The Blytonly Obvious

The iron fist in the velvet glove

2011-11-18T09:49:00.001+11:00

I can hardly believe that chapter five is reached and Elizabeth STILL hasn't got past her first day.

I could rant about the mixed philosophy of the school yet again, but I think it would be better just to let the principals of the school tell you themselves (for some reason there are two - I don't know why, they don't seem to actually do anything except lollop about in their drawing room). Elizabeth goes to see them this chapter (can I say that I NEVER went to see a principal when I started a new school - and I started at new schools 4 times in high school). Here's what they have to say to Elizabeth (after laughing delightedly when she said that she was going to be naughty):

"We never punish anyone, Elizabeth," said Miss Best, suddenly looking stern again. "Didn't you know that?"
"No I didn't," said Elizabeth in astonishment. "What do you do when people are naughty, then?"
"Oh, we leave any naughty person to the rest of the children to deal with," said Miss Best. "Every week the school holds a meeting, you know, and the children themselves decide what is to be done with boys and girls who don't behave themselves. It won't bother us if you are naughty - but you may perhaps find that you make the children angry."

A cold shiver ran down my spine when I read that passage. I pictured them sitting there with sneaky hip flasks getting quite squiffy during their conversations with the new brats (it's what I'd do). And that is all I'm going to say about it (there must be something terribly wrong with me today if I'm not running at that red flag).

This chapter "Elizabeth is naughty" exposes Elizabeth to the true brutality that Whyteleaf School authorities (by that I mean the students) are capable of.

Basic plot: Following that not very encouraging meeting with the principals, Elizabeth goes to supper where she is still in food coventry, makes a joke (Enid never did have a very good sense of humour, so I won't try to repeat the joke), then finds out that she has an assigned bed-time.

Elizabeth, predictably. objects to going to bed at 8 p.m.

Irish Nora's response?

"No wonder you're such a cross-patch! my mother says that late hours make children stupid, bad-tempered, and slow."

I rather love that response: it's supremely arrogant (in that Nora has known Elizabeth for less than half a day) and slavish apes an absentee parent all in one. Nora, however, is a true daughter of Enid: she doesn't stop her parent aping there. No, she takes it to its logical conclusion and decides become an absentee supervisor, expecting Elizabeth to do as she's told, while she buggers off back to the playroom.

In a massive piece of perversity, Elizabeth doesn't go to bed (gasp). She instead goes to play on the swings (honestly, playroom, swings? If you're going to be naughty, steal some cigarettes and go sit behind the bike shed!). Honestly, this girl is made to be a rebel. I mean, we all know the dangerous effects of swing sets, don't we? It's a slippery slope to slides (I tried not to make the pun, really I did), then merry-go-rounds before she's a full-on rollercoaster junkie. Tsk tsk ...

Fortunately for Irish Nora, back-up is at hand to save Elizabeth from this slippery slope. A boy comes along and orders her to go to bed or he'll dob her in to the other kids (fittingly, we're not told which boy - and neither is she - what she doesn't know, she can't dob. Gotta love corrupt government).

"Pooh!" said Elizabeth, and she swung herself very had indeed, put out her foot and kicked the boy so vigorously that he fell right over. Elizabeth squealed with laughter - but not for long! The boy jumped up, ran to the swing and shook Elizabeth off. He caught hold of her dark curls and pulled them so hard that the little girl yelled with pain."
The boy grinned at her and said "serve you right!"

That fight scene started so promisingly. Finally, I thought, Elizabeth is going to actually do something worth her title. Then it was matched and bettered by the other kid and my hopes were dashed.

It would have been so much better if he had hit his head or done some actual injury that would REALLY get Elizabeth in to trouble. All that happened was that Elizabeth came out second best in a fight, and we got a glimpse of the iron fist inside the velvet glove. How is Elizabeth supposed to be naughty when the corrupt system in which she is operating allows right-minded individuals to commit violence with impunity while punishing the minority for the same infractions? This is so unfair to we readers ...

Because of course Elizabeth is going to be dobbed in to the authorites by this unknown boy.

Here ends Elizabeth's first day in Blytonia. The score? Elizaeth 0, Blytonia 4 (perhaps 5). We'll see how day 2 goes next time.

Shrimp paste and bullying

2011-11-11T00:01:00.000+11:00

Blast Enid – she’s gone and annoyed me again.

You may well be thinking well there’s a news flash, but you have to understand that even though I may rail at the old girl, even though I am fully aware that I am not going to agree with a thing she says, even though I read the books with an eye to ripping its guts out, I still open one of her books hoping that this book will not disappoint me. I’m all grown up and I still want to believe Enid when she tells me that if you do this and this and this you will be pretty and successful and everyone will like you ...

So then, when I open a book and read something as stupid as I read in this chapter, I just get annoyed.

Chapter 4 is called “Elizabeth gets in to trouble”. And it annoys me because it’s so very very stupid. The basic outline of the chapter is Elizabeth trying to break every rule that happens to come her way, or to make herself obnoxious, and coming up against the Irish bouncer Nora each time (mixed in is the obligatory oohing and ahhhing over classrooms, but classroom decor porn is more Enid’s thing than mine – seriously, only food is described in more detail). She does things like put too many items on her dressing table (apparently punishable by drawing and quartering) not sharing her food (which sends a person to food Coventry), and having messy hair. I mean the scope of this girl’s villainy is beyond compare.

Of course, she doesn’t like doing any of these things, and she’s quite upset when she gets punished for them. When bouncer Nora takes her stuff, she instantly wants to redeem it, she tries to share her food (but being in food Coventry, she’s turned down ...) and she’s horrified that her hair is messy. You really get the impression that she’s really not trying too hard (and, being a Blyton character, she is smitten with the classrooms – what is it with Enid and big square rooms with desks in it? They aren’t really that exciting ...), which of course gives you the SUBTLE hint that perhaps Elizabeth will stay ...

Seriously, the girl is trying to get expelled and she’s making a fuss over food sharing? If it were me, I’d be sneaking around trying to find what I could burn down. Or perhaps I would look at a fake bomb threat, or taking a classroom full of students hostage. I’d be home again in a day or two – a week, tops (you know, once the police got through with me). Problem solved.

Of course, Elizabeth's problem with disobedience may have something to do with the entirely unexpected form of discipline. I think I mentioned in an earlier post about the bullying aspect of this school. Nora the Irish does like to ‘shove’ her way past a recalcitrant student in her charge, but more insidious is the fact that the students go straight to ridicule the moment someone steps out of their pre-conceived notion of good behaviour. They mock Elizabeth over EVERYTHING she does. And remember, Elizabeth has been at the school for perhaps 2 hours at this point. She’s tired, her parents shipped her off to school with no notice and no proper goodbye, and ridicule is the most appropriate way to deal with her? Welcome to Blytonia people, this is where sanity comes to die.

I got to the end of the chapter thinking that there was very little that a box of matches wouldn’t solve at that school ...

I forgot to mention the food, which is the only redeeming feature of the chapter. It appears that first day is the day all the students eat the ENTIRE swag of food sent on by their parents. There is an orgy of chocolate cake, jam, shrimp paste, currant cake and other assorted fish pastes. I kept imagining that the fish pastes were contaminated with some sort of salmonella – that would have made the story soooo much more interesting

The greatest disappointment

2011-11-03T00:28:00.001+11:00

I went shopping today.

I was going clothes shopping, but as invariably happens I got sidetracked by all the pretty books in the bookshop. And then I remembered that there is a new Jasper Fforde book out this month and the clothes were forgotten ...

Anyway, I came across the most wonderful sight whilst I was browsing: A large picture-book hardback version of the Magic Faraway Tree.

I was instantly besotted. It took me right back to a similar version I had growing up (I think that they just changed the cover and re-released the version I had as a child). I grabbed the book, all ready to buy it and put it aside for the grandchildren (perhaps not my own grandchildren, just those poor benighted souls who may not be exposed to the glorious wrongness of Enid) when I had the foresight to open it.

I was instantly confused. The story was about Joe, Beth, Frannie, and their cousin Rick. For a moment I thought that this was a new story or one about characters I had not come across before - I mean, Enid DID write well over 800 books, I may well have forgotten one or two. But then I realised what the abomination really was: it was a re-worked version

Joe, Beth, Frannie, and their cousin Rick were the updated versions of Jo, Bessie, Fanny and Dick. Dame Slap became Dame Snap and no longer hits people (thus losing all of her menace).

It was terrible. My beautiful picture book had been vilely defaced. I'd heard about such a travesty occurring, but to see it was worse than heart-breaking. I departed that place, the burning gall of disappointment threatening to choke me as I went ...

Let me know if you have had similar disappointments with the works of the great lady.

Venus Fly trap

2011-10-27T23:07:00.001+11:00

So we come to chapter three: Elizabeth makes a bad beginning.

We left our abandoned puppy spurning the affections of a teacher (that sounds sooooo dodgy) as she stared up at the kennel she was to call home. I assume it had kennel-like aspects to it, as Enid never bothers to describe the place (not like the castle of Malory towers, where you were subjected to a minute description every time Enid ran out of storyline).

Predictably, the first thing they do is eat. This is an Enid Blyton story, after all. And I have it on good authority that not liking rice pudding makes you a bad person:

“There was hot soup first, then beef, carrots, dumplings, onions and potatoes, then rice pudding and golden syrup. Elizabeth was so hungry that she ate everything, though at home she certainly would have pushed away the rice pudding.”

That kinda makes me wish that I didn’t throw away the rice pudding I bought the other week when I was shopping (although in my defence, it was artificially sweetened and tasted like crap – I’m not bad, honest I’m not).

So all the kids sit around eating and discussing the inappropriate and irresponsible presents that their parents gave them at Easter (what kind of moron gives a child a PUPPY, when the child lives at boarding school and can’t take the pet with them? Call the RSPCA!). Elizabeth, eating rice pudding (which makes you good) remembers that she wants to be thought of as bad, so takes the opportunity to compare a teacher to a guinea pig.

Whoa – living life on the edge, aren’t we?

Anyway, all the other kids get all pissy about that, then the fun comes. Elizabeth gets shown to her dorm. We’re given, of course, a lengthy description of polished floor boards and blue rugs and trunks that the menials have lugged up the stairs for these little brats.

And we meet Nora.

Do you want to know what Nora is like? She’s Irish. Seriously, that’s Enid’s most used adjective with Nora O’Sullivan (Irish name – check). I am not kidding. The first time there is any description of her, it’s a description of her “blue Irish eyes”. Because all blue eyes are automatically Irish, of course. Of course this sly little adjective colours the way you see Nora (later on, she’s described as “the angry Irish girl” and another time Elizabeth is frightened of her because she’s “big and strong” – so I see a rugby forward with anger management issues). She is, however, heart and mind part of the establishment.

