Run Away Home - what are we meant to think?

[tosomja.livejournal.com]

I've just read RAH for the first time and whilst I enjoyed it, I also found it rather disconcerting.  I found myself unsure which side AF was expecting us to take in the Edward saga and wondered what others felt.    If I've got it right, Edward was snatched by his father as a baby and taken to Switzerland, and his mother refused to follow as she didn't want to live abroad.  When Edward came back to visit, his mother then refused to let him go back to his father (who had, after all, snatched him).  As far as all the Marlows except Ann are concerned, Judith is then the demonised one, with comments about how stupid she was not to just follow him to Switzerland, and particularly how dreadful to have put him into care and all efforts are obviously put into reuniting Edward with his father.  Edward is seemingly quite disturbed by the whole thing and is fairly unpleasant throughout the whole thing.

Several things disturbed me about this book.  One was that no one seemed to communicate at all with Edward - I kept waiting for some sort of denoucement involving Edward, Judith and Felix, where there would be lots of weeping and resolving of misunderstandings, and finally an arriving at some sort of joint custody arrangement which Edward was happy with, or at least some moment when Edward would break down and we would get some glimpse of the distress he was going through, and of the complexities of what was going on.   

Another was how united the Marlows were in their pursuit of returning Edward, and how completely they dismissed Ann's opinion about it - what do you think AF wants us to feel about Ann in this book?  Her religious views are obviously against AF's own, and she comes across as rather dogmatic in othe ways - is her support of Judith meant to be another example of how she takes the side of the law without considering the facts and emotions of the case?  

Then, despite this, it seemed like AF was trying to make the point that the case wasn't cut and dried, by introducing Judith's overdose and also portraying Judith as a likeable character when she appears, but that doesn't seem to lead to much genuine reflection on the part of the Marlows, just momentary second thoughts in some cases. 

But then, after reading RAH, I felt that most of the Marlows did not get portrayed as possessing much capacity for self-reflection, and also didn't appear to communicate much with each other! Giles in particular appeared to simply decide what to do, announce it and then do it.  I was reminded of that comment made by someone (Lois Sanger?) in Cricket term I think (am just remembering so have probably got it wrong) about Nicola thinking, like Rowan, that what more could one ask out of life than to be a Marlow.  It seemed like they just acted, assuming that somehow, their very Marlowness would mean they were on the right side.   

What does anyone else think?  Will a re-reading resolve these issues, or are they intrinsic to the book? 

  

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Comments

[rosathome.livejournal.com]

Exactly. It's complicated, and the more the story unfolds, the more complicated it becomes.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'no one seems to communicate at all with Edward'? The one thing that is crystal clear throughout the whole book is that Edward wants to go back to his father. What else did you need to know? And who would be communicating with him that the Marlows would know about it?

I think that the reasons the Marlows act in the way they do are fairly obvious too. First - it's what Edward wants. Second - being in care is clearly a worse alternative than being with his father, and being with his mother isn't a viable alternative. Third - once they've decided, they have to go through with it. Finding out later that Judith wasn't such a bad sort isn't going to affect their actions.

I also think that while, of course, they're Marlows and there is that sort of 'nothing better in life' arrogance, they're also (mostly) teenagers who do tend to see things in black and white terms. Rowan and Giles are clearly the most reluctant to get involved and that makes sense because they're older. And of course Giles acts in that way - he's not only the eldest of eight (and thus used to taking charge of much younger siblings whose opinions don't carry much weight, because, you know, there's eight of them), he's also a naval officer and the 'adult' at home during most of the book. I wouldn't expect him to sit round having conferences asking for opinions and holding votes.

One of the things I like about the Marlows is that they're such a 'normal' family precisely in the respect that they don't spend their whole time talking about their feelings and analysing their actions. They do things, sometimes they mess up, sometimes they have private doubts and regrets, and occasionally they find they need to talk to someone else about them - but NOT to burden that other person. The scene with Rowan and Nicola at night, for instance, I think is very well judged in terms of the level of confidences discussed but also the prohibition on repeating them further.

Anyway

[rosathome.livejournal.com]

...too much from me!

Sorry - my last sentence got cut off.