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It’s hard to imagine, but in 1949 Hollywood descended on my little home town of Much Wenlock. Both its locations and inhabitants featured in David O. Selznick’s screen version of Mary Webb’s 1917 novel, Gone to Earth. The film’s star, Oscar-winner Jennifer Jones, certainly looks the part, and in this respect she well conjures the book’s central character, the untamed but doomed spirit that is Shropshire lass, Hazel Woodus.
As an American, Jones of course had to receive specialist drilling in the Shropshire dialect, a form of speech which these days is scarcely heard, but would have been the norm during Webb’s childhood. She writes it very clearly in the book’s dialogue, and Jones makes a good stab at it, but it perhaps sounds overdone to modern ears. People in England do not speak like this any more.
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Mary Webb herself spent her adolescence in Much Wenlock, and for the rest of her too-short life lived in various parts of rural Shropshire. She knew country ways intimately. Her writing is rooted always in the landscapes of her own growing up – the upland wilds and rugged long-gone lead-mining and peasant farming communities, the small market towns. But although she observes the hardship and poverty with a keen eye, she has tended to be dismissed as a writer of the romantic and rustic, her work parodied in Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm.
In her day, though, she had some very well known literary admirers including Rebecca West and John Buchan (Thirty-Nine Steps). I think her novels deserve a rediscovery. Her themes are still relevant today: male attitudes to women being one of them; human cruelty and wilful destructiveness for another.
In Gone to Earth, the central character, Hazel Woodus, is eighteen, motherless, and living in an isolated cottage with her coffin-making, bee-keeping father, Abel. Her only companion is a tame fox, Foxy, and her only guidance in life is dubiously received from her dead mother’s book of gypsy spells.
Two men want her: the Baptist Minister who marries her and tries to protect what he sees as her innocent spirit, and the fox-hunting landowner who wants only bodily possession. Hazel herself is torn between respectable conformity and her growing sexual awareness. And if I tell you that the term ‘gone to earth’ is the huntsman’s cry when a fox goes underground to escape the hounds, you will know that the story does not end well.
In other senses the book’s plot may be purely allegorical. Above all, it is about the pointless destruction of natural beauty and freedom. Webb was writing it at a time when three of her younger brothers were fighting in the World War 1 trenches.
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Much Wenlock 1949 in outside and inside the medieval Guildhall: scenes from Gone to Earth, director Michael Powell
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The making of the film did not run altogether smoothly, and there are perhaps some parallels between Hazel as an object of male possession and control , and the position of the film’s star, Jennifer Jones. She had had an affair with the executive producer, David O. Selznik, and by 1949 they were married. He wanted Gone to Earth to be solely a showcase for her, and he did not think the film’s makers, the fabulous storytelling team of director Michael Powell, and screenwriter, Emeric Pressburger, (The Red Shoes, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp) had done her justice. He even took them to court for not producing what was in the script. He lost the case, but he still had the right to make an alternative version.
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The upshot was that for the 1952 American release, renamed The Wild Heart , he chopped all the scenes that did not make the most of Jones, had new scenes shot, and to make sense of the makeover added a commentary by Joseph Cotton. The film was not well received, and so did not serve his purpose. Only recently has the original Powell and Pressburger version been fully restored.
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In the film clip below you will see, not Much Wenlock, but a location some miles across Wenlock Edge. Here are the beautiful hills of South Shropshire, in particular the Stiperstones with its bleak outcrop known as the Devil’s Chair. This is where Hazel goes at night in expectation of guidance from one of her mother’s superstitious rites. This silly, girlish act, and mistaken reading of events will have tragic consequences.
For more on Mary Webb:
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“This year’s discovery has been Mary Webb, author of Gone to Earth. She is a genius, and I shouldn’t mind wagering that she is going to be the most distinguished writer of our generation.”
— Rebecca West, review of Gone to Earth in the Times Literary Supplement, August 30, 1917
Mary Webb: neglected genius for the synopsis of Gone to Earth and also for details of her other works.
Tish Farrell 
Fascinating. Great post. I haven’t heard of Mary Webb. I am not surprised Jennifer Jones doesn’t sound right, her voice was so airy and whiny. Truthfully I can’t stand watching her movies because her voice drives me crazy.
