trennels | Fairness in the Marlow household

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?

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I think it's associated with that slightly creepy conversation Giles has in Run Away Home about the wrong sort of women for naval officers to get mixed up with. I end up biting my lips every time I read that bit, before recalling that Giles is canonically a whopping idiot quite a lot of the time, at least on shore, and he's only about 22 anyway.

Is Giles' age compared to Kay's (considering the closeness in age of all the others) compatible with whatever rank he's got by the end of the books? I remember thinking that he seemed a lot younger in Run Away Home when I finally got to see him for an extended period.

I didn't think the conversation was creepy as such, just a bit ruthlessly pragmatic. A little Roan-ish, even. If the Navy is as vital to him as it seems to be, a potential Mrs Giles needs to be able to cope with that. I'd like it more if he'd considered the possibility that no-one would, and had taken that option into account.

Rowan gives up school at 16 (Falconer's Lure). She drives up to school when she is in fact too young to do so (End of Term). Ready Made Family occurs the following Easter, the Cricket Term the following Summer, Attic Term the Autum after that, and Run Away Home that Christmas. At best Rowan is (barely) eighteen at the time of Run Away Home. Kay goes up to Oxford (eighteen) at the start of End of Term. She marries Edwin the following Easter (nineteen). By the next autumn (Run Away Home) she may (or may not) be twenty. If Giles is 22 it's the most he can be, and his rank is sub-lieutenant.

Rowan's age wobbles a bit--she says she's seventeen in FL, but in EoT she's too young to drive (although she might have meant that she wasn't licensed, and that looking twenty-ish with the lipstick meant she's less likely to be asked to show a licence). Then Patrick thinks about her 'running the family farm at eighteen', some time in AT or Run Away Home.

I thought I remembered Nick telling Esther or Miranda at some point that Giles had been promoted? To lieutenant would really be the only thing.

And after Rowan it's pretty much baby-a-year until it rounds off with the twins. And from Ginty => twins can't be more than 18 months or so. Eoch! Think of poor Mrs Marlow's reproductive organs. The woman deserves Chocbar :)

Oh, and Commander M. must have had frequent leaves at that time :)

That'd mean she was pretty much permanently pregnant between starting with Ginty to having the twins, because Peter's between them, isn't he? Which, ow.

Commander M. must have had frequent leaves at that time

I wonder if he was posted at home (maybe a position somewhere in the Admiralty) when the children were younger? Or at Portsmouth or Southampton? Presumably he wasn't in command of his own ship at that time.

He probably would have had to have been posted at home to be around that frequently.

Ginty is born on 6 January; the latest the twins can be born is July the following year (Nick tells Patrick she's 13 in FL, which is August 1948. Ginty at that point is 14 1/2). Even given the fact that twins are usually slightly premature, the latest point they could have been conceived is December or so of the same year Ginty was born, and there was Peter in between! Ow, indeed!

I've actually got my legs crossed just thinking about that time frame!

Fairness in the Marlow household

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