The Deliverance

The Deliverance: A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields is a novel by the American writer Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945), published in 1904. It was her first work to achieve broad commercial success and the third in a series depicting Virginia's social transformation from the Civil War to the early twentieth century, following The Voice of the People (1900) and The Battle-Ground (1902). Set in Virginia's tobacco-growing region, the novel centers on Christopher Blake, born into a long-wealthy planter family. After his father's early death, the estate is taken from the family by Fletcher, once the plantation's overseer, through underhanded means; the mansion changes hands, and the Blakes are forced to labor on their former property for others. Christopher, aged ten, gives up his schooling and works for years, supporting his blind mother and two sisters while concealing the family's decline—letting his mother believe the South won the war and that the family still lives at Blake Hall. Fifteen years of toil and humiliation harden his character until hatred of Fletcher is all that remains in his heart. He uses Fletcher's grandson Will to take revenge on his enemy, yet is drawn into deeper tragedy and guilt, and in the end bears the consequences in his own way. Meanwhile, his bond with Fletcher's granddaughter Maria Windham grows slowly amid class divisions and family feuds, pointing toward a reconciliation beyond hatred. Glasgow renders in realist style the postwar reordering of Southern class relations, the decline of the old gentry, and its "evasive idealism"; through Mrs. Blake's blindness and self-deception she also symbolizes the entire South's refusal of reality. This is the original English-language work, included in various collections of English literary classics.