Ginty

[ex-lizzzar998.livejournal.com]

I have only just found this community - wish I'd been able to participate earlier. Despite not being as gorgeous or popular as Ginty at school, I always had some sympathy for her. Does anyone agree with me that perhaps things will work out OK for her, despite her certainly very questionable behaviour in Attic Term? After all, she is only fifteen although I can understand Patrick being upset ( even if he doesn't mind the ultimate consequences) as she does lie, if only by omission. Sometimes I do think that AF has it in for her for being a conventionally feminine teenager - I'm pretty sure she is about the only Marlow would wouldn't be considered slightly odd at the schools I went to - but perhaps sheer Marlow confidence and force of personality would carry them through...

Also, does anyone have any comments on her name? I've heard of Ginty and McGinty as a surname (I think usually Irish or Scottish) but not as a short form of Virginia, which I think Is usually Ginny. Nevertheless, I guess it fits with the general gender ambiguity of Marlow female names (Nick, Lawrie, Rowan, even Kay used for a man in Malory, although less often subsequently, I think) If she's not stuck being called Ann, maybe she's redeemable (actually I think Ann's a perfectly reasonable name, but it doesn't seem that cool in Marlow terms.)

Comments

Ginty

[dunite.livejournal.com]

Some interesting comments from you all about Ginty. I agree with smellingbottle about her insecurity, and her need not to be alone. She's actually a fairly typical modern teenager, but perhaps she wouldn't have been quite so much in the days when AF was first writing about her. I think that Ginty finds it easier to pretend that things are so, rather than looking at things as they are. In this situation, the desire to Gondal is of a piece with her friendship with Unity Logan: AF doesn't suggest, for example, that the events of TMATT really affected Ginty in a long-lasting way, more that she was pretending to herself and to Unity that those events had affected her. The experience would have been intense: she was the eldest, responsible, very scared, and also sidelined somewhat by Peter's absurd would-be heroism. However, I also understand why her parents are concerned (in FL) about her failure to put that time behind her, and rightly concerned about Unity's part in this. I think it's perfectly natural for her to realise suddenly that she can't go on pretending, and so channels her outlets into things she was previously interested in. There are hints of this earlier in FL which suggest that Ginty can't always pretend to a sad, sweet sorrow.

My thoughts about Mme Orly approving her evidently stem from her good looks and general presentability. Plus Ginty actually likes the presents that their grandmother sends, and seems quite at home in Mme Orly's world. The children presumably pick up on the tension that exists between their mother and grandmother, and Ginty is the only one who appears to appreciate that their grandmother may have things to offer that their mother doesn't. Glamour, pleasure, dances, sophisticated Paris, that kind of thing.

While I don't think that most of the Marlows would fit comfortably into a modern school, they aren't untypical characters for post-war school fiction. Most successful girls in school fiction are both brainy or hard-working and sporty (or at least are tryers).