Precious Bane
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Precious Bane is a novel by Mary Webb, first published in 1924. It won the Prix Femina Vie Heureuse Prize. In 1958 it was made into a film starring Patrick Troughton and Daphne Slater. In 1989 it was adapted for television by the BBC, starring Clive Owen and Janet McTeer.
With Gone to Earth, it is the main work parodied in Stella Gibbons's satire Cold Comfort Farm (1932).
[edit] Synopsis
The story is set in rural Shropshire shortly after the Napoleonic Wars. It is narrated by the central character, Prue Sarn, whose life is blighted by having a harelip. Only the weaver, Kester Woodseaves, perceives the beauty of her character, but Prue cannot believe herself worthy of him. Her brother Gideon is overridingly ambitious to attain wealth and power, regardless of who suffers while he does so. Gideon is set to wed his sweetheart Jancis , but he incurs the wrath of her father, the cruel and scheming self-proclaimed wizard Beguildy. An act of vengeance by Beguildy makes Gideon reject Jancis and tragedy overwhelms them both. Prue is wrongly accused of murder and set upon by a mob, but Kester defies them and carries Prue away to the happiness she believed she could never possess because of her harelip.
The title of the story refers to the love of money, which, as Prue records, blights love and destroys life.
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