Review by C.J. Bunce
A novel from the early 20th century that has the impact and intrigue of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, the voyeuristic view of family relationships like that of the Brontes or Jane Austen, and the passion and call for action of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables? Oh, and you probably never heard of it? Get ready for a stunningly illustrated graphic novel adaptation of This Slavery, Ethel Carnie Holdsworth’s 1925 historical tale of life and death in the cotton mill town of pre-World War I Lancashire, England. Adapted with colorful and incredibly detailed imagery by Scarlett and Sophie Rickard, This Slavery is now available at bookstores everywhere and here at Amazon.
The slavery of the title isn’t about transatlantic slavery, but the treatment of mill workers, the enslavement of the poor to the wealthy via the workplace, and also the historical, systemic enslavement of women to men, in the way women have been left to decide to marry wealthy men as their last choice to pull themselves out of unlivable conditions.
Holdsworth (1886-1962) was a radical feminist poet and author. The story was a call for action, but one not so well received in its day, and certainly not as well as her other books, like her 1917 mill-girl romance Helen of Four Gates, which outsold H.G. Wells. This Slavery is a fictionalized historical document of a family trying to survive on a meager income, unsanitary city life, often with meals of boiled potato skins.
Readers will meet Hester and Rachel Martin, two sisters struggling to survive when their jobs at the mill vanish after the mill catches fire. Rachel seems to be the stronger of the two. She uses her empty schedule to read up on economic works. Hester, whose natural skills are in music and playing the violin, ultimately decides to marry one of the suppliers to the mill. Rachel leads protests and eventually a strike. Hester raises a family in luxury and safety, only to lose her children to diphtheria–deaths directly caused by her husband’s failure to improve sanitation conditions. So she secretly begins a campaign to help the workers behind the scenes. These are two great heroines who make great sacrifices to try to help their fellow townspeople.
Today the book reads like a call for the poor, over-worked, and underpaid to rise up, seek and acquire fair working conditions, fair wages, and a livable life from the likes of the landed gentry, whose big businesses have controlled towns and continues to grip and strangle citizens of the biggest nations. Watchers of TV and movies will see the struggle felt by the sisters in Holdsworth’s account of Lancashire life in films like How Green Was My Valley, Harlan County, USA, and Brassed Off, and in TV shows like Sherwood, Toxic Town, Bodkin, Mystery Road, and even Mr. Selfridge.
The artwork by the Rickard sisters is gorgeous–maybe an odd thing to say about a 368-page comic about poor working conditions in small town England. But it’s true, and just like half the credit of Spielberg and Lucas movies goes to John Williams for the music, half the credit of the success of this book goes to the Rickards’ artwork, which brings this frightening and dark world to life. The design is exquisite, the Rickards incorporating William Morris-esque wallpapers within the panels and in chapter title pages. The coupling of the details of private British life–of the reality of both the poor and the wealthy and Holdsworth’s gut-punch of death and sorrow is quite the combination.
Here are some pages from the book:
You’ll feel like you’re reading something as substantial and literary as Pride and Prejudice or Doctor Zhivago. And it’s a good pairing with the award-winning mill-girl romance novel A Curse Dark as Gold. It is a perfect example of how to fire up a classic work and engage a new audience. This is the latest graphic novel that should join the likes of John Lewis’s March series, Girl Rebels, and Remember Us to Life. Get Scarlett and Sophie Rickard’s adaptation of Ethel Carnie Holdsworth’s This Slavery now available from Elite Comics, your local comic shop or bookstore, or here at Amazon.
