only children

[antfan.livejournal.com]

 

Has anybody noticed a curious thing about the books, that while the Marlows themselves are spectacularly fecund, just about every other major character - Patrick, Tim, Miranda, Esther….is an only child? 

 

I’ve been wondering for a bit if this is more than coincidence….it seems to me that AF (who is on record as saying she began the Marlow stories very much with publication in mind) made sure to choose both a genre (school story) and a type of family (large, naval, adventurous, anglican) that were both acceptable and recognisable in terms of current children’s fiction.  When Tim describes the various Marlow sisters at the start of AT, you can almost see how AF was thinking, setting them up: Kay scholarly, Rowan good at games, Ginty a bit wild but with good stuff in her etc etc…the “types” that inhabit so many school stories.  Giles and Commander Marlow, of course, are both fine, upstanding naval types, and Mrs Marlow is a typically clichéd docile mother (IMOshe gets more interesting/complex in subsequent books).

 

However, as we all know, AF’s books are NOT simply genre school stories, and it seems to me that one way she made them more complex was by introducing characters who in some manner diverge from the mainstream and so tend to present rather different perspectives/values.  So we have Patrick (Catholic) and Miranda (Jewish) and Esther (divorced parents) who all of them at various times present slightly unusual slants on accepted conventions/values, and certainly contrast strongly with the more conventional Marlows.  And then there is Tim (artistic father, well-travelled) who tends to subvert and undermine practically all established school girl story values.   If you try to imagine Autumn Term without Tim it is just about impossible – never mind the plot, but you would end up with a far more conventional piece of boarding school fiction.  (Whether, as reader, you actually like Tim is another matter entirely!)

 

These “onlys” all have something of the outsider about them, and so it is only fitting that they should be “only children” – used to standing alone.  Of course, they all have a foot in mainstream too: Miranda and Patrick’s families are rich, Esther’s dad is a barrister, Tim is the headmistress’s niece!  A bit like AF’s books themselves: on the one hand, genre stories about upperclass families, full of ponies, team games and squabbles in the guides…and yet as we all know there’s a whole lot more? Or (not for the first time )am I spinning a theory out of nowhere?

 

AF was also an only child, and I also can’t help wondering if any of them represent her or aspects of her charater.  (Based only on obits) the top candidate would seem to be Miranda (Londoner, Reform Jewish but with some interest – expressed in End of Term – for Christianity) but then Patrick shares AF’s real name and Catholic views.  And I believe both AF and Esther like gardening...

Comments

veering away from your main question, but....

[nzraya.livejournal.com]

FWIW, that business with Tim -- being related to the Head and also being the child of travelling artistic parent(s) who arrives at school assuming her sophistication will put her ahead of the herd, only to find that she is behind academically and must suffer the ignominy of Third Remove -- is all vintage Chalet School:

(1) Joey Bettany is the sister of the CS's first headmistress; Simone whatsername is the niece of the second headmistress; subsequently, though no one is related to Miss Annersley, she becomes "Aunt Hilda" out of school to Joey's kids and virtually anyone else Joey adopts...

(2) Numerous pupils (Clem Barras; Lavender from "Lavender Laughs"; Katharine Gordon; others that I'm forgetting...) have artistic parents (or guardians) who travel a lot and cause their kids to have erratic or unorthodox schooling. They sometimes arrive with an attitude ("I'm so cool because I've been to..."), expecting to outshine their classmates on the basis of their experiences, and almost always are disappointed to find that the opposite is the case.

Point (2) is the more interesting to me, because it's yet another example of a plot convention that is used repeatedly and very predictably in some of the classics of the genre, but which in AF's hands play out unconventionally: Tim *does* end up making a splash with some of the "unusual" skills she's picked up while neglecting the regular curriculum, and *does* succeeed in carving out a niche for herself as "special" -- a person whose approval matters, and who doesn't really give a damn about anyone else's opinion -- that lasts throughout the series. Far from knuckling under and becoming "a regular Chalet School girl" (the usual moral), Tim insists on her specialness despite all efforts to quash her, and ends up making it a real and fairly unquashable thing.

Re: veering away from your main question, but....

[antfan.livejournal.com]

Fascinating - I had never seen Tim in that way before, but of course you are right, the Bohemian rebel is a bit of a stock figure. I

Following on, it always seemed to me that by Cricket Term AF was having some problems knowing what to do with Tim. She doesn't get up to much other than a bit of giggling/sketching. Too sophisticated to join in the cricket/other people's plays...

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

Books seem to have a much higher proportion of only children than real life. I don't know if this is because authors are more likely to be only children, or if the authors just can't be bothered to write in siblings.

If you didn't have Tim in Autumn Term, the classic story would require Nicola to daringly suggest the Play and probably have Lawrie write it (it would be like Enid Blyton's O'Sullivan Twins, where Our Heroines have to do everything). The difference with AF is she manages to have people like each other to different degrees (which Brent-Dyer manages), *and* have that change over time.