"Green Dolphin Street": Novel or Movie?

Hendrickson Publishers has re-issued a nice uniform set of several of Elizabeth Goudge's novels. One "uniform" aspect of these re-printings is that the publishers have seen fit to highlight some possibly controversial aspect of Goudge's works to warn sensitive readers. In The White Witch they warned me that I might not like how Goudge depicts Romany people; in Green Dolphin Street they warned me that I might not like how Goudge depicts the Maori people in New Zealand and that colonial attitudes may not be enlightened enough for 21st century readers! The publishers even suggest that they considered bowdlerizing Goudge's work but decided that readers can handle it after all.

I wonder what trigger warnings Hendrickson adds to their different editions of the Holy Bible!

Nevertheless, it's good to have these books in print. Green Dolphin Street or Green Dolphin Country, as it was published in the U.K., was the basis of the 1947 MGM movie with Lana Turner as Marianne, Donna Reed as Marguerite, and Richard Hart as the man in the middle of the two sisters, William Ozanne.

I've watched the movie several times--and wrote about it for The St. Austin Review (subscriber access required)--and now I've read the novel, so the most common question is: which is better, the novel or the movie?

The answer in this case is: both.

The movie is excellent as a film; it maintains the outline of the plot, condenses the action in time, and heightens some of the dramatic tension.

The novel is excellent as a work of fiction: Goudge signals early on the crucial issue of the plot (that William Ozanne gets names, including Marianne's and Marguerite's, mixed up all the time); she creates an interior life for each of her characters, and she spreads the action of these three lives, and the other people around them, over a longer period of time--about forty years. The three main characters are in their sixties when they reunite. The final resolution of the plot, for example, comes not just before Marguerite makes her final vows (as in the movie) but years after she has become the Mother Superior at the convent in their hometown (after several years in a French convent).

The movie leaves out one set of supporting characters, Samuel and Susanna, Christian missionaries to New Zealand who befriend William and Marianne Ozanne. Nat, Captain O'Hara's first mate, isn't featured in the movie either.

Although the novel's omniscient narration is divided almost equally among the three main characters, it is Marianne who faces the greatest crisis and must develop more as a person. William and Marguerite have genuinely loving and open personalities; Marianne is a controlling and manipulative person who needs to learn that she is not in control. Her attempted manipulation of people and events almost led to her daughter making a terrible marital mistake, for example. Goudge notes Marianne's progress in humility by noting that she finally accepts that she really can't make her parents' home totally her own. She accepts that some things should be left to reflect the influence of the past.

Highly recommended.

The Gypsy Priest and the English Civil War

I just finished reading Elizabeth Goudge's The White Witch, a historical novel set during the English Civil War. The publisher, Hendrickson, comments on the author:

Elizabeth Goudge was a British novelist (1900–1984) born into the home of an Anglican priest and theologian. She wrote children’s books as well as novels—her Green Dolphin Street was made into an Academy-Award winning film. In style and themes she parallels English writers such as the creator of the Miss Read series as well mirroring the spiritual depth found in George MacDonald’s Victorian novels. She won the Carnegie Award in 1947 for The Little White Horse, which is J. K. Rowling’s favorite children’s book.

In this book she tells the story of a family in Oxfordshire and how the English Civil War affects their lives. Starting with the Haslewood family and the group of gypsies who sometimes live near Squire Robert Hasleswood's lands, Goudge gathers a cast of fictional and historical characters to deal with issues of life and death, good versus evil, and religious conflict.

Goudge's Anglican background is clear as she depicts Robert Haslewood's Puritan conversion as a disaster for the family, the community, and especially the local Church of England minister, when Robert accidentally--although in a self-righteous rage--burns the little hovel Parson Hawthyn occupies. Robert is a sad figure: each time he comes home he wants to win his children, Jenny and Will, over to him, yet each time he does something that creates more distance between them. He wants their little dog, Maria (named for Henrietta Maria, King Charles I's wife in happier days) destroyed just because she irritates him and then he violently destroys the celebration of Christmas and burns down the Parson's home because it's all too Popish for his newly inspired Puritanism.

Goudge creates triangles of relationships: Robert loved Froniga, the White Witch of the title, but married Margaret. Poor Margaret has the ultra-capable Froniga living next door and helping and healing everyone in the village. 

In addition to the admiration of Robert, Froniga has the gypsy tinker Yoben, who has a secret: Goudge drops some hints (he prays in Latin from a book; he defends the Blessed Virgin Mary; he has been "cut off from the sacraments of religion"). Through Yoben, she becomes acquainted with the Royalist spy cum itinerant portrait painter, Francis Leyland, aka John Loggin.

In addition to admiring and visiting Froniga, Yoben cares for Madona, an elderly gypsy woman who has three gypsy children to care for (Cinderella, Dinki, and Meriful).

Since there is a White Witch, there must also be a Black Witch, the evil and malevolent Mother Skipton. These two pagan spiritual influences are well-matched by Parson Hawthyn, who frees Skipton from her darkness and reminds Froniga of the source of her lightness. He offers the example of love in the service of Jesus Christ and His Church that no one else in the novel even approaches.

Beyond this Oxfordshire idyll, Goudge depicts the events of the English Civil War, including King Charles, his sons and his daughter Elizabeth, Prince Rupert, Jeremy Taylor, Oliver Cromwell, John Hampden, and others. She recounts the battle of Edgehill, the exile Royal Court at Oxford, and other battles. King Charles I, who touches Will Haslewood's scrofula and cures him, is mysterious and almost mystical; Oliver Cromwell, whose adamantine righteousness converts Robert Haslewood to extreme enthusiasm, is easily fooled: a Royalist soldier enters his headquarters and charms him out of the Royal Standard, returning it to King Charles.  

Goudge's descriptions of nature and animals are delicate and sure: she explains the human motivations of her characters very sympathetically. The plotting and the pace pick up appreciably after the first few chapters, while Goudge is introducing her characters. I'm glad that Hendrickson is publishing her works in quality paperback editions; I was insulted by the publisher's politically correct comments on Goudge's unfortunate depictions of the Romani people. I thought she depicted them as free people who loved nature. Hendrickson's suggestion that they could have censored her novel was despicable.