Readthrough: End of Term, chapters 6 & 7
Sep. 12th, 2014 01:41 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
lilliburlero.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
trennelsThank you for all your contributions so far.
Miranda is useful here to give offer a detached point of view on the Christmas Play, but there is also a sense of her exclusion from a part of school life and the faint melancholy of that throughout her conversation with Miss Cromwell. (I have a headcanon that Cromwell and Keith were rivals for the headship of Kingscote, and wonder what the place might be like with Crommie as head. Probably no less barmy, but in a very different way.) I like to imagine what Dr Herrick’s ‘courteous explosion’ looks like and Kempe’s reaction to his unilateral sacking of Barbara Evans. (If Barbara, why not Jess, by the way? Watsonian explanations invited.)
I do feel rather sorry for Tim in this bit--so desperate to have something to do--and relish Cromwell’s approval of her initiative. Miss Keith’s determination to hang on to the vestiges of her character-based casting is looking increasingly pathetic and inconsistent; since she can’t, presumably, countermand Dr Herrick’s changes without insult to the episcopal authority, I know where I’d have been directing my persuasive efforts if I were Kempe.
I think the muddle between Nicola and Lawrie over the Shepherd Boy is an excruciating read: Nicola’s initial pleasure in the part (interesting that although there are numerous indications that she’s a better singer than actor and Lawrie’s so often around to outshine her, she still prefers acting to singing) followed by Lawrie’s acrobatic delight, them both thinking that Kempe has mixed them up, the glimmerings of uncertainty--Nicola hoping then that Lawrie’s right, the dashing of Lawrie’s hopes and Nicola’s loss of pleasure in the whole thing, both Lawrie and Tim’s hostility to Nicola: ouch, ouch, ouch. Tim’s reaction is plausible, but still, I think unreasonable: does she really expect Nicola to defy authority like that? It strikes me that Tim might have sunk a good bit of her own ambition into her support of Lawrie, and therefore, with the added advantage of being Headmistress’s Niece, might be just about the only person in the school who could imagine such cheek might be possible. The suggestion to Dr Herrick, that even Miranda sees as bold, was only a mite of what she's capable of.
The subsequent scene in the sitting-room is nicely atmospheric, with the bleak weather and Sally and Elizabeth’s bird-feather collection (mournful memories of Jael and Regina) setting off Nicola’s realisation of the change in dynamic between her, Lawrie and Tim. I think my favourite bit of it is Nicola’s thought that she might have ‘butted in, often, where she wasn’t really wanted’ followed by a typical bit of officiousness from Marie Dobson. Oof; Forest being particularly pitiless there, I think. And Nicola’s relief at not having to see Lawrie again that evening making her ‘sociable and hilarious’: although they aren't estranged for long, in fact, you have a sense of something shifting in their relationship as the twins grow up.
Nicola is having a perfectly ghastly morning, what with her form’s insensitive comments, Tim’s hollow attempts at reconciliation without apology--even going as far as to blame Nicola for sulking. Esther’s qualms are also convincingly handled, her dream of flight taking her to her sense of being a visitor in both her parents’ new homes. The conversation in which the possibility of them swapping is realistically painful, I think, especially Tim’s 'pleasant' and entirely unanswerable ‘you do rather want to do the Shepherd Boy. Don’t you?’ (Talk about loaded questions!)
The conversation between Miranda and Esther interestingly but obliquely prefigures the later quarrel over Nicola and Lawrie in the art room, and we learn intriguingly, of Miranda’s experience of theatrical types through The Shop.
Lawrie and Nicola’s different miseries caused by the Shepherd Boy are neatly delineated here: Lawrie’s self-centred single-mindedness contrasts with Nicola’s self-conscious awareness that people are comparing her with Lawrie, but Nick is also touchingly mistaken on a couple of points: the motivation for Kempe’s criticism of her performance, or Esther’s true feelings about singing solo. She’s pretty isolated at this point, not feeling able to discuss the Play with any of her friends.