It’s Nora who tells the new girls what form the establishment takes. The school’s co-ed, which is a rarity, Enid liking her children segregated and all.
Anyway, we learn rules like:
- Only 6 things are allowed on your dressing table
- No matter how much money your parents give you, you have to put it in a box and the school shares it out by way of set pocket money
- The sharing of extra funds is determined at school meetings,
- Bad children are fined at school meetings
- School meetings are run by students (teacher participation is sporadic and rational – they’re probably off on holidays with Elizabeth’s parents ...)

You know, I thought the indoctrination by students was bad at Malory Towers where you had strict teachers doling out punishment. But trial by (Blyton) students? No ... just, no.

The school is a progressive school, based on the actual independent school in the UK called Summerhill. Summerhill is a democratic community, governed by school meetings run by the students, and where all classes are optional. The ethos of that school is “freedom, not licence”. The whole idea is that the child is meant to know best what how to learn. Incidentally, the school still runs.

I can see how Enid would be attracted to such an idea - kids governing themselves without pesky parents. I can also see where Enid struggled with it. She is a traditionalist at heart, with her school having compulsory uniforms, compulsory classes, and a militaristic feel from the student body that is slightly alarming. It’s as though the students are inches away from starting a cult or something, there’s just this menacing feel that I can’t quite like, as though all they need is one student to come along and promise more pocket money, harsher penalties for offenders and the extermination of the Jews or something ...

You know what it is? It’s the shadow of Lord of the flies. There is this bullying feel to the whole place that dresses up as school spirit. The children feel obliged to teach each other lessons all the time, so they’re ALWAYS on other student’s backs to conform conform conform. And then there’s public humiliation – because ALL punishment and trials take place in front of the WHOLE school, which of course is the best way to deal with adolescents ...

In real life, the school apparently runs quite well, but we are in Blytonia, where, at the end of the day, children DON’T know best unless they are parroting what their absentee parents tell them (in an effort to win their love). And Blytonia, don’t forget, has the angry Irish girl working as an enforcer. The whole thing is just an endorsement of Enid’s idea of (lazy) parenting really – it’s taken it beyond mere absenteeism to actually having the children do all the work. Quite frankly, it’s Enid’s own personal wet dream.

Anyway, we end the chapter with Elizabeth saying to the others that she isn’t going to share her food. DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUUNNNNNNNN .....

Quick Clarification

2011-10-25T00:13:00.002+11:00

I can't believe that I have to do this, but I am going to anyway.

It's come to my attention that there's a troll out there who decided to use the name of my blog in order to start creepy conversations with people online. They don't only use my name, they use a few aliases, but they've started a google+ account and a wordpress account in the name of Blytonly Obvious

Two things you should know:

1. I have this page and a Facebook page. One day I may get round to having a twitter feed (but I am essentially lazy and really just rely on you adding this blog to your RSS feed to find out when I post). No other site with the name Blytonly Obvious is run by me (and really, who would pick such a name? Even I think the name is bad, and it's my name).

2. I never comment anywhere using the Blytonly Obvious name. I have a life outside of this blog, and it doesn't involve creepy spruiking of this blog and starting inappropriate conversations with strangers.

If you want an idea of what I'm referring to, this blog post is where I found my explanation. (As a side note, if you do check it out, look down at the comments - I am vain enough to be flattered by someone calling my blog "reasonably well known". It's a step up from "my flatmate doesn't even read it")

Anyway, I'm off to wash my hands thoroughly. The whole thing makes me feel a bit icky, and I saw Contagion tonight, which has left me completely terrified contracting a random bat/pig virus ...

Sartorial Child Abuse and Dull Train Chapters

2011-10-20T23:04:00.001+11:00

With a visit by the establishment underway in Canberra at the moment (and Australians suddenly deciding that yes, we do like wearing hats your majesty, this one may look like I just bought it from Myer, but I’ve had it for years – honest!), I thought I should get back to Enid’s latest establishment.

Chapter two is imaginatively called “Elizabeth goes to school”. I’m so glad Enid clears this sort of stuff up for us – I’d never understand what was going on ...

We open with Elizabeth trying various things to convince her mother to let her stay at home. She tries being good, then she tries being destructive (those cushions never saw that ink coming...), then she tries – well, nothing else actually. That really is the extent of Elizabeth’s repertoire. You might argue that she didn’t try very hard to stay out of boarding school, but perhaps she realised that if she was going to play games, so was her mother. You see, it seems that mumsy had really cottoned on to this kennelling idea for Elizabeth. Once it caught on, everything the poor girl did was an excuse to send her to school. She’s being good? Excellent, she’ll fit right in; she’s cutting holes in the curtains? Oh dear, she really does need school to teach her some manners ... you see how this would go on - mummy darling would just concoct more and more outlandish justifications for sending her precious angel away for other people to rear (she killed the gardener? They'll soon cure her of that at school ...).

So it comes time for Elizabeth to go away. They don’t have a travelling cage big enough for her, so they send her off in a taxi to catch the train with all the other strays. She doesn’t go quietly though, no, she promises freedom to all of the other captive animals in the house – her horse, her dog, her canary. She’s going to be so naughty she’ll be sent home and then the Revolution shall begin!! My money is nanny will be the first beheaded - don't say nyer nyer to a spoilt child ...

We come to an important part here on going away day. I say it’s important and I mean it. This passage is the one that nearly had me calling DOCS (even though I’m pretty sure that they wouldn’t have any power over a 1940s fictional school in England – it’s just a little out of their jurisdiction). I’ll quote the whole paragraph:

The outdoor uniform was a dark blue coat with a yellow edge to the collar and cuffs, a dark blue hat with a yellow ribbon round it, and the school badge at the front. Her stockings were long and brown, and her lace shoes were brown too.

You see what they’re doing to the poor children? In the first sentence, I thought the uniform sounded not-so-brilliant, but it was tolerable in a school uniform sort of way (I mean, it’s no Malory Towers brown and orange – now THAT was a fashion statement). Then you hit the second sentence. And you stop. You go back and read it again. It still reads the same.

Brown stockings. Brown stockings with a blue and yellow uniform. That’s borderline child abuse right there. Seriously, is the woman colour blind? What sort of moron subjects their students to such an horrific combination of colours? And don’t mention that private school in Sydney that changed its uniform to aqua and pink to benefit from an old lady’s will, because I know that story.

Here’s a thought: if you’re going to have a blue uniform, why not make sure that the stockings MATCH THE REST OF THE UNIFORM. Have you ever worn brown shoes with a non-brown outfit? It is truly an uncomfortable experience. That nice dull brown that you put on when getting dressed suddenly pops out in public as brightly as hot pink would. I find it such a colour clash distressing to wear, and yet here’s Enid merrily doing it to her faithful followers. And passing it off as the height of school-yard chic. GAH!

I digress. My apologies for that. Elizabeth is in the taxi going to the station to catch a train to London to meet the school train. Jolly good. Who’s taking her? Her governess. OK ... ummm ... have her parents gone on holidays? Nope, her mum just can’t be arsed going to London to at least meet her only daughter’s new kennel masters ... (sigh) I’d rant, but I’ve been there, done that.

Next: the obligatory train ride. Of course there’s one – british rail services have nothing better to do with their time than put on chartered trains for right thinking children at isolated upper class schools. And of course Enid has to detail the trip. Nothing much really happens. There’s this fat girl called Ruth handing around sweets and Elizabeth refuses one (I would too, the chances are that the other person would think you grasping ...). So Ruth starts teasing her in front of all the other children. Up to this point the only thing Elizabeth has said is words to the effect of “I’ll be back home soon”, and refusing to take a sweet is hardly a cardinal sin, so this treatment, meant to make Elizabeth seem sulky, just makes me not guilty about calling fat Ruth “fat Ruth”.

Of course, Enid ends the chapter at the front door of the school. You have to remember that she was writing in the 40s, when rationing was in – so one mustn't give the children too much description in one go – the’ll ruin their appetite.

I'm sorry if I skipped over some stuff in this chapter, but a lot was just filler to suck you in. I can't really be bothered with it. Next time: Elizabeth and the lord of the flies school.

who do you blame when your kid is a brat?

2011-10-10T23:49:00.008+11:00

OK, this has been shamefully late in coming, but I have an excuse – I have been busy bettering society. Really, I have. I have a new job, and it involves dispensing JUSTICE!!! (at least, that’s what I put on my census form, I couldn’t figure out a better description of my job. It gave me this awesome feeling of power just writing it). What with all my making the streets safe to walk again, Amelia Jane got dumped in a box in my room and forgotten. So it's time for a new story.

Anyway, I was going to do a Famous Five thing, but I ran into a problem: I don’t have the first book in the series. It’s a grave oversight, one which I intend to remedy at the earliest possible moment. In the meantime, I’ll give you the gems to be found in another of Enid’s school time classics:

The naughtiest girl in school.

Chapter 1

Enid has this fault of blaming all of the behavioural traits of a child on its disposition. The title ‘the naughtiest girl in school’ conjures up images of untold horror, a right little cantankerous ... sandwich, who is attacking the other children with her lacrosse stick and trashing books in the library because she feels like it. The reality, as you will soon see, is not so grave. Remember kiddies, we're dealing with Enid-esque naughtiness here: this is upper-class naughtiness ...

So here’s the set up. Elizabeth is a spoilt little rich kid, who has had a number of governesses to look after her. What her mother has been doing, no one knows (because of course she wouldn’t be working, that’s only for nasty common mothers) but she obviously needed help to look after her one child. Anyway, governess number six is going to go, and mummy’s at her wits’ end to know what to do, because, you see, mummy and daddy are going away on a holiday, and mummy can’t possibly be expected to look after the little brat while they’re away.

The solution? Pack her off to boarding school. Not just that, don’t tell her until you’ve organised the enrolment, got all her uniforms, given the staff notice and booked your non-refundable holiday tickets ... you only tell her when there’s less than a week before term starts. Then goad her when she, quite understandably, says she doesn’t want to leave the one place she has ever lived. That will show her how much you care.

I mean seriously, her parents are abandoning her to go gallivanting off ... somewhere. (They never say where they’re going, and as they’re grown-ups, Enid doesn’t much care. That’s not important: JK Rowling may kill her parental figures off, Blyton just packs them on a boat and hopes that they drown.) AND, they’re only going for a few weeks (they’re going to be back before half-term). How do you jump from “I need someone to look after my child while I’m away for a few weeks” to “let’s send our pre-pubescent child, who has had little to no contact with other children, to boarding school”. My own theory is that the parents attacked this issue while they were looking for accommodation for the family pets: the horse gets stabled, the dog is sent to a boarding kennel, the child goes to school where she’ll be fed and watered (presumably) and the parents can pick her up if and when it suits them ...
Wow, and we wonder why the kid is messed up?

