The bride's farewell door Meg Rosoff

LOG  2015-2016   5VWO 
Your name: Janne Hendriks                                              Class: V5C
Teacher: I. Vlierman
Which books did you read before this book? Give title and author.

   4VWO                                                       5VWO
    1 – Go ask Alice                                     1.
    2 -  The notebook                                   2.
    3 – The fault in our stars                            3.

Title of this book:                                                            
The bride’s farewell

Writer of this book:
Meg Rosoff
Character :  Describe the personality of the main character. What is
                     he/she like? What is his/her goal, strength, weakness?
                     Who is his/her helper and adversary?

Pell Ridley is a strong woman who is afraid to lose herself in a marriage. So she flees away. She doesn’t know her place in the world, but she knows that she doesn’t want to be a married woman. Pell attaches a lot of importance to her adopted brother Bean and does everything to find him when he disappears. She is also very well with horses and attaches a lot of importance to her own horse Jack. Pell doesn’t oft know how to bear or what she wants, what points out her surface relationship with Dogman and  her facility to let things go and to say goodbye.

Setting:  When and where does the story take place and in what kind of social environment? Be as precise as possible.

Place: English country

Time: 19th century

Social Setting:
Narrator:  From what perspective is the story told?  Why do you think
                     the writer chose this particular perspective? How does this
                     perspective contribute to the story?
changing personal teller: the perspective changes between Pell, Bean and Dogman.
Theme:      What is the message that the writer wants to give his
                   readers? Did the message come across?
The theme is Pell’s search for her place in the world. Her past, her not wanting to marry and her company (Bean, Jack, Dickens) have also pretty big roles.

Now you are going to write a summary of your book.
In the night before her wedding day, Pell Ridley creeps out of bed and leaves the house with only a few things. With her horse Jack and small boy Bean she leaves the farmhouse in Normansland, away from the marriage that Pell was supposed to get involved in. During their journey to Salisbury, Pell remembers Birdie Finch – the young man she knows from childhood and with whom she has always been meant to be married. But now, before the wedding, Pell realizes she does not want a marriage or a family. She also thinks of her youth: nine children plus Bean and their free life in which only staying alive mattered. The laziness and lust of her brothers and will to work of her sisters. She was the one with a passion for horses and a great connection to her sisters and mother. Her father’s alcoholic obsessions and his workless hanging around – while being the town’s preacher – was the cause of the family’s poorness and life without norms. Her father was also the one who suddenly came up with Bean, a never-speaking child given away by his mother, too poor to take care of him.