Oh dear, poor Jennifer. She’s not too whiny in Gone to Earth, more country yokel. Glad you liked the post though, Marie.
What a fascinating post. All new to me, but something I want to learn much more about. Much Wenlock…I do love that name:)
Mary Webb is a v. interesting writer. Elemental, and of the landscape. Sometimes a bit purple prosey, but she might well appeal to you, Janet.
“…mother’s superstitious rites:
(often) have tragic consequences”…
Most interesting. Thanks for the share, Tish.
Thank you for reading, Jamie.
Interesting post. It made me learn some geography. I hadn’t heard much about Much Wenlock. What a difficult upbringing you must have suffered with a home town so pun able – or am I making too much of it?
It’s interesting you should say that, Bumba. I don’t recall a single pun about Much Wenlock. I think this shows a great lack of imagination on our part.
I can’t think of anything good either. Still, you can’t have too Much Wenlock.i suppose there are no common law marriages there, since if they did they would be living out of …….
Ho-ho, Bumba. Actually that’s triggered a memory. I went to a talk about Wenlock’s ancient Poor Law archives. I seem to remember it was a habit in the past to round up all people not properly married and expel them from the parish, along with any other (deemed) undesirables. The good burghers of Wenlock were uppity individuals. Also remembered that a few years ago some of us ran an activist magazine in the town called Wenlock Eye – this to speak up about the rampant development and lack of decent sewerage that had had much to do with 50 people’s homes flooding in 2007. So I did once have a headline: Too Much in Much Wenlock…I was quite pleased with it at the time.
Aha!
I’ve been to Kong in Ireland where they shot The Quiet Man. It was the biggest — ONLY big — thing that ever happened there. I can imagine what it must have been like. I’ve never heard of the movie and remarkably, Garry never heard of it either, nor the author. I will keep an eye out for the movie on cable. TCM is bound to show it sooner or later. And I’ll poke around Amazon and see about her books. Thanks for an interesting and enlightening post.
Am glad it started a few hares, Marilyn. As to Mary Webb’s books, I know Virago re-issued Gone to Earth. Somehow I doubt she ever had much of a readership outside the UK, but then you never do know.
Great post, Tish! I pride myself on being a movie “maven” but did not know the back story of this film. It also explains why I didn’t enjoy “The Wild Heart” when it was first released in 1952. I’m a big Jennifer Jones fan but this one didn’t do it for me. Selnick’s ambitions for Jennifer didn’t always serve her well. His arguments with Powell and Pressburger really undercut Jennifer Jones .”Duel In The Sun” is another obvious example of DOS overdoing things.. Thank you very much.
I’m glad this hit the spot, Garry. It’s all fascinating stuff isn’t it – all the agendas going – so many ‘creative’ objectives.
Liz, I would like to share your wonderful post here:
http://intothebardo.wordpress.com
All credits and links as appropriate. You can check it out and see how we lay in a bio. Let me know bardogroup@gmail.com. I’d need your bio and a photograph if your a willing to do this. Watched the movie this evening, by the way. Thanks!
Hi Jamie. I sent you an email. T
Got it. Thanks, Trish. Emailed back.
A really interesting post Tish. I love old British movies (A Matter of Life and Death is a fav), but I’d never heard of Gone to Earth, or of Mary Webb. Thanks for the introduction to both. It’s looking like a miserable weekend hear weather-wise so it could be a good time for a marathon DVD session 🙂
That sounds good, Su, a cosy DVD session. But isn’t your weather supposed to be heading for summer? Mary Webb is v. interesting. She died v. young though, around 48 – a thyroid problem. I suppose the thing about her books is that they are PASSIONATE. Not intentionally literary. She wrote her first one (if memory serves) The Golden Arrow in 3 weeks. I have the sense that she stood on the surface of the earth, and the words sprang out of her – sometimes too many, and sometimes just right. She’s not to everyone’s taste because of this I think.
“Supposed to …” being the operative words. September is often wet and quite cold here. Not to mention that the boy-child is heading off early Saturday morning and the Big T is in Melbourne until Sunday. I can watch ‘Brief Encounter’ and ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ and ‘The Lady Vanishes” and whatever else I want in peace … perfect peace. I must look for a Mary Webb book. Not sure they will be to my taste, but I won’t know until I try. Thanks again. Cheers. Su
… or even *here*