The Ready Made Family

[geebengrrl.livejournal.com]

There are three things that always troubled me a bit about this book:
a) Why did Karen suddenly up and marry an older man, with kids, and chuck in her degree;
b) Why is Edwin such as bastard; and
c) the cooling of relations between Rowan and Karen

I re-read the book over the weekend, and I came up with a few theories, so thought I'd put them out there and see what the general opinion is.

(a) Why did she do it?
At the time the book was written, the '60s were beginning to make themselves felt. There are references to dolly birds for example, and things pointing to a gap widening between youth and age. I get the feeling that Karen is quite old-fashioned. She's studying Classics (and she studies - in Peter's Room she's spending her whole xmas vacation pouring over the books), her sisters refer to her as "straight", she doesn't seem to be partying her time at Oxford away. Could it be then, that Karen found she didn't want to be part of this brave new world that was opening up - she doesn't seem the type for pop music, free love, drugs etc and she doesn't seem to have any friends at Oxford. Does it make sense that she saw an academic career was not going to be what she wanted, not because she doesn't want to be an academic, but because she doesn't like the way academia is going (maybe she even has inklings of the coming tide of post-modernism). If you're 19 and a young fogey and not a particularly good "coper", is it an easy solution to your problem to marry a much older man whose interests seem to align more with yours, so that you can feel more comfortable in your skin?

(b) Why is Edwin such as bastard?
I think you can understand Edwin a little better if you think a bit deeper about the class issues involved. I'm basing this on a few things: Edwin reads the Guardian, he drives a fairly ordinary car*, Karen calls him "love"**, and they send the kids to the village school and the Colebridge grammars. This, to me, points to Edwin possibly being a lower-middle-class grammar school boy made good; but with a bit of a radical/lefty edge. So part of the reason he comes across as such a bastard is that he's wrestling with an internal conflict - he's married a woman who comes from all he despises (money and privilege); AND he's under obligation to the ruling classes because he's staying in their house, eating their food, and having his kids minded by them. Peter's behavior to him is not just a kid being cheeky to an adult, but a member of the ruling classes trying to assert their power over the proletariat. Edwin wants to assert himself in the face of the Marlows' privileged existence, but his radical identity is being swamped by sheer weight of numbers.

* Edwin drives a Hillman Minx, a fairly ordinary, mid-priced British car manufactured from 1947 to 1960.
** I tend to associate this with lower-middle / working class speech. While it comes from Karen in this context, I am speculating that she calls him that because he calls her that. It contrasts to the Marlows, who are always "darling" when an endearment is required.

(c) Why do Karen and Rowan fall out?
In Peter's Room, there is a discussion between Nicola and Rowan in which Rowan admits that, while farming is OK, the staying at home bit of it is very very dull. I get the impression that she is longing for excitement and the company of people her own age - and that maybe she thinks Karen has all that because she lives away from home at Oxford.

Now Karen arrives home, announcing that she is throwing all that away to get married. She announces this just after Rowan has watched someone have a major stroke, has a looming farm disaster (swine fever), which she now has to cope with alone; and also is facing the long term prospect of taking on the farm herself, aged 18 with 8 months experience under her belt, or possibly having to give it up. Yet everyone is running around paying attention to Karen, for the whole book.

So I think Rowan is angry for two reasons: (1) She is going through a bloody hard time with no support; and (2) she is facing the prospect that leaving school to go farming may have been a mistake, she may have to give up farming anyway, she has no A-levels so she's not going to get to university, and here's Karen throwing away the the things that Rowan gave up, to get married AND getting all the attention.


Maybe I'm thinking too much. But it's a plausible explanation to me, and I'm interested to know what you think.

Comments

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

Insightful.

I wonder if, at Oxford, Rowan heard one too many people saying that women didn't *really* cut it as scholars. Nicola would have stuck her chin out and thought "I'll show YOU!"; Rowan might have quietly despaired. If you couple that with never really fitting with her own age group, as you suggested, she might have leapt at what she saw as her first real chance at love. God, what a horrific situation.