Things to note:

Elizabeth is pretty, which means she’s set for Enidificaication (or indoctrination), because Enid cannot bear to have an ugly good person. People’s characters are determined by their looks.

The things Elizabeth will miss at home: Her dog, her canary, her pony. Some people have it tough. Show some sympathy for the poor dear.

Mummy: completely helpless. Looks to others to raise her child. Primary emotion is despair: when Elizabeth shows how naughty she can be by pinning stockings to the governess’ skirt, mummy despairs – “what are we going to do with her?”.

Daddy: mentioned, but completely absent – obviously he doesn’t want to deal with the brat either. Like most of Enid’s father figures, he wouldn’t dream of getting involved in a family cat fight.

The Slap

2011-05-04T13:36:00.002+10:00

Sometimes I really don’t get the way Enid’s mind worked. After reading this story, I have to conclude that she had some very odd notions of discipline (I already knew that, but Enid is the one person whose odd notions never fail to exasperate me – it’s like trying to teach my grandmother how to use a mobile phone: surely she’ll get it one day …). Her un-ironic grasp of the Orwellian concept of "Might is Right" seems to completely miss the point he was trying to make.

In this second story, we get an idea of how discipline works in the nursery. Amelia is playing pranks on everyone. She throws water at the other toys, then chases them around a bit, threatening to poke them with a pin. The toys decide to punish her by waxing her shoes so that she slips and falls while wearing them. This "harsh but fair" treatment apparently does the trick: Amelia suddenly realises the error of her ways after the toys effectively dance around her yelling "nyer nyer, we got you!" and promises to be good.

That’s it in a nutshell.

Let me repeat: Amelia pulls a prank, the toys pull a prank back, Amelia realises the error of her ways. Huh.

I know we’re not meant to have any sympathy for old AJ, but this stretches the credulity just a little. I fail to see the difference in behaviour of the two sides. Pulling a prank to punish a prank just isn’t really all that smart. If you think about it, someone pulling a prank on you is more likely to cause you to pull a prank on them, which in turn will make them pull a prank … you get it.

Maybe I’m a little slow, but I fail to see the moral in this story. It sounds like it’s meant to be "be nice to others or they’ll be mean to you" or something along those lines, but I’m just not feeling it. What this story is really about is peer pressure. This is not a story about the evils of prank pulling. No. In Enid’s world, pranks are the measure of a person’s intelligence (unless of course, Enid doesn’t like the person, then it’s just a matter of them being wicked). This is a cautionary tale about upsetting the moral majority.

Let’s look at the two sides:

Amelia Jane:

Amelia Jane is doing what she always does – she plays. It might be not to everyone’s taste, but nonetheless it is what she was made to do. She’s pretty open about it; it’s not her fault that the other toys aren’t fast enough to dodge the flying water or avoid the big toy with the pin. AJ just doesn’t really know her own strength – that comes with having no physical brain …

The Toys:

The toys, on the other hand, connive, sneak into a dark cupboard to carry out their dastardly deed, and then congratulate themselves on their cleverness. It annoys me because it is so smug and self righteous and I just can’t stand the smug way in which the toys carry out their social cleansing. They give no justification for their actions other than the fact that they don’t like AJ – but is that a good reason?

You know what it’s like? It’s like killing Osama bin Laden (look at me, bringing current events into Enid!). Organising a hit on a wanted criminal is not "bringing someone to justice", no matter how many times the President says so. No matter how much he might deserve to be brought to justice, execution in that manner is an abuse of the Rule of Law. I did not hear a word that indicated that the US was trying to apprehend him and he died in the fire fight – this was a hit. Even Nazi leaders got a fair trial and due process. (Sorry – but this is something irks me – how can you fight for a system of governance by breaking one of its fundamental rules?)

Similarly, playing a prank to "teach someone a lesson" does not allow for due process for the accused. It was simply the self-righteous and extra-judicial actions of the Teddy Bear and his cronies. I don’t trust that Teddy Bear: he seems to me like a sinister sort of figure. He’d push you off the toy shelf to get the prime spot, I just know it.

There is no point where they say "See AJ – this is what it feels like to have a prank played on you". I’m fine with the idea of an object lesson if it is explained – you know, you hurt our feelings when you throw water on us kind of shtick. Cloying, but instructive. Humiliating for humiliation’s sake? That’s just bullying.

So I don’t really like this story very much.

By they way, one small point: the toys are afraid of being pricked with a pin? They’re TOYS. They don’t have nerves, they can’t feel anything. Amelia Jane is a hand-sewn toy herself – so presumably needles went into her construction. Was there a point in time when needles went from being part of her creation to an anathema to her? It doesn’t add up. I'd go into it more, but I have a whole post saved up just on how toys are not really people ...

The question of appeasement in the nursery

2011-04-17T09:45:00.002+10:00

Amelia Jane was published from 1937 (first book in 1939), on the cusp of WWII. Enid was famous for never EVER referring to the war, but re-reading the first AJ story, I couldn’t help wondering whether AJ sprang from the idea of an anarchic outsider threatening “Our Way of Life”. Though unschooled in the ways of polite society and a nuisance to “Our” day-to-day life, AJ (the outsider) mayn’t be all bad in enid’s eyes ...

The Plot of the story: Amelia Jane is running around the toy room with a pair of scissors, cutting holes in everything she finds, including bunny’s tale. The toys get angry and get the brownies to lock her in the toy cupboard until the toys feel like letting her out. After a while though, the brownies get attacked by goblins and only Amelia Jane can fly the toy plane to attack the goblins and save the brownies. When she does so, she promises not to be naughty again …

Where’s the politics? Well, I found it on Wikipedia. What’s happening in Europe when Enid writes her first story of the naughty doll? It’s 1937, and Europe is gearing up for WWII: Hitler is building up the German Army in the Rhineland, Spain is degenerating into civil war, and Ideology is the governing principle of the day.

I will note that the Anschluss and the occupation of Czechoslovakia did not happen until after this story was written, but the remilitarisation of the Rhineland had (an event in 1936 that pretty much did what it said on the box. Germany armed itself; Europe debated it but eventually stood back, lacking funds and/or will to demilitarise them again).

Enid could not have failed to hear about the debate. In the UK, the Rhineland topic was much debated (understandable, given recent history). Further, Enid’s first husband, a WWI veteran, was working on a book with Churchill and becoming increasingly depressed by the prospect of a new war (he began drinking as a consequence, which was part of the reason the marriage ended), so it would have been a topic that interested him, particularly in light of another crucial event taking place ...

In a nasty foreign country that Enid never visited, there was a civil war going on. Now, children, we all know that the Spanish are fiery people who are sometimes very badly behaved (Carlotta in St Clares anyone?), but some of them were almost good enough to be considered English (or at least they would be if they weren’t so Spanish). The bad Spanish people won an election, so the good Spanish people under a man called Franco decided to take over the country and make sure all the people were part of the right-thinking element. Well, the bad people didn’t like that at all and so they started a war in Spain. Nasty, unwashed people from all over the world went to help the good Spanish and the bad Spanish, and there were lots of newsmen covering the story too. Even that strange little artist Picasso painted a picture with a foreign name about the people dropping bombs in the war (the Guernica was displayed in 1937).

That charming German fellow, Mr Hitler (the Germans are so very orderly and clean and white, aren’t they?) sent the good Spanish people help: he sent planes to bomb the bad Spanish people. And that was after everyone got so annoyed at him building up his army the year before … wasn’t it silly of them to worry?

I think you have an idea bout where I’m going with this. Look at the significance of the imagery in the story: AJ, the perennially naughty doll, has armed herself and is playing with her new weapon = Germany arming itself. The toys and magic brownies (side note: magic brownies sound like something from Amsterdam) disarm her and lock her up: one option for the international community (alternately, these two elements symbolise WWI and the consequences for Germany. Brownies attacked by goblins? Well all good international people think like Enid, and bad ones are … communist (communism was fearfully on the nose). Amelia Jane rearmed and sent in to help … do I need to spell the whole damn thing out for you? This is not a children’s story, this is as close as Enid could get to joining in the grown-ups’ discussion.

What do I draw from this? Well, it’s not a big leap to say that Enid had fascist tendencies. Xenophobia, Uniforms and Discipline (or at least, marching)? Totally up her alley. Aryan race over foreign looking people? Give her a black shirt and introduce her to Oswald Mosely. If Hitler had made her books required reading, she would have led the army across Europe.

Enid was famous for not ever mentioning the war in her stories. She drew a lot from her own life, however, and so it isn’t surprising that there may be hints of the world around her in the stories she writes. After all, you can’t divorce yourself entirely from the era in which you live.

Or I might just be reading too much into this. I really do like the idea of Amelia Jane as Hitler …

When the revolution comes, the teddy-bear will be the first against the wall

2011-04-04T23:19:00.004+10:00

I’ll admit that I’ve been lazy, but that ends now. I have a shelf of Enids to get through (and more coming in every week, not to mention the possibility of more lost Enids to play with), and a big red-dressed doll breathing down my neck.
So

Amelia Jane.

The text is double sized, there is an over-abundance of exclamation marks, and brownies are name checked in very the first paragraph. Enid has told you in 50 words that you are 5 years old and will be ready to swallow any pap that she deigns to tell you.This is a book for younger readers, dressed up to look like a novel (my version is a hard back thing of about 180 pages with about 100 words per page and an illustration every 3-4 pages).

This series of short stories was first published in Sunny Stories, EB’s magazine, then bundled up into a book in 1939 (there are three sequels, and a wanna-be sequel written by someone else). Europe was plunging once more into war and our Lady Enid was starting to work on securing enough printing paper as she could from as many publishers. So she cobbled together some stories about a big red doll in a nursery.

Who is Amelia Jane?

“This was Amelia Jane, a big, long-legged doll with an ugly face, a bright red frock, and black curls. She hadn’t come from a shop, like the others, but had been made at home. Shop-toys nearly always have good manners, and know how to behave themselves – but Amelia Jane, not being a shop-toy, had no manners at all, and didn’t care what she said or did!” (page 1)

Oh dear, boys and girls. AJ does have some problems. She’s a working class doll stuck in an upper-class world! She lives in the nursery of the house, and with all the references to the nanny, the nurse and the maids - well, it’s no wonder she’s an agent of anarchy. Disbarred from being either feminine or clever in one fell swoop, AJ is relegated to a grotesque caricature, the charity toy with delusions above her station.

