However, she soon discovers that the mill’s conditions are bleak and harsh, and desperately longs for escape, determined to leave the life she is forced to endure behind her …īess soon hears tales of a terrifying monster – a mermaid – living in the millpond, but she does not believe what she has heard … until she sees something in the water. She arrives from a London workhouse to the rural cotton mill with the hope and false promise that life will be better. The story is written as a first-person narrative through the eyes of eleven-year-old Bess. I was absolutely entranced by this richly atmospheric tale with its depiction of the harsh realities of life for children working in Victorian mills the slow building of the heart-warming friendship that develops between Bess and Dot and, the symbolism between the mermaid’s situation and that of Bess. The Mermaid in the MillPond is a dark, tense and hopeful story intertwining history and myth in perfect symbiosis.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |