5 starsRead the Story
I've recently become a fan of Catherine Cookson's tv films. So far I've seen
The Girl
Tilly Trotter
The Moth
15 Streets
I've found them to be very engaging stories, unlike some other period dramas that have a hard time getting started. Sometimes they end oddly too, and content is always something to be on the watch for. For all that, I enjoy them immensely. Today, I finished The Rag Nymph.
A woman is jailed with the crime of 'prostitution'. It was unclear whether she actually was a prostitute, (I don't think she was), but she is bailed out of jail by a pimp (did they use that word back then?) named Boswell and is taken to his 'house'. Instead of letting herself be used, she hangs herself, leaving her daughter Millie an orphan. She's taken in by a Ms Aggie, a kind elderly woman with no family of her own, rather poor, save a teen (I suppose he's a teen) boy named Ben. Ben turns out to be a good, kind boy who is constantly after Aggie to keep Millie, and grows up to be a good, kind man who falls in love with Millie.
Boswell, however, is always on the lookout for the child of the woman who cheated him. Ms Aggie is constantly find ways to keep Millie protected from Boswell, such as sending her to a boarding school, a governess position, a friends house, etc. As it usually is, beautiful people attract trouble. At a party, a clearly perverted man flirts with Millie, and his jealous wife sets her sons on Millie. A rather wealthy young man, Mr Thompson, whom she had danced with earlier in the evening comes to her rescue (along with the perverted man). As Mr Thompson falls in love with Millie, Ben becomes more and more agitated, especially after Millie sees his back and realizes that he's a crippled (I'm sure the first word that describes him in the book is criple, but it was hard to tell in the movie until you saw him with his shirt off. Then it's clear there's something wrong with his back).
Mr Thompson shows Millie his house and inadvertently lets slip that they can never be married, but wants to remain lovers. Millie will have none of that ('My mother hung herself before she was used!') and walks home by herself. She accepts a ride from a man she doesn't know (never a good idea) and does not recognise the man sitting next to her, but he seems familiar. The audience knows immediately who it is: Boswell the 'pimp'.
Ben, worried about Millie, goes to Mr Thompson's house. Not finding her there, he continues to search for her, but it's his cousin who works for Boswell that finds him first. She sneaks him into Boswell's 'establishment' to rescue Millie, who has been drugged and in her underclothes, waiting for her 'client'. Ben meets Boswell on an empty stairwell on his way to Millie and fatally stabs Boswell. Millie's client is the perverted man from the party, and he is also stabbed to death by Ben, but not before turning the knife on Ben himself.
Millie hurries Ben home, and Aggie goes for a doctor. As Millie's watching over Ben, he tells her he loves her. She doesn't accept him immediately, but when Mr Thompson comes calling to propose to her she flatly refuses him, saying she's engaged to Ben.
Ben turned out to be one of my favorite men from any movie. He's good and kind to Millie and Aggie, and while he's had almost no schooling, he goes back to school to better himself and eventually becoming a teacher. There's nothing he won't do for Millie, and always tries to do what's best for her and Aggie.
Some of Cookson's books-to-novels end strangely, such as Tilly Trotter, where the girl not only doesn't get married to who you thought she loved all along, but ends up her master's lover. The Girl also ended oddly, although admittedly it was better than Tilly.
The Rag Nymph and 15 Streets seem to be my favorites so far. The romantic leading men are wonderful, not too gushy and aren't above fighting for what's right, and the women aren't the obnoxious women you see far too often in movies and tv nowadays.
All in all 5 stars!
