In Brief
For twenty years Anna Bouverie, as a priest's wife (£9000 a year and a redbrick rectory that looked like a bus shelter) had served God and the parish in a diversity of ways. She had organised the deanery suppers, made cakes for the Brownies' Easter Cake Bake, delivered parish magazines, washed and ironed her husband's surplices (not altogether perfectly according to Miss Dunstable), grown her own vegetables and clothed herself and her children in left-over jumble-sale items.

When her husband failed to gain promotion to archdeacon and retreated into isolated bitterness, and the bullying of her younger daughter at the local comprehensive reached unendurable proportions, Anna suddenly rebelled. Taking a job in the local supermarket she earned money, a sense of her own worth, the shocked disapproval of the parish, and the despairing fury of her husband.

As her loneliness and isolation increased, three significant men observed her with enormous interest, each of whom was to play a part in the part-tragic, part-triumphant blossoming of Anna's life.

Inspiration
When asked where Joanna found such insight (without actually being a clergy wife) she replied, ‘the answer (maybe - one can never be certain about these influences) — is spending my young childhood, and then a lot of childhood and adolescent holidays, in the Cotswold rectory, where I was born. My grandfather was parish priest of Minchinhampton for 35 years and my grandmother, a fascinating, talented, and life-enhancing creature found the life of a country priest's wife extremely hard - and if she didn't actually say so, made it plain! So that may have been the seed of the novel. The rest has been adult observation of the price vocation extracts on those who love the person so consumed, and for this particular book many, many interviews with modern rector's wives. And I have to tell you, I didn't make anything up. Not even the lover...’

The Rector's Wife knocked Jeffrey Archer off the bestseller spot in 1991 but it was easier at that time, she says, "There wasn't nearly the same competition. Writing wasn't seen as a particularly sexy profession, as it is now. People were either reading arcane literary novels or airport blockbusters, and except for thrillers there was nothing in the middle ground of the traditional novel, which is where I think I am."

For Discussion
1.   When Peter was made curate in a northern suburb of Bristol, the vicar’s wife said: “Anna is such an appealing girl. I don’t know what it is, but it is more than it looks. It’s a kind of sparkle, and it would be a shame to extinguish it with duty.” (Page 30) But Anna reaches a point of isolation; she feels her only function is to be “relative to primary people”. She says, “I think I’m vanishing.” (Page 130)

• How did this begin? Discuss the way Anna’s role as wife and mother had to adapt to the expectations of parochial life.
  
  
• What do you think started Anna’s rebellion against her way of life? Was it simply Peter’s deep disappointment, his apathy toward their marriage and a desire to help Flora change her school? Why did Anna not tell Peter that Flora had a free place at St. Saviour’s?
  
  
• Despite Anna’s attempts to be compliant, the deanery supper makes her realise how impossible life is. She feels that “she had, to all intents and purposes, simply ceased to be.” (Page 157) Was Anna justified by this feeling and could she have done anything to redeem the situation?
  
  
• The Friends were “Anna’s first friends of significance” (Page 31) but it is Eleanor who plays a part in Anna’s rediscovery of herself. Read the passage on page 162 where Eleanor confides in Anna. What do you think it tells you about the two women?
  
  
• Anna realises with “a strange diffidence”(Page 161) that she will leave Peter and her lack of self-worth is compounded by the new parish group’s attempts to help her; “I’ve painted myself into a corner.” How far do you think this marks a turning point?
  
  
• Discuss the types of love that Anna attributes to Daniel, Patrick and Jonathon on page 197. How far do the two letters she has received — one from Patrick and one from Jonathon — portray what she means?
  
  
• As Anna’s love for Jonathon develops, so her newfound world starts to fall apart but she soon realises that “she has turned some kind of corner” (Page 233) and she realises what she must do. Make a note of each episode that leads to this final decision and discuss whether Anna’s decision is fair.
  
  
• Peter’s death marks a kind of serenity in Anna’s behaviour. Trace the way that Anna deals with Peter’s funeral through to her conversation with Peter at his grave. Look at how Anna deals with people - her family, the village, the men in her life and the women. Examine the choices that Anna makes about where she will live and how she finds a new job. All these factors are the blossoming of the new person who is no longer ‘the rector’s wife’. How does this person compare with the person you met at the beginning of the book?

