The virgin and the gipsy

BY LAWRENCE

This work is settled in Papplewick, that is in the northern Enland, in a valley.

More exactly it is a village in the north of Nottingham , near Newstead Abbey.

The works presents a great contrast between the fixity of the Christian rectory and the pagan freedom from convention of the gipsy life.

The dominating carachter is that of the grandmother , an umpleasant and demanding presence, whose appetites for attention, food and power must be satisfied.

The disappearing of her erring daughter-in-law has given her the opportunity to reassert her power over the rector.

Another important carachter is aunt Cissie who is presented more fully and is the most immediate victim of the grandmother,having sacrified all her life to the old woman.

Cissie doesn't take care of her mother with love, infact she has negative feelings inside paricularly towards Yvette, who represents the youth and the possibility to choose, to decide about her future.

Then another carachter is rector Saywell, who is intellectual clever but emotionally confused: he has been left by his wife, whom he considered to be as pure as a flower? now his attitude towards his daugthers, and particularly towards Yvette is strongly influenced by this fact.

On one hand he is very lovely and indulgent but on the other hand he sees in Yvett something of her mother features and so he feels nervous and very confused.

This is the reason why when he discovers the Window Fund he gets angry: he sees in his daugther's action the same feeling of rebelion that She Was Cynthia felt.

Cynthia is presented from the first lines of the opera like a very beautiful woman , but she is also defined 'unrestrained' and this already reveals a deeper nature.