Sunset Song
Malena Bower
The central character is a young woman, Chris Guthrie, growing up in a farming family in the fictional parish of Kinraddie in the Mearns at the start of the 20th century. Life is hard, and her family is dysfunctional.
Chris Guthrie's mother, broken by repeated childbirths and learning she is again pregnant, kills her baby twins and herself. Two younger children go to live with their aunt and uncle in Aberdeen, leaving Chris, her older brother Will, and her father to run the farm on their own. Will and his father have a stormy relationship; and Will emigrates to Argentina with his young bride, Mollie Douglas. Chris is left to do all the work around the house. Soon after this, her father suffers a stroke, leaving him bedridden. For a time, he tries to persuade her to commit incest with him; but, as he is badly hurt, he is not able to force her. He dies shortly afterwards. At his funeral, Chris realises what happened to her father and breaks down in tears as she never knew the hardship he has endured for them.
Chris, who has had some education, considers leaving for a job as a teacher in the towns, but realises she loves the land and cannot leave it. Instead, she marries a young farmer called Ewan Tavendale and carries on farming. For a time, they are happily married, and they have a son, whom they also call Ewan. However, when World War I breaks out, Ewan Sr. and many other young men join up. When he comes home on leave, he treats Chris badly, evidently brutalised by his experiences in the army. Ewan dies in the war; and Chris subsequently hears from Chae Strachan, who is home on leave, that Ewan was shot as a deserter but that he died thinking of her. She begins a relationship with the new minister, and she watches as he dedicates the War Memorial at the Standing Stones above her home. The Sun sets to the Flowers of the Forest, bringing an end to their way of life, forever.
The novel touches on several issues; the distinctive, not always positive character, of small rural communities in the North East of Scotland, the role of women, and the "peasant crisis" i.e. the coming of modernisation to traditional farming communities.[1] The theme of the onset of modernisation and the end of old ways is explored using many symbols, for example, violent deaths of horses (supposed to represent old, traditional farming methods) and the appearance of motorised cars representing new technologies which brush the people of the land from the road. The author also has some political opinions reflected in the characters of Chae Strachan, the Socialist, and Long Rob, the pacifist, and he shows how they react to the coming of the war. The dilemma Chris faces over whether to continue her education or commit to a life in the land is also featured. The title of the novel is a direct reference to the theme of the sunset of the old ways and traditions. By some readings Chris is "Chris Caledonia", an allegorical figure for Scotland itself.[2][1]
When it was first published, some readers were shocked by its realistic treatment of sex and childbirth, and its sometimes negative portrayals of family life. Some wondered if it had been written by a woman using a male pseudonym.[2][1]
There are also a number of adaptations for the stage. The adaptation by Alastair Cording was produced by Aberdeen Performing Arts at His Majesty's Theatre under the direction of Kenny Ireland in 2008. It was staged again on the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2010.[3] An adaptation by Morna Young was staged at Dundee Rep and the Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh under the direction of Finn den Hertog, between April and June 2024. [4]
Jack Webster, the Scottish writer and journalist, wrote a play based on the novel and Lewis Grassic Gibbon's life which toured Scotland in 2008. The novel was also the inspiration for the Richard Thompson song "Poor Ditching Boy" on his 1972 album Henry the Human Fly.[5]
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'Sunset song' is a 1932 novel by Lewis Grassic Gibbon set in the rural north east of Scotland, specifically Kinraddie a fictionalised version of the Mearns in Kincardineshire where the author grew up. The novel tells the story of a young woman Chris Guthrie who is 15 at the start of 'Sunset Song' and 24 at the end. We follow Chris through late adolescence, love, marriage, childbirth and widowhood over the course of the novel. It is set in the early 20th century when the outside world in the shape of the First World War and technological change is beginning to impact on the hitherto isolated world of Kinraddie.
In the novel Gibbon uses the rhythms and cadences of Doric, the north east Scots language to capture the land and people of Kincardineshire and in doing so helped create a new tradition of Scottish writing quite distinct from the English novel.
'Below and around where Chris Guthrie lay the June moors whispered and shook their cloaks, yellow with broom and powdered faintly with purple, that was the heather but not the full passion of its colour yet'. This sentence introduces us to Chris Guthrie a young woman marvelling at and at one with the natural world around her. Through Chris we learn about the people and land of the Mearns but also discover Chris herself as we see her change and develop over the course of the novel.
One side is the intellectual Chris that excels at school, is a voracious reader and wants to be a teacher, the other Chris is her more spiritual, emotional side that is at one with the land and the people of the Mearns
This dilemma between heart and head as well as home and the wider world is a fictionalised version of struggles that lay at the centre of Lewis Grassic Gibbon's life and that inspired much of his writing including 'Sunset Song'. Gibbon left the Mearns at the age of 16 to become a journalist in Aberdeen (a choice that would not been so easy for a girl to make at the time) and would visit but never live in the Mearns again. His childhood home though had a strong and increasing hold on his imagination and through the character of Chris he explores the world and life he left behind. The novel is also a tribute to the women of the rural north east. Gibbon was born James Leslie Mitchell but he chose to publish 'Sunset Song' under the pen name Lewis Grassic Gibbon which is a variant of the name of his maternal grandmother Lilias Grassick Gibbon.
Leslie Mitchell recognised this fact about his native country in the early 1930s. Ninety years on so many Scots still find it difficult to face up to these insights in our favourite novel, Sunset Song.
When I lived in Greater London I passed the cut off for Welwyn Garden City more than once, not knowing that Lewis Grassic had lived and wrote there. Amazing, I wish I had turned off to explore.
As for the cruelty I always took it that the hard life on the land had bred a cruel, unforgiving streak in some of the inhabitants.
Give my regards to the Sun in Lemsford if your feet take you that way. I confess I regret the building of the golf course on the Brocket estate, I confess it was on occasion, my delight on a moon lit night in the season of the year.
That reads to me like supine capitulation to globalism and the faux internationalism of Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter and Google etc all of which assertively, aggressively express the psyche of America and English language hegemony.
Being born in a country, Iraq, where that psyche let (destructively) rip, I am disinclined to yield to its ingratiating influence. Writing as a late teen, multilingual cosmopolitan, I would advise Scots to do likewise.
Mitchel was a socialist, a communist even. The garden city movement has complex origins but a good part of them are in the idealism of the cooperative and Arts and Crafts movements and the developing traditions of the trade Union movement. Welwyn Garden City had an active communist party branch and a relatively skilled and well organised work force drawn from working class communities right across the UK as well as strong non conformist and artistic communities.
How could anyone read sunset song and talk about the brutality of john guthrie, a tenant farmer without mentioning the brutality of the tenure he existed under?
He was evicted from his farm for daring to speak back to the lairds wife after his cart met her car on the road.
He lived with no rights whatsoever, as all tenant farmers did, and woe betide the man who failed to doff his cap. This has had a massive negative effect not only on farmers but also their workers who depended on them.
John Guthrie was evicted from a relatively good farm and had to move to a much poorer farm at the very time his families needs were increasing sharply. His mental health and of his wife would have taken a big knock.
Being evicted from your home is probably the most brutalising experience you can experience short of actual violence, and a very costly experience too.
Scottish farmers are still subject to this barbaric behaviour in 2022, as shown on front page of the scottish farmer last week
What surprised me though was how dogged the remaining agricultural labourers were and the efforts they made to keep up social networks. This spoke to me of deeply felt relationships with neighbours, kinfolk and the land. They loved the land. They had great pride in their work. They were determined to stay and stake out their claim even though they had no hope at all of ever owning a square inch of it.
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