Oh Marie, don’t. But her objection on Miranda’s behalf, cringe-making as it is, serves to highlight the exclusionary nature of the play: that even bohemian Jennings seems oblivious to. And Tim’s request to draw something like an illuminated manuscript highlights her sense of the play not making use of her off-beat talents either.
The ‘battle royal’ about Nicola and Lawrie is nicely poised between the painful mood that has characterised the last few chapters and outright farce. Esther’s decisive and devastating contribution, though it is hardly mollifying, rather clears the air: I wonder if this is a skill she has learnt in a household where parental quarrels are common. Nicola’s indignant defence of Giles proves her quite incorrigible where that young man is concerned: even the more palatable iteration of Autumn Term, I think, shows every indication--complacent, thoroughly convinced of his own charm, unable to take responsibility for the consequences of exercising that charm, displacing an uneasy conscience into anger with a junior--of being absolutely spoilt rotten. Lawrie, for once, is more perceptive, but Nicola for once also takes the tease well.
I enjoy Forest’s excursions into the slightly unedifying but very believable processes of Lawrie’s mind, and the next passage is a brilliant evocation of their unsteady progress. It’s a wonderful blend of self-deception: ‘refusing to remember’ Miranda’s disparagement of her netballing abilities, pretending not to be crying when she is, even though she’s alone, fantasy: the whole meta-commentary riff on the stamina of ‘people in books’, and self aware realism: the recognition that she can’t possibly play better injured, Craven would be angry if she tried it, and that Miranda’s criticisms of her might have had something to them after all.
Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey books are a favourite of Nicola’s, it seems, and actually, later on in the series, have some plot impact. It strikes me that Sayers’ novels stand at an angle to conventional detective fiction as Forest’s do to the school story; both series are highly intertextual, full of literary allusion; The Nine Tailors might resonate (oof pun) in particular in its interest in how the various buried antagonisms, negligences, and prejudices of a community lead to the victim meeting his end.
Anyway, Nicola's (to Lawrie) baffling response serves to recalibrate their relationship: 'There was Nicola, here was Lawrie, and whatever people might be doing to them outside and whatever they might from time to time think of one another's clottishness, it made no difference really.' I believe this is is Forest-speak for 'they love each other'. Is there ever an admission of love both direct and sincere in the series? I can't remember one. And the reckless warmth of reconciliation seems to provoke Nicola into accepting (albeit reservedly) Lawrie's idea of swapping.
Lawrie's thoughts on waking are priceless, neatly listed in order of objectionableness (I particularly like Lawrie's continued belief in a universe ordered by Someone to the advantage of Lawrence S. Marlow.) The somewhat accidental manner in which the swap goes ahead seems calculated from the start to subvert the conventions of this hoary old plot device. And there is of course the irony that it is Nicola--who finds it difficult to dissemble or be anyone other than herself--who has to bear the burden of impersonation, rather than Lawrie, who would positively relish it. The echoes of the Shepherd Boy situation are unavoidable.
I think there has been some discussion of this before, but it's interesting to note who can and cannot infallibly tell the twins apart. Their father, Lawrie notes, sometimes can't even when they are together--presumably because he spends relatively little time with them; Ann and Ginty can't when contextual information such as whose bed and clothes is whose is muddled; thinking back to Traitor, even Pam Marlow can't be absolutely sure when the clues of bearing and gesture aren't there because Lawrie is unconscious. Miranda can't. But Tim 'never had the least difficulty'. Tim also knows Lawrie well enough, it seems, to have intuited some of the motivations for the swap, as that uncomfortable conversation between her and Nicola demonstrates.
Nicola has, as Miranda comments, 'no real talent for crime', as she reveals with a series of errors: I enjoy her 'un-Lawrie-like' stern frown at too-obvious Jenny, and wince at the exclusion of Marie. Painful as the latter is, it's not attributable merely to bullying; Marie's officiousness and eagerness to please would, one senses, endanger the plot. I also very much like Lawrie making the best of her cameo role as in-bed ill Nicola, and her twin's uneasy reflection that 'if that was the way she talked when she was ill, it wasn't rather maddening for everyone.'