Three things to look out for in this passage:

- Enid’s trick of making appearance indicative of character
- Enid’s insistence that institutionalisation is the only path to social success
- Enid's insistence on the maintenance of social class system, even in War-time England

So why is AJ so very naughty? Good question, I say. And there’s a simple, very Blyton answer: because she did not come from a store. You see, store bought toys all know how to behave, but Amelia Jane was made. Enid’s love of institutionalisation runneth over, subtly indoctrinating those impressionable minds as to the joys of hair brush spankings and behaviour modification. I've spoken before about Enid and brainwashing children - she's just getting in early with AJ.

Further, Enid’s indoctrination has a hidden motive. Note that it’s the store bought toys that are acceptable. Enid is instilling a sense of consumerism in her young audience, which is self serving – particularly as she had a living to make from selling things to children. There was her books, the newsletters, magazines, two fan clubs ... so she had to get the little darlings to go all Aldous Huxley - you know, ‘spend don’t mend’ and all that. I think it’s a reasonable argument to make that all the evils of advertising to children can be laid at our lady Enid’s door. She raised, in effect, a generation of institutionalised spenders.

Amelia Jane is stuck in the middle of all this fascist web of ideology and indoctrination. She feels the effects of the regime, bowing to its harsh dictates from time to time, feeling the heat of its wrath (being sent to Coventry is a severe blow to anyone...). And yet! Time after time she manages to fight her way through the mire of the moral majority and return to her true calling of exposing the hypocrisy of the nursery by reducing it to anarchy ...

What I do like about this story is that, to the invisible children who own the toys in the nursery, Amelia seems to be a prime favourite. She gets played with a lot, is taken on holidays, and generally is shown favour. I love this, as it shows good taste on their part. They are unswayed by appearance or any idea of consumerism. This does seem to not fit with the story, as in a true Enid story, AJ would have been a present from your working class grandmother (whom your social climbing mother takes good care not to associate with) made by her own work-roughened hands.

I also adore Amelia Jane. She sees the self-righteous toys of the nursery and lifts two seamed fingers firmly in their direction. If there were to be a revolution in Blytonia, Amelia Jane would be the Che of that land. Truly she would. And then ... there would be blood ...

Mr Tumpy and his Caravan

2011-03-08T23:58:00.003+11:00

Who else but Enid could come up with such an ... Enid title? (I confess, you could substitute the word stupid in there and it wouldn't go amiss)

Anyway, the Guardian has been reporting that a new Enid story has been discovered in a bundle of old papers. It's ever so exciting. Any new Enid is exciting - with over 850 books to her name, there just isn't enough of her work for we fans to read!

What I particularly like about the story is the comment made by the group that found the manuscript. Did they talk about the plot? or the characters? No - what they thought we all needed to know was that the manuscript had "no spelling mistakes".

Gold star for Enid!

On Marilla ...

2011-02-12T13:54:00.002+11:00

So I hinted mysteriously (well I hope it was, it felt kind of crass, in a ‘stay tuned, we’ll be right back after these messages’ sort of way) about the fact that I didn’t think a certain ranga heroine was the real protagonist of Anne of Green Gables. Then I promptly disappeared for a month. Sorry.

I’m ready to back my claim.

BTW, for those who have privately expressed consternation as to my maligning of Anne’s character, never fear. I am not going to trample your dreams too much (mostly because I don’t think that it’s necessary).

My claim:

Anne is Not the True Heroine of Anne of Green Gables

Pish, you say, not to mention poppycock. We all know the story is about Anne. It’s right there in the title! Well, yes, I suppose, there is a name in the title – in fact there’s two – but it’s the latter of these that holds the clue. You see this is not a story about how Green Gables changes Anne; as I wrote rather incoherently in the post, Anne doesn’t change – she just ignores any past issues in her life. This is a story about how Anne’s presence changes those around her.

The real heroine of this story? Marilla. She is hands down the best character in the book. Matthew is sweet, Anne is a funny idiot, but this is Marilla’s story. Anne is just a bit player with delusions of Grandeur.

Look at the way the story is structured. The first chapter is all about Marilla explaining to Rachel what she and her brother had decided to do and Rachel tsking something chronic over it. Anne is not chosen in person; in fact it is never explained how Anne was chosen from an entire orphanage of children. What does that tell you? Who she is is not that important. That she is what she is is merely details. This story is about Marilla learning some humanity by caring for another human being.

Anne herself doesn’t come into the story until the half-way through the second chapter, and even then she is seen through Matthew’s eyes. Indeed, the vast majority of the stories about Anne in the book are told from Marilla’s point of view: she watches Anne and we watch along. We see what happens to Anne, but we also see Marilla’s reaction to the events of the story.

Failing Marilla, there is always a sense that we are watching the action of the story as a bystander, or as though someone is recounting the anecdote to us at a later date. Anne is never the absolute centre of any story – she may be the subject, but she is not its purpose. We never see very far into Anne’s head – never more than could be surmised by just guessing – so we are never given leave to really embrace Anne as a true heroine, just a character involved in the action.

In the course of the story, Anne goes off to school, a period interspersed by letters home (as read by Marilla) and Anne worrying about making Matthew and Marilla proud (so they are still front and centre of the story). Anne gets the fairy tale ending – scholarship to university, class honours. But the camera is on Matthew and Marilla as Anne gets them, and this one event shows brings about the primary example of why Anne is not the heroine of this piece.

The scholarship surrounds the main climax of the story. If this book were really about Anne, she would take that scholarship and run, cheered on by her ailing but supportive Marilla. After all, we all know that the fantasy ending always goes to the Heroine, after much sacrifice and trouble. This does not happen. Instead, Anne’s glory is undercut by a series of calamities for Marilla. She loses her brother, her saving and is in danger of losing her house and her eyesight. Anyone who reads the book forgets about Anne’s achievements the moment Matthew dies. She’s like the BFF who gets the token moment in the sun (hence Diana’s relegation to bit player) before the real action takes place.

So Anne (as a character) doesn’t gain or lose any status in her decision to not take the scholarship she’s offered. She’s just submitting to her role as supporting actress – and then things fall into place so that Marilla gets her dream ending. Hooray! I actually rather love watching that particular character slap-down. There’s something so heartwarming about seeing Anne get one ...

Anne is, dare I say it, the Mary Sue of Green Gables, the ideal that LM wishes she had been growing up with her grandparents on PEI. Anne, for all her flaws, manages to charm those around her into what she imagines life should be. Reality would make short work of a real Anne. Marilla is the real author behind the Mary Sue, well aware that the little girl is her fantasy and laughing at herself for indulging in said fantasy.

I love Marilla much more now than I did as a child. She is so dry, so deadpan, that you don’t realise that she is laughing at first until you go back and read carefully. She goes right over the heads of the children reading the story, so dazzled are they by the red hair and big words. A return visit to Avonlea as an adult ...

I’m going to have a few more posts on Anne – but I really want to start Amelia Jane, so I’m going to intersperse them a bit (and try to make them shorter ... Look at me, under 1000 words!)

Next stop – the Nursery, where we get to meet the one of Enid’s greatest creations ... Amelia Jane!

Why Anne is not my Favourite Character in the World

2011-01-04T21:46:00.004+11:00

I lost my copy of Anne of Green Gables. Actually, I lost most of my set of the AoGG series. This tends to happen a lot with me; I lend out books left right and centre and never keep track of them. Then the lendee moves to another state and loses all of her (my) books in a monsoon flood or some such tragedy and I find myself stuck with an incomplete set of LM Montgomerys. I picked me up an old yellow hardcover with a wallpaper-like cover (complete with coffee mug stains) in order to scribble in should the mood take me

I mention this because the AoGG covers are the ones that I would say truly affect my enjoyment of a book. The late 90s versions that had Anne with fluoro red hair made my eyes bleed; later versions are dull and uninspired. Give me the kitsch and quaint cover of the 80s (pictured) – it’s the only one that doesn’t look like a damn romance novel or look so gloomy that no child would ever wish to read it. There’s something about the cover that feels homespun – it feels fun.

To me the cover is important. I need the cover to sway me in this book, because I have a love/hate relationship with the garrulous heroine of the piece. There are times when I truly do hate Anne, and I’m going to favour you with a (long) explanation as to why.

(Sigh: a re-cap for anyone who has not read this classic: an elderly brother and sister wish to adopt a boy to help on their farm, but are sent a girl who has a big mouth and a knack of getting into scrapes. Hilarity and drama ensue.)

I’ve always had a curious disconnection with Anne. I don’t get why Gilbert likes her (but then he always seemed a bit sappy to me), I don’t get why everyone puts up with her stories (which owe a lot to Mrs Radcliffe and those of her persuasion). I really just don’t get Anne these days. Perhaps I’m getting old.

Yet I still love the book. LM Montgomery is a masterful raconteur. Anne sparkles throughout, but only because the retelling buffs her up from a tiresome over-sentimental child with a superiority complex to a truly unique gem of a girl. My problem is that all Anne is is sparkle. There’s no substance behind it.

Seriously, read the second chapter. It’s our introduction to Anne as a character. In it, Anne barely draws breath for seven pages. We’re treated to a monologue of all her thoughts and feelings about everything. In a modern book, you’d call this lazy characterisation: we get told everything we need to know about the character in their first chapter and judge them from thereon in based on that information.
Here’s what she says:

She imagines stuff
She likes trees
She likes belonging to someone (Orphanages are bad)
She likes reading stories
She doesn’t like being skinny
She wants to be rich
She imagines more stuff
She likes trees
Do I talk too much?
More about trees
Her hair is red – her no likey
Imagines more stuff
Trees are pretty (renames tree lined avenue)
Ponds are pretty (renames pond)
Imagines even more stuff
Hooray! A new home!

Right there is pretty much everything you need to know about Anne – you accept everything she does after that because, well, she told you she right at the beginning! The only impression one gets of her is that she talks a lot. That in and of itself does not a character make. She’s a cardboard cut out – merely the means of propelling the real action of the book – but I’ll talk about that in the next post.

My opinion of Anne is a recent thing. I did worship her when I first read the book (at about eight years old – I saw the 80s TV version and was hooked). I think that this is a brilliant example of a story being told on two levels. As a child, I loved the make-believe stuff she went on about; now the thought of the ‘lake of shining waters’ is more than faintly ridiculous. Then I got Anne’s need for a different name and identity to go with it; now … well I still get the whole identity thing – I just don’t bother with the names. Then I thought Marilla was boring and skipped her parts; now I realise that the moments when Marilla is laughing at Anne are the best moments in the whole story. Now I find Anne just a bit tiresome, and as she grows up and becomes ‘normal’, she loses even the charm of childhood.

