Lois

[kit120.livejournal.com]

I always thought Lois ended up killing herself, because she couldn't get over losing the cricket match.  Everyone tells her it's not a matter of life and death, "but they were wrong".  I haven't read 'Cricket Term' for about 25 years and I never owned it, but I remember rereading that section over and over and being absolutely chilled by it. Did I read too much into it?  Also, given that she's extremely competitive and reasonably good at making excuses for herself and blaming others why doesn't she go on to great success in life?

Comments

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

It's certainly a possible reading, though if Lois had committed suicide so soon after leaving school I'd have expected Miss Keith to send a staff member along to the funeral as she did for Marie, and for someone at Kingscote to mention it to the Old Girls who reminisce about her.

[smellingbottle.livejournal.com]

I've read it as suggesting simply that it was an important failure for Lois, something for which she couldn't let herself off the hook, and one of the events that permanently alters your sense of yourself. That passage, if I remmber it rightly - I've no idea where my childhood copy of Cricket Term, and used to doze off over the lengthy game description anyway, having less than no comprehension of the rules - is chilling because AF is so good on the experience of realising at the onset of adulthood that you are ultimately alone in the world, and that failure is not only possible, but quite likely.

[mrs-redboots.livejournal.com]

I have to admit that this had not occurred to me. I just assumed that nobody else went to the same college/university/whatever institute of further education she went to, and she made a new set of friends who knew nothing of her rather ropey history but took her at face value. So that she was able to grow into a new person, and didn't want to look back.

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

None of the rest of the Sixth strike me as the sort of people who'd go on to a College of Physical Training, certainly :)

[mrs-redboots.livejournal.com]

No, they weren't a very athletic year!

Lois

[kit120.livejournal.com]

I don't think the suicide would necessarily be immediate, which I admit would be very difficult to hush up, but a later suicide would fit in with her downward spiral so far of moral failure starting with the rickyard incident. Also if she can't forgive herself for something as minor as a lost cricket match, how can she cope with the real mistakes she will make in life? It all makes me very worried about Esther, who can't forgive herself for not singing Nick's solo.

[stripydinosaur.livejournal.com]

ooooooh! good idea! never thought of it that way myself, but it would be an interesting end for Lois, especially as she is one of those characters whose feelings we do get to see a bit of.

[richenda.livejournal.com]

How interesting - and how appalling! I'd always read it metaphorically - as in survival or not of school reputation.
You may be right - and AF's writing does have a dark and truthful aspect, doesn't it?
But do we know that she doesn't go on to success? I suppose that I assumed that she would find out, as most of us did, that life or death (of school reputation) hasn't much to do with the rest of life.

[colne-dsr.livejournal.com]

I'd always assumed, from reading it as a teenager, that she died literally. I've never really noticed AF using such oblique references to events - I always took anything like that literally.

On the other hand, if Lois had thrown herself from the train on the way home, then the Old Girls would have certainly heard. If she died, it must surely have been a year or two later; and even then, you'd have thought someone would have seen it in the paper?

[rosathome.livejournal.com]

It had never occurred to me that this could be taken literally. When they reminisce at OG functions: 'D'you remember Lois Sanger? D'you remember how she sat and gloomed that night after we lost that comic cricket match? D'you ever hear from her? Does anyone ever hear from her? Whatever did happen to her, do you suppose?', clearly no one there suspects that she's dead. And that is the kind of news that does always get back.

Isn't there a passage somewhere where Patrick speculates about whether Lois knows she's a heel or not? I think this is her big moment of self-realisation. Knowing that she can't 'ever-so-carefully' twist an ankle before every match for the rest of her life, and that there won't always be an excuse for failure.

[kit120.livejournal.com]

I guess it's possible that that comment, "but they were wrong" on the people who told Lois it wasn't a matter of life and death is supposed to indicate what Lois thought at the time and just shows that she wouldn't be comforted. However, followed so closely by the news that she was never heard of again, it does strongly indicate death by some means or other, at some time or other, but directly as a result of the lost cricket match.

The fact that the other old girls talk gaily about that 'comic cricket match' and don't suspect that anything terrible happened to Lois indicates dramatic irony. Something terrible must have happened or their failure to understand how important the match was to Lois and total lack or worry about her would hardly be worth reporting.

If Lois could live without trace, couldn't she as easily die without trace?

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

I agree with you here. It's an interesting theory, but I honestly don't think AF would have killed off both Nicola's main antagonists - Lois and Marie. She works so hard at making the school books at least seem naturalistic (whatever may happen in the holidays) that I don't believe she would have put in two such similar deaths, in which the hated person just disappears, unmourned and almost unnoticed, from Kingscote society.

Lois

[charverz.livejournal.com]

There is a fairly recent article in Folly, with the Merricks' Twelfth Night 15 years later.

Lois is Games Mistress at Kingscote! (a little far-fetched, given the comments of her peers, some of whom must have kept in touch with the school.)