Lois and Janice's conversation is brilliant, I think: Lois's officiousness (a parallel with Marie, perhaps) and Jan's lack of illusion concerning 'the Tone of the School and all that nonsense talk'. The dialogue has a theme of espionage, with Jan's quote from the 'Smugglers' Song' in Puck of Pook's Hill, Lois's objection to 'bit of homework' as a phrase suggestive of 'spivs and slyness', Jan's rejection of the role of 'unpaid spy'. Lois's attack of prefectly responsibility contrasts with her reluctance to make full disclosure about the Guide hike, with which much of the animosity between herself and Nicola began. She is almost indecently keen to get Nicola in trouble, to the point of forgetting that it will also involve Lawrie.
I find the scene with Marie genuinely hard to read, between Marie's childish chanting, the cold disgust of the rest of the team, Marie's slow recognition that the 'jape' (Miranda's disgust for the word is magnificent) is in fact her humiliating exclusion, the continuing shadow of the Guide hike, the presentation, without authorial comment, of Marie's dehumanisation in the eyes of her peers.
Lawrie's continued dog-in-the-manger hopes that they might be discovered, resulting in Nicola's sacking as Shepherd Boy, resonate interestingly in this context. Lawrie recognises that her thoughts are unworthy and tries to suppress them, but her motivations are in many ways (or more so) as louse-ish as Marie's. Finding a way to blame Kempe for her thinking 'wormish' thoughts is a lovely touch. Nicola, less self-centred, has taken from the episode the lesson that Marie has feelings too, like Ann--in itself an interesting comparison: it occurs to me that though Forest doesn't do much to suggest Marie might have redeeming qualities, she does draw persistent parallels between Marie and more appealing characters, the implication being that everyone, however, admirable, contains a Marie. If it was intended as moral reflection, it worked on me: to this day I identify certain aspects of my behaviour as Marie-Dobsonish. The final sentence might stand as a motto and summary for the entire series: between discomfort in the presence of feelings and self-absorption, it is rather a wonder that any emotional development goes on at all. And yet it does: the paradox of Forest is that these novels, so interested in interiority and describing complex emotion, also advocate a stern repression of visible signs of it.
Over to you!
Miranda is useful here to give offer a detached point of view on the Christmas Play, but there is also a sense of her exclusion from a part of school life and the faint melancholy of that throughout her conversation with Miss Cromwell. (I have a headcanon that Cromwell and Keith were rivals for the headship of Kingscote, and wonder what the place might be like with Crommie as head. Probably no less barmy, but in a very different way.) I like to imagine what Dr Herrick’s ‘courteous explosion’ looks like and Kempe’s reaction to his unilateral sacking of Barbara Evans. (If Barbara, why not Jess, by the way? Watsonian explanations invited.)
I do feel rather sorry for Tim in this bit--so desperate to have something to do--and relish Cromwell’s approval of her initiative. Miss Keith’s determination to hang on to the vestiges of her character-based casting is looking increasingly pathetic and inconsistent; since she can’t, presumably, countermand Dr Herrick’s changes without insult to the episcopal authority, I know where I’d have been directing my persuasive efforts if I were Kempe.
I think the muddle between Nicola and Lawrie over the Shepherd Boy is an excruciating read: Nicola’s initial pleasure in the part (interesting that although there are numerous indications that she’s a better singer than actor and Lawrie’s so often around to outshine her, she still prefers acting to singing) followed by Lawrie’s acrobatic delight, them both thinking that Kempe has mixed them up, the glimmerings of uncertainty--Nicola hoping then that Lawrie’s right, the dashing of Lawrie’s hopes and Nicola’s loss of pleasure in the whole thing, both Lawrie and Tim’s hostility to Nicola: ouch, ouch, ouch. Tim’s reaction is plausible, but still, I think unreasonable: does she really expect Nicola to defy authority like that? It strikes me that Tim might have sunk a good bit of her own ambition into her support of Lawrie, and therefore, with the added advantage of being Headmistress’s Niece, might be just about the only person in the school who could imagine such cheek might be possible. The suggestion to Dr Herrick, that even Miranda sees as bold, was only a mite of what she's capable of.