Anne is the favourite of all Montgomery’s heroines, but she is not her best. Montgomery is at her best when she writes about downtrodden heroines growing a pair and overcoming the strict and/or cruel guardians – usually through passive aggression, sneakiness or outright rebellion.
Anne doesn’t fit the type. You know she’s had a hard upbringing – it’s outlined for you – but it’s like it happened to another person. Anne is keen on melodrama, so her anguish over not being able to stay at Green Gables is ridiculous rather than affecting; you don’t even stop to think that she had no family and no home – even when she is telling you that. Then after that first incident, her past is treated as though it never happened.
No one is that well adjusted. Not after being subject to an abusive alcoholic, borderline slavery, neglect, institutionalisation and lack of education. You don’t just spring back and say ‘oh well, that’s done. I don’t have to think about that ever again’. Anne does, and it makes her feel, I don't know, a bit ... two dimensional. Perhaps I’m asking too much of Montgomery, but surely an acknowledgement of her past
The only moment any such acknowledgment is given is in chapter 6, when there is the possibility of Anne going to the nasty sounding Mrs Blewett. Marilla looks over to see Anne upset

“the misery of a helpless little creature who finds itself once more in the trap from which it had escaped”.

That’s it. That’s the only bit of the past that comes back to haunt Anne. After that she never feels a moment’s worry about her entitlement to stay a GG. Which is why I’m firmly of the opinion that this book is not about Anne. And I’ll write about that next time ...

Reading this back, I’m beginning to realise that Brideshead Revisited is taking its toll on me. You know, underlying tensions and family issues causing psychological damage and all that Freudian stuff. All I need now is to determine which of Anne’s cronies is Aloysius and spank them with a hairbrush. How very Enid ...

Parole - Malory Towers wrap up

2010-12-07T13:54:00.002+11:00

Well, these six books seemed to take a great deal longer to review than I expected them to. I have, however, been paroled from Malory Towers Correctional Facility and am now free to explore other areas of Blytonia.

I just wanted to write briefly a word of warning to the unwary who wish to seek out the treasures that are MT. It seems as though the publishers are not content with leaving well enough alone. They’ve committed a travesty against the work of Blyton - by writing sequels.

Yes, children, Hodder got Pamela Cox (a serial Blyton sequel offender) to write a set of books following June and Felicity through their MT careers. The stories follow similar themes as Blyton's, which is disturbing as they were written in 2009. you know the type of thing: girl is ashamed of her working class relatives/circus performer grandmother/trained chimp brother. Enid could (just) get away with that rubbish; Pamela Cox – no.

On a more disturbing note, the German translation has twelve sequels, which follow Darrell into her adult life. She comes back to the school as a teacher, marries her old German teacher (alarm bells should be going off right about now) becomes the matron then later the Headmistress (when La Grayling gets hit by a car – Hooray!). I’ve only read the Wikipedia summaries and I feel a shudder going through me at the very thought of these books. It’s like reading the sequels to Heidi (I don’t suggest you do that unless you have a sugar deficiency). GAH!

Anyway, after that Public Service announcement, I shall move on to other counties in Enid’s Blytonia. The ever-wonderful Amelia Jane is the next series that I will tackle, amongst my packing and moving (who moves over Christmas? If I had my way, not ME), but first I shall take a break from Enid and we will have a quick romp through the wonderful/irritating Anne of Green Gables …

disjointed ramblings of the nouveau riche and schoolgirls

2010-11-22T22:29:00.002+11:00

Right. Attack of the nouveau riche. Go.

One of the side stories in this book has to do with second former Jo. I warn you, this is a cautionary tale of letting the wrong sort associate with you … prepare to be horrified.

Jo is obviously of the lower orders. Her name is abbreviated as befits a servant (but what about sally …?), and she is far too conscious of her money (well bred girls don’t worry about it – there will always be a parent or husband around to give them an allowance …) which indicates that her wealth is not of the old variety.

Big red flags have been planted around Jo – she’s fat, not very intelligent and doesn’t even like sport! Oh no! As she’s been around for a term already, the indoctrinated know that she is not to be befriended, and we the audience are thrust into the story just accepting that Jo is what they say she is.

But it’s her father that really shows what she is.

At the beginning of the book, Jo’s father nearly runs Darrell’s car off the road, which leads to a confrontation in which Darrel’s dad coldly tells off Jo’s in front of a crowd. It’s one of those moments where the breeding and dignity of Mr Rivers is supposed to shine through and show Jo’s dad for the low brow cretin for what he really is. In reality, a well placed ‘piss off’ would do wonders for the scene. Really.

And we know Jo’s dad is low brow. He drops his haitches, dresses inappropriately and is far too familiar with strangers. In fact, he’s quite a friendly guy, but stuck in Enid’s ice sculpture garden, he just wilts.

Basically, if it were an Australian contemporary story, Jo’s dad would be a bogan in a souped up torana who thinks those Angus burgers at McDonalds really are ‘just a little bit fancy’. Miss Grayling indicates that she regrets allowing such an uncouth interloper into her fine establishment, just after an encounter in which he tries to charm her. So we are forewarned that Jo is in danger.

Enid’s girls begin their usual round of bullying and victimisation to try and coerce her into being at least acceptable regime material. But Jo is defiant, making friends with an impressionable girl from the first form (note: this girl is you or your child – good, but helpless against the incursions of the classless). She fights back, but you know how it is – she’s never going to make it work.

The crisis comes when Jo loses five pounds. Just why she was carrying it around at school where there is nowhere to spend it is a mystery, but she is low class like that. Anyway, she loses it and matron finds it and deduces that it is Jo’s. But instead of just calling Jo in and giving her a bollocking for having too much money at school (girls are only allowed a few shillings a week, kept locked up in the matron’s office), matron puts up a notice asking for the girl to turn herself in.

Jo’s in a pickle. She needs to get the money back, but doesn’t want to get caught by the regime … so she picks her moment and steals the money out of the safe – along with four more pounds. Then she goes to town and spends the lot at the local shop, buying food for a birthday feast (what I love about this part is the fact that the shop, no doubt well aware of the allowance of the students, nonetheless let her spend the money then contact the school). By the time she gets back, news has got out that the money is missing. The entire form gets in trouble because Jo won’t own up and one just does not tattle.

Of course, the girls dole out the worst possible punishment – COVENTRY. Jo, beginning to feel guilty, ostracised by her peers and just plain fed up with the raw deal she’s been getting, decides that the ideal solution is to run away. But she can’t do it alone – remember that first former friend? Bingo! Off they go!

… and aren’t missed until bed-time.

Blah blah blah, they get found the next day, the first-former gets off (aren’t you happy? She claims the Nuremberg defence – which gets her off! WTF?), but Jo is expelled. No second chance, no redeeming character trait that would soften the icy chambers of Miss Grayling’s heart. Grayling does happy dance in her head during the interview with Jo and her dad. The Nouveau Riche threat is neutralised!

To be fair to Jo – she does learn something, she writes a letter to prove it. She apologises to the girls, puts on a brave face about her current school-less situation, and goes forth into the night. Just why she couldn’t do that at MT, I don’t know. Jo’s not very smart, a fact that La Grayling pounces on to justify her decision to vote her off the island.

…. And we all learn our lesson. Class will tell. It’s impossible to think that the right thinking element will not prevail. Absolutely impossible!

Meanwhile, June, suitably chastened by the near expulsion last book, has now come under fire from Amanda, the new sixth former. Amanda is a big, sporty type who is going in for the Olympics. When goaded by the other girls, she claims she can make June into an all-round sports champion. Amanda bullies June, June has a tantrum and quits (I think she even throws her racquet). Then drama strikes.

Amanda, being Enid’s choice of victim for her ‘pride comes before a fall’ 4x2, decides that she wants to swim in the ocean. Which has currents she is unfamiliar with. And sharp pointy rocks. Smart. Anyway, she sneaks off early one morning, gets half way to … wherever she was going (America perhaps), and gets caught in the current. Rather than swimming across it like any Australian knows to do, she fights it, tires out and gets dragged to the big pointy rocks. In a marvellous coincidence, June happens to come down, happens to see, and happens to know how to break into the hitherto unmentioned boathouse belonging to the school. Amanda lives, but may never be a great athlete, thus learning her lesson – and serves her right, wouldn’t you say? June also starts training again so that Amanda can live vicariously through her triumph … that’s an arrangement that will definitely end happily.

That’s really all of interest in the book. There’s a brief cameo of a copy of Claudine from St Clares, but Enid doesn’t quite know what to do with her. There’s also an improbable trick involving magnets and teachers’ hair pins that was funnier in Enid’s head than on paper.

And so we leave Malory towers (FINALLY – it took me long enough). The girls go off to wherever their parents deem the most likely place to meet their future husbands, Enid leaves you with that insidious feeling that you want more, and her publishers helpfully point out that they commissioned writers to write sequels so that you can get even more Malory Goodness. Don’t expect me to read them, though. Enid is only fun when it’s Enid doing the writing.

Don’t say Peculiar, that’s just strange: The Obfuscation of Enid

2010-11-11T21:24:00.003+11:00

This is the essay about editing Enid that I alluded to a few posts ago:

A couple of months ago, the dedicated rose up. Cardigans fuzzed and tweeds burred. Battle lines were drawn in ink. It was an outrage, they cried, it was a travesty. Forums het up until they became incandescent as the dedicated protested that it would never be done to Dickens or Shakespeare.

The unthinkable was happening. Enid was being tampered with.

Again.

Hodder Childrens Books had announced that they were re-editing Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books to remove all traces of mid-century slang and render the text ‘timeless’ for generations to come. The announcement was one of those ‘moving forward’ type of actions so loved for their pretence of progress; it was meant to show that Blyton would be well placed for the new millennium.

The devoted said Shucks to that.

This, of course, is not the first time that the first lady of children’s literature has been violated. Of all the classic writers of the English tongue, Enid Blyton is the one author against whom the blue pencil continues to be wielded. Classic English literature is generally considered sacrosanct, each work a product of its time and thus part of shared cultural history. But Enid? Enid is the anomaly, belonging to none and every generation simultaneously.
It has been half a century since the last of Enid Blyton’s books were published, and in that time Her books have rallied a legion of followers. This latest renovation of Blyton’s works has opened up that particular can of worms in a way that none of her previous revisions have done. The battle over who truly ‘owns’ Enid and how that ownership is to be displayed has developed into an increasingly heated conflict as the various generations of her readers mass and take sides. With several decades of copyright left to run, this partisanship will only escalate in the coming years.

On one side, we have the devoted Enid-ites, epitomised by the aging and be-cardiganed man who teeters just this side of creepy (and possesses more information about girls’ boarding schools than is seemly). Joining him is the middle-aged and ostentatiously artistic lady, and the pseudo-retro and over-opinionated gen-yer and their ranks of clones. Arrayed against them is the mindless, soulless publishing machine, whose single aim is to world domination and the compete obfuscation of Our Lady Enid.

