Fairness in the Marlow household

[carmine-rose.livejournal.com]

I was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on the fair/unfair treatment of the Marlow young by their parents. I'm thinking specifically the treatment of Nicola by her parents/mother in Cricket Term. Is there anyway this could have been handled better? Should it actually have been Nicola who was going to have to leave? Should they have told her or dropped it on her in the summer holidays? Should they have removed all the girls, or perhaps just both twins?

For that matter, should Lawrie have been given the Prosser? (I know this wasn't her parents' decision, I'm just interested whether people think it was a good judgement call on the part of the staff.)

In a similar vein, what about the horse business in Peter's Room? Was it fair that their mother bought Ginty a horse for her birthday, and said no-one else was to ride it? Was it reasonable to buy herself one before ensuring the children all had equal access to a horse for hunting? In effect, she created a situation where one daughter was the only one in the family who was unable to go hunting (without hiring a horse), which seems harsh to me. But then, I'm from a small family where such unequality with gifts never happened - is this normal for a large family? Was Lawrie's reaction reasonable, or did other readers take it as just one more example of her throwing whiny tantrums?

These two occasions seemed to me to best illustrate Mrs. Marlow's failings as a mother (and also perhaps where the children got their selfishness) - I wondered if anyone else felt the same.

Can anyone else think of any other examples of this kind of thing? Or of fairer treatment?

Comments

imo

[jen-c-w.livejournal.com]

the whole thing boils down to a question of justice or equality. Ginty always seems to drift - the half term off (ok there's reasons behind it, but you get the impression that Nick or Ro would have managed to drag themselves back), right at the beginning Lal says about Ginty being in an A even though she's not clever at all, she's really good at diving, yet always mucks it up, and she has generally useless friends - the redoutable Monica aside. So, perhaps it's a case of Mrs M feels that if gin has something she really gets into, it will work its way into all of her life, rather than just leaving her as pretty and somewhat vacant which is how some - Mrs Merrick for example - but not AF I hasten to add - seem to see her. Personally I've always loved Ginty, so was fairly happy about it all, but that's a "proper" reason for it.

Re: imo

[carmine-rose.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's a good distinction - it's not really "equal" treatment, but it might well be "just", what with what Ginty's been through and with her general tendancy to be unfocused.