” …. to give way to them is to conform to rules set down by the evil-minded … It would be a mistake for you to give life to the story by taking notice of it …” Ross to Jinny, Bk 1, Chapter 14, p 118 in Sourcebook ed
Ross (Robin Ellis) takes Demelza (Angharad Rees) to her first assembly ball (one of several climactic moments in Demelza, From Season 1, Part 6)
Dear Friends and readers,
Over the past three weeks, I’ve been rereading Demelza in the recent beautiful edition published by Source books. They are apparently going to publish as many of the Poldark novels as sales allow. The covers are not appropriate: the first turns Ross Poldark into a saga of the US west, complete with cowboy and wooden house; the second, Demelza, is a bit better with a romance heroine overlooking a cliff and sea, but the landscape is generic green grass, not Cornwall at all.
For a new fresh outline of the plot, see comment.
Rereading Ross Poldark and now Demelza I’m very aware of one important technique in these books. Not a lot happens in any given volume. They move very slowly. I had thought events that occur in Demelza occur in Ross Poldark but no, much less occurs than I thought. Graham will spend say 5 chapters slowly delineating the early growing love and interbonding of Ross and Demelza after marriage, then take them to Trenwith for Christmas as the conclusion of his book. That’s all that happens. So this leaves enormous amounts of time and space for the delineation of character, for dialogue and for just the right amount of tactful references to history. Then when we do have an action sequence or political (recuring someone, an election) or economic (a meeting of men to debate whether to open a mine, where to bank) it’s deeply embedded in a gradual reality. The books do not feel forced or contrived.
I’m almost finished with this novel, the 2nd of the Poldark books. When I’ve done, I’ll probably go on to The Loving Cup, the 10th novel (the 9th is The Miller’s Dance).
This second reading of Demelza has show me why Graham entitled it Demelza. Although it’s not written strictly from her consciousnessness nor does her POV dominate the book — it is again as most of his book, a third person omniscient narrative using free indirect discourse — she is the central linchpin of the book; it’s her activities or deeds that shape the plot-design and what happens to her its climaxes. In the case of Ross Poldark my students though the education of Demelza Carne in that novel resembled that of Cartherine Morland, but there she did not enter the wide world, only a new upper class family in which she had been educated from age 13. Now she must deal with wider politics in several realms.
When I reread Ross Poldark I discovered it’s a slow moving, slowly building novel with no much happening in any particular sequence of chapters. There may be a sudden swift climactic action, but it comes at the end of a slow buildup, and after it we have aftermath and new slow gradualism The texts of the chapters unfold out of the characters. Here’s an outline.
1) Demelza opens with the birth of her child, Julia, and all that swirls around that (the midwife is much more capable than any doctor), and then two christenings, one in which the upper class characters & Ross’s family are invited, and the next day the lower class ones & Demelza’s: as dramatized this makes her the central diptych for she brings these people together, plus her father and stepmother and brothers show up on the wrong day.
Demelza at christening among the ladies
On the second day Keren, the strolling actress is introduced and Mark Daniels who came to this second christening is mesmerized, enthralled and persuades her to marry him.
Audience
The disaster of their union is played out in this book: she creates a liasion between herself and Dr Dwight Enys and Mark in crazed hurt, murders her. There is a contrast between Keren and Demelza and Demelza tries to reach Keren to accept the man she married; but Keren of course has married a far poorer, uneducated man.
Demelza talking to Keren
So the Martin-Keren debacle comes out of, is tied to the christening, and also Ross’s need for a surgeon for his new mine and his giving Dwight the gatehouse near the mine, just at the edge of his property and near Mark’s dwelling. And Keren’s story is the under darker side of such a choice as Demelza’s: the woman’s fate is that of her husband; in this book this seems inescapable.
2) The second phase or series of actions of the novel begins after the christening, with Demelza going to Falmouth, to make contact with Captain Blamey in order to foster and engineer a renewed love affair for the sad (Demelza thinks) Verity. At first Blamey is hostile, and when Blamey is brought together with Verity through Demelza’s machinations — a trip to Truro where Blamey and Demelza agree to meet in a shop (in fact they meet in the street because his nerve faltered). Then she is intensely reluctant and moves away; they are caught up in a strike, half-riot so Demelza loses sight of them but by the end Verity has been brought to acknowledge she still wants to marry Blamey, to have another identity and role in the world than sister, aunt.
