The Redeeming Characteristics of Edwin Dodd

[ailbhe]

I have only managed to think of two.

Now, I freely admit that The Ready-Made Family disturbs me for good and personal reasons. Nonetheless, I find the character of Edwin Dodd almost entirely without redeeming social importance...

with the possible exception of these:

(1) He volunteers to help Nicky when her query directly relates to his personal area of expertise and interest.

(2) He shows up just in time to rescue his daughter from a paedophile, when she was only in danger in the first place because she was running away from him.

Other than this, he seems cold to the point of cruelty, has a ridiculously short temper, doesn't appear capable of apologising in a reasonable way, and seems to hate his children while wanting to own them as precious property.

However, I have not read Cricket Term.

Edit: the day before the wedding, Chas is thrilled to see him and climbs out a window and runs towards him. So there must be some positive in there somewhere, though I note neither girl is that excited...

Comments

[helenprev.livejournal.com]

I don't like him at all. I concede to your two redeeming characteristics but I certainly can't think of any more!

I know we see him entirely through the Marlows' eyes - but the fact that he calls Karen 'Katie' is quite enough to grate... and the way he treats his children is appalling.

I have read Cricket Term, millions of times, and though he doesn't show any signs of being horrible at all in that, neither does he redeem himself any further as far as I am concerned!

[smellingbottle.livejournal.com]

(3) Interesting badger-ish hair?

Or am I inventing this fact?

[blonde222.livejournal.com]

He likes Dorothy L Sayers novels?

[tabouli.livejournal.com]

Edwin does come across brutal and unpleasant, though he strikes me as the sort of emotionally repressed man for whom anger is the only acceptable means of expression. In fairness, he's been through a stressful time (separation, death, prospective loss of children, pressured into a marriage he has doubts about), and he probably found the confident, challenging Marlows would be hard to cope with.

My sense of Edwin is of an awkward intellectual who has been raised under a cold-showers-to-toughen-'em-up regime of discipline where any sign of rebellion or emotional vulnerability is something to be ridiculed and quashed. A strict boys' boarding school or brutal father, perhaps.

I've met men with that combination of intellectual rigour and emotional repression. Maybe Edwin was attracted to Rosemary because her warmth and gentleness, which he both craved and despised, and she to him because there's something deeply touching about being the one to lure the broken child out of the beast. She had to live with both, though, and perhaps seeing the beast in Edwin-as-father was what led her to leave. What does Edwin do then? He latches onto another nice, unthreatening woman, the much younger Karen, and then commandeers her to provide his children with the warmth he on some level understands to be desirable but could never provide himself.

[richenda.livejournal.com]

My whole mental picture of him changed during the conversation with Rose:
"So do I" (miss her mother)
When I read again the scene with Karen and
"Are you sure he does want to marry you?"
I now see it in a completely different light.
(Yes, I know that I might not be quoting exactly.)

I'm now sure that the author's intention was that he has real feelings for Karen. The "Katie" is surely an awkward attempt to show real affection, by someone who still doesn't understand what went wrong in the first marriage, and is still shocked by the death. And the fact that there are three children from the first marriage does suggest that he has some -er - social/emotional skills, doesn't it?

Even the appalling scene with Peter seems more understandable when you consider that schools were still beating pupils well into the 1950s.

[chazzbanner.livejournal.com]

I also like the fact that his children 'get' his dry sense of humor. It shows IMO they've had more interaction with him than we might think, and positive interaction at that.

[colne-dsr.livejournal.com]

I would have thought that a good proportion of parents of 3+ children have had at least one run away from home, or at least they did in the days when children were allowed out without a lead. Especially just after a dead mother, a new stepmother, and a new home have all appeared in quick succession. (Most runaways don't get so far, and usually come back in time for tea!)

[bookwormsarah.livejournal.com]

Have to say that he went up in my estimation when he whacked Peter - I'd wanted to do that every time he starts on the mummerset. Of course it was extremely violent and unacceptable, but I did have a modicum of sympathy.

[richenda.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry - that's the second time today that I've forgotten to log in. It happens when I'm replying to email.

[owl]

I'm not sure how one gets 'Katie' from Karen, really. And then Edwin objected to Chas and Fob, which are the same sort of nickname.

[ex-lizzzar998.livejournal.com]

I made a similar comment to this earlier as I am going through the back posts - I think you are right that Edwin is an odd and rather conflicted character. It says in AF's introduction to the Girls Gone By editions that he was originally going to a wife-beater - before AF decided that this would be going too far and he could just be really bad tempered and wind everyone up. I think this tension between bad Edwin/OK but really bad-tempered Edwin remains. Apparently in an earlier version of Run Away Home he beats Charles and Rose, upsetting Karen. He clearly does have some fatal attraction for her though. Personally, I hope she does eventually go back to University and doesn't spend her whole life as a housewife do to his rather dubious attractions.