And then there is the battlefield: Enid Blyton’s body of work. The terrain is rocky, as there is no author with such an ability to engender adoration and embarrassment in equal measure. She drew all manner of un-PC matter under her wing and nurtured it, leaving her followers unsure as to how to deal with her. She’s that great aunt who regales your friends with stories of her bowel movements but who gives you the best Christmas presents.

Enid’s writing really taps into the whole idea of how each generation thinks they should raise the next. Because she remains so amazingly popular (Hodder states that they still sell half a million copies of her Famous Five books every year), her work is constantly adapted to suit whatever the current child rearing trend happens to be. You can see the progress of ideas from generation to generation through the various stages of assault on her body of work.

The first campaign Enid withstood was an attempt to silence her. In a two decade stand off, the BBC maintained an unofficial ban on her works, dismissing her as a “competent and tenacious second-rater” (the BBC’s archive has a page devoted to their letters from, to and about Enid – the reviews are quite brilliant, for example “There is rather a lot of the Pinky-winky-Doodle-doodle Dum-dumm”). By the fifties, however, Enid had become such a leviathan of children’s literature (churning out 12 books per year at her zenith) that even the behemoth of the BBC was forced to capitulate and consent be dragged along in her wake. The first Blyton story was read on the Beeb in 1954. Round one the lady.

The next assault was, most would concur, a sensible one; it was certainly the most successful. It was felt that if Enid could not be stopped, she had to be censored: the racism had to go. Blyton was famous, even in the fifties, for her parochialism and her rampant racism. French people were selfish, Spanish bad tempered, Americans were crass and “Gollywogs” … well, they don’t even print those books anymore so I’m not sure what they were supposed to have done. Only proper English people were capable of true goodness in Enid’s mind; society didn’t agree and she was overruled (to an extent … French bashing is apparently still in vogue). This victory levelled the score, although it was a bit of a one-sided battle: Enid had succumbed to Alzheimer’s and opposition to PC-ing her unfeasible in the face of such reforming zeal.

It was the nineties that saw the next sharpening of the blue pencils. We were all looking to the future, so Blyton’s works were accordingly modernised: girls drank coke, not tea, had central heating rather than fires and were called Zoe instead of Betty. Decimal currency was in, so all those old duodecimal references were out. It was all very new millennium and forward looking, but it dated quickly. Tea turned out to be healthier than coke and sitting around the central heating really held no appeal. As for Zoe, well, the next generation of girls was called Mackenzie, so the name dated awfully quickly.

The response to these last changes was not so favourable as previously. Blyton societies had begun to gain traction; the internet emerged as powerful rallying point for the knights of Enid. Objections to alteration ‘for alteration’s sake’ began floating around along with the idea that enough time had passed that Enid could be classified as a set historical entity. These new changes ended in a draw: new ‘classic’ editions of the books were put out to placate the growing number of the followers of the True Enid. But the schism between the true and false Enid had begun.

Flash forward to today, and we have the latest stoush in the long-running war.
Hodder’s press release flashed across the world, bouncing off satellite and burrowing through cable, planting itself firmly in news sites and discussion forums. The hounds of Enid bayed, blogged and commented, crying for today’s children and the rich cultural experience that they would be losing. This was change for change’s sake and as such we were called to revile it and hold faith with the true Enid.

So what were the changes? On the face of it, it sounds innocuous enough. Hodder announced that the times were a-changing and that Enid’s language had to change with them. If it were just a matter of replacing a few nouns or adjectives there might not have been much of an issue, but even in the small excerpt Hachette Australia provided above, you’ll notice that there is more going on. Judgement calls are being made as to content. The edited version removes reference to ‘the boys’ in relation to climbing and swimming. The female empowerment of this omission is certainly very PC, but misses the point of the passage – that Anne’s major companions are ‘the boys’ and they are part of all she does. It is gendered whitewashing, ensuring that no parent could possibly be upset by anything Enid may have to say.

Which brings me to a question that I’ve not seen answered, or even addressed, in all this: what do children think of this development? Who knows? And really, who actually cares? Certainly not anyone involved in this discussion. This latest bout of fisticuffs in the battle for Enid is between publishers and the readers of news reports and press releases. Parents weigh in, literature critics have something to say. The actual readers of the books are silent over which version they would prefer; the battle rages over their heads. Enid is the domain of the grown-ups. There is almost a belief that Her stories cannot truly be enjoyed until one is an adult, childrens’ tiny heads being incapable of recognising Her genius. She is the ultimate nostalgia: brimming with wholesome, innocent adventure that allows us to point back and say with a sad, smug smile that yes, life was better when we were young.

So what scarring would there be to little Johnny who doesn’t understand what a swotter is (or why it’s awful)? And how would children really react when faced with something beyond their ken? We fear failure for the next generation, so the latest changes attempt to make things easier for them. These efforts, however, intended to render the books age appropriate, have resulted in a solution that appears quite ridiculous. Enid’s stories involve technologies, institutions and ideas straight from post-war Britain. How is it that this aspect can remain relevant to readers yet the vocabulary used is not? She either is relevant or she isn’t. Her stories of upper-middle class children at boarding school solving cold war crime are not precisely tapping into the current affair issues of eight-to-ten-year-olds – so why must the language do so?

Enid is a product of her times and no amount of editing is going to make her more relevant or more readable to her audience.

Last Term at Malory Towers part 1

2010-09-23T18:22:00.003+10:00

So we are coming to the end of this moving tale of school life and cultural indoctrination. It brings a tear to my eye to see all these little brats all grown up and ready to be inflicted on society.

In a small segue, I was quite excited that seven Blyton manuscripts were bought this week by Newcastle Library to prevent them going into private hands. One of them was this book!

Book six I will call “Attack of the Nouveau Riche”. I promised you that I would show you what happened when the ‘wrong sort’ were allowed into the Facility, and I shall deliver ... in the next post.

I’ve split this up for a reason. I loathe this book. It’s badly put together, disjointed and confused. The side-stories that I’ve excised and given their own post are really just put in so that something happens in the story – whenever something bad happens, Darrell just “Oh that’s just too bad, but I won’t let it spoil my last term, so I’ll just forget about it ... la la-la la-la ...”. Of course, she does this with the Gwendoline story, but Gwen is the true hero of the story, so I’m not putting her in a corner.

Anyway, the story.

As far as Darrell is concerned, you can basically ignore her for most of the book – Enid does. She’s now Head-Girl of the school, and well on her way to adult bovinity (it’s something that I have noticed. All the teachers and grown-ups seem to be extremely stupid. They are always surprised and always at a loss to figure out how the younger kids manage their ‘ingenious’ tricks. It’s almost as if their brain switches off after a certain age … actually, that’s it! It’s always annoyed me that the end of Enid’s school series seem to imply that life is over … and maybe it is. Children get sent to school to be ‘educated’ and once the indoctrination is complete they are sent out into the world as drones, placid, unimaginative and completely devoid of that spark of individuality that defined them as children. The fire dies out, and they live out their lives with only the pilot light on … look at me getting all poetical.). Anyway, She’s being driven to school for the last time and is quite miserable over the whole process.

As the reader, you get drawn into this fit of nostalgia. I read it again waiting for Hedwig to be killed (if I just spoilered HP for you, too bad. It’s been out for years now, and I can’t pander to those who are waiting for the movie. And yes, that is a message to my sisters who complained about me spoilering Anna Karenina for them), thinking again that this was one of the true parallels between the two grand dames. Nostalgia at the beginning of a last book is just self-indulgent.

So, Darrell’s boring, and all of the sixth-formers are disposed of in the first few chapters. Mary-Lou is going to become a children’s nurse (and marry a doctor – Oh I can see it a mile away!), Alicia, Sally and Darrell are off to St Andrews University (cough findahusband cough), Bill and Clarissa have bought a stable and are going to start a riding school (did you notice the part where they BOUGHT a farm? No talk of a husband … but two girls living together is apparently quite acceptable), Maureen is going to become a secretary (pleb), Irene and Belinda are off to Guildhall to be all arty and stuff, and Gwendoline – well she’s apparently off to finishing school (but more on that soon). So we can forget the oldies. They’re all very maudlin about leaving school and this being the last time that they will do this and do that … GAH!

And Gwen? Well, Gwen comes into her own. This really is the basis for my absolute love of this character. Forget about the sympathy you have for the bullied misfit, Gwen gains depth at the end of this series – depth that is really quite beyond Enid, and possibly depth that wasn’t intended by the author – but depth nonetheless.

Enid is at her vicious best at the beginning of the book. Gwen keeps telling everyone about a fight she’d had with her dad over finishing school. He wanted her to get a job, and she thought that was too plebeian and wanted to follow her mother’s plan of going to finishing school. Gwen’s dad really doesn’t hasn’t done himself any favours in the past be being such an absentee father and leaving her with her mother (and that governess who is having it off with either [or both] Gwen’s mother or father, because why else would she still be in the house when Gwen is 18?), because when intimations are made that he is ill, Gwen brushes it off as being a claim similar to her own or her mother’s claims of illness (and we all know Gwen’s track record).

Towards the end of the book, disaster strikes. Gwen’s father is struck down with some mystery illness – one so bad that he may die. Gwen rushes home, convinced she’s missed her chance to make it up to him.

It’s here where Gwen really comes into her own. After a couple of weeks (the next chapter really) She writes a letter to Darrell, letting her know that her dad survived, but will be an invalid for the rest of his life. Unaccountably, this means that all their money is gone too – but you know, karma and all. So Gwen looks like she’ll have to financially support her family from now on … and she’s calmly accepted it and is ready to do so. She ends the letter by asking the girls to keep in touch.

Darrell’s response is sickening. She’s happy that Malory Towers has rubbed off on her and writes back out of pity. Pity? WTF? Gwendoline just showed that she is ten times the person that any of the others there, and they PITY her? What proper adversity have THEY suffered? What also sickens me is Enid’s attribution of influence to the school, by having Grayling wisely say that this adversity ‘could be the making of her’. That this proves true does not mean that the credit goes to the school. Gwen’s spent her whole school career being bullied, isolated, put down and used, and when push comes to shove, she doesn’t back down This letter is really why I am a Gwen fan.

But Enid is happy with the sappy, poor Gwendoline end. The story winds up after this. Nostalgia comes back with a vengeance. A last this, a final that. In the last pages, Sally and Darrell and Alicia have a moving scene where they ‘pass the torch’ to Felicity and June (I kid you not – they use that phraseology – carry the torch, hold the standard ... Almost warlike in its tone). It’s quite a frightening moment: yes we do want the grand traditions of brainwashing, bullying and classism carried on from generation to generation. Well done Enid!