Verity facing Blamey, admits to desire for her own life
By the end of the novel Verity has run away and desperate as Francis is for funds, when Warleggan comes to bribe him with a gift of 1200 pounds (forgiving one debt and cash for the other) Francis truly thinking that Ross had been go-between again, betrayed Ross by telling Warleggan the names of the men in Ross’s new company. Warleggan could then put the screws on them — loans are called in, property reclaimed — and destroy Ross’s company. It was Francis’s information that allowed this. Francis is frantic to keep believing this and then at the close Demelza coming over to tell it was she, precipates his rage — against himself too.
Ross facing ruin
So Demelza’s second and (to Ross and the Poldark family) disloyal act and loyalty to her gender and sister-friend by a train of events destroys Ross’s company. His intense business for a year is useless and he is thrown back on farming. He refuses still to sell his shares to Warleggan and takes out a new loan to pay through Pearce — refusing to bend to the monopoly. It is his choice to do this (which will lead to smuggling in the next book), but it was Demelza’s interference interacting with the family that inadvertently led to the failure.
Family and business, politics and gender are utterly intertwined in the world.
3) The high point of the novel visually and dramatically is the assembly ball they go to with again Demelza at center, this time as dancing lady. Ross does not want to go because just before he and Dwight had brought Jim Carter out of a prison he had been moved to and he had died.
Ross is incensed at his class and his world. Later, after the ball he again disobeys the law by helping Mark Daniel to escape the law when he murders his adulterous wife, Karen.
He exposes Sanson, a nephew of the Warleggans. At that ball Francis sees Blamey and again Blamey tries to conciliate and again Francis won’t. So there is nothing for it but Verity must run away or give up her life to Francis’s prejudices and needs.
At the ball too Demelza’s inability to cope with upper class abrasive males and sneering females leaves her vulnerable:
Meeting Hugh Bodrugan and his stepmother Connie
Sneered at by Lady Teague who asks where her father is, Demelza says “truth is he’s far more particular about the company he keeps nowadays …”
It’s too much for her as a non upper class woman with no high self-esteem and background of training to cope. The cost registered in her face:
A parallel in Francis’s (here insulted by Margaret, the prostitute who has now married); Francis learns Demelza is a soul-mate for him:
Ross apologizes later on for deserting her and she forgives. (A repeat of this will happen in London in Stranger from the Sea, whereby she does not again go into high class society.
4) Finally another decision of hers, to be a nurse to Francis, Elizabeth and Geoffrey Charles, partly because she feels she took from them Verity leads to her sickness, the death of Julia, Ross’s despair and then identifying with the working classes utterly and leading the high conflagration food riot at the end of the book.
Demelza come to nurse Francis
Their baby, Julia, ill
A sub or the secondary plot-design of the novel dramatizes Ross’s perpetual kicking against the laws and customs of his world directly while Demelza works against them indirectly — both are pro-friend, pro-decency, and if family members will let them by not insisting on amoral behavior on their part, pro-family. This is by the end seen to be attached to his male friendships and companions whom he is loyal to: lower class, Jim and Mark, then upper for bank loans, and then at the end Captain MacNeil who warns him he must not get caught disobeying the law nor push it too far. MacNeil chases down smugglers on the beach and at the same time, Mark Daniels so knows Ross has been instrumental in freeing Mark.
Ross amid the people, helping them
Captain MacNeil, acting for the state
MacNeil and Ross identify as ex-soldiers who both fought in North America, but their allegiance is in the one case to the state and law (MacNeil); in the other, to friends, love, family, principles (Ross).
Ellen
Ellen And Jim Have A Blog, Two 
Here is a plot-summary of the book. I only occasionally mention the filmic equivalent (Parts 5-8 of the first mini-series 1975-75):
The third reading of Demelza has show me why Graham entitled it Demelza. Although it’s not written strictly from her consciousness nor does her POV dominate the book — it is again as most of his book, a third person omniscient narrative using free indirect discourse — she is the central linchpin of the book; it’s her activities or deeds that shape the plot-design and what happens to her its climaxes.
When I reread Ross Poldark I discovered it’s a slow moving, slowly building novel with no much happening in any particular sequence of chapters. There may be a sudden swift climactic action, but it comes at the end of a slow buildup, and after it we have aftermath and new slow gradualism The texts of the chapters unfold out of the characters. Here’s an outline:
The years are 1788-89. I notice how much shorter the chapters are than I had thought.
