Why a Booktrail?
Early 1860s: An injured arrives at the Miss Martha Farnsworth Seminary for Young Ladies.Just who is the beguiled?
The Beguiled
What you need to know before your trail
Wounded and near death, a young Union Army corporal is found in the woods of Virginia during the height of the Civil War and brought to the nearby Miss Martha Farnsworth Seminary for Young Ladies. Almost immediately he sets about beguiling the three women and five teenage girls stranded in this outpost of Southern gentility, eliciting their love and fear, pity and infatuation, and pitting them against one another in a bid for his freedom. But as the women are revealed for what they really are, a sense of ominous foreboding closes in on the soldier, and the question becomes: Just who is the beguiled?
Locations
Reset- America/ USA - Louisiana
- A: The Madewood Plantation House.
- America/USA Virginia - Fredericksburg
- B: Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park
- C: Fredericksburg Confederate Cemetery
- D: Kenmore Mansion
- E: Mary Washington House
Travel Guide
The Southern States – Virgina
Filmed at the The Madewood Plantation House in Louisiana, there is a real sense of southern spirt throughout the story. The girls school is a place of strict morality and haunting, ethereal girls who study there under the tutelage of the mistresses. The interiors were filmed inside actress Jennifer Coolidge’s home in New Orleans!
Mostly white, there is a black maid (who interestingly is not in the movie version)
The school remains shut of from the world, despite the ongoing Civil War which the girls are aware of, but not really concerned about, until the strange soldier arrives at their door. In the book it’s somewhere near Fredericksburg and it’s here where the booktrail should also take you to see the history and heritage of the area – Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park
The Civil War
When the soldier arrives, so to does the bloody history of the trauma and lasting effects of the war, the horror of the politics, the racism, the hot and humid emotions which bubble then rise to the surface.
The weather and atmosphere here as well as the school and the ongoing war is one of claustrophobia and stuffy, unrelenting trauma. There is no escape, both inside or out, the girls are repressed and the soldier awakens more than their sexuality and awareness. The school is awash with secrets, all the women dressed in white like ghosts trailing about the place keeping an eye on the dead.
Streetview Maps
A) Lousiana - The Plantatation House
D) Virginia - The Kenmoore Mansion House
Booktrailer Review
Susan: @thebooktrailer
An interesting book this one. It was good but not great and the pacing although should have been slow building was a bit too slow in the beginning. It’s quite a disturbing read in many ways – a solider arriving injured at a house in Virginia only to be tendered to by women who have no idea of the world outside. They at first feel threatened but it soon becomes clear that it might be him who should be afraid.
There are several girls who give their viewpoint of the events which unfold and I admit to getting a little confused over who was speaking although each chapter is signaled clearly. Sometimes it felt a little repetitive as one girl told the story of another in a different way. But on the whole, the tension, ghostly sequences ,sense of foreboding and danger runs throughout with only a few dips. There are some uncomfortable moments as some of these girls are under age and they are expose to so much.
The setting is what makes this book – a small plantation house with a mixed race woman, the house slave and white students in the middle of the Civil War and all that entails. The heat, the oppression, the sexuality and the sense of how on earth this is going to end kept me reading. And those frissons of excitement and the unknown, the mouse in a cage of cats, the mouse which fits back and then oh that ending. Definately a beguiling read in many respects!
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The Beguiled
Destination: Louisiana, Virginia, Frederiksburg Author/Guide: Thomas Cullinan Departure Time: 1860s
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