Details
Joan of the Tor is the most tragic character in the novel. In Chapter X, Delia Killigrew disappears from the text and is replaced in Chapter XI by Joan. She lives on a farm, presumably Temple Tor Farm, at Temple, a hamlet off the Launceston – Bodmin road on Bodmin Moor. She is first seen by Marvel, who had turned off the main road onto a side road, ploughing a moor field above him. This area of granite tors and marshy bottoms is drained by the Warleggan River, a tributary of the Fowey.
Joan speaks Cornish and English. The first words heard by Marvel are addressed to a team of oxen – ‘Comely Vean’. ‘Vean’ is the Late Cornish form of ‘byghan’ or little. A knowledge of Celtic is the one thing she has in common with Delia Killigrew, apart from her feelings for Jack Marvel. While Delia is rather a passive figure, reacting to what occurs around her, Joan is utterly self-reliant and self-directed. She is unafraid to confront the troopers who come in search of Marvel and can fight Cornish style as good as any man.
She has no religious or political views. The Reformation and the refusal of Cornish language by the Anglican Church had left her forbears without religion – a situation that will remain unchanged until the coming of John Wesley a hundred years in the future. When the wounded Marvel appears at her door, and appeals to her as a servant of the Church and Crown, she dismisses it with disdain. She protects him as she would a wounded animal.
It is Joan who rides to Boconnoc House to warn Hopton of the approaching Parliamentarians and to deliver the King’s letter, but not out of any commitment to a cause. Then for three months she nurses Marvel back to health, falling in love with him in the process. Yet she is too unsophisticated for Marvel, a child purely of nature, and when she realises that she can never compete with the sophisticated Delia Killigrew, she takes a bullet intended for Marvel and dies in his arms.
For all her unsophistication, Joan is the noblest and most selfless character in the novel, and even death holds no fear for her. As with many at that time, she is caught up in events she neither understands nor sympathises with. She pays for the folly and antagonisms of others with her life. The theme of wounded and tragic innocence is one that runs through Q’s novels, usually in relation to women or children.