A Proper Woman - Hardcover

Beckwith, Lillian

3.6

58 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312006721 ISBN 13: 9780312006723

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 1987

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When the family croft in the Hebrides is sold, Anna Matheson is forced into marriage with Black Fergus, a harsh and violent man, and finds love and fulfillment only later in life

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About the Author:

Lillian Beckwith (Lillian Comber) was born in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, in 1916. She went to live in the Hebrides before the Second World War and stayed there for nearly twenty years, living first on Elgol, Isle of Skye, and later on the nearby and smaller Isle of Soay. Her hilarious initiation into crofting life is captured in the heart warming book 'The Hills is Lonely'. She acquired her own cottage, and living and working on her own croft gave rise to a series of magical Hebridean books such as 'The Sea For Breakfast'. She retired to the Isle of Man, where she died in 2004.

From Publishers Weekly:

Told with simplicity and compassion, this brief tale set in the Hebrides early in the 20th century portrays persevering Anna Matheson, who, like Jane Eyre, bravely endures much gratuitous cruelty without allowing it to obliterate her innate kindliness. As a child, Anna lives with her mother, father and younger brother, Mata, on their croft, where she uncomplainingly accepts a routine of hard physical labor in a repressive domestic atmosphere. After the elder Mathesons die, Mata brings home his bride, a callous, vain city girl named Jeannie. Indifferent to Anna's love for the croft, Mata and Jeannie sell the farm before moving away, leaving Anna nearly destitute, homeless and without employment. In desperation, she marries "Black" Fergus McFee, a dissolute man renowned for brutality. Anna forces herself to tolerate his abusive ways for years; then, as in a fairy tale, she finds marital contentment with another man after Fergus's accidental death. Even its contrived conclusion doesn't mar the novel's absorbing vividness, a quality especially evident in the descriptions of unspoiled, perennially beautiful terrain, Fergus's barbarity and Anna's will to survive. Beckwith wrote A Shine of Rainbows.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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