trennels | catholic question?

So good to find this site, full of other people who share a passions for the Marlows Fascinating that people have such very different responses. Never occurred to me that you could love the books but not Nicola, or that anyone actually liked Patrick Merrick….

So I’d like to ask opinions about something I find puzzling. All the obits/biogs say Antonia Forest was such a strong catholic, and yet why (to my mind) are her noncatholic/nonreligious characters so much more appealing? And her catholic characters so strongly unappealing. Mme Orly is a nightmare –fun to read about, but a nightmare – and then there’s Patrick… I suppose he is the major example. To me he always seems both arrogant and a prig, and his religious certainties always seemed a big part of this. He is just way too certain of himself and his beliefs.

Some examples: In conversation with Rowan, he states that of course he never has any difficulties at all in believing in God (End of Term). Nicola, following a conversation with him, reflects that she hopes her ancestors were genuine believers in Protestantism, as anything else would seem so inferior to the Merricks, with their acceptance of possible martyrdom. (interesting: she seems to detect in his religion a kind of dynastic superiority rather than a personal spirituality!) In the same conversation Patrick makes clear that he sees the whole of English history through a Catholic prism – completely writing off the Tudors and the Restoration, and stating that of course his family supported Charles not ‘Orrible Oliver during the Civil War. (And more fool them, as Oliver Cromwell’s regime was notable for its toleration towards Catholics – far more so than after the Restoration.) Patrick’s certainties (religious, social, intellectual) are not even much shaken up by his long talk with Jukie (Thuggery Affair) although he does at least find Jukie’s DIY theology baffling, rather than amusing (as we are told would usually be the case). Is such cast-iron certainty/superiority really an attractive feature in someone who is only fifteen/sixteen? Wouldn’t you want to shoot him for such smugness!

Most tellingly, I can’t think of any notable example of kindness or generosity by Patrick, religiously inspired or not. Quite the opposite, in the whole betrayal of Nicola for Ginty -which makes it all the more annoying she is just delighted to get him back!) (Oops – I suppose Patrick’s willingness to help Jukie – at some personal risk – is an example here. However, Jukie dies and the incident seems to have no lasting effect upon Patrick at all.)

ALSO I can’t help noticing that AF herself chooses for her main characters people who are both open-minded and reflective and generally of no strong religious conviction at all. (Does this mean she likes them best? Or she thinks they are more appealing to readers? )In End of Term, Nicola is both thoughtful and intrigued by the different religious beliefs she encounters, almost sociologically observant, but very far from expressing any particular belief herself. This makes Nicola a lot more appealing in my eyes…she is also generally a kinder person than Patrick, and far more reflective about herself and her own behaviour. For that matter, Lawrie (who states that she thought Christianity was some sort of mythology, like the Olympians, and even tries to make bargains with God) is a lot more appealing than Ann (full of conventional religious piety).

Then there’s Nicholas and Will (Player’s Boy/Rebels). AF’s Will is surely one of her most appealing characters: wise, ironic, shrewd, detached…and he has no interest in supporting the Old Religion. Furthermore, he believes Nicholas is right to betray the Essex plotters regardless of the fact that some of them are hoping to restore the Catholic faith. (He and Nicholas’s scruples and regrets about this are to do with personal loyalties/friendships, not religion.)

So what’s going on here? Am I misreading the books totally? So many things I like about AF’s writing – her subversiveness (especially in the school setting), her openness to paradox and alternative points of view, and her choice of open-minded, searching, pragmatic characters for her main narrative viewpoints – seem at odds with what I read on the AF web-sites – that AF was a strong catholic herself. (And monarchist for that matter.) Of course, I have to say it is decades since I read Attic Term – would that make things clearer? Do I simply not understand what AF was trying to do? Comments please!

Tags: nicola, patrick, religion

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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.

And I don't

Sorry - no idea where that "And I don't" came from at the end of the previous post!

We can see in Mrs Marlow's references to her youth that her mother was always a Very Difficult Person, presumably before her conversion.

I don't think Ann is particularly 'trying to to be holy' - one doesn't get the impression that she takes a line of personal self-righteousness, but her perennial helpfulness and doing things for others is both exploited by and annoying to her siblings (this is almost distinct from their irritation over her piety). She seems to have 'boundary problems' with family members: because besides being an effective prefect she's also shown as an excellent Guide patrol leader who stands no nonsense from her patrol members and is adored by them. More effective in this respect than Karen is shown to be (e.g. in Autumn Term). Family dynamics at work?

