trennels | Well, then, what about Peter?

Entry tags:

Well, then, what about Peter?

Oursin's thoughts about Ann's Marlovian qualities made me think about Peter's. I mean, just how Marlovian is he, when you really think about him? He's scared of heights (can't imagine his naval ancestors gibbering in the rigging, somehow) and this fear, coupled with his pointblank refusal to admit to it, gets him into major strife, like freezing on the cliffs, and feeling pressured into breaking back into the Foley house, all just in case people might suspect something most of them already know anyway.

He's got appalling taste in friends, starting with horrid Hugh and kleptomaniac Dickie as described in Traitor, and extending all the way up to Foley. He and Patrick seem to be friends more through force of circumstance than genuine liking. And you can't help suspecting that his mate Selby at Dartmouth is as dull as ditchwater, can you? Of course, you could argue that poor taste in friends is a trait he shares with Ginty, Karen and possibly Lawrie (Ann doesn't have any friends that we ever see).

Possibly because of all the strongminded siblings he's surrounded by, he's underconfident and has a tendency to be dominated by others (Patrick, Rowan, Giles). And in his turn, he tends to bully other people when he feels he can get away with it, shading into the sadistic when he's acting the part of the chief brigand in Peter's Room.

Although he's good at sailing, there's no particular reason to suspect that he's got anything else which will enable him to make a successful career as a naval officer: he's got no head for navigation, panics under pressure and makes seriously stupid decisions about the best way of handling crises (hmm, we have a large gang of drug-dealing thugs. Tell you what, I'll get a bunch of them to chase me round the countryside brandishing bicycle chains and razors, while you break into their house and my (presumably) virginal and inexperienced young sister is left on her own with a horny and experienced gang-member. What's that? Let the police handle it? Naah.)

Thoughts, anyone?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I sometimes wonder what Giles was like as a boy - as the eldest (and favourite?) child, he would probably have been rather different from poor Peter, stuck at the tail end with the twins, but perhaps Giles is what happens when Peter comes out the other side of adolescence.

One very Marlovian quality is his refusal to let the fear of heights get in the way of what he thinks he ought to do. He can forget it at times - on the lighthouse tower with Foley, for example, and later in FL in the divin competition. He also, I think, copes rather well in Run Away Home with Giles conked out.

There's also the master's comment about diving - "young Marlow trying to break his neck" and "reasonable to find that board daunting".
The there's hanging on to Nicola on the Undercliff.
I think he's a fairly good example of the Hornblower type - not obviously a good sailor at first sight, but determined and tenacious.

Hmm, interesting.

Although popular opinion states that AF was quite conservative and therefore unlikely to be a feminist, I do wonder whether she was making a subtle feminist statement with Peter and Nicola - Nicola being, to all intents and purposes, far better suited to a career in the Navy than Peter, who is nevertheless shunted that way purely because he's a boy. I don't think Nicola ever expresses any feelings of unfairness about this (though I haven't read all the 'holiday' books, so she might), but then she's quite stoic about the whole 'sorry love, we're yanking you out of school cause your twin's too much of a drama queen to cope with the trauma' unfairness in Cricket Term, so she could be suppressing it all...

Not sure I'd agree with Lawrie and Ginty having bad taste in friends, I must say - Ginty has a definite preference for the redoubtable Monica, and only gravitates towards drips when Monica's not around; and I don't think Lawrie's friendship with Tim is a bad choice. But then I suppose you could argue that neither Ginty nor Lawrie are the driving force behind those particular friendships...Can't remember enough about Karen's friendships to comment.

I don't think she does really think it's unfair - she seems to accept that boys are better (isn't there something about her imagining a family of all boys?). I don't remember anything in the holiday books. Although she's not really tested - she is fairly resourceful, but then no-one expects her to be, Her and Rowan do so off their own bats, while Peter's pressured into being a Navy type.

Karen is friends with Margaret Jessop, who Lawrie has a crush on. Lawrie also makes rather dubious friends left to her own devices - I suspect that prior to Tim, she hid behind Nick's friend-making abilities and tastes. At the Merricks' 12th Night party she's on the stairs with older and drunker people, and actually in The Thuggery Affair, she's enjoying herself thoroughly until she realises that she's been rather stupid in underestimating Red Ted.

