I was a bit bewildered by The 'dogs in trouble' reference as well. I don't think I've come across dog owners saying this. When you explained, I thought It sounded like pompous Edwardian fathers to their sons, then I remembered Hillaire Belloc's zoo keeper shouting at Ponto the lion when he's eating Jim: Let go, Sir, down, Sir, Let it go. Everything about Patrick was entirely alien to me when I first read the books: his sense of oneness with his patrilineal ancestors, the blood sports, the Catholicism, the contempt for liberals and the view of Protestantism as adopted entirely for convenience by lesser men than his ancestors. Having said that, I do think it's a bit harsh to call him arrogant for wanting his teachers to insist on being called 'Sir'. Like Pip , I just took it as wanting formality and I'm not sure 'Answer to' is such an odd way of putting it. We were trained from the age of 5 always to address teachers of either sex by their appropriate title and surname so saying 'Sir' sounded humiliatingly subservient when I first came across it, though it was used at secondary school and began to sound normal to me. Mrs Kent
Re: Patrick's views of teachers
Everything about Patrick was entirely alien to me when I first read the books: his sense of oneness with his patrilineal ancestors, the blood sports, the Catholicism, the contempt for liberals and the view of Protestantism as adopted entirely for convenience by lesser men than his ancestors. Having said that, I do think it's a bit harsh to call him arrogant for wanting his teachers to insist on being called 'Sir'. Like Pip , I just took it as wanting formality and I'm not sure 'Answer to' is such an odd way of putting it.
We were trained from the age of 5 always to address teachers of either sex by their appropriate title and surname so saying 'Sir' sounded humiliatingly subservient when I first came across it, though it was used at secondary school and began to sound normal to me.
Mrs Kent