I don't know. Patrick is sixteen, just the age where if he's going to be smugly superior, he will be. I bet that if we were to meet him at 18, and certainly at 21, he would be completely different! Madame Orly would probably be dreadful whatever her denomination - she just isn't comfortable around young people, and it shows!
I find Nicola's and Lawrie's total ignorance of the basics of Christianity really rather surprising, considering that they go to boarding-school, where church attendance and daily prayers are undoubtedly compulsory! But there again, Nicola's surprise at discovering that there are real believers today, people for whom God is as real as bread and butter, and for whom worship is a normal part of daily life, may be due to her age.
As for Ann, she wouldn't be nearly so irritating if she wasn't quite so in-your-face about things. She may or may not be a believer, but she gets things just wrong - she has to do everything for everybody, can't ever let anybody else be helpful. Patrick's faith, I suspect, is a lot more real and grounded than Ann's is! He talks about it when asked, but basically gets on with the job of living - Ann has to try to prove she's "holy" in every interaction with her sisters.
It's interesting that the glimpses we get of her in Attic Term show that she's actually a successful prefect, managing to work very well with the juniors who are put in her charge. Yet in Run Away Home she is as irritating as ever - and devastated when left out of the family plans to rescue Edward, since she can't be trusted not to hand him over to the authorities.
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I find Nicola's and Lawrie's total ignorance of the basics of Christianity really rather surprising, considering that they go to boarding-school, where church attendance and daily prayers are undoubtedly compulsory! But there again, Nicola's surprise at discovering that there are real believers today, people for whom God is as real as bread and butter, and for whom worship is a normal part of daily life, may be due to her age.
As for Ann, she wouldn't be nearly so irritating if she wasn't quite so in-your-face about things. She may or may not be a believer, but she gets things just wrong - she has to do everything for everybody, can't ever let anybody else be helpful. Patrick's faith, I suspect, is a lot more real and grounded than Ann's is! He talks about it when asked, but basically gets on with the job of living - Ann has to try to prove she's "holy" in every interaction with her sisters.
It's interesting that the glimpses we get of her in Attic Term show that she's actually a successful prefect, managing to work very well with the juniors who are put in her charge. Yet in Run Away Home she is as irritating as ever - and devastated when left out of the family plans to rescue Edward, since she can't be trusted not to hand him over to the authorities.
And I don't