Antonia Forest fans

I agree that's Rowan's justification in that scene, but I think there is a horror of boasting or too much praise in the Marlows which she's also expressing - think of Captain & Mrs Marlow not wanting to say too much to Lawrie about how good she was in Prince and the Pauper. Though there it seems to have been OK for the family to discuss it; it's only when the twins arrive that everyone starts shutting Ann up.

Nicola and Lawrie take pleasure in Ginty doing well at the swimming match - though of course there's some school pride there too.

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think of Captain & Mrs Marlow not wanting to say too much to Lawrie about how good she was in Prince and the Pauper.

Yes, although I think telling Lawrie she was good is different from telling Peter he was good. She already knows it and likes to hear everyone agreeing; Peter is full of insecurities and needs to be encouraged.

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I thought the next bit was more of a post-hoc justification by Rowan (the real reason being that family successes shouldn't be crowed over) - which is why I didn't include it. Maybe this is my 21st century viewpoint but I find it hard to believe that the family of someone who came second would really mind the family of the winner being pleased! It's not like they were talking about how rubbish the second boy was.

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jonquil.livejournal.com

1. Ann and Rowan never get to have any fun.
a. Because they are the Older Sisters.
b. Rowan falls in love with a visiting local aviatrix and is whisked away to a life of glamour and glory; she can become the Wicked Aunt to the next generation of Marlows and half-Marlows.

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ailbhe

Yes, please.

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Even Kay doesn't get to have much fun, Oxford quickly over and she's step-mother to 3 children and reduced to buying vests for Fob and making apple pies...

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jonquil.livejournal.com

Yup. Kay's life also fills me with feminist rage -- it just makes no *sense*; you are seeing it through a very biased observer, but there's never ever a hint of what attracted Kay. (The guy is also, by modern standards, one step on the slide toward being a wife-abuser; he's controlling in a very dangerous away.)

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Yes, and there's no hint of any kind of equal relationship - even the name he calls her 'Katie' reduces her to a little girl with very little say about things like the children's upbringing.

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vilakins.livejournal.com

I think the rule is that one doesn't blow one's own trumpet, and crowing over a family member's success is 1) fairly close to doing that by association, and 2) Peter might get a swollen head which is a Bad Thing. :-)

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It's not just the swollen head thing though is it - with Lawrie and acting in Autumn Term it's actually thought to be better if she doesn't know how good she is. That seems to be to have inherent problems, if you don't have good enough self-esteem/self-awareness to work it out for yourself as how would you ever know? Luckily Lawrie seems to be perfectly capable of doing it for herself!

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Or, as I have always assumed, it is the Marlow parents demonstrating how well they know their children. Ann's efforts (at the Colebridge Festival) are publicly praised and rewarded, as are Nicola's, precisely because they both (for very different reasons) are naturally modest. Lawrie, on the other hand, has a natural tendency to over-estimate her abilities and boast about them, so her parents are careful not to encourage this.

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Yes, and Nicola gets praised by her father for her Prince and the Pauper acting, even if slightly off-handedly, and he knows she 'needs telling'.

I can't help feeling that Rowan, in the regatta scene, is conscious that she's effectively the one in charge of them all, being the most competent, and is therefore being a bit more restrictive than her mother might.

Or, now I look at it again, 'Nick, you mustn't' seems to be uncredited. In which case maybe it's Kay being over-anxious and Rowan backing her up as she so often does?

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I thought it was Ann saying that line, actually. So Rowan is not only standing in for her mother in putting Nicola down but also in backing Ann up.

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Just got the book out - it is uncredited, but it was Ann who told Nicola to shush a bit earlier, so may well be her again. However, Mrs Marlow is still there, so it could even be her - but once Peter arrives, she says 'That was a fine effort.', and Nicola tells him 'Jolly good, my boy', and the others 'added their congratulations'. So they are, as you suggest, aware that Peter deserves and needs praise for his achievement.

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I wonder if there's something in the word 'crowing', too, suggesting that Nicola's exclamation wasn't primarily for Peter's benefit but to glory over others nearby.

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Yes, I think there may be.

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I thought it was Ann too, something about the italics on mustn't!

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ankaret.livejournal.com

I also assumed it was Ann, though I couldn't tell you why - I think it could just as easily be Karen.

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Yes, so he praises Nicola for something she does less well than Lawrie - it seems it's okay be congratulated for doing something competantly but not brillantly, but if it's excellent then you should keep quiet.
Kingscote in general isn't keen to reward excellence it seems - character is thought to be far more important - look at their approach to casting the Christmas Play and to filling the sports teams...

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Though it's an interesting conversation he has with Nicola on the way to the car, and I think he's genuinely trying to work out how best to handle Lawrie in a way that looks after her and her talent.

Miss Keith thinks character is more important, I agree, but there are clearly other staff who would like to take a more professional approach to the Christmas Play! The other plays are cast pretty much on merit. For sport, I know Marie is shoehorned into the netball team and Nicola ousted for apparent sloppiness, but Miss Craven is certainly keen on winning matches.

