Year of Wonders: Part 2: Ring of Roses Summary & Analysis

The narrative turns back in time to the spring of the previous year. After the financial hardships of the first winter of her husband’s death, Anna is thankful when George Viccars, a journeyman tailor new to town, becomes her paying tenant, supplementing the meager living she ekes out from raising a flock of sheep and working part-time as a maid at Bradford Hall. George works for Anna’s neighbor, Alexander Hadfield, and turns out to be kind and polite; he immediately takes to Anna’s sons Jamie and Tom, and spends a lot of time playing with them. At night, he works by the fire and tells fascinating tales of faraway cities like London, York, and Canterbury. As their friendship becomes more intimate, Anna notes that she never had evenings like this with her husband, Sam, who worked all day in the mines and was too tired to talk when he got home.

The towns is greatly excited when Mr. Hadfield orders a box of cloth from London, which he and George store in Anna’s cottage. Even though he’s inundated with orders for clothes from the villagers, George finds time to make Anna a beautiful green dress. Anna is reluctant to accept the gift, worried that others will think it evidence of an improper relationship between tenant and landlady, or that it will make her feel beholden to George. But she has almost no possessions and only one dress, so she tries it on and is surprised by how beautiful and womanly she feels while wearing it. George kisses her and says that he wishes she would let him “provide for you in all matters,” hinting that he would like to marry her. But when Anna touches his face, she realizes he has a fever and orders him to bed, saying they will talk about this later.

Anna sleeps poorly, mulling over the possibility of marrying George. Preoccupied since her husband’s death with the survival of her small family, she realizes that she is still young (only eighteen) and wants to experience life and love again. She does her morning chores and leaves the house before George or her sons awake. As she kisses Jamie’s head, she reflects that although Christians are warned not to love “any earthly thing” more than God, her love for her sons is stronger than anything she has ever known.

Arriving at the rectory, where she works as a housemaid in the mornings, Anna finds Elinor Mompellion working in the garden. Elinor is a rare example of a well-born woman who doesn’t think herself too good to work the land, or to be kind to her servants; Anna characterizes her as inherently good, saying that she “could not” perceive “the distinctions the world wanted to make” between those of high or low status. Elinor has been teaching Anna to read; although almost everyone in Eyam is illiterate, Anna has always been smart and hungry for knowledge, making letters in the dust as a child and loving church because it provided her access to literature.

However, Anna doesn’t want Elinor to teach her herb knowledge, lest other people begin to think she is a witch. While Elinor is protected by her class from such suspicions, the town healer, Mem Gowdie, was once accused of witchcraft; people believed that because her teas and salves could cure illnesses, she could also cause miscarriages or bad harvests. The villagers still look “aslant” at Mem’s neice, Anys, who also works as a healer; Anna notes that her stepmother, Aphra, relies on Anys to cure her children’s minor ailments but fills the house with charms against witches when she visits. Aphra insinuates that Anys uses supernatural means to make herself more attractive to men.

After completing her morning’s work at the rectory, Anna returns home to nurse Tom. She’s surprised her sons are sitting in the kitchen with Jane, the girl that watches them, rather than playing with George. Going upstairs, she finds George lying in bed, moaning with fever and disfigured by a huge sore on his face that smells like rotting apples. George, recognizing that he has a contagious and fatal disease, urges Anna to take her children and leave the house; but Anna stays to nurse him, fetching Mompellion to console him spiritually. Before George dies, he exhorts them to burn all his possessions and the cloth that came from London.