The Dwelling Place

Product Information

This can be because you're in a country where BritBox is not available, or because you're using a VPN. olds in mines up to 14 hours a day and 5-yr-old boys as chimney sweeps up to 12 hours a day are unimaginable to Americans in the 21st Century. The Dwelling Place is a wonderful novel which covers some 20 years and provides meaningful character development.

The time came when a sudden and dramatic turn in Robert's affairs brought him a much closer involvement with the Thormans of Foreshaw, and especially with the elder daughter Agnes who shouldered so many of the burdens of this troubled household and who alone of all her family loved and protected the frail unworldly Millie. This is definitely for adults, because there is a violent and traumatic rape (but I didn't even realize it was a rape until there were hints and I had to go back and re-read it; the scene itself isn't graphic) central to the plot. I could relate to the reader who gave it 4 stars because it's so engrossing, but ultimately it's so appalling that I can't in good conscience recommend it to anybody unless they like the "survival on the fells" sort of plot enough to endure the icky stuff. Read this book in the 70's when I was a teenager, recently re-read it and now I remember why it has always been in the back of my mind as a great story. She meant to have them all, despite the scorn of some folk, who thought they knew what she deserved better than she did herself!

Unlikely though it may be in our more enlightened age,she forgives her rapist and agrees to marry him,thus legitimising her son. They are now the proud parents of twins, Rose Mary and David, who are inseparable and the apple of their mother’s eye.

The setting is rural England in the first half of the 19th Century, the time that Dickens' work takes place.Loved by a kindly but weak flourmill worker who marries the miller's daughter for her money,and raped by a weak,drunken aristo(egged on by his appalling sister - a recurring theme in Miss Cookson's work),she becomes pregnant and gives birth to the heir to a baronetcy who becomes the object of an epic struggle. I'm not often a fan of the happy sappy ending but this one made me happy :) Lots of likable characters; even the characters we were supposed to hate were likable in a way.

Some of CC characters are so evil they seem unreal and in this book the most evil character is female.

But then, in a single week, his whole world had been turned upside down by a dancer, Stephanie McQueen, who seemed to float across the stage of the Empire Music Hall where she was appearing as The Maltese Angel. I kept seeing the movie in my mind as I read and I already knew to expect (or so I thought)and so I wasn't able to really get into the story. Best part of this entire miniseries: Clive is SUPER SURPRISED that Cissie keeps trying to avoid him, and he keeps chasing her down and pinning her to the ground and to cave walls and stuff, totally indignant.