Plot

This is a brief account of the plot of the play, not the book.

Act One

Scene 1 Chris introduces us to her father, Guthrie, and the village. She explains why her family had to move to the Mearns. We learn what Guthrie thinks about gentry and we see his relationship with others in the village. We understand that a convention of the play will be playing of other roles by the main characters in the village.

Scene 2 Guthrie and the audience are introduced to the main characters in Kinraddie and their hard working lives. It is hinted that Guthrie and his wife Jean disagree about having further children. We see and hear the Speak in action.

This scene relates to The Unfurrowed Field in the book.

Scene 3 Family life centres on Chris studying and Guthrie's desire for her to do so.

Scene 4 Guthrie proudly challenges a poacher on his farm.

Scene 5 Jean worries about Guthrie's influence over Chris, his insistence that she studies, his offer of 'an education' if she does well. She identifies the 'two Chrisses' – one wanting education, the other more closely allied to the land. Chris feels confusion about the two sides to her character. She wins a bursary and goes to study at college, as her father offered.

Scene 6 Chris learns from her older school friend, Marget Strachan, about the possibilities of education for women. She grows to understand that change and temporary sensations can be good and pleasurable and has her first experience of her own sexuality. Marget leaves to study in Aberdeen and Chris is left behind.

Scene 7 Guthrie and Jean argue about his lust. Chris is uncomfortable.

Scene 8 Chris takes her father's side, preferring books to courting. But Jean offers her another view, pointing out the pleasures of work on the land and noting that Guthrie was once a ploughman who also enjoyed courting.

Guthrie and Jean play out their life story together. We see them happy and in love and then watch that happiness sour as childbirth and his religious beliefs embitter them both. She resents his lust and his intolerance. He beats his son viciously for an innocent mistake. She suffers at childbirth and he regrets his sexual desires.

Chris learns that her father is responsible for her mother's suffering. She is shocked.

Scene 9 An interlude shows us how close the farming life is allied to the cycle of procreation and fertility. Misbehaviour is brutally punished.

Chris is chased, probably with sexual intent, by Andy the Daftie. She is untouched, but her father's attitude seems to blame her for the event.

Scene 10 The Reverend Gibbon wins the job of minister of Kinraddie Kirk by pleasing the village with a sermon based on the Song of Solomon with its sexual overtones that appeal to the congregation – except Long Rob.

Scene 11 As Chris helps her mother with energetic housework she strips to her underwear to keep cool. Her father enters and is outraged at the sight of his daughter 'near naked'. He sees her for the first time as a woman.

Jean realises that Guthrie has seen his daughter sexually, and she is horrorstruck. She part explains to Chris, but hides some of her fears.

Guthrie enters furiously in search of his gun. Jean tries to confront him with her concerns. He punishes Will viciously, taking out his frustrations on his son.

Scene 12 Chris longs for an escape from the farm through education. Jean kills herself.

Scene 13 Chris has to give up college. Will challenges his father.

Scene 14 At harvest time Will resents his father's use of old, backbreaking techniques. Guthrie uses them to exert his control over his children.

Scene 15 A tinker who has worked with Guthrie offers to sleep with Chris. Although she resists she is tempted.

Scene 16 Will and Guthrie argue. Chris feels nervous alone in the house with her father. Will tells Chris he is planning to go to Canada and urges her to find her own way out of the situation.

Scene 17 A montage scene of the Speak commenting ironically on the villager's sexual goings on.

Guthrie challenges Will about his girlfriend. Will stands up to him and Guthrie loses face.

Scene 18 Will introduces Chris to Ewan Tavendale. Chris regrets how little time she has for education now that she is working all the time.

Scene 19 Chae Strachan's farm burns down. Chris is kissed but she doesn't know by whom. She half enjoys the experience.

Scene 20 Will tells Chris he is leaving but not that he is going to marry his girlfriend and go to Argentina. Chris is left alone with Guthrie, who falls ill in his anger at Will's desertion.

