The Girls of Priory Hall
New young naïve teacher, Isla Owen, is drawn into a passionate affair with an older experienced woman, sixty year-old Miss Annersley, the administrator of Priory Hall School for Girls, “run on English lines” in the Eastern Townships of Quebec Province in the mid-1960’s.
Isla’s naïve illusions about boarding school life are based on the school-girl stories of her youth and contrast with her poor working-class background in England. They are part of her deep attraction for Miss Annersley, against the back-drop of a “real” boarding-school.
As her illusions crumple Isla slowly becomes aware of the insidious class-system in the school that denigrates the French-Canadian maids. She sees how it reflects the social, political mores of the Province of Quebec itself in the 1960’s. Isla’s awakening becomes part of the rising “Quiet Revolution” against English domination and the power of the Catholic Church in Quebec.