The Peppered MothBessie Bawtry is a young girl living in the early 1900s in Breaseborough, a mining town in South Yorkshire, England. Unusually gifted, she longs to escape a life burdened by unquestioned tradition. She studies patiently, dreaming of the day when she will take the entrance exam for Cambridge and be able to leave her narrow world. A generation later, Bessie's daughter Chrissie feels a similar impulse to expand her horizons, which she in turn passes on to her own daughter. Nearly a century later, Bessie's granddaughter, Faro Gaulden, finds herself listening to a lecture on genetics and biological determinism. She has returned to Breaseborough and wonders at the families who remained in the humble little town where Bessie grew up. Confronted with what would have been her life had her grandmother stayed, she finds herself faced with difficult questions. Is she really so different from the plain South Yorkshire locals? As she soon learns, the past has a way of reasserting itself-not unlike the peppered moth that was once thought to be nearing extinction but is now enjoying a sudden unexplained resurgence. "The Peppered Moth" is a brilliantly conceived novel, full of irony, sadness, and humor. |
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Page 15
... never know , would never work it out . But again and again , throughout her life , she would dream of that staircase . A birth trauma , we now might call it . Will Bessie Bawtry ever learn this term ? It seems unlikely , as she crouches ...
... never know , would never work it out . But again and again , throughout her life , she would dream of that staircase . A birth trauma , we now might call it . Will Bessie Bawtry ever learn this term ? It seems unlikely , as she crouches ...
Page 169
... never crossed their minds . The exodus from Breaseborough was the premise of their birth and being . Joe- and - Bessie were inconceivable , to them , as a married couple in Cotterhall or Breaseborough . Chrissie and Robert had been ...
... never crossed their minds . The exodus from Breaseborough was the premise of their birth and being . Joe- and - Bessie were inconceivable , to them , as a married couple in Cotterhall or Breaseborough . Chrissie and Robert had been ...
Page 197
... never play cards at home , but on holiday , in a rented lodging , they can become a Happy Fam- ily . Bessie and ... never happened . The holiday was to continue , without interruption , as though Ellen Bawtry had never lived and never ...
... never play cards at home , but on holiday , in a rented lodging , they can become a Happy Fam- ily . Bessie and ... never happened . The holiday was to continue , without interruption , as though Ellen Bawtry had never lived and never ...
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Common terms and phrases
Auntie Dora babies Bert Bessie Barron Bessie Bawtry Bessie's boys Brease Breasebor Breaseborough Cambridge Chrissie's coal Cotterhall dark daugh daughter dead death Donald Sinclair Dora's Dr Hawthorn earth Edith Sitwell Ellen Bawtry eyes Faro Gaulden Faro's father Fiona George Bellew Georgette Heyer Gertrude Wadsworth girl glass Hammervale happy Holderfield Jenny Pargiter Joe Barron knew listened live look Lyme Regis married Miss Heald mother never Nick Gaulden Nick's night Northam once peppered moth Peter Cudworth ring Robert and Chrissie Rose & Rose round Rowena says Faro Sebastian seemed sister Dora Slotton Road smell South Yorkshire Spanish flu stare Stella Steve Nieman story sure T. S. Eliot tell thing thought tried waiting waste watch woman women wonder young