Book 1, p 1: May 1788
Chapter 1 & 2: it opens in May 1788 with the birth of Julia (they were married June 1787), and all that swirls around that — including the discussion and how Demelza sees how Verity’s life is empty
Chapters 3 & 4 & 5: then two christenings, the first and then introduction of Enys and the scheme for opening an independent mine (Pascoe), again Blamey and second Christening one in which the upper class characters & Ross’s family are invited, and the next day the lower class ones & Demelza’s: as dramatized this makes her the central diptych for she brings these people together, plus her father and stepmother and brothers show up on the wrong day.
During this second christening (much happier because so much more natural), Keren, the strolling actress and her company are to be there; she is introduced and Mark Daniels who came to this second christening is mesmerized, enthralled and persuades her to marry him.
(The disaster of their union is played out in this book: she creates a liaison between herself and Dr Dwight Enys and Mark in crazed hurt, murders her. So this series of events is tied to the christening, and also Ross’s need for a surgeon for his new mine and his giving Dwight the gatehouse near the mine, just at the edge of his property and near Mark’s dwelling.)
Chapter 6: The second phase or series of actions of the novel begins with Demelza going to Falmouth, making contact with Captain Blamey and fostering and engineering Verity’s renewed love affair. At first Blamey is hostile.
Chapter 7: Mark comes to Demelza for land to build his house and she helps.
Chapter 8: Mark builds the house, the near flight of Keren, the wedding and that night his exhaustion and their not having sex. It’s made a point of. She resents it.
Chapter 9: Ross’s attempts to enlist Francis and the various men to open Wheal Leisure
Chapter 10; Demelza waiting for Ross is visited by Blamey who does want to court Verity again and asks her; Ross comes home to tell her of his schemes to use Pascoe’s bank, enlist a group of men to open a business; the invitation to Warleggan has been refused; the deepening of their relationship in Ross’s mind (p. 88)
Chapter 11: In fact Ross goes to party, sees Enys there and much richer Margaret (who is sarcastic to Ross); intertwining of movements in Blamey with Keren come to ask for a promotion for Mark and Demelza taking Verity to Truro to meet Blamey; a food riot developing from starving
Chapter 12: The intertwining of the riot with Verity and Demelza in town and Blamey helping them to escape. When Blamey is brought together with Verity through Demelza’s machinations — a trip to Truro where Blamey and Demelza agree to meet in a shop (in fact they meet in the street because his nerve faltered). Then she is intensely reluctant and moves away; they are caught up in a strike, half-riot so Demelza loses sight of them but by the end Verity has been brought to acknowledge she still wants to marry Blamey, to have another identity and role in the world than sister, aunt.
Chapter 13: Ross throws Jud and Prudie out when he encounters rumors spread that he has fathered Jinny’s child; at Trenwith Verity now home, Elizabeth turns up trumps when Francis comes back now made broke by loss of confidence from strike. Endss on Verity at window with her beating heart, waiting for Blamey, cares nothing for brother and sister-in-law’s trouble in comparison. Elizabeth ever the passive support. Gimletts brought in and mentioned ever after but no characterization for real.
Chapter 14: Ross and Demelza discuss the Paynters leaving and Demelza says this is unfair to Prudie; Ross that Mark has an unstable wife (and so cannot be trusted, under pressure) so he has to turn to Zacky Martin to be his silent agent at the next meeting. How Keren uses a broken ankle to get into Enys’s house; she’ll do anything for him
Chapter 15: Francis closes Grambler November 12, 1788: a remarkable full eloquent scene
Book 2: April 3, 1789, p 126
Chapter 1: Whole chapter given over to ticketing for Carnmore Mining Company with Zacky Martin as agent; they succeed in buying; the company is floated with Pascoe’s money; the strike for corn has repercussions and they are moving prisoners as the prisons fill up — alas Jim Carter is just then reaching end of his term; Pascoe tells Ross of rumors about Verity.
Chapter 2: Ross talks with Verity about situation at Trenwith; Elizabeth patient but no understanding of Francis. Ross home sees Demelza playing as “a thread of silver into the spring” — an invitation to an Assembly and Ball put on by Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall and she wants to go so he accedes.
Chapter 3: At home with Keren and Mark; she visits Enys once again; he says they must stop but does not throw her out; she must not criticize Daniels for not being other than they are; she stays to help with his work and leaves.
