Year of Wonders: Change

In her novel ‘Year of Wonders’ Brooks has addressed the theme of change; the ways in which one can change and why. Brooks character Elinor Mompellion observes the changes in the character Anna with admiration stating “I wonder if you know how much you have changed, it is perhaps the one good to come out of this terrible year”, as she sees the changes take place within Anna that are crucial to the explanation of Brooks’ theme. The changes which take place in Anna include the loss of her belief in god and religion and her subsequent reliance on medicine and science, a total change in her personality and values, and a change in her status in the society; the way people regard and react to her as a figure within the community. Through Anna’s character we can understand how and why characters change.
The starkest change which can be observed in Anna’s character is the alteration which her beliefs undergo from the beginning of the novel to the end. The conflict within Anna between her understanding of the world and her belief in God is linked to Brooks’ exploration of the conflict between Science and Religion and the way Anna alters her beliefs Anna to emerge from the plague with a skew towards the effects of nature rather than those of God. At the beginning of the the plague year, we are introduced to a young woman who states that she is of the puritan teachings, and indicates how she was taught to view the world in polarities of “light and dark”, expressed through imagery of shadow from trees flashing past. However as the novel progresses we can see an obvious transformation in her beliefs, from the young girl who memorized phrases of the bible and psalms and held the Mompellions in such high esteem, to a woman with a logical understanding of the world. Brooks explores religion through Anna and her philosophising throughout the novel and   death acts as a particularly crucial theme here, because it illicits a change within Anna. With the death of her sons, Anna begins...