The Misunderstandings of Charity Brown
The Brown family belongs to a Christian sect, the Lucasites. While the Lucasites are fictitious, Elizabeth Laird has drawn on her own 1950s childhood experiences growing up in a family with similar religious beliefs. Their rules include not going to the theatre or cinema, not drinking alcohol or wearing makeup, as well as not associating too much with people who are not Lucasites, at the same time as trying to persuade others to ‘enter the fold’, expectations with which the youngest daughter Charity struggles.
The Browns inherit Gospel Fields, a large house which Charity’s parents decide they will make ‘a refuge for the weary and heavy-laden’. The tensions Charity and her siblings (Faith, Hope and Ted) deal with are well described. A warm and loving family, the Browns are generally able to accommodate changes and questioning from inside and outside the family without rancour.
Charity forms a friendship with Jewish neighbour Rachel and, attending the opera with her family and shocked at the fate of Madame Butterfly, has something of an epiphany, declaring that in addition to her avowed ambition to travel the world, she wants to fight injustice and oppression. This foretells Elizabeth Laird’s own subsequent life story as an author who has written movingly and truthfully about children’s lives in many countries where she has lived.
A first-person narrative delivered in a chatty and engaging style that endears the heroine to the reader and enables empathy with her concerns. The flavour of the 1950s is conveyed in several ways, including integral references to food, such as what becomes an important family meal cooked by Kurian, an Indian visitor, at the climax of the novel. A negative aspect of the period is shown in the stark and memorable episode demonstrating Kurian’s landlady’s racism.