The subsequent scene in the sitting-room is nicely atmospheric, with the bleak weather and Sally and Elizabeth’s bird-feather collection (mournful memories of Jael and Regina) setting off Nicola’s realisation of the change in dynamic between her, Lawrie and Tim. I think my favourite bit of it is Nicola’s thought that she might have ‘butted in, often, where she wasn’t really wanted’ followed by a typical bit of officiousness from Marie Dobson. Oof; Forest being particularly pitiless there, I think. And Nicola’s relief at not having to see Lawrie again that evening making her ‘sociable and hilarious’: although they aren't estranged for long, in fact, you have a sense of something shifting in their relationship as the twins grow up.
Nicola is having a perfectly ghastly morning, what with her form’s insensitive comments, Tim’s hollow attempts at reconciliation without apology--even going as far as to blame Nicola for sulking. Esther’s qualms are also convincingly handled, her dream of flight taking her to her sense of being a visitor in both her parents’ new homes. The conversation in which the possibility of them swapping is realistically painful, I think, especially Tim’s 'pleasant' and entirely unanswerable ‘you do rather want to do the Shepherd Boy. Don’t you?’ (Talk about loaded questions!)
The conversation between Miranda and Esther interestingly but obliquely prefigures the later quarrel over Nicola and Lawrie in the art room, and we learn intriguingly, of Miranda’s experience of theatrical types through The Shop.
Lawrie and Nicola’s different miseries caused by the Shepherd Boy are neatly delineated here: Lawrie’s self-centred single-mindedness contrasts with Nicola’s self-conscious awareness that people are comparing her with Lawrie, but Nick is also touchingly mistaken on a couple of points: the motivation for Kempe’s criticism of her performance, or Esther’s true feelings about singing solo. She’s pretty isolated at this point, not feeling able to discuss the Play with any of her friends.
Oh Marie, don’t. But her objection on Miranda’s behalf, cringe-making as it is, serves to highlight the exclusionary nature of the play: that even bohemian Jennings seems oblivious to. And Tim’s request to draw something like an illuminated manuscript highlights her sense of the play not making use of her off-beat talents either.
The ‘battle royal’ about Nicola and Lawrie is nicely poised between the painful mood that has characterised the last few chapters and outright farce. Esther’s decisive and devastating contribution, though it is hardly mollifying, rather clears the air: I wonder if this is a skill she has learnt in a household where parental quarrels are common. Nicola’s indignant defence of Giles proves her quite incorrigible where that young man is concerned: even the more palatable iteration of Autumn Term, I think, shows every indication--complacent, thoroughly convinced of his own charm, unable to take responsibility for the consequences of exercising that charm, displacing an uneasy conscience into anger with a junior--of being absolutely spoilt rotten. Lawrie, for once, is more perceptive, but Nicola for once also takes the tease well.
I enjoy Forest’s excursions into the slightly unedifying but very believable processes of Lawrie’s mind, and the next passage is a brilliant evocation of their unsteady progress. It’s a wonderful blend of self-deception: ‘refusing to remember’ Miranda’s disparagement of her netballing abilities, pretending not to be crying when she is, even though she’s alone, fantasy: the whole meta-commentary riff on the stamina of ‘people in books’, and self aware realism: the recognition that she can’t possibly play better injured, Craven would be angry if she tried it, and that Miranda’s criticisms of her might have had something to them after all.
Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey books are a favourite of Nicola’s, it seems, and actually, later on in the series, have some plot impact. It strikes me that Sayers’ novels stand at an angle to conventional detective fiction as Forest’s do to the school story; both series are highly intertextual, full of literary allusion; The Nine Tailors might resonate (oof pun) in particular in its interest in how the various buried antagonisms, negligences, and prejudices of a community lead to the victim meeting his end.
Anyway, Nicola's (to Lawrie) baffling response serves to recalibrate their relationship: 'There was Nicola, here was Lawrie, and whatever people might be doing to them outside and whatever they might from time to time think of one another's clottishness, it made no difference really.' I believe this is is Forest-speak for 'they love each other'. Is there ever an admission of love both direct and sincere in the series? I can't remember one. And the reckless warmth of reconciliation seems to provoke Nicola into accepting (albeit reservedly) Lawrie's idea of swapping.
