A Woman’s Lot (The Meonbridge Chronicles)
Following the devastation of the Black Death, depicted in Fortune’s Wheel, the first book of the Meonbridge Chronicles, more and more women are given the opportunity to take on men’s work, the women of Meonbridge being no different. Eleanor Titteridge, without a husband, hopes to build up a fine flock of sheep; Susan Miller tries to encourage her husband to pull himself out of his increasing melancholy and ill-temper. Agnes Silver longs to be a wood-turner alongside her husband, but he is scornful, particularly as she struggles to cope with the duties of a wife and mother. The village priest sees all these women as scolds deserving the wrath of God. Soon, most men of the village are persuaded by his rhetoric – but not all.
This novel is an absorbing account of the times. Although we readers, with education and more enlightened attitudes, might consider the inhabitants of Meonbridge cruel and ignorant, they are instantly recognisable to us. Some things never change.