And then it closes, with Enid dropping in to personally say goodbye. I hate this device. It is so manipulative. There is a feeling of loss associated with the action of saying goodbye – it’s said as Darrel drives away, so we are stuck at this damn prison with Darrell off on a new adventure to which we are not invited. I always hate the end of books for that very reason – the whole what happens next? But Enid just manipulates the reader. She makes you miss the damn girl. It’s like an abusive relationship – what she’s done in the past is forgotten and we’d probably happily go back to her in another book ... until she loses it and hits someone again ...

GAH! I could talk about this all week, but I’ll stop. There’s more to come – basically the side stories. And the nouveau riche ... never forget the nouveau riche!

Prep and house-mistresses

2010-09-15T22:32:00.002+10:00

I had decided to post my latest essay for class up here, as it was a lyrical essay about Enid and the various updates done to her over the years, but two things stopped me:

1/ I haven't actually handed the essay in, and if they run it through turnitin, I may have some explaining to do ... which would be awkward
2/ I already covered the underlying issue in an earlier post

So, I'll put it to you. I'll put up the first paragraph and ask you if you would like to read it (at a later date, when I've well and truly handed the blighter in)

Hem, hem:

"A couple of months ago, the dedicated rose up. Cardigans fuzzed and tweeds burred. Battle lines were drawn in ink. It was an outrage, they cried, it was a travesty. Forums het up until they became incandescent as the dedicated protested (nearly in caps) that it would never be done to Dickens or Shakespeare.

The unthinkable was happening. Enid was being tampered with.

Again."

And one of my favourite descriptions, just for good measure:

" ... we have the devoted Enid-ites, epitomised by the image of an aging and be-cardiganed man who teeters just this side of creepy (and possesses more information about girls’ boarding schools than is seemly)..."

If you want to read about Enid being edited again, do let me know, and I'll post the essay in full in a couple of weeks.

Tally Ho!

In the Fifth at Malory Towers

2010-09-02T11:55:00.002+10:00

Sorry about the delay in posting – I couldn’t bring myself to post about this book, plus, I’ve been reading Anna Karenina and that’s been taking all of my time lately. I have an ever-growing pile of books to read that are stuck at the AK traffic jam. Anyway, onwards and upwards!

I do like the fact that a friend of my sister was reading Malory Towers for the first time recently (she is 31). I’m not certain if she reads this blog, or whether it was a spontaneous Blyton reprisal (this friend was responsible for my introduction to Five Go Mad in Dorset some years ago), but I was vastly amused when she begged me not to spoil the end of the last book. I was amused for two reasons:

1/ The idea of Blyton having any level of suspense for a reader over the age of 12 just tickles me
2/ The fact that she hadn’t finished it – seriously, these books you can read in one sitting.

Right, book 5.

I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, it’s all feel-goody and light, on the other, it’s saccharine and plot-device-y. It feels rather like a filler book than an actual part of the series.

Storyline: It’s the term after book 4 and all the girls are relaxing after a heavy term. Then they get the news that they are in charge of the end of term entertainment (which, apparently, is quite a big deal, despite us never knowing of this event’s existence before …). They decide to put on a pantomime – Cinderella to be exact – in a move that is so freaking pedestrian and narrative vehicle-y that it makes my eyes bleed.

By a peculiar coincidence, the form happens to have a composer (Irene), a set designer (artist Belinda), a costume designer (previously unknown, but apparently long term inmate Janet), and a voice coach (Gwendolinitis recoveree Mavis). Unimportant people from other towers fill in other roles, but they aren’t worth Enid’s notice (although she throws the names around in quite a confusing manner). Then, in the manner of a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, Enid lets us in on something. Darrell – thug Darrell, who usually expresses herself best with her fists, is an aspiring writer – and is given the task of writing the script.

WTF? How is it that it has taken 5 books to get to this information about our Heroine? This caused me some concern. What has Enid really told us about Darrell?

1/ She likes sport
2/ She’s sort of smart
3/ She has anger management issues
4/ She has a Boring BFF (capital B)
5/ She has Anger management issues (in case you’ve missed me beating you over the head with that fact
6/ She Loves Her School

I’m writing this list, wracking my brains to figure out what Darrell really is like. It’s stumped me. She is a total blank. She’s not so much one dimensional as without any dimension at all. I mean, it’s hardly surprising that she loves her school, given her starvation of affection at home (it’s not as though her parents HAVE to send her away to school – I presume that there’s a number of perfectly decent schools nearby that they chose to not send her too – they must really like being empty-nesters or something).
And now we learn that she likes writing. And according to Enid, she does a jolly good job of writing the panto, resulting in a bang-up script. Well done Darrell – scooby snacks all round!

There is, of course, tension. New form-bitch Moira (left down from the previous term) has megalomaniacal tendencies and much drama ensues – culminating in several cast members quitting the panto. The Suspense, the Angst! It’s all edge-of-the-seat stuff, I tell you. What I really love about this is the skewed logic Alicia displays when Darrell begs her to come back. She says that she wants to, but that she never goes back on her word because that is weak … and Darrell accepts that? If it had been me I would have slapped her for being such a stupid, self-centred bitch. Or at least told her that pig-headedness is not strength …

Meanwhile, trouble is brewing with the next generation. Not with Felicity, of course, as she is now in line with the regime and has been rewarded with a spot on a Lacrosse team, but with June. June is getting into trouble constantly with the fifth formers, who are happily testing out their brand-new ‘punishment books’ on her (apparently senior students can make junior students do strange things like learn poetry as a punishment – ever notice that these magical items have never been mentioned before. PLOT DEVICE!). June is ticked off particularly by Megalomaniac Moira, and is starting to feel the want of motherly love about the place. So, she does what any pissed off teenager out for revenge would do – she starts sending anonymous notes to Moira along the lines of “You’re a bully and no one likes you!".

Shocking stuff, right? Moira is stoic about it, but is secretly upset, because deep down she just wants to be liked by people (I especially like the part where she is worried that the writer could be her sister – what familial affection!). Then the unthinkable happens: June is found out – by Mam’zelle of all people. All hell breaks loose – and everyone is so surprised that it’s clearly-typecast-as-school-baddie June who committed the heinous crime. June is expelled, but Moira nobly goes in to intervene and gets June unexpelled (the really funny thing is that all this drama takes only 1 chapter – that’s just a couple of pages).

Now, here’s the thing about June’s letters. They may be mean and underhanded, but what else would you expect of a thwarted, rebellious teen? How many times did you write a letter to someone telling them EXACTLY what you thought of them? Or imagined writing one? Teenagers write notes for EVERYTHING – from “do you like me? Check yes or no” to “I HATE YOU. YOU ARE A ******* *****”. They don’t like confrontation, and notes give that. Plus any confrontation would have just resulted in more punishment for June.

Secondly, June keeps saying that she ‘didn’t know it was wrong’. I believe her. In a way, she was the most honest person in the school when it came to Moira. Everyone else was bitching about Moira behind her back, and MT penitentiary is not backward in having regime members tell renegades exactly where they are going wrong. June is actually doing Moira a favour in telling her what people are saying about her – but no one seems to feel guilty about how they’ve treated Moira. Gossip is encouraged in the regime – after all, every regime needs a propaganda machine.

Anyway, everything is finally cleared up and the panto, dogged by absolutely no rehearsals in the past few weeks, magically comes together on the night. Notable is the fathers ogling Alicia in her snug costume doing acrobatics (what do you think they are really saying when they marvel to each other “she could be on the London stage”?). It all goes swimmingly, and concludes with everyone yelling for the author. And we close with our heroine basking in the applause and thinking she may just have a career in writing. Enid really is manipulative: you close the book with a cheesy grin on your face (well I do) and then stop to wonder exactly WHY you are smiling when you don’t particularly like Darrell? GAH!

OH! And Gwen update! Gwen gets Gwendolinitis! New girl Maureen is foisted onto her after everyone else decides that she isn’t worth having as a friend. She’s meant to be Gwen’s twin in temperament, and Gwen learns a lesson about herself in the process. Of course, Maureen goes through her own hazing from the girls, who really go hammer and tongs for her (so far that they actually feel a little bad for a moment afterward, but it is soon squashed by the weight of their self-righteousness). Gwen does try to change, but no-one’s really interested in helping her do so, so her efforts AGAIN go unrewarded. Really, after part of the reason Maureen was foisted onto Gwen was to ‘teach her a lesson’, the least the girls could do was some follow up …

And Mam’zelle plays a treek! In what is my favourite trick of the series, Mam’zelle buys fake teeth and puts them on one Saturday, then goes around randomly smiling at people. I heart this trick – and the reactions it gets from all of the people she passes. They all keep wondering if she has a toothache!

Anyway, that is the fifth in this series … there’s only one more book before I move on to another of Blyton’s brilliance. Next up is nostalgia central, and although Enid doesn’t quite kill Darrell’s owl, she comes pretty damn close.

PS. I’m really sorry about all of the capitalisation in this post. My Shift keys and I seem to have an understanding at the moment …

Don't say peculiar, that's just strange

2010-07-26T23:38:00.004+10:00

People can be so stupid!

This is a link to the ABC's report of Hodder's latest brainwave.

They are going to re-edit Blyton.

Again.

This time, rather than get rid of the offensive racism (gone) or the offensive names (also gone) or even the outdated technology (gone in places), they're going for the REAL problem.

The vocabulary.

OK, I get why 'dirty tinker' needs to go, but 'swotter'? Altering 'mother and father' to 'mum and dad' seems pointless, and changing 'peculiar' to 'strange' is just stupid (in fact, I'd say that's counter-productive in the struggle to expand children's vocabulary). Hodder claim that it is being "sensitively and carefully" revised and that Blyton would approve as she wrote because there were no 'modern' books around when she was a girl. They say the aim is to make Enid's work 'timeless', so as to appeal to future generations.

Many people (as you will see in the discussion below the story) are annoyed, nay - outraged, at the stupidity of this action. They put forth the observation that it is only Enid who undergoes this constant revision; they argue that reading these old words will help children expand their knowledge and vocabulary; they claim that Blyton's vocab was indicative of the time and should stay as a testament to the period (and that generations continue to find our E appealing despite the old slang).

All of this I agree with. My problem with this action is, in addition the above, that despite the insidious nature of Blyton, she has a distinctive narrative voice, and her characters also speak in a particular way, that will be lost somewhat in the de-identification. Besides, the first thing that sprang to mind when I read this was Orwell's 'newspeak' in 1984.

