Marlows as Children

[res23.livejournal.com]

Let's hope this works. I have finally remembered my user name, but it's taken me ages to remember how to post a new message instead of a comment...

Anyway, I've always wondered what the various Marlow siblings were like as children, and a comment in the thread below about prequels made me think about it even more. I find the twins different in Autumn Term than pretty much everywhere else, somehow very much younger (Nick jumping out of the train, etc). And I'd be curious about how much all the others changed as they grew up, too. It would be easiest to write a prequel with them all much as they are now - Ann being very good, Rowan still supremely confident, Kay very academic, but I think that would be losing something. Was Rowan as insecure as Nick sometimes is about her capabilities? Was Ann always so at peace with helping everyone, or did she sometimes resent it more as a child? Was Karen ever silly? How did Ginty's bomb shelter experience change her? Was she always pretty, and did she notice as a child, or is some of her shallowness later on a result of that? What was Lawrie like before she realised she was supremely good at acting? (and indeed, was that actually known before the play in Autumn Term? It seemed like it was really sort of discovered then - was Nick always seen as the one who was best at everything before then?) Did Peter hide his fears just as well as a child? (I guess we get some clues in Falconer's Lure, that Patrick at least knew some of them. Come to that, we also hear a little about Nick as a child in that one too, wanting to trail after the boys), and a million other similar questions... So, what do you think all the characters were like as children??

Comments

[richenda.livejournal.com]

was Rowan ever as insecure as Nick sometimes is?

Well, we're told that Nicola was "so much like Rowan of blessed memory" so perhaps we are to understand that she was ..

Ann

[colne-dsr.livejournal.com]

I would have thought that Ann would have been just as helpful (or even more so) than she is now. It's a fairly common habit among little girls to want to "mother" baby brothers and sisters - I think Ann with 4 tiny tots to look after would have been in "Ann heaven". I can see her spending all day picking up the toys Lawrie's thrown out of the pram, and never getting bored. Maybe Nick was especially reliant on Ann until fierce independence set in (at about age 6?) and the reaction made her go so far the opposite way.

Re: Ann

[ejarh.livejournal.com]

We know from Peter's Room that when Ann was nine-ish, just after Karen and Rowan started school, she imagined what it would be like if she was Charlotte Bronte and she "kills off" Giles, Karen, Rowan and Nicola. So maybe Ann's not quite so soft and sentimental as she is often thought of. She's the main character of this imaginary Bronte-Marlow family - nicely out of charcater from her usual "every one else first" mode.

Re: Ann

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

Well, Nicola's the only one of those she had any choice about - Giles had to go because Charlotte Bronte didn't have an elder brother, and Rowan and Karen corresponded to Elizabeth and Maria.

I do find it interesting that she chose to lose Nicola rather than Lawrie or indeed Ginty, as Nicola strikes me as a lot more Anne Bronte-like in temperament; I can't see Lawrie holding down a job in a household where Peter was carrying on with the lady of the house in the intervals of getting drunk with the local railway staff [1]. Then again, Anne Bronte carried on playing Gondal whereas Nicola decisively rejected it, which may be the parallel Antonia Forest was going for.

I wonder whether Ann felt she couldn't 'get rid of' Lawrie because Lawrie had always been the one the family thought might not make it? Is there actually anything in canon about Lawrie having been iller than Nicola, or is that just a supposition based on Lawrie being generally prone to make more of a fuss?

Charlotte Bronte definitely was the main character of the Gaskell bio, but she's still definitely a very self-sacrificing main character, always putting her father and sisters first. And yet she has such a very intense inner life; I wonder sometimes whether Ann does too.

[1] I may be maligning Branwell Bronte here, as I can't actually remember where in his career his getting-drunk-with-railway-staff phase came.

Re: Ann

[colne-dsr.livejournal.com]

I suspect Ann "got rid of" Nicola because Nicola, by that time, was already resenting Ann's helpfulness, while Lawrie was (and is!) still taking advantage of it. In daydreams, it's always a help if the other characters will do as they're told!