  2.  “It’s the damned Church…Slammed doors, refusals, hierarchy, muddle, divisions, loneliness…socially it is a prison.”(Page 41) Anna’s outburst to Isobel is an emotional summary of a view of the life in the Church of England. Over the last twenty years significant social changes in the church may suggest that Joanna Trollope’s narrative of a marriage suffering under the weight of ecclesiastical vocation is a somewhat dated point of view. The ordination of women, the debate about gay and lesbian clergy and the introduction of Local Ministry Teams are just some of the ways that the Church has tried to introduce a broader perspective. However, an increase in options doesn't necessarily bring a change in basic attitudes.

• Anna says, “The small-mindedness of the Christian community when seen at close quarters…. beggars belief.” How fair do you think this is a fair assessment of parish life?
  
  
• Examine the way that the new Rector of Loxford and wife are very different to Anna and Peter. Is their attitude to parish life a more realistic view? What do you think of the parish group’s reaction to them?
  
  
• Other characters in the Church all offer their own viewpoint of church life. Look through the book and select three people who represent different elements of church life. Discuss the role they play and think about any people you may have met who are similar.
  
  
• It is common to confuse Church with God but Joanna Trollope cleverly makes sure that this is not the case. Daniel says, “We all need something different, we all hear different messages” (Page 172) Find different examples of this in the book and see how far they reflect Daniel’s comment.
  
  
• St. Saviour’s offers a different view of the church. Anna says that it is the “Same God” (Page 47) and to Flora the nuns appeared “like grey gulls, mysterious and soothing.” (Page 49) What do you think of Joanna Trollope portrayal of St. Saviour’s and St. Ignatia?

  3.  The book begins with an introduction to the members of the Bouverie family. It is a picture of family life and all the characters are there.

• Flora is a complicated child. She says, “I’m different…. I don’t know why, I just am.” (Page 77) In what way do you think Flora is different to more conventional children? Discuss how she copes with all the changes that happen to her. Flora asks awkward questions (Page 173). How much is her character used to highlight and emphasise important stages in the book?
  
  
• Luke and Charlotte are not impressed by their mother’s choice of work — but for different reasons. How would you describe Luke who is profoundly affected by the situation? How do you feel he copes and how do you think he has changed by the end of the story? Charlotte plays a smaller part in the book but would you say she is a typical teenage girl?
  
  
• Laura and Kitty each react differently but their characters have a quiet strength. Discuss their roles as mothers and grandmothers. Do you think they could have done any more than they did?

  4. The men in this story all play their part in the way that Anna discovers herself. They are significant because each man portrays a view that could be said, perhaps, to be typical.

• Peter’s growing bitterness and fear of loss of faith isolates him from Anna. He is deeply affected by his disappointment but do you think that this is the only thing that has changed him since he married Anna? He feels a complete failure but what do you feel about his belief that “Suffering is part of the spiritual progress” (Page 61)? Is Peter’s death necessary or could the book have ended differently and still given Anna her freedom?
  
  
• Daniel, Jonathon and Patrick are external characters in a way. Each one appears for the first time when Anna begins to rebel. What kind of men are they? How do they contrast to Peter and to what extent are they responsible for what happens?

  5.  “Reading Trollope's novels gives one the strong impression that she has her finger firmly on the pulse of contemporary Britain, indeed, a historian looking back to study the main social preoccupations of the 1980s and '90s and the early years of this century would learn a lot about how the power structure between men and women, and within the family, was changing during these years.” (Amanda Thursfield www.contemporarywriters.com/authors

• How true is this of The Rector’s Wife? See if you can gather together the various descriptions of Loxford village and see if they make a fair picture.
  
  
• Many of the village characters that appear in the book are classic. Are Colonel Richardson, his Marjorie and Mike Vinson, the electrician, ‘real’ people? Do you feel you could actually meet these people?
  
• The first paragraph of The Rector’s Wife opens with a familiar scene — waiting for the school bus. As Anna delivers her magazines village life unfolds, from the wealthy newcomers, through Elaine Dodswell to Mr Biddle. And then there is the parish group and the congregation — the deanery supper and then the induction service. To what extent do you think Joanna Trollope captures the different levels of village society?

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