Scene 21 Chris has to nurse her father, who treats her like a slave. Her dreams of an escape have turned to nought.

Scene 22 Chris fears her father's lust will lead him to turn to her. She prays for a release from her prison. He dies.

Scene 23 The funeral. Chris first cannot mourn for her father, then discovers that she does indeed feel for him.

End of Act One

Act Two

Scene 24 At the lawyer's, Chris learns that she has inherited all Guthrie's substantial savings. She can leave the farm. The lawyer encourages her to return to college and the teaching career. Aunt Janet wants Chris to live with her.

Chris finds herself free for the first time in her life, but realises that she cannot leave the land to be a teacher. She arranges to stay on at the farm.

Scene 25 Chris meets Ewan Tavendale and discovers that she loves him.

Scene 26 In a storm Ewan helps Chris rescue her horses. He asks her to marry him. She decides to do so.

Scene 27 Chris prepares for the wedding and is helped by Long Rob and Chae.

Scene 28 Before the wedding, Chris experiences a moment of loneliness, but recovers, thinking of her love for Ewan.

Scene 29 Chris and Ewan are married. Chris sings The Flouers o the Forest at her wedding and receives advice, including an offer of help whenever she needs it from Long Rob.

There follows a short 'honeymoon' period during which Ewan and Chris live in an isolated world of young love. Then the practical world returns.

Scene 30 Chris discovers she is pregnant. She fears the delivery, remembering her mother, and argues with Ewan. But she recovers and looks forward to the future.

Scene 31 Chris and Ewan live in a narrow world bounded by their own domestic happiness. The outside world means nothing, despite the outbreak of the First World War. Ewan reaps his first harvest and Chris gives birth to a son.

Scene 32 Chae goes off to war. Chris and Ewan ignore it, focussing on their domestic and work life. Long Rob is called a traitor when he argues against the war.

Scene 33 Chris and Ewan become slightly uneasy about how the war might impact on their lives. Chae returns from the war, now cynical about its aims and outcomes. He sees that the people at home are making money from the war and have ruined the land he loves.

Scene 34 Conscription is introduced, but Ewan is exempt as a farmer. Long Rob refuses to go to war and is imprisoned as a conscientious objector. Ewan feels the pressure of other people commenting on his staying at home. Chris decides she wants another child, but will wait until spring. Ewan surprises her by leaving suddenly to enlist.

Scene 35 Chris and the other women have to work the fields. Long Rob returns from the prison an invalid after mistreatment for being a conscientious objector.

Scene 36 Ewan returns from training, brutalised and harsh. He abuses Chris, ignores the land and his son, drinks heavily and uses her sexually. She fights back by refusing to sleep with him and threatening him with a knife. She ignores him as he leaves without saying goodbye.

Chris regrets ever having loved him, but realises what she has lost.

Scene 37 In revenge, and in search of comfort, Chris makes love with Long Rob. He leaves to join up, knowing he will probably never return.

Scene 38 Chris receives a telegram saying Ewan is dead. She is inconsolable.

In an image, the men who used to work the fields are shown on the battlefield.

Scene 39 Chae returns to tell Chris that Ewan was shot as a deserter. In a flashback we see his last conversation with Ewan. Ewan tells Chae that he deserted because he suddenly knew he had to return to Chris to make up with her. He goes to the firing squad thinking of her and of Blawearie. Chris tells his ghost that she forgives him and understands.

Scene 40 After the war the worthless goods and gear of the old farms are sold off cheap in a farm sale. There is much talk of who made money and who died in the war. The farms are being turned over to sheep because of the slump. A new minister appears and is engaged to be married to Chris.

Scene 41 At the service of dedication of the war memorial, the new minister makes an impassioned speech with clear communist leanings. The bagpiper plays The Flouers o the Forest to end the service and the play.

The End