Yes, you're right about Lawrie, actually - & I think that if Tim hadn't latched onto her, she could well have ended up being friends with all sorts of undesirables at Kingscote.

Isn't Margaret Jessop supposed to be rather fab, though?

Lawrie, in Autumn Term, develops a crush on Lois... ?enuff said about her judgement?

Both Lawrie and Peter have a tendency to develop crushes on people, which Nicola is far too sensible to do (or at least sensible enough to restrict them to people who are safely dead).

I was really thinking about Edwin rather than Karen's schoolfriends - I think the only one of those we see is Margaret Jessop, who seems nice enough. And although Monica is OK, the rest of her friends are pretty self-important and snooty.

I do wonder whether she was making a subtle feminist statement with Peter and Nicola

Is this - trying to think of textual evidence! - something that shifts over the course of the books? Because massive social changes around possibilities for women over the period: at the beginning just being a Wren ('typing in uniform') would probably have been seen as quite a radical choice of career, but things are definitely shifting in the later episodes - e.g. Jan Scott going into her ?uncle's law firm not as a secretary but to be a proper solicitor in the family firm. But feel that there is a long tradition in Eng lit, esp possibly YA lit, of girls feeling excluded from the career possibilities open to their brothers and brothers feeling ambivalent about the family business, whatever that is - e.g. in Yonge's The Daisy Chain, there's an unspoken assumption that Norman, who turns pale and faint at the sight of blood, is automatically going to be successor in family medical practice (and this causes one of the many crises de conscience among the May siblings). (And one wishes Ethel had gone to London Medical School for Women...)

He's good at socialising with strangers.
He's good at getting other people to do all the work.

Otherwise, I tend to agree that Nicola (absent seasickness) is clearly more Captain material than Peter (and Rowan, inspiring as she does thoughts of the long line of Marlows with their happy happy ships). Though I don't really blame him for Thuggery Affair & not calling in the police soon enough; isn't something set up to make that difficult? (and the story requires it). Not sure if Nick would have called in the police either; she isn't always that likely to confide in the authorities.

Oh yes, I'd forgotten about the seasickness.

Phone lines were cut, and Tom Catchpole at the burnt hassocks and cymn books thingy. Oh no, the phone lines weren't cut were they, it was a fault? Also, no proof because of the capsule being in Lawrie's coat.

Actually, that's a point, how differently would Thuggery Affair have gone had Nicola not been staying with Miranda?

I think Forest said that if Nicola had been there instead of Lawrie that would have been 'one more brave, resourceful child helping to cope' along with Peter and Patrick, so Lawrie was required to introduce some randomness and panicking into the plot (which she does very effectively).

Peter's non-officerlike qualities come out more with his family, maybe (thinking about him bullying Nick in the kitchen in ?Peter's Room), but his poor judgement of character would be a serious flaw. Is he improving with age, though? Clearly Selby is all right, and he's not the only one to dislike Edwin. And I agree with you that he copes well in Run Away Home.

my (presumably) virginal and inexperienced young sister is left on her own with a horny and experienced gang-member.

I think he's assuming that the Thuggery don't look on Lawrie as female (see the passage early on in which Jukie non-verbally dismisses from consideration, from her pov): he's not to know that she's got herself up like a swinging chick, or that the Thuggery member designated to keep an eye on her is Mr Lech.

I can see that he might be happier not feeling that he had to go into the Navy - when

prestonuk did her ODNB entry for Nicola as First Sea Lady, I wanted to have a coda mentioning Peter as a celebrated wildlife photographer. And Selby always sounds to me like one of those quietly quirky types.

I think probably he doesn't see Lawrie as female, either.

At the Merrick's New Year Party he's determined to dance every dance, but avoid dancing any of them with any of his sisters - I'm not sure if it's exactly he doesn't see them as female, but more not the sort of female the Thuggery would be interested in (even, now I recall, having seen Lawrie after her first experiment in non-character make-up). And what his definition of 'presentable' was, in terms of dancing at least once with every presentable female at the party, would be a matter of some interest.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Well, then, what about Peter?

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject