A treat for a non-member of the Ancient Order of Foresters to stumble upon the discussions here – non-member, but a devoted reader ever since coming on Peter’s Room when first published (and little younger than Peter at the time), then realising how it fitted into a series which was still growing, then. While unversed in minutiae as most members are, for perhaps just the reason of being an occasional rather than continual re-reader, several things strike me. The topic of ‘what next’ is natural to speculate on, however fruitless, but can turn contrary. Surely the whole thrust of the series is an oh-so-gradual but natural process of bringing Nicola and Patrick together? And a degree of bouleversement in the attitudes and development of other characters needed to implement any of the suggestions made, in other directions, seems to me improbable and unlikely to have been contemplated seriously. Now that so much is revealed about her, one is aware that AF kept her options open; but it strikes me that one cannot expect her to have offered hostages to fortune by revealing what was going to happen. Granted, the desultory growth of the series must be a considerable clue to the nature of her methods: letting the characters evolve for themselves, and (as their creator) being more than a little surprised herself at what they chose to do. Hence too the episodic nature, for better or worse, of the narrative development, as contributors have stressed; and a rather surprising dryness of tone that can result when plot does take the upper hand (in Run Away Home particularly). Character surprises do crop up, not the least being Patrick’s decision to turn traitor in the Brontëan role-playing group-fantasy of Peter’s Room; not the least revealing thing about that being the surprise of the other players. But these relate to self-knowledge, the capacity of the young to be already multifaceted yet immature, and then to grow further: which makes the books compelling. These are people with room for emotional development, and finding their nature for themselves: yet I can’t feel that any amount of character-development would have so shifted the the overall direction as to alter narrative destiny.
Determining Patrick’s future ‘significant other’ is just another way in which his choices often seem so central to the series, and so relates to the main other thing that many find puzzling or off-putting: how AF could give the best traits to non-Catholic members of the cast and so leave Patrick looking cold or unbending and in some ways less mature. As though she was more ambivalent to her own adopted faith than she could otherwise let on; and yet Patrick is in possession of qualities that put him priggishly ahead of his years. Is the answer that AF in fact did admire Patrick – more than she could otherwise let on? There is a sort of question that would be impertinent to put to a live author and so even about a dead one; yet I can’t help wondering if the paradoxes that Patrick embodies relate to AF’s male ideal (assuming of course that she had one: but a spinster status is far from one that necessarily disdains the male sex, if one can so put it). Having a faith and making it work in one’s life does have its paradoxes, and AF must have worked her way at leisure through some of these, in life as no doubt in story-telling. I wonder too about her holidays before the Second World War, in which she encountered two boys who kept hawks. Is it possible that her ideal was ever embodied in a real boy, of the striking physique attributed to Patrick; or is that one impertinent question too far? It is of course a shame that there are so many things that we shall never now know, and a loss that no draft of future work (let alone the two abandoned adult novels) survives, as we are told. (rigmarole1)
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
Patrick, Nicola, etc.
Date: 2010-03-21 10:50 am (UTC)Determining Patrick’s future ‘significant other’ is just another way in which his choices often seem so central to the series, and so relates to the main other thing that many find puzzling or off-putting: how AF could give the best traits to non-Catholic members of the cast and so leave Patrick looking cold or unbending and in some ways less mature. As though she was more ambivalent to her own adopted faith than she could otherwise let on; and yet Patrick is in possession of qualities that put him priggishly ahead of his years. Is the answer that AF in fact did admire Patrick – more than she could otherwise let on? There is a sort of question that would be impertinent to put to a live author and so even about a dead one; yet I can’t help wondering if the paradoxes that Patrick embodies relate to AF’s male ideal (assuming of course that she had one: but a spinster status is far from one that necessarily disdains the male sex, if one can so put it). Having a faith and making it work in one’s life does have its paradoxes, and AF must have worked her way at leisure through some of these, in life as no doubt in story-telling. I wonder too about her holidays before the Second World War, in which she encountered two boys who kept hawks. Is it possible that her ideal was ever embodied in a real boy, of the striking physique attributed to Patrick; or is that one impertinent question too far? It is of course a shame that there are so many things that we shall never now know, and a loss that no draft of future work (let alone the two abandoned adult novels) survives, as we are told. (rigmarole1)