Character Showcase - Mrs. Henrietta Fielding

Mrs. Henrietta Fielding has struggled alone to bring up her son since he was four years-old. She is a stern woman with a cold manner and an undisguised hatred for the male sex. Which is unfortunate for her son, Evander, who takes the brunt of her wrath and disgust simply for being born a boy and now being the only surviving man in the house. She claims her lectures, criticisms and dire warnings are all for his own good. But he tends to think she just wants to make his life miserable.

Mother and son have lived in the same house all his life, but they might as well be strangers who were forced into shared accommodation. At least, that is how her son sees it. He cannot wait to get away and takes the first opportunity he finds to flee her house in the Oxfordshire village of Tender Tumblety.

Mrs. Fielding raised her son with a firm, strict hand, hoping to steer him out of the path of tragedy and “strumpets”, but she almost seems resigned to the fact that he will get himself into trouble and embarrass her – just as his father did. She can barely stand to look at her son or talk to him directly. He reminds her too much, perhaps, of Mr. Fielding.  She is as distrustful of the outside world as she is of men in general, and never ventures beyond Tender Tumblety. Once a week she has sherry with the vicar -- probably to enlighten him on what the topic of his next sermon should be. Her only other social engagement is held every Wednesday afternoon, when the other widows of Tender Tumblety converge upon her front parlor for tea, crochet and gossip. Her son refers to these sessions as “web-spinning”.  He is not welcome to join the gathering of black spiders, even if he wanted to. Sometimes he sees them clustered in corners around the village -- an unofficial association, of which his mother appears to be the leader, and whose purpose can only be dark.

Ever since her son was a boy, he remembers watching her make herbal potions in the kitchen and then passing them on to village women, who came furtively to her back door. As a grown man, he has formed his own conclusions about the purpose of her potions, but he keeps it to himself, unable to confront his mother about anything. He has also come to a suspicion about the number of merry widows there are in Tender Tumblety and the part his mother might have played in raising it to such an unusual level.

Again, it’s not something he would ever discuss with his mother. Nobody in Tender Tumblety  would dare.

But if Henrietta Fielding truly despises and despairs of her son so very much, why is she not happy when he leaves her home for good at last, to set up his medical practice in Yorkshire? Why would she try to dissuade him from getting as far away from her as he can?

And can Evander trust those strange childhood memories that have suddenly begun to haunt him – images of his mother committing murder with her own hands? It’s been thirty years since his father’s fatal accident, but the dead, like Evander Fielding's memories, are no longer content to slumber in the grave.

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Learn more about the Fieldings and Henrietta’s secrets on July 5^th, in A LOVELINESS OF LADYBIRDS.

(Image used here: "A Widow's Mite" by John Everett Millais 1870)