Mr Wroe's Virgins

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Mr. Wroe’s Virgins] leaps headlong into the most ambitious and risky territories: faith, love and existential meaning.” — The New York Times Book Review Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives. It still strikes me as extraordinary that it’s based on a true story: that there was a man called John Wroe who founded the Christian Israelite Church in Ashton Under Lyne, Lancashire in the 1820s, where he predicted the world was about to end. Perhaps most strangely of all, he professed that God had told him to take seven virgins from the local congregation for his ‘comfort and succour’. We know little of who these women were, but Jane Rogers has given them poetic life from her imagination and in doing so created a historical document of the world in which they and many other working class women might have experienced the society of their time.

And what of Wroe himself? He’s seen through the eyes of, and actions toward, the four women with whom we are put in touch, and each has a very different experience of him. An angel, a demon and a very real and complex human being with doubts and questions, it’s possible to like him, hate him and wonder why he seems to bring about his own downfall. He leaves the story as he entered it, an enigmatic character.A nineteenth century prophet claims seven young women for his own in this “engaging, serious and gleefully ironic novel” based on true events ( The New York Times Book Review). Mr. Wroe is the Prophet of the Christian Israelites and one day he gets a message that he’s supposed to take seven virgins into his household. And his congregants are eager to offer up their daughters - the young ones, the ones to crippled or mentally deficient to marry otherwise, the unwanted niece. Some want to be chosen - the pious old maid and the beautiful egotist with a secret that needs to be hidden. Writer Colin Wilson describes Fort as "a patron of cranks" and also argues that running through Fort's work is "the feeling that no matter how honest scientists think they are, they are still influenced by various unconscious assumptions that prevent them from attaining true objectivity. Expressed in a sentence, Fort's principle goes something like this: People with a psychological need to believe in marvels are no more prejudiced and gullible than people with a psychological need not to believe in marvels." My children were five and two, and I had anatomised motherhood in The Ice Is Singing. Now I wanted to explore other areas where women might find value and meaning: work, religion, love, the physical world. My own instincts, reinforced by these two conversations, told me that if set in the present, such a book would be all too easily placed in the “women’s ghetto”. The story is told from the point of view of four of the seven women. One is pious and believes in the Prophet wholeheartedly and will do whatever he says that God says is right. Another is vain and egocentric and has more lies in her than truths. The third and fourth are not even Christian Israelites and they do not always understand what their Sisters do. One of them is a socialist looking to reform the world and the other comes to the household more animal than human. And it’s interesting to see her evolve into a thinking, dreaming, human being.

In the end I had to narrow it down to four stories, with each of my four women pursuing a different desire. And in the years it took me to research and write the book, life intruded to alter and colour it – most significantly in the sudden illness and death of my father. My loss became Hannah’s loss, and her grief gave me the key to her character.Wroe died in Melbourne, Australia, in 1863, aged 81, leaving the church affairs in the hands of his trustees.

John Wroe (19 September 1782 – 5 February 1863) was a British evangelist who founded the Christian Israelite Church in the 1820s after having what he believed were a series of visions. It’s a successful attempt to put flesh on the bones of these characters, but only to a certain extent. Joanna, Hannah, Leah and Martha are given a voice each, and for me these are successful. We see each of them grow from their point of entry into the narrative, and although the development isn’t always in a positive direction it’s very believable. As to the other virgins however, Dinah and the sisters Rebekah and Rachel, we never go inside their heads. Why is that? Beyond the facts that Dinah is ailing and the sisters rather young the information provided is scarce, but it does suggest an interesting tale to be told about one of them, at least. We weren’t promised detailed information about all seven virgins, it’s true, but it’s rather frustrating to not get their take on the events of which they are a part. Jane Rogers chronicles the nine months these women spend together until accusations of indecency and the trial that follows bring Wroe's household to its dramatic end. There is a cripple, a badly beaten mute, two underage sisters who can barely read, Joanna "the Saint," Hannah the unbeliever, and Leah, who secretly mothered an illegitimate child. And then there is Prophet Wroe, as enigmatic and attractive to each of the virgins as he is an iron hand. With an impeccably crafted narrative and utterly beguiling prose, Rogers delves deep into the conflicts surrounding faith, love, and passion. Ultimately each of the virgins comes away with a powerful lesson in independence.

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Though there are many tragic aspects to the story, and the characters are undeniably isolated, the moments when we came together as a company to discuss and film sections (with cameras, desk lamps, ring lights and candles) were strangely convivial. It is a testament to the four actors, who filmed (often alone) in graveyards, fields, basements, beaches, hilltops and a succession of bedroom corners, in attempt not to betray our time scale, as well as the skills of our amazing editor Mat Ort, that the endeavour became uniquely pleasurable and satisfying. A short time later, Wroe started having visions, and often became blind and unable to speak — on one occasion remaining blind for six days. During these periods, Wroe said, many remarkable events were foretold and revealed to him: the Spirit told him to relinquish his worldly employment, so he devoted his life to travelling and preaching, where he gained many followers and persuaded them that he was a messenger of God. [ citation needed] When God told Prophet John Wroe to comfort himself with seven virgins, his congregation gave him its daughters. So begins this provocative and immensely powerful novel, set in nineteenth-century England and based on actual events. But that’s all turned on it’s head eventually and it’s a wonder of did he? Did she? Who’s telling the truth?

In 1819 Wroe became ill with a fever and two doctors who attended him considered his life was in serious danger. Wroe asked for a minister to come and pray with him. Although his wife sent for four church ministers, each refused his request. Wroe then asked his wife to read a few chapters of the Bible to him, and after a while, he gradually recovered his bodily health, but his mental distress continued and he "wrestled with God" day and night for some months. [ citation needed] In the 1820s, Prophet John Wroe settled his Christian Israelite church in Lancashire, England, where he and his followers awaited the end of the world. And when God told Wroe to find “comfort and succour” with seven virgins, his followers supplied him their daughters. This is the story of those seven young women—faithful, cynical, canny, and desperate—and their charismatic leader, as they move headlong toward the historic trial that brings their household to its dramatic end.A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact. Cast: Minnie Driver as Leah; Jonathan Pryce as John Wroe; Lia Williams as Joanna; Kerry Fox as Hannah; Kathy Burke as Martha; Moya Brady as Dinah; Catherine Kelly as Rachel; Ruth Kelly as Rebekah; Freddie Jones as Tobias; Nicholas Woodeson as Moses; Stefan Escreet as Samuel Walker Wroe was born, on 19 September 1782, in the village of East Bowling, near Bradford, West Yorkshire to a worsted manufacturer and farmer, and baptised in the town. [1] After a rather scanty education, he entered his father's business, but later took a farm. He married and brought up a family of seven children. [ citation needed]