During the civil war and Cromwell’s rule, all the past certainties – the monarchy and the Church – had been repeatedly challenged and overturned. Charles II replaced Cromwell’s rigid puritanism with the more relaxed Anglicanism and his reign began the dynamic period known as the Restoration.

In 1658, only 7 years before the novel opens, Puritan statesmen Oliver Cromwell (who defeated King Charles I in the English Civil War and ruled as Lord Protector of the British Isles from 1653) died and Charles II, heir to the throne, returned from exile to rule England as King. The context of Year of Wonders is important to understand as it informs a lot of the division and instability in Eyam during the isolation and crisis of the plague (we explain in more detail why context is so important in Context and Authorial Intent in VCE English).

Year of Wonders belongs to the genre of historical fiction (meaning it is fictional but based on historical events) and aims to capture and present the historical context accurately. Our job while studying this text is to consider how all the different responses to an external crisis contribute to an analysis of human nature. The novel explores how crises affect human behaviour, beliefs and values and reveal the real character of a community under pressure. The novel illustrates that adversity can bring out the best and worst of people and that faith can be challenged and eroded. She explores the consequences of a catastrophe on an isolated, insular and deeply religious community and we see characters exhibit tireless dedication and heroism, or succumb to depression, exploitation and sometimes murderous depravity. The experience of the plague provides Brooks fertile ground to develop characters that illustrate the extremes of human nature displaying the dignity or depravity, self-sacrifice or self-interest that people are capable of when faced with terror, pain and the unknown. While the characters and events are fictional, author Geraldine Brooks based the novel on the true story of Eyam, whose inhabitants, at the urging of their vicar, courageously decided to quarantine themselves to restrict the spread of the contagion and protect other rural townships.

Year of Wonders is set in the small English village of Eyam in 1665, as the town struggles through a deadly outbreak of the bubonic plague. For a detailed guide on Text Response, check out our Ultimate Guide to VCE Text Response. However, Year of Wonders may also be studied in Area of Study 1 - Text Response. For a detailed guide on Comparative, check out our Ultimate Guide to VCE Comparative. Year of Wonders is usually studied in the Australian curriculum Area of Study 1 - Reading and Comparing.

A year of wonders