Reaction Paper on Geraldine Brookss The Year of Wonders Essay

Reaction Paper on Geraldine Brookss The Year of Wonders - Essay Example This essay discusses that the contaminated articles and clothes of the tailor were not initially destroyed because of lack scientific knowledge. Eleanor and Michael reveal marriage secrets to Anna. Bradford family faces Mo mp hellion's wrath because they ran away, as they had the means to do so like any other noble family. Rector’s secret shadows fall on the nobility of his work. Anna goes through a mental and spiritual unraveling and almost attains a rebirth. All female characters, Lib, Anna, Gowdies, Anna’s stepmother all show the enormous strength of character. Those were the days when antibiotics have not been invented, though science was receiving royal patronage. Methods of disinfection were not well-known even in London and this fear of infection drove Londoners to inhuman methods during the plague. Fear and superstition and survival made them merciless. Other than burning the infected material, there were hardly any alternatives of infection. Written in modern a nd fluid style, not dull or tedious, the book maintains uncanny optimism despite the prevailing grimness, ‘how fear drove ordinary people first into superstition and then into primeval brutality’. It also shows that human nature does not change while knowledge does. The village is in stark contrast with the treatment London gave to its sick, locking them up with the healthy in their houses, sealing the houses without water or food, and according to Samuel Pepys, ‘making us cruel as dogs to one another’. London was gripped by the fear of unknown.