Synopses
Powers of observation, sympathetic appreciativeness of life, and accurate delineation of human nature are together what define the extraordinary literary talent of Mary Webb. She wrote with delicacy and perceptiveness, drawing readers into an emotional intimacy with her scenes and characters. There is a genuine artistic principle in Webb’s view of the interdependence of man and his environment. Her characters are complicated individuals who feel deep sympathy, love and joy, and derive genuine pleasure from rural living. Her novels detail an environment where people, nature, folklore, language and morality are inseparable.
Each of Mary Webb’s six rural tales (one left unfinished at her death) operates on multiple levels—a bare outline of each story reads as romantic melodrama. Yet Webb used her stories set in Shropshire as a way to explore the larger meaning of existence. As she probes the interplay between love and hate, struggle and submission, and birth and death, her characters and settings are transformed into universal symbols.