The Thirteenth Tale

[diddl]

Anyone else see this?

I was only half watching.

Which twin did Vida save?

Or is the thing that we work it out ourselves?

If she did rescue Emmeline why did she give the baby away straight after the fire? She wouldn't have known then that Emmeline wouldn't have been able to care for the baby long term and up to that point Emmeline had been a good mother to him.

I really enjoyed it, but there seemed to be a lot of unanswered questions. As I understood it:

• the twins Adeline (bad one) and Emmaline (good one) were the product of incestuous relationship between Charlie and Isabelle Angelfield

• the Vanessa Redgrave character (Vida) was their half sister (father Charlie) who was adopted at a young age by the housekeeper and gardener, but kept secret (?)

• in the fire, Vida saved Emmaline's baby from being burned by a jealous Adeline by substituting a dummy and hiding baby in garden. In subsequent fire, Adeline dies because Vida can't open door to let her out (burns hand in process)

• Vida gives saved baby to baker's widow and he is brought up by her

• Vida 'becomes' Adeline (outsiders believe that there were only two of them anyway so no-one noticed??) her so that she can be Emmaline's twin as she had always wanted

What I don't understand :

• why was Vida kept a secret and left to forage in the garden?

• why did Vida give Emmaline's baby away, presumably letting Emmaline believe her baby had died in the fire?

• why did the governess character not know about Vida - the housekeeper and gardener must have been very good at hiding her ?? (Governess was shocked when she saw Vida and Emmaline playing when Adeline was locked up at the doc's, and thought Vida must be Adeline)

• why did the girls leave Charlie to rot in the garden, and why was he not ever found (though he might have been the bones found near the end).

ah yes and why didn't anyone discover a body after the fire

and

why was Emmaline (as an old woman) digging in the garden looking for bones?

we recorded this and have just watched it tonight. found it quite interesting but confusing and I have therefore just downloaded the book.

I am two chapters in an already gripped. already it is so much better than the tv version. I implore you all to read it

Wasn't the baby given away before the fire?

I think that Adeline survived and she was digging for Emmaline.

smudgy she was looking for her dead baby's bones i think. although obviously her baby wasnt dead but she didnt kjow that.

but the fact thay the elderly digging lady couldn't coherently be understood made me believe that she was adeline the crazy mute one amd that Emmeline died.

cany wait to read the rest of the book

why was Vida kept a secret and left to forage in the garden?
After Isabelle married Roland March and left Angelfield, Charlie went on a bit of "raping and pillaging" spree through the village. As the child was a product of a shameful event, she was hidden & abandoned by her mother. In the novel this is all explained in the Thirteenth Tale (called Cinderella's Child IIRC) that Vida gives to Margaret just before she dies.

why did Vida give Emmaline's baby away, presumably letting Emmaline believe her baby had died in the fire?
IMO, Vida gave the child away as it was Ambrose's baby. Vida wanted to be able to love Ambrose, and the child was a reminder that he seduced Emmeline after Vida had turned him down.

why did the governess character not know about Vida - the housekeeper and gardener must have been very good at hiding her ?? (Governess was shocked when she saw Vida and Emmaline playing when Adeline was locked up at the doc's, and thought Vida must be Adeline)
The house staff were adept at keeping secrets. Protecting the abandoned child was just one more.
I also wonder if they were concerned about Charlie's incestuous habits being applied to his daughters - they obviously all looked like Isabelle.

why did the girls leave Charlie to rot in the garden, and why was he not ever found (though he might have been the bones found near the end)
Only Vida knew about the hovel - she'd followed Charlie & Isabelle there and seen what they did there. She didn't have any feelings for him and probably thought it was best to leave him rot. She had more immediate things to concern herself about as she became the carer for the household.

I was really disappointed in the TV adaptation. So many themes were ignored to fit it into 90mins.
Margeret was basically reduced to a conduit for the story, with her background story from the novel completely changed. This made her role very different and almost inconsequential.

The ambiguity of the novel was part of it's joy - which sister was which at the end?! I wonder if Emmeline died in the fire. People may think that it was Adeline who perished because the mumbling shell of a women who survived was babbling and confused, but that doesn't mean she was Emmeline. In the novel, when the twins are split by the Dr and Hester, both become almost catatonic and revert to twin language.
Does Vida call the survivor "Emmeline" because that is the twin she wanted to survive? Also, there are two girls left after the fire. The villagers believe she is Adeline and she accepts that moniker. No one would believe the scarred & crazy twin was Adeline and that Emmeline was suddenly lucid.