And I agree. Rowan has quietly given up her life to Keep The Family Together; Karen, who had a chance, has thrown it away, and not even for the benefit of the Marlows.

[geebengrrl.livejournal.com]

(assuming you meant Karen there, not Rowan) Yes, I can imagine Karen feeling a bit lost and mopey about that; and quite likely that she would have encountered that attitude

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

Sorry; I flipped the names.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

(a) Why did she do it?

They had sex.

Edwin had just heard his ex-wife had died - he would have been (though he wasn't showing it) in a pretty fragile state, and in the state of mind where it is, frankly, quite easy to end up having sex with someone you would normally never have had sex with. More people fall into bed with the wrong person right after a funeral than at any other time. (Okay, this is based on anecdote rather than data. I'm not sure anyone's done a survey.)

I agree with jonquil that Karen was, very likely, also in a fragile state - a quietly-despairing they-say-women-can't-be-scholars-oh-god-suppose-they're-right state. It wouldn't be - it isn't - at all unusual for very bright young women to be completely messed up by the attitude they get at Oxford from the male students and the faculty.

I bet she and Edwin fell into bed together and that Karen - who is, after all, a thoroughly strait-laced, well-brought-up girl - felt this meant she ought to marry him. And that Edwin, who was probably contemplating with horror the thought of either leaving his children with their grandparents or looking after them himself by himself - threw whatever sense he had to the wind and proposed.

Agree with you about points (b) and (c).

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

It wouldn't be - it isn't - at all unusual for very bright young women to be completely messed up by the attitude they get at Oxford from the male students and the faculty.

I wouldn't have thought that coming from a single-sex school would help with the initial shock, either.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

And simply the shift from being top-of-the-heap at Kingscote to being in her first year at Oxford, among people who may seem more intelligent/assured/sophisticated etc than she is.

At the period in question, Karen would at least be in an all women's college (whereas these days, the only one left is St Hilda's, and it looks as though that may be going mixed). One question that was discussed earlier was how on earth she and Edwin ever met.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

I've always wondered how they met, though I can't remember whether it was me who said so here or not. I always imagine some ghastly inter-departmental mingle, mostly because I cannot see either of them picking each other up in a pub or whatever.

[ex-ajhalluk585.livejournal.com]

I think her tutor had a party at her home, with a mixed group of students and non-studenty types (perhaps even recruiting the first years to hand drinks and so forth; that went on often enough in my day), and Edwin and Karen met at that, and Karen found it such a relief to talk to him, compared to the boys of her own age.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

Particularly if the rest of the women in the room were boycotting him in sympathy with Rosemary.

[ex-ajhalluk585.livejournal.com]

Oh yes! And Karen might not even pick up on the boycott, or sense it but dive in on the side of Edwin instinctively. Now that sounds very likely indeed. Do you want to write it?

[ex-ajhalluk585.livejournal.com]

I agree, in particular about Rowan's attitude to Karen. I also think that, very probably (especially given Nicola's subsequent realisation that Karen's just as selfish as Lawrie about rolling over anything and everything in the path to taking what she wants, just more sophisticated about disguising it) that Rowan has throughout their years at Kingscote been "taking up the slack" quietly on Karen's behalf - coping with Nicola on the first day after the train disaster in Autumn Term for example - so Karen could achieve her ambition, and that Rowan's expectation that Karen has noticed and appreciated her efforts to date (and don't forget - no-one even considered asking Karen to take on the farm, because of course "she's got Oxford") to help her to achieve her ambition has been comprehensively trampled by Karen not merely chucking it without apparently a second thought to go running after something else she thinks she wants (and which Rowan thinks, with some justice, is an objectively bad idea) but it's increasingly obvious that she never understood that Rowan had any special role at all. In fact, it's rather a large-scale replay of Nicola assuming that because Giles is special to her she's special to him, and being disillusioned at Port Wade (yes, I know Nicola shouldn't have been so dense as to take him at his word, but he was able to tease her in that way because she hero-worshipped him to the extent he did).

