Marlow Family Values

[tosomja.livejournal.com]

I'm just re-reading Falconer's Lure, and have been thinking more about the values or unspoken rules of the Marlow family and how they permeate all the books - and also how they are sometimes pretty harsh! I was struck by this bit in FL (p 213 in the GGBP edition)
Peter has just won the sailing race.
"'Jolly, jolly good' crowed Nicola, pink with pleasure.
'Nick, you mustn't'
'Oh rubbish, of course I can.  Anyone can see he was jolly good'
'Hush yo' mouth' said Rowan lazily."  etc etc.

It seems to me that Nicola has broken one of the Marlows' dearly held rules/values which could be something like

"When things are done very well, the person shouldn't be praised much (if at all), and pleasure in the acheivement shouldn't be expressed to others"

What do you think, and what do you think are the other Marlow family rules?

Comments

[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.

[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.

[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!

[robincarmody.livejournal.com]

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.

[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.

[robincarmody.livejournal.com]

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.

[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!!

[robincarmody.livejournal.com]

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.

[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?

[robincarmody.livejournal.com]

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

[antfan.livejournal.com]

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...

[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."