I don't know, I think it's a fascinating aspect of the books, but (as so often with Forest) gets more complex the more you look. After all, when Peter gets back to the group in the scene you've quoted, he is praised enthusiastically for his achievement.

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Good character comes up again and again - and punishment is often seen to be the way to push those of doubtful characters into line it seems to me. Look at the approach the Guides take (I know it's not school proper) - they punish Lawrie and Nicola for supposed bad behaviour by excluding them for a year, with the premise that they might then be ready to be Guides. I think the approach now might be rather to see Guides as a place where they might develop their characters and become more trustworthy within it, rather than having to do that by themselves outside before they are allowed to participate.
In fact, that could be said for everything at Kingscote - if you're thought to be of 'doubtful' character like Jan Scott, then there's no participation allowed in things like sports and plays at all it seems, although it's different for those like Marie Dobson (maybe because she is only seen as doubtful by her peers, not by Authority?).

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sorry that was me, thought I was logged in!

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Maybe worth saying that though these are Kingscote values they are not Marlow values (AF values presumably?) in that the Kingscote staff obsession with building character is generally presented as rather silly, and likely to be to the detriment of whatever play, team or guide patrol for that matter is being used for that purpose. The Marlows seem to think that pure merit should be rewarded. that is how Nicola picks her cricket team after all.

In this respect I think AF is very different from authors like Brent-Dyer who have the school knocking various girls into shape, and seem to endorse the role of boarding-schools as being to produce and mould girls of a certain type. Generally AF seems to suggest that people retain their characters, good or bad. I do think the earlier books are a bit different in this respect mind you - in End of Term, there is a sense that both Ginty and Lawrie and seeing the error of their ways, as a result of their experience in the play. Ginty is like a transfer showing its true colours (?) and so less inclined to sympathise with the twins swapping for a team; Lawrie reflects on how she is spoilt and babyish while sitting in the bath...however, subsequently both Lawrie and Ginty resume their paths as monumental egotist and self-obsessed light-weight (sorry, I know both are more complex than that suggests) and remain as far away from the Kingscote ideal as ever....

I don't know whether this was because AF decided that it would be more interesting to have Lawrie/Ginty retain their idiosyncrisies, or whether because she decided that's how people are - they don't mature in the way Authority wants - or because they just did their own thing (as characters will do). but I do think this aspect makes AF a very modern as well as a subtle writer - that morality is complex, and the apparent approved morality of institutions so very suspect. Which is why I was so surprised when I discovered she had such a tough and reactionary moral outlook herself...

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It's not about the excellence or otherwise; it's about the character of the one being praised and the likely effects of that praise.

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richenda.livejournal.com

Not just a Marlow rule - it was very very very bad form to crow publicly over a family success when I was young
For example, a proud mother might say that X or Y had passed an important exam in music, and then allow it to be winkled out of her that it was the LRAM

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thekumquat.livejournal.com

Yes, boasting was most Bad Form.

The Marlows seem to follow the Swallows+Amazons family motto of "better drowned than duffers, and if you're not duffers you won't drown" - somewhat literally.

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mrs-redboots.livejournal.com

Boasting was incredibly bad form: "Has your trumpeter died, dear?" you would be asked if you said anything positive about yourself. However, nobody else ever told you anything positive about yourself, either, as this might have spoilt you or made you swollen-headed, or stopped you trying so hard, or something.

Small wonder so many of that generation and class (including me!) ended up with emotional issues But then, so did our parents.... and, of course, it meant that any praise that did happen to come your way was worth having.

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colne-dsr.livejournal.com

Not a class issue. I was always told that if anything good was to be said about me, I should wait to let someone else say it. And I'm sure the same was true for most people at my schools - certainly spending all your time saying how good you were (remember Enid Blyton's Fatty?) was never a way to be popular.

In life generally, exuberant celebrations of victory post-date Falconer's Lure. Footballers jumping about in unruly heaps is a new thing since 1970. Jockeys' flying dismounts and even standing in their irons waving their whip was unknown until the 70's. By and large, learning to be a good winner was as important as learning to be a good loser.

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mrs-redboots.livejournal.com

Footballers jumping about in unruly heaps is a new thing since 1970.

Oh, I think I beg to differ on that one - I well remember how they would rush about hugging each other in pleasure in the 1960s (when we all had massive crushes on Georgie Best so watched football every chance we got!). And remember Nicola's reaction in The Cricket Term when (I think) Lawrie and someone else expressed delight in having got someone out: "Lot of ruddy footballers!"

Mind you, in those days, a spatter of polite applause was all that was expected at cricket - although one was expected to yell one's guts out at school lacrosse matches!

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Perhaps "a new thing since about 1965" would be more accurate re. footballers? By the time 'The Cricket Term' was written, footballers' behaviour had already started to change. But it took a long time - some 1979 football coverage was rerun this week, and they were making out that there was something incredibly strange about Brazilian players' goal celebrations when the like can now be seen every week in England. I think it depended on what sort of working class you were: whether you were "respectable working class" as I suspect colne_dsr's background was (something that is now more or less extinct), or whether you anticipated what would happen to the working class during and since Thatcherism as the get-rich-quick footballers of the Swinging Britain era did.