And, of course, Madame Orly was married to a collaborateur (as confided by Sue Sims at the AF Conference, based on discussions with AF) which presumably causes a good few tensions in the Marlow household now, too.

I think Patrick staying up all night lighting candles for Peter in the chapel is an extraordinarily moving scene, and very much founded on a clash between two strands of Catholicism in his heritage, the Old Catholic families and the Irish nursemaid who'd taught him prayers.

I agree with this. It was a very Catholic act, the belief in the power of prayer coupled with personal hardship.

As a 'cradle' Catholic partly educated at rigorous Catholic schools I find Patrick instantly recognisable as a pre Vatican 2 typical Catholic child, encouraged to think in terms of Catholics and non-Catholics. The latter, so we were taught/indoctrinated, could get to Heaven but it was far harder for them. Once this idea of natural spiritual superiority has taken root it takes years of shifting. Also, I seem to remember that Patrick shows surprise that C of E types seem to wear their religion lightly and know so little about it. The bit where Mrs Marlow says the children have to occasionally turn up at church to save her embarrassment is light years away from the Catholic who would attend come what may or risk the future of their immortal soul.

Things are different now, of course, but I think AF characterises her Catholics in a very true way for the time she was writing.

Which book is that - the candle-lighting? I don't remember it at all - is it Attic term?

It's really interesting about the collaborateur - is there all kind of Marlow back story then that doesn't appear in the books?

sorry - anonymous was me, antfan, by the way -not pressing all the right buttons

Run Away Home.

I always like the bit in Autumn Term where Ann's patrol talk about her to the twins and they find out that she is not as mollycoddling (Sorry! couldn't think of a good word) in Guides as she is at home; I think this is an excellent bit of writing, showing how differently people behave - or are viewed - with their friends compared to their family.

It's funny about Ann. When she is such a good Mary in End of Term, for example, presumably because the story means a lot to her (because everybody who knows her is rather surprised about it) you get the feeling that as a person and a believer she is to be taken seriously, and does have redeeming features. Obviously Nicola doesn't like her, but that seems to be a basic personality clash. However, in Run Away Home she really does seem to have become a caricature - so unpleasantly prissy and narrow-minded. I rather preferred the more nuanced version, I have to say.

I don't feel that Ann is prissy and narrow minded exactly - just very into PC. She holds firm beliefs and, depending upon your point of view, might be seen as strong and capable with definite leadership qualities. Her character would actually need very little tweaking to make her a typical popular character from other school stories written about the same time. It must be very tough being born into a family who are all so very different from her and tough too to hold on to beliefs and behaviours that are seen as laughable and/or boring. I don't like Ann particularly but I find her a sympathetic character at times and I have a suspicion that if I found myself slipping through a time warp and ending up at Trennels (to pick up something nzraya sort of suggests) in the school holidays it would be Ann I would sidle up to first while I plucked up the courage to speak to Rowan. (Who would probably be unpleasantly sarcastic.)

Forgot to log in. The above was from me.

Generally speaking, I think Ann's response on spiritual issues is rather different to her response on moral/ethical issues. I mean, there's Nicola looking at her with surprise as she appears "gay and recollected" on returning from church. Her response to Edward Oeschsli, however, is very much a "render unto Caesar" approach (and while it's perfectly valid that the rest of the Marlows utterly disregard the human aspect when it manifests in the person of Judity, Ann disregards Edward and Felix's human aspect also).

Where Ann comes over as thoroughly unsympathetic is the reason why she refuses to lend her bicycle to Nicola, though. That one is narrow-minded (if I'd been Ann, I'd have never lent my bicycle to another family member for different reasons, but the reason given is obnoxious). Basically she's putting obstacles in the way of Nicola's spiritual journey because she's being sectarian about things.

Yes, I think the spiritual vs moral is an important and helpful distinction with Ann. Maybe, like Patrick, she's still working out how to live out her faith in ways that don't make her quite so priggish. She's a teenager too, remember. And she's likely to overcompensate for her family's total lack of concern for these matters. But it doesn't mean it's not real or well-motivated.

catholic question?

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