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

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

And thank you for that. Reading this, I was starting to think I lived in a different universe, where I lived in hand-me-downs from my sister that were in turn handed down to my younger cousins (and at 29 I still receive with thanks cast-offs of my sister's) and my daughter (though, yes, she's still a baby) has owned about 5 items of new clothing in her life - most are handed down from my sister's son and most of those were not new to him. What on earth is wrong with that? And the more so for party clothes, which have no chance of being worn out before being outgrown. Apart from the fact that the Marlow books are (mostly and sort of) set at a time when wastefulness would have been far more frowned on than it is now, I actively like the idea of reading books where disposability is not a virtue.

[carmine-rose.livejournal.com]

What on earth is wrong with that?

I'm not suggesting that they chuck old clothes away (I'm sure there are plenty of people they could have been donated to), nor that hand-me-downs are bad things to have - I too had loads from my elder cousins. I just don't think it's unreasonable for the girls to want new, or to think that some of the money from the Last Ditch could have been spent on a nice gesture for all the girls - witness how happy the twins were the year after when they got new party dresses for Christmas. Was that a waste of money?

For God's sake, I'm not bagging on hand-me-downs - surely I've made that clear by now. Just saying I think it would have been nice for the girls to get something posh and new out of the financial "windfall".

[oursin.livejournal.com]

But they weren't new-new party dresses: they were Doris makeovers of old dresses of Mrs Marlowe's (probably a lot better than anything they'd be likely to have shopbought).

[carmine-rose.livejournal.com]

Oh, were they? I've misremembered that then. I thought they were new. Back to the books!