Word: verena
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...generous fee, the Tarrants--a pair of 19th-century Cantabrigians with looks and behavior that seem more rodent-like than human-hand Verena's education, upbringing, and welfare over to Olive. She spirits the girl away to Beacon Hill, and away from all the distractions that could affect an impressionable young woman of that age. Olive's fear for Verena's "impurity" is a fear of everything outside the narrow Suffragist circle of dedicated ladies and genteel performs...
This sets up the ongoing conflict of the story: the fight-unto-death for the affections, body and soul of Verena between the two listeners. Olive Chancellor (Vanessa Redgrave) and Basil Ransom (Christopher Reeve...
...ECCENTRIC woman of Brahmin origins, Olive has elevated suffragism to the level of a personal cult. Olive and Basil become enthralled by Verena, an earnest, sweet-looking, if not quite articulate enough character to make plausible her subsequent fame as an orator...
Olive wants nothing less for Verena than an airtight existence as her personal protege and possession. For a time, things work out: Verena is genuinely fond of her mentor, discloses her every thought and act, and shows promise as the darling of the East Coast parlour circuit as she delivers feminist addresses to fashionable audiences...
Basil Ransom remains equally taken with Verena. Beyond her fiery, teary feminist rhetoric, Ransom finds in her all he wants in a wife. While the girl is intrigued by the handsome stranger, and enjoys flirting as much as prosletyzing. Basil's intrusions into the idyll fill Olive--his distant cousin, it turns out--with morbid jealousy. The crossfire of affection, jealousy, and sheer emotional blackmail swirling around Verena intensifies, as Basil follows the women to the Vineyard, insistent that she allow him to replace Olive, the cause, and just about everything else in her life...