Chapter 4: The Warleggans to hold a party just before; Ross in Truro buys lovely objects for Demelza to wear. Ross’s breaking into prison with Enys and bringing the desperately ill Jim Carter out of prison, he hallucinating the place was vile
Chapter 5: Ross and Enys’s attempt to save Jim by amputation; Mark visits Demelza, cannot give him help for real; she knows Keren is “carrying on” with someone.
Chapter 6: Ross and Verity again; he confides: that Jim is dead; he very bitter over this. Verity and Demelza and Ross at Nampara: the bitterness of Ross’s loss; Verity tells him he is unwise not to go to ball and assembly.
Chapter 7: The Warleggan ball: Ross goes, the Teagues there; Demelza dressing; George Warleggan making points with Elizabeth.
Chapters 8 – 10: The Assembly ball and Demelza’s problems coping with abrasive men. The card tables and Verity has to refuse to run off with Blamey (angering him); how Ross does not help Demelza with the men accosting her at first and finally comes over to take his place by her side as her husband.
Chapter 11: The gambling scene with Sanson and Ross’s final dunking: note Sanson was able to fool Francis and fleece Francis for 600. That money will set another train of evil betraying events a foot. How things are linked (as in Trollope).
Chapter 12: The goodbyes after the festivity. The Warleggans’ resentment on behalf of Sanson. Elizabeth and Francis go off separately home to Trenwith; Ross and Demelza’s conversation on the way to their home; some understanding in both of them: she how easy the bitter words, how hard the kind ones; back to Julia.
Summary of this marvelous set piece: The high point of the novel visually and dramatically is the assembly ball they go to with again Demelza at center, this time as dancing lady. Ross does not want to go because just before he and Dwight had brought Jim Carter out of a prison he had been moved to and he had died. Ross is incensed at his class and his world
He exposes Sanson, a nephew of the Warleggans. At that ball Francis sees Blamey and again Blamey tries to conciliate and again Francis won’t. So there is nothing for it but Verity must run away or give up her life to Francis’s prejudices and needs.
At the ball too Demelza’s inability to cope with upper class abrasive males leaves her vulnerable; Ross apologizes later on for deserting her and she forgives. (A repeat of this will happen in London in Angry Tide (where a duel ensues) and Stranger from the Sea, after which whereby she does not again travel with Ross away from Cornwall or go into high class society for a long time (not until Twisted Sword, Novel 11 — trip to Paris). It’s too much for her as a non upper-class woman with no high self-esteem and background of training to cope. This is good insight. Class gives a woman a weapon against abusive males.
Chapter 13: Keren comes to Enys and he can no longer resist: “then take” she says. Actually liaison starts late in the book and it is found out quickly.
Chapter 14: May 2, 1789: the Warleggans, Cary, Nicholas and George: vowing revenge but also showing the means through squeezing interlopes out once they know who they are. Warleggan could then put the screws on Ross and his Carnmore Copper Company — loans will be called in, property reclaimed — and destroy Ross’s company
Book 3:
Chapter 1: Verity’s escape: the child wants her to read to him; she slips away; comic scene of Jud in church contains real protest against the hypocrisies of these ceremonies
Chapter 2: Home to discover Verity’s note; Francis’s rage and blaming Ross, Elizabeth’s demurral (you have no proof, could have been Demelza); George Warleggan turns up to gift Geoffrey Charles, woo Elizabeth and successfully pressure and bribe Francis into telling.
Warleggan comes to bribe him with a gift of 1200 pounds (forgiving one debt and cash for the other) Francis truly thinking that Ross had been gobetween again, betrayed Ross by telling Warleggan the names of the men in Ross’s new company. . It was Francis’s information that allowed this. Francis is frantic to keep believing this and then at the close Demelza coming over to tell it was she, precipates his rage — against himself too
Chapter 3 Andrew and Verity home together to joy at last
Chapter 4: Mark home early (how he is respected by young boy and fellows); goes to Enys’s house and views sex; comes back, Keren arrives; he confronts her and he murders her. Poignant imagery about her
Chapter 5: Ross’s dreams of smelting, wakened by found body of Keren; Enys’s guilt in visit; Ross to Daniels to offer Paul his boat for Mark’s getaway but no one must know (Vigus mentioned)
Chapter 6: Nampara: Elizabeth’s note that Verity gone, implying Ross knows; Enys’s desperate visit to Demelza seeking solace, validation; Ross brings in Mark and Paul
Chapter 7: Near confrontation: Mark wants to kill Enys; a trap he says; not so, Ross helps Mark hide, the coming of McNeil; don’t underestimate McNeil Ross tells Demelza
Chapter 8: powerful scene of escape through tide: “Heavy windless rain set in as night fell” So a second disobedience to law by helping Mark Daniel to escape the law when he murders his adulterous wife, Karen.
