McAsh is a Scottish miner
who works for Mr Jamisson. All miners are considered slaves, but with
a lawyer's help, he's free. He's tortured and he runs away to London
with the help of Lizzie, a rich friend of him. Jay Jamisson, son of
the owner of the mines, proposes to Lizzie, who has been all her life
very liberal. Robert, Jay's brother, gets enraged after that because
he was mend to marry her. They move to London, and McAsh and her meet
again. Their feelings toward each other start to develop. In the
meanwhile, the Jamissons try to destroy McAsh, who has started a
strike, and the only way to get him imprisoned it to turn his strike
into a riot. Lizzie discovers that she's pregnant and that her
husband has lied to her, so she helps McAsh so he isn't killed.
McAsh is deported to Virginia, where Lizzie and Jay are moving to.
There, he works as a slave, but it's treated kindly by Lizzie. Her
baby borns dead, and she closes herself to the world. One day, she
discovers that her husband has been cheating on her, and suddenly she
realizes that she's in love with McAsh. She runs away with the
ex-miner. They go into the unconquered country with him. Jay follows
them because his father has died and the only way to inherit some
money, it to have a child with Lizzie. He's about to murder her, when
some Indians kill Jay and save the couple. Finally, they build a
house there, where they are really free.
The story is set in the
18th century, and it deals with the Payment of Arles,
which was a law that compromised the life of a miner. A miner who had
work more than a year on a mine, was property of the owner of that
mine. Also, when McAsh, the protagonist of the story, moves to
London, he's in the center of the discontent of people with the high
prices and poor wages. He's the leader of those strikes. Also, on
those times, the only punishment was to be hang. Lucky people with
connections, where deported to America, where they'd be slaves.
Compared to nowadays, no one is property of other person. Everyone is
free, and working for someone for a year doesn't mean to become his
forever. Right now, with the crisis, we're having that problem with
high prices and low wages in a way, and people are going on strikes,
so that hasn't changed much, but I find quite shocking how justice
was applied to people. Hanging them is usual in the book. People went
to see who was going to be hung and why. And they watched it like it
was the television.
A part of the book that I
personally like is :
“Peg and Fish Boy were
rummaging through a sack looking for a saw, when Peg found the iron
collar. She pulled it out and stared at it quizzically at it. She
looked uncomprehendingly at the letters: she had never learned to
read. “Why did you bring this?” she said. Mack exchanged glances
with Lizzie. They were recalling the scene by the river in the old
High Glen, back in Scotland, when Lizzie had asked Mack the same
question. Now he gave Peg the same answer, but this time there was no
bitterness in his voice, only hop. “Never to forget”. He said
with a smile. “Never”. “
It's the last paragraph of
the book, and I find it really moving. That iron collar was put
around his neck to humiliate him in front of all the miners when he
was tortured. That sign of slavery hurt him and keeping it is brave.
It's braver to keep it and never forget it, than forget all the bad
things that had happened to him.
I don't have anything from
my life to connect with the story. I suppose I've felt like a “slave”
when I've been told what to do, but I think that's just a teenager
attitude. Still, I think you have to fight to get what you really
deserve.
