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Pell and Tess Find!

'Nomansland' seems the perfect setting for the fiction writer, an imaginary location evoking isolation, even desolation.  But it's not fictional, it is the real setting of Meg Rosoff's new title 'The Bride's Farewell'.  The hamlet is situated at the northerly edge of the New Forest "as if liable at any moment to tumble down the hill into Wiltshire."  Heathland and forest surround Nomansland and in Rosoff's book it is home to heroine Pell Ridley before she escapes during the early hours of her wedding day.  Part of an impoverished large family labouring to keep the winter hunger at bay, a limiting life of drudgery which Pell has no intention of being shackled to.  She sets off to the Salisbury horse fair and the hope of employment.  Set in the nineteenth century it has a Hardyesque quality echoing 'Tess of the d'Ubervilles' and its brooding landscapes populated by characters happy to pass judgement upon the 'outsider'.  It explores themes of loss, identity, the search to belong and the possibilities of romance.  Other Hampshire settings are used, namely Andover, providing the location for the brutal, dehumanising workhouse.  The most negative portrayal of a local location I've unearthed to date in this search. I read "At a time in which news travelled slowly by coach and infamy built up slowly over decades, the name Andover had become overnight synonymous with abuse and fear."  The powerful descriptions of the cruel workhouse in the town make the reader wince with pity and rage.  As the novel draws to a close Pell and her rescued sisters enter Winchester, arriving at the Wykeham Arms in search of solace and aid.

Coming full circle Tess, at the end of Hardy's novel is escorted to the prison at Wintoncester, and the final scene features Angel and Tess's young sister Liza-Lu watching from a nearby hill as the black flag signalling Tess's execution is raised over the prison.

23 September 2009 from Angela Hicken

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