Review of The
Minister’s Daughter by: Julie Hearn
At long last I’ve returned with a new review for you
all. After my review of The Crucible I
thought back on reading it in high school. Around the same time I read The Minister’s Daughter by Julie Hearn.
Now, I’ve been ruined by my Education education and
as soon as I thought about reading Hearn’s novel I started thinking about
supplemental texts (aka the key to any good unit plan).
I’ve always been really curious about the Salem
witch trials and love finding fun books that put a new twist on the events. The Minister’s Daughter isn’t about
Salem but it carries a lot of the same themes and nicely compliments Miller’s
play.
*Summary Contains Spoilers*
The novel opens with the beginning of The Confession
of Patience Madden, 1692. She claims she’s finally going to tell the truth
about what she and her sister Grace did when they still lived in England.
The story then switches to England in 1645 where we
meet our protagonist, Nell. Nell is a Merrybegot (a child sacred to nature who
is begot on May Morning) and granddaughter to the cunning-woman and healer of
their small village. The cunning-woman is gaining in years and becoming
forgetful so she’s teaching Nell the ways of the old knowledge.
Nell speaks with her friend Sam Towser who is madly
in love with the minister’s daughter, Grace Madden. Sam tells her the minister
has forbidden Maypoles, and frolicking in the woods and fields and any other
kind on merry-making on May Morning as it is unholy.
To cut a long story short three important things
happen on the eve before May Morning.
1) Nell is summoned by the fairy court to act as
midwife for a fairy woman giving birth. She travels under the fairy hill and
returns the next morning. The fairies also give her the caul as a gift.
2) Patience Madden, Grace’s younger sister, goes
wandering in the night and meets the fairy messenger before he finds Nell. He
asks her where the “Mary-by-God” is and poor Patience is convinced she has seen
the devil. To add insult to injury she then witnesses…
3) Grace “frolicking” with Sam Towser who Patience
is also convinced is the devil.
This eve sets off the rest of the novel told
alternately through Patience Madden’s Confession and in the present of 1645.
Grace becomes pregnant and Sam Towser decides to
skip town and join the King’s Army because possible death is a better option
than marriage. Since Sam is already a dead beat dad Grace goes to the
cunning-woman’s cottage to get a purge for the unborn thing. Nell informs Grace
that her unborn child is a Merrybegot and it cannot be purged as it is
protected by nature.
Needless to say Grace does not take this well. She
formulates a plan to get Nell into some trouble and have her accused of
witchcraft.
Poor Nell only makes things worse for herself when
she tries to protect the baby by tossing a dead frog charm on Grace.
A witch-catcher is called into town and starts
gathering evidence against Nell which culminates in the villagers getting
caught into the panic and dunking the cunning-woman in the local pond. She
doesn’t recover and dies but not before handing her secret box over to Nell.
The box contains all her relics of the old knowledge and a little jeweled frog
that belonged to Nell’s late mother.
Patience Madden finds out that her late mother had
the same jeweled frog.
Yes, the minister’s late wife was also Nell’s
mother. Lots of scandal in 1600s England.
Meanwhile, Nell goes for a walk in the woods to ease
her grief and finds an injured soldier. She doesn’t know him but the force is
strong with this one and Nell’s healer instincts take over. She uses her most
precious charm, the fairy caul, and heals the soldier. Nell tells him there’s
no need for payment and they part ways.
Flash to All Hallows Eve and the witch-catcher has
all his evidence and goes to arrest Nell. She, of course, won’t confess to
witchcraft. (Including casting a curse on Grace Madden to make her stomach mysteriously
swell.) She is about to be hanged when *drumroll please* the wounded soldier
comes back to rescue her!
And to put a cherry on that cupcake, he’s also
Prince Charles II of England. Whew.
So our protagonist Nell lives out the rest of her
life in happiness and can practice her healing in peace. The minister and his
daughters travel to America and settle in…wait for it…Salem!
I must say, Nell’s ending is a little sugary
sweet. The history woven into it is kinda cool, (Charles II really was in the
part of England where Nell’s village is located in 1645 though the novel is
100% fiction) it is also a little cheesy.
The real good stuff comes with the ending of The
Confession of Patience Madden. Patience spends most of the novel as a fly on
the wall. She is ignored and called stupid and gets wrapped up in her sister’s
scheme to hide her pregnancy. After the Maddens go to America Grace gets
married and starts over and Patience becomes a spinster and keeps her father’s
home.
Around this time as Patience gains in years Abigail
Williams (a character we already love to hate) starts accusing people of
witchcraft. Patience is accused and it turns out her Confession is meant to get
her out of being tried as a witch.
She goes back to that night before May Morning when
Grace was “frolicking” and tells the men her sister knew the devil in the
biblical sense and gave birth to his demon spawn.
You see, Grace is the witch so go get her.
Report Card:
The twist Patience Madden’s Confession was just as
raw and cold this time around as when I first read the novel. Other than that,
I must say, I was a little disappointed with The Minister’s Daughter. It didn’t have the same bite as when I
first read it, but for this I have some explanations.
1) When I first read the book I was chin-deep in the
Salem witch trials. I absorbed and loved every bit of any type of story that
had any remote connection to the period. Hearn’s novel is a really nice
supplement to a unit surrounding The
Crucible. It is accessible, and it involves really interesting narrative
and storytelling devices with the alternating storylines. The novel also gives
the readers access into the life and mind of someone who is a little quirky and
outspoken and only trying to do the right thing but ends up almost dying
because of it. The panic and paranoia motifs run deep.
2) I was 15 when I read this novel. One’s reading of
a text dramatically changes over 7 years.
That being said I will give The Minister’s Daughter my first dual grade—B /C. The B for when I
first read it and it made me love learning history and English folklore even
more, and the C for when I re-read it and it was a little sugary.
*Note*
For those of you who were worried, Grace Madden’s
baby lived. She tried to throw it out in a snowstorm so it would freeze and
die, but the boy is a Merrybegot so he was protected and taken in by a kindly
village woman and her family.
