Year of Wonders Chapter Summaries/Quotes/Characters

Question 0

Spring 1665: Ring of Roses

Answer 0

. George Viccars arrives (He's a tailor)
. he stays with Anna
. orders cloth from London
. Mr Viccars gets ill (plague?)
. he makes a dress for Anna
. mr Viccars dies

Question 1

Leaf fall, 1666: Apple Picking Time (first)

Answer 1

. not many people remain in the village/town
. characters are introduced
. the Bradford’s are back
. we know that Mrs Mompellion, Sam and Anna’s kids are dead

Question 2

Spring 1665: The thunder of his voice

Answer 2

. sexton took Mr Viccars body
. Anna wanted to burn all the clothes he made like he told her to
. nobody let her burn them
. Anna found out mr Viccars ‘laid’ with Anys
. there was talk of the plague from a young Londoner at the Bradford’s dinner party

Question 3

Spring 1665: Rat Fall

Answer 3

. Jamie and Edward were playing with dead rats they found (don’t they spread the plague?)
. edward and Anna’s other son Tom died

Question 4

Spring 1665: Sign of a witch

Answer 4

. Jamie got sick
. no remedies helped, Jamie died
. Anna as filled with grief
. a mob began accusing Mem of being a witch
. they then threw Mem into the flooded mine to test this
. Anys resuscitated her
. Anys was accused of being a witch, she was hung (rector was furious)

Question 5

Spring 1665: Venom in the blood

Answer 5

. Mem is unable to attend Anys’ funeral
. Mem dies 5 days after Anys
. Mompellion speaks of the plague being a test
. Mompellion says they must stay in the village so they don’t spread the plague

Question 6

Spring 1665: Wide Green Prison

Answer 6

. Bradford’s are preparing to leave
. the rector tries to convince them to stay
. Elinor recruited Anna to help Mary Daniel’s give birth
. Maggie and brand go to nearby town

Question 7

Spring 1665: Soon to be Dust

Answer 7

. Maggie and brand come back to the village
. they are chased out of town
. Maggie is injured but brand was brave enough to rescue her
. Anna let’s Maggie stay with her while she recovers

Question 8

What is the order of chapters in year if wonders?

Answer 8

. apple picking time
. ring of roses
. thunder in his voice
. rat-fall
. sign of a witch 
. venom in the blood
. wide green prison
. soon to be dust
. the poppies of Lethe 
. among those that go down to the pit
. the body of the mine 
. the press of their ghosts
. a great burning 
. deliverance 
. Apple picking time 
. the waves, like ridges of plough'd land

Question 9

Spring 1665: The Poppies of Lethe

Answer 9

. Anna escapes into a state of oblivion with poppies to forget her sadness
. Richard Talbot was sick and his wife bought a charm from the ‘ghost’ of Anys Gowdie
. Elinor tells Anna her story

Question 10

Spring 1665: Among those that go down to the pit

Answer 10

. Jakob Merril was dying of the plague, he allocated his assets to his children
. Anna pleads with her father to dig graves so there would be less pressure on mr Mompellion
. Merry Wickfords whole family had died and she was about to lose what remained of her family, being their mine
. Elinor and Anna decided to help

Question 11

Spring 1665: The body of the mine

Answer 11

. Anna’s father is ripping people odd because he is the only one who will dig their graves
. Josiah even buried Christopher Unwin alive
. his sentences was to have knives through his hands

Question 12

Spring 1665: The press of their ghosts

Answer 12

. people became more superstitious and bought more charms off ‘the ghost of Anys Gowdie’
. John Gordan had become a flagellant
. he died from falling off a cliff whilst his wife died from the plague

Question 13

Spring 1665: A great burning

Answer 13

. Elinor has symptoms of the plague (Michael and Anna are worried)
. Michael tells townsfolk that they need to burn everything
. aphra ends up being the ‘ghost of Anys’
. aphra’s daughter faith dies of the plague

Question 14

Spring 1665: Deliverance

Answer 14

. Anna sees aphra dancing around her croft with faith strung to a walls
. the plague may be over
. mr Mompellion goes to announce the news
. aphra in her madness kills Elinor and then herself

Question 15

Leaf fall 1666: Apple picking time (second)

Answer 15

. Michael is grief stricken (Anna goes by Elinor’s wish, to be his friend)
. the Bradfords return
. Michael and Anna’s relationship grew
. Anna is no longer scared of Elizabeth Bradford
. she helps deliver the Bradfords baby
. Elizabeth tris to drown the baby but Anna stops her and says she’ll raise the baby
. Anna has a different view of Michael

Question 16

Epilogue: The waves, the rides if plough’d land

Answer 16

. Anna tells her story of how she arrived in Oran
. she now studies medicine
. she named the Bradford’s baby Aisha and has her own baby (Mompellion’s) which she names Elinor

Question 17

What are some quotes describing Michael Mompellion?

