The Ones School Couldn't Help

[childeproof.livejournal.com]

Hello, all. First post, having discovered the community very recently and thrilled to encounter other AF nit-pickers, as curiously few people in my life are capable of worrying about what Daks did all day in Noah's Ark, or who think in times of peril or indecision 'What would Nicola Marlow do?'

Was amused by other people's various comparisons with the Chalet School series, and a thought occurred, in the context of the discussions of how much AF expects the reader to adopt Nicola's POV. What about the conspicuous school 'failures' in either case? How much are we supposed to despise the Kingscote failures?

The Chalet reforms virtually everybody who steps between its fragrant floral cubicle curtains, bar the proto-Nazi Thekla von Stift (who, however, as far as I can remember, did do a Gwendolen Mary Lacey by later writing a half-ashamed letter to Mademoiselle Lepattre to apologise for her bad behaviour...?) and Joan Baker, who combined, from the Chalet's point of view, the twin scourges of being working-class and distinctly sexually savvy. All others are butted in upon by Joey or Mary Lou until they desist from being anything other than good Chalet girls.

The obvious Kingscote 'failure' (cue inevtable Tim Keith joke) is Marie Dobson, whose death has always chilled me rather. (AF deciding to get rid of a character who is so utterly useless she is effortlessly trumped by the 'pale idiot rabbit' Elaine Rees in The Prince and the Pauper and thereafter goes downhill? There seems to me both realism and contempt in the manner of her death. Heart failure from getting up to turn on Top of the Pops, really, when Nick is continually risking her neck jumping the Cut on Buster, outwitting spies and child abductors etc. What's Marie's function in the novels, though?

I've always found her characterisation as chilling as her death. Lest we imagine that all humanity is as upright, vivid and vaguely heroic as the Marlows, who, whatever their individual defaulting, do have a collective blonde glamour at Kingscote, AF gives us Marie, repellently plain, cowardly, unpopular, untalented, untruthful and clammy-handedly desperate for approval. Does AF give her a single redeeming feature, or so much as a moment of sympathy? Is she only there to make the Marlows extra vivid? Or to show us moments of moral compunction in Nicola as distinct from other characters? I suppose one other thought is that AF uses Marie to buck the trend of schools reforming the substandard, a la the Chalet - she never 'improves', but the depiction of her awfulness from Nick's POV is more detailed and more disgusted than the other 'flat' character failures, like the 'steaming nit' Gina French.

I don't have my AF books to hand, and can't produce the brief section of Autumn Term (the rickyard scene) which is from Marie's POV, which talks about her fear of farm animals and lack of athleticism, or her excruciating attempt after the play to help Nick clear up, and am not remembering clearly their tenor. Or in End of Term when she is left out of the twins' swap-over for the match.

Thoughts?

Comments

[childeproof.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's right, isn't it - not being the saintly Chalet, where School Rules = Being a Good Christian, Kingscote has rather more secular modes of conduct which have little to do with its restrained Anglicanism. Also, the official school position, the general code of behaviour for the girls, and private morality are all completely different. I'm always interested by moments when they clash, like the fact that Ginty privately thinks her own worst failing was pretending she dived (dove?) badly so Monica could win the Diving Cup, despite landing both Nicola and Patrick in trouble over the phonecalls, or that Miranda, not someone given to apologies, is ashamed of telling Miss Keith about the Suspicious Changear Parcel in Attic Term - prsumably because it smacks of tale-telling, or teacher's pet-type attendance at Visiting Day?

Or other moments when we might expect a clash but don't get one, like when Wendy Treadgold, who is apparently generally anti-Semitic, makes unpleasant remarks about Miranda's wealth in front of Miranda and Nicola, without either of them responding apart from exchanging glances. (It's always struck me as slightly odd that neither of these two notably self-confident girls hits back.)

[anstruther.livejournal.com]

IMO, I think their lack of retaliation has got a lot to do with the fact Nicola and Miranda regard Wendy Tredgold as common. To reply would be to lower themselves to her level. Plus I think that in their times, overt verbal aggression would have been rather less frequent than it is today - they are observing the mode of conduct of their world. Which isn't in the least to say that no aggression is ever displayed at Kingscote...

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not sure it's that they think Wendy is "common" in a snobbish sense, just that she's pretty much worthless and her opinions don't matter; and furthermore, as far as they are concerned, everyone else who does matter will see that Wendy doesn't matter. Fairly patronising, but then, they're only 13.

A bit like the end of Autumn Term, where Nicola isn't bothered by Marie because Marie is a gabby wet drip who can't help it, whereas Lois isn't gabby or wet and certainly could help it.

[anstruther.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, in canon they don't actually say Wendy is common but I think there are grounds for inferring that. Re snobbery, in End of Term Miranda does expressly refer to "that common little soul with the perm and the Jaguar".

"Fairly patronising, but then, they're only 13."

Have to admit, I always see that pair as being blessed with a healthy sense of their self-worth. :)