

have been a peaceful negotiation with the Colonel. All in all, Anna's

story showcases a broader sense of freedom than other characters,

especially from a non-religious lens, but it still contains some

complications.

Lastly, it is important to talk about Brook's perspective on

freedom of choice. She portrays a group of people whose freedom of

choice is limited by the restrictions the plague and Michael brings on

them but also by their morals, which in modern society is obviously

what people use to create laws. But as mentioned before, there is no

proper law in Eyam during the events of the story. The exclusion of law

greatly affects how people behave, as stated before, there are crimes

that go unpunished; the murder of the Gowdies, Aphra's unjustifiable

actions, and some of these crimes are judged in unusual ways, such as,

Josiah's case. It could be argued that in most cases majority of the

people are given the freedom to do whatever they want however, their

freedom could be limited and is left up to the individual's morals and

beliefs, especially religious ones. But it is important to mention that she

clearly does not have any bias towards scientific or religious thinking. In

the story both sides are shown with upsides and downsides. Aphra's

superstitiousness makes her deranged and leads to her neglecting her

baby, and Anna leaving Josiah to die can be seen as negative

outcomes, while Michael's idea to burn everything resulting in the

plague being over and Anna saving the Bradford’s baby are clearly

positives.

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 In conclusion, "Year of Wonders" portrays the freedom of choice

of the people of Eyam, in an especially challenging time period, and

how this freedom is left on the individual during times like this. The

freedom of the people is linked with each other and limited by the

plague and guided by their individual morals. The townspeople, led by

the local priest, Michael, are challenged by the plague and place certain

limitations on their lives, their actions guided by their faith; both affecting

their freedom. On the other hand, Anna, the narrator, is indifferent to

faith, and her freedom excels and is limited in other ways, but ultimately

gets the chance to start a new life for herself. However, while most

people use their faith for good, people like Aphra and Josiah, use it for

undeniably bad things and are punished in unusual ways. And Brooks,

examines this theme, through the aforementioned ways and without

bias for religion or indifference to it.

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 Bibliography

Brooks, Geraldine. Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague. London, 4Th

Estate, 2021.