[ex-ajhalluk585.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I think Edwin's a bastard because he's a bastard. I agree there are inherent tensions in the situation - I wouldn't like to be a Guardian-reader in the Marlow household, and I think there certainly is a chippy "Angry Man Who's Not As Young As He Used To Be" vibe about Edwin (he's pretty much a contemporary with Jimmy Porter, whom I also always regarded as a complete git; I've never managed to sit through Look Back In Anger)- but you don't necessarily have to formalise it in class-conflict terms: his first marriage had also failed comprehensively, and the children are distinctly nervous around him. I think he's one of those blokes with a hair-trigger temper and insufficient inhibitions about letting it show, and that however decent the rest of the human package is anyone who's seen the temper in action and who is potentially within it's reach treats him as though they were walking across an active volcano, and for good reason. Beyond that, one can speculate about where the anger came from (he's quarrelled with his only sister, hasn't he?) but the fact of the lethal rage bubbling away and just about kep under the lid most of the time is there in plain sight. I think if Karen gets out of this one without major pschological damage she'll be lucky. Fortunately, her Lawrie-eque level of self-absorbption may protect her.

a question, aside?

[blonde222.livejournal.com]

In Peter's Room, it says that Karen is a) interested in and b) very good with young children. But there doesn't seem much evidence of this in RMF - nor really in any of the school stories.... What gives? as Rowan might say..

Re: a question, aside?

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

I don't remember Fob coming out with any of the major rejections of Karen, or of Edwin and Karen's marriage that Chas and Rose, in their different ways, do, so possibly Karen managed to forge more of a relationship with her than with her elder siblings?

Then again, it could be that Fob has much less scope to express her feelings, whatever they might be - she's so much younger, and unhappiness probably gets covered up by her stolidity in general.

[(Anonymous)]

I always assumed that Karen and Rowan fell out over Karen's (despicable, in my opinion) maneouvrings to get Mrs Tranter out of the farmhouse so that she and Edwin could live in it.

[ex-ajhalluk585.livejournal.com]

I agree that this probably opens Rowan's eyes to Karen's character - and while we're talking about class and political issues, that definitely is a conflict between a "two nations, noblesse oblige" Tory viewpoint and a purely Thatcherite Tory viewpoint.

[colne-dsr.livejournal.com]

And Rowan has spent the past year working very closely with Mr. Tranter, and is a good friend of his by now; and somewhere in one of the books (not necessarily this one) it mentions that she feels a little bit guilty about keeping him working when he would otherwise have retired. And she certainly thinks it appalling that Mrs. Tranter has been chucked out when her husband hasn't yet decided whether to live or die, and if he lives, would certainly want to come home. I don't think there's any more in the row than that - but then, I've never been one for deep meanings!

Incidentally, I know Mrs. Marlow was relieved to see Karen go, but I think her being pro-Karen in the dirty work is a bit out of character? I always had the impression that she viewed "looking after the lower orders" as a sort of duty? Or has she persuaded herself that Mrs. Tranter really does want to leave?

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Legally, if Mr Tranter isn't working as farm manager, he doesn't have any claim at all to the tied house that goes with the job, and the Tranters and Mrs Marlow will all be quite well aware of this.

Further, Mrs Marlow may feel that Rowan is unlikely to want to be farm manager at Trennels forever - certainly not when she's married (and I doubt if Mrs Marlow is counting on Rowan staying unmarried for even the next ten years). But, if the Tranters have been allowed to stay on in the tied house when Mr Tranter isn't working as farm manager, it's possibly going to be legally (and certainly emotionally) far more difficult to evict them than if they have been told to go when Mr Tranter stopped working. Maybe Mrs Marlow had been steeling herself to go "talk it over" with Mrs Tranter (politely inquire when they were thinking of moving) and is relieved that Karen did it for her.