Chapter 9: McNeil and Ross’s dialogue with McNeil’s friendly warning; Ross to Sir John Trevaunce to sound him out, gets nowhere, Trevaunce inveighing against “that man Fox”
Chapter 10: Demelza’s conscience leads her to go confess to Francis who throws her out; all Ross’s partners desert him as they get their letters calling in loans, forced to pay up, and it comes to him the only one not there who knew was Francis (name not mentioned)
Chapter 11: Ross home and bitter with loss; Demelza confesses; he goes cold with rage at her betrayal; he does not want to hurt her (“you’ll get cold”); what has she done, she tries to sleep (scene of estrangement in bed) and he does not even try
Book 4: Christmas Eve 1789
Chapter 1: Verity’s letter to Demelza: her happiness and gratitude, now has the life to live she wanted to and could. Family and business, politics and gender are utterly intertwined in the world — seen in Forgotten Story and Cordelia (the mysteries are far more fantastic romance than the historical novels). Demelza did it.
Chapter 2: a bleak Christmas — I love this chapter, for still we have the carols; he comes back from going over books, ending company the two struggling through to be decent to one another; visit to Sir Hugh Bodrugan, he will not ask for loan; he will see Pascoe.
Chapter 3: The desperate illness at Trenwith brings Choake and then Enys; Ross’s meeting with Tonkin and then George’s offer to buy him out at inn; narrator insists on spite as strong motive in George. So Demelza’s (to Ross and the Poldark family) loyalty to her gender and sister-friend by a train of events destroys Ross’s company
Chapter 4: News of illness at Trenwith: another decision of hers, to be a nurse to Francis, Elizabeth and Geoffrey Charles, partly because she feels she took from them Verity — this will lead to her sickness, the death of Julia. This is interwoven with Ross and Sir John, Ross and Pascoe where Ross will not sell his mine. So Ross’s despair and then identifying with the working classes utterly and leading the high conflagration food riot at the end of the book.
Chapter 5 Ross to Pearces. In book Pearce lives with his sister; Pearce will arrange 1000 pound loan if he can; home to Demelza who tells Ross where she’s been and what done
His intense business for a year is useless and he is thrown back on farming. He refuses still to sell his shares to Warleggan and takes out a new loan to pay through Pearce — refusing to bend to the monopoly. It is his choice to do this (which will lead to smuggling in the next book), but it was Demelza’s interference interacting with the family that inadvertently led to the failure.
Chapter 6: New Year’s Day, 1790, a gale, snow flurries, Demelza takes to her bed; Enys: both wife and daughter have it
Chapter 7: Northerly gale for another 3 days: Demelza’s nightmares; her father’s crazed religion about being saved; let him die in the mud says Ross; memories of Keren and Mark, calls to her dog, “He takes things so much to heart, Verity had said” (of Ross); choaking someone’s hand there (Enys). The cold, the thaw, the weather, Demelza wakes and Ross lies to her that she can see Julia in morning; Julia has died
Chapter 8: The burial of the child; Ross’s rage; Julia will be lonely in the cold, she hated wind. Now deep in Ross’s mind (as we went back and forth between them just before and after marriage in first book); the wreck reported, how he rouses the people, Grambler miners to come, Jud that Jud never saw Ross looking so much like his father
Chapter 9: A scene Ross remembered for years afterwards: the men on the beach, women taking needed food; he gets inside ship and sees hopelessness (Sanson’s body) the fires, the wreck happening, and more men streaming on. Rose’s mind half-crazed
Chapter 10: Drunken fights and mayhem on the beach; men of ship come and Ross there invites them back to his house although his wife has been sick. Ross: “much in the world is monstrous”.
Chapter 11: Morning after; tranquil now: he had planned so much for Julia; normative life returning to him; she so thin and weak; he takes her to window to look out, she asks that he let her stay in the sun a little while longer
Ellen