Winifred Holtby, best known for her posthumous novel ‘South Riding’, published ‘The Land of Green Ginger’ in 1927.
The title is the name of a street which the heroine, Joanna, encounters as a child. In the novel, it is located in the town of Kingsport; in reality, it exists in Hull.
Joanna, who was born in South Africa, dreams of adventures in far-off places.
She falls in love with and marries Teddy Leigh, who is off to fight in the Great War, despite his precarious health (which he does not reveal to her).
Returning from the War, Teddy’s tuberculosis worsens, increasingly undermining his physical, mental and emotional health.
The family – now with two young daughters – move to a remote farm in the Dales, where they face a bitter struggle to escape poverty. As Teddy declines, Joanna increasingly shoulders this burden.
To help make ends meet, they take in a lodger – Paul Szermai, a Hungarian exile – who is grieving his own lost love.
Teddy and the local villagers grow convinced that nubile Joanna, deprived of physical love, has started an affair with Paul. She hasn’t.
Teddy – now confined to bed – veers between insane jealousy and a religious longing to sacrifice himself for his wife’s happiness.
A final, desperate effort to make love with Joanna leads to her impregnation and his death. Naturally, the villagers believe the child to be Paul’s, but he has disappeared.
Joanna struggles against the villagers’ vindictive small-mindedness, but eventually decides to leave with her children for South Africa, and the adventures she has long desired.
This is rural tragedy worthy of Hardy, but the tragic is tempered by Joanna’s irrepressible spirit; her determination to escape the stultifying social norms of post-war Yorkshire and to live her dream.
It could have been an even better novel, perhaps. But, even as it is, I judge it a minor masterpiece.
TD
November 2023
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