Answer 17

“I’d forgotten what his eyes could do – what they could make us do – when he stared down from him pulpit and held us, one by one, in his gaze.”

“His body is strong, but I fear that the strength of his will far exceeds it. It can drive him to do what any normal man cannot do.”

“It was a voice full of light and dark.”

Question 18

What are some quotes describing how Michael has changed?

Answer 18

“I think grief has undone him.” (Mr Stanley)

“The delicacy masked a most unnatural coldness; that subtle thought had twisted itself into perversion.”

“And now it is Elinor Mompellion’s Michael who sits all day in the dark…”

“It was as if he commenced on a journey at the moment of Elinor’s death, and every day he moved farther and farther away.”

Question 19

What are some quotes which describe the Gowdies?

Answer 19

“I knew how easy it was for widow to be turned witch in the common mind”

“I’m not made to be a man’s chattel.”

Question 20

What are some quotes which describe the views in the town?

Answer 20

“Like most in this village, I had no occasion to travel father than the market town seven miles distant.”

“Men doffed their caps and women curtsied, just as we had always done simply because that is what we had always done.”

Question 21

What are some quotes which show Anna’s struggles?

Answer 21

“For the hour in which I can lose myself in someone else’s thoughts is the greatest relief I can find from the burden of my own memories.”

“The trouble with weeping is that once begun, it became almost impossible to stop.”

“I…wished to know how things stood in the world.”

Question 22

What are some quotes which show how Anna has changed?

Answer 22

“Let’s go and live since we have no choice in it.”

“It was as if there were 2 of me, walking down those stairs”

“A servant has no right to stay, once she’s dismissed. But I did stay, plumping the cushion, placing a shawl.”

“Where Michael Mompellion had been broken by our shared ordeal, in equal measure I had been tempered and made strong.”

Question 23

What are some quotes which show Anna’s epiphanies?

Answer 23

“Perhaps the Plague was neither of God nor the Devil, but simply a thing in Nature.”

“I was meant to go on; away from death and towards life, from birth to birth, from seed to blossom.”

“For I was not Elinor, after all, but Anna.”

Question 24

What are some quotes which describe Elinor?

Answer 24

“The frail body was paired with a sinewy mind, capable of violent enthusiasms and possessed of a driving energy to make and do.

“I wonder if you know how you have changed.”

“When she discovered that I hungered to learn, she commenced to shovel knowledge my way as vigorously as she spaded the cow-pats into her beloved flower beds.”

“Because of her, I had known the warmth of a motherly concern…She never reminded me of my place…she was my friend.”

Question 25

What are some other relevant quotes?

Answer 25

“But I do it. I do it for her. I tell myself I do it for her. Why else would I do it, after all?”

“For hundreds of years, the people of this village pushed nature back from its precints. It has taken less than a year to begin to reclaim its place. In the very middle of the street, a walnut shell lies broken, and from it, already, sprouts a sapling that wants to grow up to block our way entire.”

Question 26

What quotes describe Sam’s life and death?

Answer 26

“Down in the mine at daybreak, out again after sundown. A life in the dark. And a death there, too.”

“Sam’s world was a dark, damp maze of rakes and scrins thirty feet under the ground…His whole life was confined by these things.”

Question 27

What are some quotes revealing the effects of the plague?

Answer 27

“These times, they do makes monsters of us all”

“This plague will make heroes of us all, whether we will or no”

“Loneliness, shunning and fear. Fear will be your only faithful companion”

Question 27

What are some quotes relating to Aphra and Josiah Bont?

Answer 27

“I didn’t move to warn him…all I could think of was the sting of his fist”

“I could not speak for him.”

“Out of our negligence and her loneliness came much rage.”

Question 28

List all the main Year of Wonders characters.

Answer 28

. Anna Frith
. Elizabeth Michael Mompellion
. Anys and Mem Gowdie
. Aprha and Josiah Bont
. George Viccars 
. Jamie and Tom Frith
. The Bradford's (Mrs Bradford, Colonel, Elizabeth)

Question 29

List all the supporting Year of Wonders characters.

Answer 29

. Alexander and Mary Hadfield (Anna’s neighbours)
. Christopher Unwin (Josiah tried burying him alive)
. Alun Houghton (The Barmester)
. Jane Martin (Puritan girl)
. John and Urith Gordon (Contribute to Anys’ murder and John later becomes a flagellant)
. Lib Hancock (Anna’s childhood friend)
. Mr Stanley (Puritan minister)
. Merry Wickford (Young orphaned daughter of quaker miner)
. Maggie Cantwell (Bradford’s cook)
. Brand (Pantry boy who works for Bradford’s)
. Ahmed Bey (Elderly Arab doctor who takes Anna under his wing)
. Aisha and Elinor Frith (Anna’s daughters)