In the book neither twin is mute. Adeline is only mute when she is separated from Emmaline. So when they are old there is no way of knowing which twin it is by the survivors lack of coherent speech.

The twin didn't die in the fire because Vida couldn't unlock the door. She was holding the key locked so that Emmaline couldn't open the door and let Adeline out. She knew Adeline was mad and would kill the baby and others.

My impression from the book was that the wrong twin had died, and the baby had to go because the surviving twin couldn't care for it. I don't remember the romance with Ambrose having any influence, but it is a while since I read it.

One of the reasons the third child was secret was that they knew Charles had disappeared and the gardener was still collecting the allowance to keep the place going. If they admitted the third child's existence then more outsiders would become involved.

I really missed Margaret's side of the story in the adaptation, there is so much left untold.
But I really enjoyed it and have dug the book out to re-read

Fascinating discussion! But I think I'm more confused than ever

Okay I have another hypothesis...

Vida is and always was the real Adeline. She murdered the half-sister in the burning room by not opening the door (and at the time she also thought she was murdering the baby, not realising it had been substituted for a dummy).

Motive - jealousy of the baby and of the half sister. She didn't want anything to come between her and her twin (Emmeline).

Emmeline rescued the baby and gave it away after the fire as she knew it would never be safe from Adeline.

So the old lady at the end (the digging one, who wasn't Vida) was Emmeline, and they had stayed together right until the end.

oh and it was Emmeline's baby according to my hypothesis... hence Adeline being jealous of him.

I lost track of where the boyfriend / father of the baby fits into it though.

I don't understand why they changed Margaret's story from losing a conjoined twin at birth to having a car accident. I felt in the book her guilt was a survivor guilt whereas in the adaptation it seemed a more understandable guilt iykwim. Also my impression in the book was that Angelfield was a long way away whereas in the adaptation it was stated as 5 miles away. Why change these minor points and annoy anyone who had read the book. I felt the ending could have been done better but both left you with some ambiguity as to which twin had died.

SinisterBuggyMonth - yes I'd really like to read the book I think, it sounds much more complex than the film.

I wonder if there's any significance in the fact that she called the surviving twin Emmeline - if it was in fact Adeline who survived surely Adeline wouldn't have gone along with the half-sister calling herself Adeline?

Did the secret sister have a name (whilst being secret)?

now I am reading the book im getting s real sense of how rushed the adaptation really was.

on the tv program I think it portrayed angelfield being only 5 miles away purely to save themselves time. in the book maraget is transcribing for vida for over a week before she visits angelfield. and she takes a few days out from vida to look up the facts and visit angelfield, to whence she has to take a train and a bus etc. I think if they'd factored all that into the programme it would have taken them so mucb longer. im 30% way through the book but Margaret has only just gone to anfelfield.

But they didn't need to specify any distance in the adaptation, those who had read the book would know, those who hadn't read it would assume it was some unspecified distance. It makes more sense that they moved a long way from Angelfield as then Vida's name change would be less likely to be uncovered by bumping into someone. There were lots of little things like that which I don't really understand why film directors change not just in this film but other films too.

I tried reading the book and gave up on it, then watched this adaptation because it had a great cast, but just didn't get into it. It just seemed ridiculously unlikely - all these children turning up at the house apparently without mothers/fathers.

I don't see how Adeline could have survivd the fire and then went on to be called Emmeline while her half sister became her.

And would Vida really have lay in the bed with the other sister at the end if she thought it could be Adeline? That implied a closeness that didn't appear to be there between Adeline and Vida as children.

I must read the book though. My mind might change then.

LittleDoris - that's why I'm thinking it only really makes sense if the half-sister died in the fire, and the motive for the murders was Adeline's jealousy of anyone else being close to Emmeline.

There would have been no need to give the baby away if Adeline was really dead. Giving the baby away only makes sense if one of the surviving sisters had to do it to save him from Adeline.

But on the other hand - there was a hint from Vida that she had always wanted Emmeline as her twin (she said something near the end like 'I always thought of her as my twin' which was odd) - so that doesn't fit with my theory (I don't think )!

no Vida , the author, was perceived as a ghost.
but she locked adeline in the burning room, and then became adeline.
the twist was, there were 3 red heads.

oh i see, so it might be adeline burnt and released, i dont think so. i think she was diggint the ground looking for her baby. and adeline was mad, and being burnt wouldnt have made her less mad