Lawrie's thoughts on waking are priceless, neatly listed in order of objectionableness (I particularly like Lawrie's continued belief in a universe ordered by Someone to the advantage of Lawrence S. Marlow.) The somewhat accidental manner in which the swap goes ahead seems calculated from the start to subvert the conventions of this hoary old plot device. And there is of course the irony that it is Nicola--who finds it difficult to dissemble or be anyone other than herself--who has to bear the burden of impersonation, rather than Lawrie, who would positively relish it. The echoes of the Shepherd Boy situation are unavoidable.
I think there has been some discussion of this before, but it's interesting to note who can and cannot infallibly tell the twins apart. Their father, Lawrie notes, sometimes can't even when they are together--presumably because he spends relatively little time with them; Ann and Ginty can't when contextual information such as whose bed and clothes is whose is muddled; thinking back to Traitor, even Pam Marlow can't be absolutely sure when the clues of bearing and gesture aren't there because Lawrie is unconscious. Miranda can't. But Tim 'never had the least difficulty'. Tim also knows Lawrie well enough, it seems, to have intuited some of the motivations for the swap, as that uncomfortable conversation between her and Nicola demonstrates.
Nicola has, as Miranda comments, 'no real talent for crime', as she reveals with a series of errors: I enjoy her 'un-Lawrie-like' stern frown at too-obvious Jenny, and wince at the exclusion of Marie. Painful as the latter is, it's not attributable merely to bullying; Marie's officiousness and eagerness to please would, one senses, endanger the plot. I also very much like Lawrie making the best of her cameo role as in-bed ill Nicola, and her twin's uneasy reflection that 'if that was the way she talked when she was ill, it wasn't rather maddening for everyone.'
Lois and Janice's conversation is brilliant, I think: Lois's officiousness (a parallel with Marie, perhaps) and Jan's lack of illusion concerning 'the Tone of the School and all that nonsense talk'. The dialogue has a theme of espionage, with Jan's quote from the 'Smugglers' Song' in Puck of Pook's Hill, Lois's objection to 'bit of homework' as a phrase suggestive of 'spivs and slyness', Jan's rejection of the role of 'unpaid spy'. Lois's attack of prefectly responsibility contrasts with her reluctance to make full disclosure about the Guide hike, with which much of the animosity between herself and Nicola began. She is almost indecently keen to get Nicola in trouble, to the point of forgetting that it will also involve Lawrie.
I find the scene with Marie genuinely hard to read, between Marie's childish chanting, the cold disgust of the rest of the team, Marie's slow recognition that the 'jape' (Miranda's disgust for the word is magnificent) is in fact her humiliating exclusion, the continuing shadow of the Guide hike, the presentation, without authorial comment, of Marie's dehumanisation in the eyes of her peers.
Lawrie's continued dog-in-the-manger hopes that they might be discovered, resulting in Nicola's sacking as Shepherd Boy, resonate interestingly in this context. Lawrie recognises that her thoughts are unworthy and tries to suppress them, but her motivations are in many ways (or more so) as louse-ish as Marie's. Finding a way to blame Kempe for her thinking 'wormish' thoughts is a lovely touch. Nicola, less self-centred, has taken from the episode the lesson that Marie has feelings too, like Ann--in itself an interesting comparison: it occurs to me that though Forest doesn't do much to suggest Marie might have redeeming qualities, she does draw persistent parallels between Marie and more appealing characters, the implication being that everyone, however, admirable, contains a Marie. If it was intended as moral reflection, it worked on me: to this day I identify certain aspects of my behaviour as Marie-Dobsonish. The final sentence might stand as a motto and summary for the entire series: between discomfort in the presence of feelings and self-absorption, it is rather a wonder that any emotional development goes on at all. And yet it does: the paradox of Forest is that these novels, so interested in interiority and describing complex emotion, also advocate a stern repression of visible signs of it.
Over to you!
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}