Posted on 01/26/2021 3:23:00 AM PST by C19fan
Disclaimer: I did not read the Catherine Cookson novel that is the source material.
I was just wasting time on YouTube when this complete upload of a TV miniseries came up on the recommended list. After some checking out some brief clips, I decided to invest the hour and 45 minutes and watch it.
One thing I immediately noticed in the beginning was most of the characters have Northern English accents. The setting is in County Durham close to Newcastle during the early Victorian era. I believe the term for the accent from that region is Geordie. One of the things I very much enjoyed about acclaimed mini-series “North and South” was getting exposed to these more regional accents.
The adaptation is really two parts. The first part is a recently widowed wife of a coal miner, Riah Millican, finds a position as a maid of all service in the house, Moor House, of a retired school teacher Percival Miller. Mr. Miller allows Mrs. Millican to bring along her children. Moor House is in an absolute decrepit state. But the presence of the Millican family and Riah’s hard works appears to bring some hope and light to the house and to Mr. Miller. He starts teaching the children. He does not have to start from zero as the deceased father taught the children to read and write so one sees them learning Latin. The fact that a coal miner and his family were literate already separated out the Millican family from the rest of their class. Mr. Miller gives Riah his mother’s a beautiful black velvet gown as a gift and one would think a happy ending is perhaps in order. But that comes to a screeching halt.
The 2nd part is Bridget “Biddy” Millican, who thanks to Mr. Miller has an excellent liberal arts education, goes to live and work at the grand estate of the Gallmington family as a laundry maid earning only 1 shilling a week. One thing one notices is how accents are associated with class as the Gallmington family speaks the Queen’s English while all the staff has their Geordie accents. Biddy starts making waves with her education. At the Christmas Party for the help in a game she chooses to quote Shelley and everyone in the audience is shocked. Biddy teaches some of her new friends to write their names. Both these events does not find her many friends among the senior staff and the Gallmingtons who have the opinion education is not for the lower classes; who knows what kind of “nonsense” they would discover. But Biddy does appear to find two key allies. One is Mr. Lawrence Gallmington who becomes attracted to this pretty red head with education and bookish interests like himself. The other is the wheel chaired bound Dowager “Empress” of the Gallmington family; she not her elder son rules.
I very much enjoyed this as it does explore class, education, gender, and a rather disturbing topic. My main complaint is not enough time was spent on developing the relationship between Biddy and Lawrence. A side complaint is I wish there was true closed caption as some of the dialogue was difficult to follow with the thick accents.
On my scale of 1 to 5 bonnets, I give this 3 bonnets.
I watched this a few days ago. I’d give it a 3 1/2. Life certainly wasn’t all ball gowns & pretty bonnets back then, like you see in most of the Austin movies. Her stories are gritty, and her main characters are more lower working class (if they have jobs).
There are a number of Catherine Clarkson works available to watch on BritBox. Most are in the 3 range but a couple I gave a 4. I found most kind of slow to start & the film quality not the best, but watchable.
I find I don’t as much like books set in the past if they were written by modern day authors, because I don’t know if they really got it right. There ARE stories of characters wanting an education that is denied to them (Jude the Obscure, and in Middlemarch, Dorothea) but it doesn’t seem as though their search for it causes upheaval around them because they simply search in vain, and find that it’s not that others are physically blocking or preventing them, it’s simply that they don’t know how to reach their goals, and at most those around them are passively not-helpful. The ones where one educated person (almost always female) starts teaching those around her and it causes problems are almost always an indication of a 20th century mindset.
....interesting......when I was on active duty we worked with some Brits who were truly Geordies.....interesting accents....
“Geordie is a nickname for a person from the Tyneside area of North East England, and the dialect used by its inhabitants, also known in linguistics as Tyneside English or Newcastle English. There are different definitions of what constitutes a Geordie.”
I agree. Very astute of you to point this out.
I love Austin and Clarkson video series and movies. I doubt there’s any I haven’t watched which are in the 18th century early 19th.
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