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lizarfau.livejournal.com

Definitely a generation thing rather than a class one - saying anything positive about yourself was seen as conceited with ideas above your station in the working-class area I grew up in. And nobody ever said anything good about you either! Put-downs were frequent - from parents, teachers, neighbours, everybody. It wasn't just middle-class and upper-class girls (and boys) who grew up with emotional issues.

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Indeed so.

I often wonder whether what the bad stuff we have lost (emotional constipation across the classes) was better or worse than the bad stuff we have gained (intense egotism and the resultant death of post-war consensus politics). Very hard to make a full, balanced judgement.

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lizarfau.livejournal.com

Yes, I agree - it would have been great if society could have reached a balance, but it hasn't, and things are too far the other way nowadays, perhaps, with mediocrity over-celebrated.

Lawrie and Ginty, I think, would relish today's society, and would have updated their Twitter status regularly, as their lives became a soap-opera starring themselves!!

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The closest to a balance was probably the 15-year period between the election of Wilson and the arrival of Thatcher. That is probably *the precise reason* why both Left and Right were frustrated with society at the time, both wanting extreme changes their way. In the event, arguably neither won, because what happened after 1979 was neither socialist nor conservative in any previously recognisable sense.

Do you think Lawrie and Ginty might, if they were around now, sound somewhat Mockney, with the others sticking resolutely to RP? It has always been noted, quite accurately, that young women do this less than young men, though I think that might be changing by now.

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colne-dsr.livejournal.com

"respectable working class" is about right, though I suppose if labels have to be assigned we were more middle class by then. Grandparents left school at 12 to work in the mills; father left school at 16 to be an accountant, mother left at 18 to be a teacher; I went to univesity and became an accountant. (Grammar schools helped.)

I think the "respectable working classes" have blurred into a much enlarged middle class, especially with the decline of manufacturing. Even the lowest paid workers (the ones who would get more on the dole) have more in common with the higher paid people than with the lump left behind who expect and demand luxury in their idleness. (Note - This is a criticism of the Shannon Matthews' type parents, not the genuinely unemployed looking for work, of whom there are no doubt increasing numbers.)

Footballers had started hugging by the mid-60's I suppose - I remember recently seeing Bobby Charlton in a series of hugs after a goal, and being quite surprised - but this habit of rolling on the floor en masse is definitely more recent.

Of course, Falconer's Lure was 1957, Cricket Term was 1974 - maybe the Marlows' attitude had changed by then, as well as society's?

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I would suspect so. AF didn't much like the changes, but she didn't ignore them either.

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I wonder at what point, though, she decided she didn't like them? What I mean is, the Marlows of the middle books seem different to me from the earliest books. Their values and behaviour are different, I think. But Run Away Home seems much more a return to the Marlows of Falconers' Lure. It's hard to explain, but I see it in the way that they are so routinely respectful towards their dad in FL (although his behaviour often seems pretty arbitrary) and Giles (ditto) in Runaway Home. By contrast, the older male in RMF, Edwin, is treated with a marked lack of respect, and to me all those family dynamics make it a much more interesting book!

I feel that in the middle books AF herself is reflecting some of value changes of her time - and is genuinely interested in a lot of the social changes that are going on - but in Run Away Home it is as if all that is pushed away, and we're back in the world of a 1950s family style adventure, any hints of modernity (Judith's teenage pregnancy) very cursory and not explored at all...

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jonquil.livejournal.com

What a wonderful phrase. In the Midwest you weren't supposed to brag about yourself, but there was an understood social contract that others should do it for you.

"How'd you do on the SATs?"
"Okay."
"She's being modest -- she got an 800!"
"Wow, that's really impressive."

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nickwhit.livejournal.com

I always like the 'unspoken family rule of not criticising one member of the family to another' (in Cricket Term, I think, and almost a direct quote tho' too lazy to go upstairs and get my copy) when Mrs Marlow checks herself after Ginty's slipped off to Patrick's without dropping the laundry over at the Dodds on her way. Certainly a rule that my family should adopt!

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Yes, most families I know have no problem criticising one member to each other! Wonder how that one started?

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I hate that rule with the Marlows, because it stops some very interesting conversations! ie Mrs Marlow then stops herself from saying what she really does think about Ginty (maybe even Ginty's relationship with Patrick) and in another scene in the Thuggery Affair, what she thinks of Rowan's farming career. Mrs M can be quite interesting - that whole bathroom scene in RMF where she reveals all that family history for example.

As for the boasting - or lack of it - I agree with those who have said it is partly a way of deflecting dislike from others, inevitable towards such a talented family. In AT Ginty adds up the family "score" and announces they would have won the dorm cup if they'd been eligible - and Rowan says something like "yes, dear, but don't mention it, they might be a bit put out". Of course, Rowan herself obviously doesn't care anyway, which is another layer. One of the brilliant things about the books, I think, is that they present a lot of school conventions/aspirations as rather petty - while at the same time having characters who do succeed in those terms (win cups and prizes, become prefects, game captains etc)

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