Advertisement: Jenny’s Case: By Ellen F. Pinsent: … includes a series of short one-paragraph review from … Scotsman, Glasgow Herald, Daily Chronicle, Daily Graphic, Literary World, … plus: … Jenny’s Case: By ELLEN F. PINSENT. Swan Sonnonachein and Co…. In these stories of English rural life there is a sad sameness among themselves, and a sad resemblance to real life. In that most tragic tale of “A Village Tragedy,” the motive was very much the same as in the present book, and no one who knows what English village life is can dare to say it is improbable. Jenny’s case is only too common a one, though all do not go on to the bitter end that seems literally forced upon this poor girl. Jenny is a farm-servant, a workhouse orphan with not a friend in the world, and a harsh and unsympathetic worrying mistress. Her prettiness attracts the village loafer, and for her sake the idle youth of good hard-working parents resolves to turn over a new leaf and work hard and honestly to provide a home for the girl he loves with all his heart. This is no easy matter for a lad with his reputation, but he is on the very point of success when he finds that poor Jenny has succumbed to the attractions of the great catch of the village—the policeman. That a man of such negotiability, so sought after and admired, should pay her, the despised workhouse drudge, attentions is too much for Jenny. She yields to fashion and respectability, as her betters have done, and clings fondly to the scoundrel’s promise of marriage. ” Mart,” when he finds her faithless, has a big drink, loses his newfound situation, enlists, and for a time passes out of the story. Jenny’s faithless lover marries a girl with money and adroitly manages to let the blame of ill-doing fall on the absent Mart. Jenny is dismissed in disgrace, and the one being in the world who has a kind word for her is Mart’s mother. But she will not stay with her to bring trouble to the old woman but finds her way to the nearest big town. Mart, when he hears at last of her ruin, deserts his regiment, and, with a stumbling, unconscious sort of blundering heroism wrecks his life, as he had been willing to redeem it, to save her. The story is powerful in its very quietness and rigid adherence to truth. The cottage life, the speech and thoughts of the labouring poor, are caught and set down in all their littleness, their simplicity, their small cunning, their pathetic helplessness, and most submissive resignation. Nowhere are the characters forced or strained, descriptions are not overdone, but the tragic story goes apparently blundering on, as such stories do go on around us. We hope the authoress will pursue the line she has marked out for herself and make for English rural life what Mr. Besant has for the city toilers, and Charles Egbert Craddock for the Tennessee settlers – a place in fiction of its own.
[see similar: Bristol Times and Mirror: Saturday 15th October 1892]
Transcribed in whole or part from scanned originals: Presented with or without modified text and punctuation. For absolute accuracy refer to the original newspapers. Source: The British Newspaper Archive
Referenced
GRO0245 Devonport: Ellen Frances Parker: 1866 – 1949