Year of Wonders: Part 2: The Press of Their Ghosts Summary & Analysis

While making tea in the rectory, Anna begins crying for her dead father and sons. She realizes she hasn’t had enough time or space to mourn Jamie and Tom, and that her grief is bottled up inside her. Elinor finds her and makes her sit down, stroking her hair and comforting her.

Anna tells Elinor of the childhood traumas that molded Joss’s unscrupulous character. As a child he was conscripted into the navy, where he was raped by the older men and whipped cruelly by the boatswain. After surviving one apprenticeship at sea he made his way to land but was captured again by a press gang. Even after he finally escaped and moved inland, he feared being conscripted again.

Telling Elinor about Joss’s life and realizing how much he has suffered makes Anna feel that her mind has been “rinsed” clean. She feels that she’s finally achieved a balance between “disgust” and “understanding” for him, between her guilt over his death and her resentment of her brutal childhood.

Elinor reflects Joss must have followed the quarantine because he feared conscription if he fled toward the coast, and Anna says that she thinks Aphra convinced her husband that she had supernatural “chants or charms” to ward off the plague. Aphra isn’t alone in her superstitions; Elinor produces a charm she found in Margaret Livesedge’s house, which Margaret said she obtained from the ghost of Anys Gowdie. Elinor confers with Mompellion, who has seen other villagers clinging to the fake charms. In fact, Mompellion has just come from the Mowbray cottage, where Lottie Mowbray confessed that “the ghost of Anys Gowdie” told her to rub her baby on a bramble hedge to prevent him from catching plague. Anna brings an herbal salve to the Mowbrays and finds them boiling the baby’s urine, another charm suggested by the “ghost.” She sternly instructs them to put an end to these superstitions and pray to God.

As Anna walks home she begins to wonder why everyone, from Mompellion to the Mowbrays, attributes the plague to a divine entity, whether it’s a test from God or the work of the Devil. Villagers are encouraged to embrace religious explanations as certain truth and scorn pagan “charms” as superstition. However, the plague might be “simply a thing in Nature,” rather than part of a supernatural scheme.

Anna stubs her toe on a rock, which makes her think about God’s agency in the world. She doesn’t believe that God caused something as simple as a hurt foot; she wonders how one should logically decide which events are large enough to be God’s work, and which are small enough to be decided by chance.

Ultimately, Anna thinks it’s best not to spend too much time on these intractable questions. Rather, they should work on the plague as a purely earthly problem, “as a farmer might toil to rid his field of unwanted tare.” Approaching the plague rationally is the most effective way to fight it.

As May arrives, the land blossoms into a beautiful spring. Anna watches apple trees flower and reflects that these things used to make her happy. Her flock of sheep gives birth to lambs, and she’s surprised that they can be so happy and so ignorant of the human catastrophes around them.

By the middle of June, as many villagers have died as are alive. As she walks through the eerie streets, Anna feels “the press of their ghosts” oppressing her. The village now lacks skilled workers since the farrier, malter, carpenter, mason, and tailor are all dead, along with scores of others. Most of the fields go unplowed and unprepared for planting.

Different villagers cope with the fear in different ways. Andrew Merrick builds a hut in total isolation and the others leave him food at a safe distance. Jane Martin, Anna’s former babysitter who looked down on her in Puritan scorn, turns to alcohol and prostitution to forget the grief of losing her entire family.

John and Urith Gordon stop coming to services at Cucklett Delf, and Anna notices that Urith Gordon, always cowed and afraid of her husband, is thinner and quieter than usual. One evening at the well, Anna sees John Gordon naked to the waist and leaning on a cane, flagellating himself with a handmade scourge and praying as he walks. Anna alerts Mompellion, who says he has feared the spread of flagellation, an extreme practice that often gained popularity in cities during times of crisis. Elinor explains that flagellants believe they can satisfy God’s wrath by “grievous self-punishment.” Mompellion adds that they are dangerous to community order, leading to confusion and the formation of mobs who seek to identify and kill scapegoats, like Jews or witches.

Mompellion and Anna set out to confront the Gordons. On their way they come across an inebriated couple having sex in the road, and Anna recognizes Jane Martin with her dress pushed over her head. Mompellion coolly dismisses the young man, Albion Samweys, but he excoriates Jane, shouting at her and condemning her as a sinner. Shocked at this unequal treatment, especially since Jane is too disoriented to understand what’s going on, Anna begs that Mompellion be lenient. Mompellion says that Anna forgets her place by contradicting him, but he relents and they convey Jane to her cottage before setting off again. Mompellion says that they should try to forget this incident, and asks that Anna not mention his outburst to Elinor.

Arriving at the Gordon cottage Anna and Mompellion find every wall covered in crosses and Urith starving under the fast John imposes. Urith says her husband has learned about flagellating in a tract from London and now believes that the only way to end the plague is for everyone in the village to publicly confess all their sins. Besides fasting, he has burned all their furniture and bedding, as well as his clothes, although Urith refuses to go about half-naked. Now he is in the habit of denying himself sleep and spending the nights scourging himself near the Edge, a cliff on the moors. Mompellion searches for John on the Edge and the surrounding moors, but can’t find him. A week later Brand sees Gordon’s body at the bottom of the Edge; he has fallen off the cliff and died.

The next Sunday, Mompellion preaches about John, saying that he “sought to please God even as he embraced conduct unpleasing to God.” However, Urith dies of the plague a week later. While she probably caught the plague from clothes and furniture other villagers gave her, many interpret this as evidence that John had been doing the right thing, and kept them safe while he was live. Martin Miller and Randoll Daniel adopt John’s behavior, parading around in sackcloth and scourging themselves. Mompellion chastises himself, feeling that his parishioners turn to flagellating because he hasn’t provided adequate spiritual guidance. He seeks guidance from his friend Mr. Holbroke, rector of the neighboring town; the two men stand at safe distances of the boundary line and shout to each other.

Elinor also does much to soothe Mompellion, telling him he always does what is best for the village. One night, Anna stumbles upon them in a moment of intimacy; Elinor is asleep in a chair while Mompellion stands, leaning over and watching her. Anna has never seen a couple behave so tenderly toward each other. She feels jealous of Mompellion because she wants a “greater share” of Elinor’s love for herself. She’s also jealous of Elinor, who seems to have an ideal marriage and someone to comfort her at night while Anna has to return to “a cold an empty bed.” In a fit of anger, she smashes the supper dishes in the kitchen.