[colne-dsr.livejournal.com]

Could be. And after all, Mrs. Marlow had a fine role model in her mother if she wants to know how to be tough! And it could be that Mrs. Tranter isn't sorry to go - she doesn't seem to need much persuading, and as far as we can see, she doesn't even ask Rowan if it might be possible to stay in spite of it all.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

I find it entirely possible that a lot of the shock and anger Rowan is expressing when she finds out the Tranters are leaving is on her own behalf - that she was counting on having Mr Tranter there to talk to, as a bulwark, even after the stroke. When Mr Tranter goes, Rowan really is on her own.

[mrs-redboots.livejournal.com]

At that, the Tranters may have been longing and longing for a nice council house, but unable to get one. The trouble with tied cottages is that they weren't always as nice as a modern council house, especially in the 1960s, but the tenants couldn't get a council house as they already had a perfectly good home! So the poor landowner had to issue them with an eviction order, and was seen as a Mean Cruel Upper-Class Bastard, even though he'd actually conspired with the tenants to do this, so they could have their dream house! It happened to my father a time or two.....

I don't quite see why Edwin would necessarily have despised the Marlows for being upper-class - they couldn't, after all, help it! I think he probably disliked children and found the noise and rowdiness of the general assorted younger Marlows plus his own young rather difficult to take. And one's in-laws, en masse, usually are pretty alarming (my mother says there are two sorts of relations: blood relations, which are yours, and bloody relations, which are your spouse's!)

It's interesting that Nicola, by the end of the book, finds him likeable and wonders, at the start of The Cricket Term, why he had married Karen, rather than the other way about!

[colne-dsr.livejournal.com]

Possibly it's my "mere male" perspective, but I never found him as unpleasant as others seem to. Certainly Peter doesn't get on with him, but I think that's largely because Peter's preconception of brother-in-law relationship does not match Edwin's conception of adult-teenager relationship. And as Nicola shows, the adult-teenager relationship doesn't have to be a "Do as your told" one-way street. I think in other circumstances, ie. if Edwin had not been treated as an outsider in the household (probably unavoidable) and if Peter hadn't been so persistently rude (definitely avoidable) then he might have come across as a reasonably pleasant, if not especially friendly, chap.

[richenda.livejournal.com]

I've tried to send this umpteen times, so it's got a bit stale now - but I've always been struck by "So do I" to Rose in Oxford about missing her mother - and then on top of grief there's the guilt about the failure of the relationship and surely a sort of jealousy of the relationship that Peter has built with the children? I've always rather liked him, and had some sympathy about losing his temper with Peter. After all, it's not so long since boys at expensive public schools took beating as a matter of routine punishment.

[bluebellbicycle.livejournal.com]

Slightly OT but could you explain to a foreigner what a 'Guardian-reader' constitutes please? :)

[geebengrrl.livejournal.com]

The Guardian is a British newspaper which is liberal and left-wing. The Marlows would probably read the Times or The Telegraph (both right-wing and conservative in outlook)

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

Certainly, the 60s were a time when quite a lot of people "dropped out" of education/training. 1967 was the year that I spent the summer wearing bells and wandering around London parks (although I did have a job to go to in September). Dropping out to get married was actually a rather respectable thing to do at that time, I'd have thought - esp to take on children

[tabithabun.livejournal.com]

I always think the reason Rowan falls out with Karen is because Karen hadn't told her anything about Edwin in her letters and she finds out they're getting married when everyone else does (or just after, actually). It feels like a betrayal as the two of them have always been close. When Nicola runs to find Rowan after Karen arrives home unexpectedly she asks whether Rowan knows anything more, presumably because Karen writes to her pretty regularly. It must have been galling to hear The News in the way she did.

I don't see her as envious of Karen's opportunities, she has so much self-confidence and would have made a far more effective Games Prefect than Karen did Head Girl. She can match up to Crommie while Karen freezes. I don't see Rowan as self-sacrificing, I take her at her word when she says she just wants a good job and running Trennels is ready and waiting for her.

Guardian reading

[cacklingmaggie.livejournal.com]

In FL (if that's the one where Jon dies)I seem to remember that he takes The Guardian and is mildly miffed when Karen snaffles the crossword. Anyone else remember this? (First post from a Newbie).