Pell remembers receiving Jack as a weak horse from Bean and the traditional, hard-working and strong character of his family.
When night falls, Pell finds a beautiful warm shawl in her bundle, clearly a gift from her sister Lou – the one who treated her the best and also loved Birdie. They find a relatively warm place to camp and Pell puts herself and Bean – happy with his company after all – in the shawl to stay warm.
After a few days of walking across little towns and farmhouses, Pell, Bean and Jack reach the highway to Salisbury. They find themselves in between many wagons and carts belonging to farmers on their way to the fair. One of them catches her eye with his beautiful white horse, and Pell helps the animal healing from her fear of falling. Pell and Bean spend a rainy night with a gypsy family – a woman called Esther and her five children. Especially Bean gets very close-connected to the youngest children.
At the Salisbury fair, Bean and Pell keep the Bewes couple company and help the male with his search for a good horse while Pell tries to find work of her own. She doesn’t know her father is in town too to search for his two children, but not very actively – he’s drinking in the local pub. Eventually, after a coincidental conversation, Pell gets a job as a horse buyer’s assistant – she has to find the best and healthiest horses for him. At the end of the day her ‘boss’ leaves without her and with her money. At the same time, Bean and Jack disappear – she doesn’t know, but they have hurried after the man. Accompanied by gypsy Esther and her children, Pell leaves to search for Bean and Jack. Although there’s some kind of tension between Esther and Pell, the gypsy children adore Pell and even give her one of the dog pups they’ve found somewhere. Pell names her pup Dicken and the children take the other one – Dog – when Esther suddenly decides to separate from Pell and head to the south. Pell and Dicken travel across the English countryside together while Esther visits Normansland and talks to a preacher in a pub about the little boy she left to him.
When darkness comes, Pell finds an old farmhouse that is clearly lived, but empty. She falls asleep in a wall close to the hearth and is discovered by a boy the next morning, when he wants to lit the fire. The boy sends her away but does give her his brother’s name in Pevesy – Robert Annes – who might be able to help her finding Jack and Bean. After a short journey Pell reaches Pevesy and meets blacksmith Robert Annes, who introduces her to his rude mother but doesn’t know the boy, the horse or the thief. His mother gives Pell a job in her dairy and board in the house. Pell lives and works there for some time while becoming friends with Robert, until she is sent away by his jealous fiancé. Without knowing what to do, Pell wanders through the woods and suddenly meets the young hunter Dogman again – the one who introduced her to the man who stole her money, back in Salisbury. Because she doesn’t have a real choice, Pell starts to live in the cow stables next to Dogman’s cottage. While Dogman spends his days hunting or seeking hurt animals, Dickens can’t stay away from his dogs. One day Dickens returns with a serious leg injury that gets worse despite Pell trying to heal it. Eventually Pell asks Dogman for help, and he manages to completely heal Dickens with some yellow powder.
Meanwhile, Pell befriends the bakery girl Eliza in the nearby town. Eliza understands Pell’s fear for a bad marriage, since she is a mother for her two nieces who were given away by their father when their mother (Eliza’s sister) died. Out of poorness Pell starts to work in Eliza and her brother William’s bakery, where quiet William suddenly asks her to marry him. Pell says no, but he starts hitting her and demands a yes. When Eliza comes in, she picks William’s side and Pell runs away. In the cow stables she lies hurt and after two days Dogman finds her and takes her to his own cottage, where he nurses her. When Pell is doing much better again, he unexpectedly kisses her – but not against her will – after a period of quiet but loving nursery. From that time on, they live together as lovers, but Pell keeps missing Bean and searches for him in nearby towns and workhouses. The relationship between her and Dogman stays quiet and he doesn’t tell her anything about his past. When one day he declares to go visit his wife and son, Pell decides to leave as well, to look for Bean – who is in a workhouse but ran away of pure unhappiness. Pell visits all near towns but can’t find her brother anywhere. Eventually she returns back home, to Normansland – convinced to find Bean there. She expects a heart-touching reunion, but gets disappointed: her parents have died in a fire, her three younger sisters have been sent to a workhouse in Andover and Lou is married to an old man. Deeply unhappy Pell travels back to Andover, where she has been before to look for Bean, and finds out that the oldest sister – Sally – has already passed away of fever. Pell takes care of the two other weak little girls – Frannie and Ellen – and contacts Lou, who comes over and blames Pell of all disaster.
In the meanwhile, Dogman stays with his ‘wife’ and son, who he teaches to hunt intensively. He also meets Harris again, the man who gave Pell work but never paid her. Harris gives Dogman the money he owns to Pell.
The next morning, Lou leaves and sends Pell to Winchester, to her husband’s niece. This woman gives Pell and the girls temporary board, but Pell can’t find work and is sent to Highfields by a blacksmith. That’s where she meets John Kirby, a blacksmith she met before on the road to the Salisbury fair. He gives Pell work as a horse groom and allows her to sleep in the hay attic with Frannie and Ellen. Pell gets a two months trial and after that, John Kirby makes clear that he’d very much like to keep her. She is sent to a different estate to work as a temporary groom for Lord Hayward. That is where she suddenly meets Jack again, being Lord Hayward’s daughter’s horse. Pell does not claim him, but decides shortly after this to leave and search for Bean again. John Kirby lets her go, together with the horse he gave to her and with Ellen, but hires Frannie, who is very good with horses. Dickens, Pell and Ellen leave. They stop again at a road point to London, Salisbury, Southampton and Winchester. There, they spend nine days sitting by the road and talking to other travellers, asking for Bean. On the ninth day they have a reunion with Esther, her gypsy children and… Bean. They stay together for one week and Pell finds out about Esther being Bean’s birth mom and also the one who put Pell’s parent’s house at fire. Bean chooses to live with the gypsies and after their separation, Pell takes Ellen and Dickens back to Dogman, who decides to take them all – Pell, Ellen, Dickens and the horse Gray – into his life, for good.
Title explanation: The Bride’s Farewell is based on Pell, who runs away from home in the night before her wedding. She says goodbye to her old life and with that, she also seals the promise to herself and to the world to never get married.