And say what you will, saying George was 'jolly lonely' sounds a great deal more interesting than saying she was 'very lonely'. Those two phrases don't even mean the same thing! The latter adjective lends the phrase an element of self pity that the former does not; 'jolly' has quite a stiff upper lip feel to it. Lose the slang and you lose more than you bargained for ...

I hate to admit I was watching this (in my defense, it was after Masterchef and I couldn't be bothered getting up), but Jamie Oliver's US school show contained an element very similar to the idea behind this re-edit. When talking to the cooks about the lunch menu, he finds out that the children are never given a knife and fork to eat with because it is 'beyond their abilities', so between the ages of 4-11, they were not taught basic table manners and ate with a spoon and their fingers.

This re-edit is like that. This is a publisher deciding not to push children to grow and learn, but to drop back and make it easy for them. The loss of peculiar really irks me - I mean ... really? If a child doesn't know the word, they can LOOK IT UP! I remember writing word lists when I was young - I'd write down words I didn't know and find them in the dictionary. And I learned things that way.

GAH! You know what the result will be? Bland, dateless, over-edited books, devoid of narrative voice, lacking in decent dialogue, without the one major virtue of the distinct vocabulary. Seriously, if you want a modern children's book, there are so many writers out there you could keep your spawn reading until middle-age.

Just Leave Enid Alone!!

Book 4 Again ... I know and I'm sorry, but this is the very last you'll hear about it!

2010-07-21T13:54:00.002+10:00

Before I start, I just want to hand out a special commendation to Lol, who valiantly tried to remove the Blyton coloured glasses from an eight-year-old immersed in the Malory Towers chronicles. In the face of (what I understand to be) fanatic Blytonism, she laboured to suggest that Gwendoline wasn’t quite as bad as previously thought. The Blyton, unfortunately, was strong in that one … but I heartily endorse her de-programming efforts.

So, on to the book …

This is the last post on book 4. I promise. I didn’t mean to write so much on this book. It’s just that there is SO much packed into one little book that I just couldn’t let an issue pass.

And this is an issue that really pisses me off about our lady of Blyton. It really does. It’s lazy, unnecessary and manipulative and irks me no end.

It’s the introduction of the ‘next generation’.

That’s right. As well as the merry-go-round of new students in the dormy (ever wonder what happens to some of them? There is only space for ten or so in the one room. Scotch stereotype Jean and nervous wreck Ellen are too smart for the form, so have been moved up; American brainwash-ee Zerelda has gone back to the states to indoctrinate the continent of ignorant savages there into the ways of Our Enid; others from earlier books just disappear as they become superfluous. I actually think Enid drugs their tea at night and lobs them over the nearby cliffs, before returning to school and convincing the girls that “Violet doesn’t exist. There never was a Violet. Violet was just a dream …”. If she can get children to swallow some of the other crap she feeds them, why not this?), Enid also decided to go back basics and introduce two new first form characters.

There are two new ciphers in this book. Felicity, Darrell’s sister, and June, Alicia’s cousin, begin their school school career this term (with much copy-and-pasting from book one: train ride to school, wise words about school going quickly blah blah blah). Felicity is a cross between Darrell and Mary-Lou (all puppy dog eyes and strong sense of self-righteousness), while June is Alicia on steroids, exacerbated by a dash of Gwendoline stubbornness and all-round Blyton spitefulness. We watch their initial settling in issues, remember fondly reading about our own first term with Darrell (I’m not joking, there’s this indulgent and nostalgic ‘yes I’ve already done that’ sort of feel to the whole thing) and sagely agree that Felicity really shouldn’t be friends with June. It’s damn smug and self indulgent – Felicity is such a dishrag there’s nothing to hate and June has not one redeeming feature in her make-up. I find it nauseating, which is interesting, as in previous reads I never really cared about the younger girls one way or the other. It’s just when you really look at these characters you see that they are so badly written as to be infuriating.

(Side note: E’s daughter Imogen is the model for Felicity, but she was more like June in reality – feeling neglected for being shipped off to school at an early age, she was rather a rebel and was almost expelled from one school – more about that in the next book.)

I really dislike this because there are already too many new characters to keep track of in each book. The narrative is divided up between two separate stories (rather than between characters in the one story), and in these later books, Darrell seems to take a back seat as the drama and comic set pieces are given to the younger, less ‘trained’ characters (to show the young readers the difference between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour – because we will all benefit from a revision of the rules of the regime).
June in particular is set up to be re-programmed quite heavily, being a cross between Alicia and Gwedoline. Brilliant but stubborn, she is Enid’s vehicle for increasing the drama in the story. Darrell hates her, given her demonstrable resistance to the regime, and that, along with study stress, is a catalyst for her simmering Harry Potter-esque anger running throughout the book

In this case, June gets all bitter about being bullied by the older forms. Having some crazy idea that hierarchy shouldn’t matter, but also possessed of a very high opinion of herself, June gets bitter at the thought that she is henpecked by older girls. So when she finds out about (and joins in) the fourth form’s illegal midnight feast, she decides to turn herself in to look good to the teacher and ‘get back’ at the fourth form. It is about this time that Darrell finds out, leading to the smackdown scene that covers Darrell in shame for the rest of term (mentioned in the first post for this book).

Felicity, on the other hand, is all shy new girl throughout the book. She’s BFF’s with June until June’s smackdown, at which point she realigns herself with a more regime friendly, Darrell approved BFF (who is never actually seen, just spoken of, giving you an indication of the interestingness of her character). She doesn’t actually do anything, just add the ‘ooh, aah’ filler of a newbie at the school – Oh, and learn a valuable lesson for us all to take in and apply in our own lives. Today’s lesson is charismatic ‘bad boy’ types do not make good friends – stick with the regime friendly alternatives instead.

(Side note: If Bella from Twilight had read Blyton, that book could have ended sooooooo differently … she’d probably end up with Mike or something like that (since apparently she HAS to end up with someone). To be honest, it probably would have made the story more interesting …)

I truly loathe this introduction of the next generation. Not only does it take away from Darrell’s character development (which is something Enid would want as she can’t do ‘growing up feelings’), the two new characters are just amalgamations and rehashes of extant characters. It’s done to reinforce this whole idea of ‘growing up’, in that the older characters are supposed to act in a more dignified manner, as befitting their advanced age (I believe they are all of 15 in this book). Once indoctrinated into the system, acting contrary to it is frowned upon – so we’ll never have the older characters acting out so badly as the younger girls: they’re meant to ‘know better’.

Also, in Enid-land, all adults are stupid (except her because she’s a super-cool freak with a photographic memory). A story about adults (even young ones) would be boring because they are all lacking in intelligence and overflowing in nuanced emotions that were beyond the literary grasp of our great lady. She doesn’t like writing about them. In her opinion, all your growing up is done by 18 and the rest of your life is just … nostalgia for those halcyon school days. The end of school is the end of life in E’s opinion, so it’s important to learn all the lessons you can before that dreadful day … and if you think that that is fatuous tripe, just wait and see what our Enid has in store for you later …

Right, so I’m done with book four (or as done as I can be in 3000 odd words – I could go on forever about why I wish Felicity could be killed off). Seriously, I’m actually going to move on … shocking I know. Given that I started reviewing this book before I went on holidays, it’s rather terrible that I’ve drawn the story out for over 4 weeks. My apologies for that.

Obviously, the next book is book 5, but the next post will be an examination of the regime in MT. All students are equal, but some are more equal than others …

Upper Fourth at Malory Towers Pt II

2010-07-02T14:44:00.000+10:00

The bitches of Upper Fourth

I almost thought I would have to backtrack on my vigorous defence of Darling Gwendoline after her antics in this book. Gwen could almost pass as a bitch in this instalment. And this put me in a bit of an awkward position.

There are two things you should know about me to understand this angst: 1/ I’m extremely stubborn and 2/ my favourite four words in the world are ‘I TOLD YOU SO’. Having delivered myself of an impassioned diatribe for everyone’s favourite bullying victim, and basked in your admiration for my inspired analysis, this book was a bit of a slap in the face. It was entirely possible that I would have to retract my analysis and admit that Enid was right. The thought had me distinctly worried; I hate backing down on an opinion – ESPECIALLY if I realise that it is wrong.

Then I thought about it, and thought about it, wrote an entry … and took off my Enid coloured glasses and realised that I was being influenced again. I should have realised the moment that Gwen showed up at school inexplicably fat (she’d never been so before).

Let’s look at what Gwendoline does. She makes a friend, one who mummy would approve of very much. The honourable Clarissa Carter, who turns up at school, undersized, burdened with braces and glasses and a heart condition, and no idea of how to go on at school (having never attended). Yes the friendship is self serving, but were I Clarissa, I would have been grateful for it. Speaking from experience (I started new schools 3 times in high school), the first thing you want is a companion of sorts. Sometimes the friendship doesn’t pan out, but that’s OK.

In this instance, Gwendoline’s lack of social nous stymies the friendship. She starts out by bitching about all the girls in the year (and let’s be honest, at that age – who doesn’t?) and taking advantage of the meek nature of Clarissa. Being the dominant member of the friendship for once, Gwen takes advantage of that position. But what can you expect? Looking at the example shown by Gwen’s mother and governess – or even by Gwen’s past friendships (in which she was the submissive character), that is how she sees friendships operate.

Eventually, Clarissa sneaks over to become friends with Bill, as it turns out that they are both horse mad (“hello world, this is me-eeee, life could be-eee-eee … fun for everyone” – and if you know that theme tune, have fun getting it out of your head). After which time, she joins the general dislike for my friend Gwen, having been effectively cured of her Gwendolinitis (aided by the miraculous improvement of her looks when her braces and glasses are dispensed with). So Gwen is left alone again, bitter and bullied.

Of course, Clarissa’s dislike may be due to the trick Gwen pulls on those around her, which was the cause of my discomfort. What made me change my mind is realising that this trick was so stupid that in the real world it would never have succeeded for an instant, so Blyton is just being wantonly vicious to poor Gwen.

Here it is: having noticed that Clarissa gets out of games because of her heart, Gwen decides to fake one too. Once in motion, Gwen decides to use this ploy to get out of the School Certificate. Picking the usual butt of jokes, Mme Dupont, as her target, she convinces her that she is ill, then arranges a meeting between the teacher and her mother at half-term, which results in her being taken home right before the exams. Of course, this all unravels when she is taken to a specialist who basically says ‘meh – she’s fine’, then absentee father turns up and decides to be all self-righteous and send her back to school to fail the exams (seriously, he raised her [or failed to do so] – then gets all sooky because she doesn’t turn out the way he wants).

My question is how could this trick have been so successful? Where was the principal in this? The sports mistress, the house mistress … anyone? Gwen got a sick note based on a couple of observations of one teacher, known for her gullibility? The whole series of events is so unlikely that I can’t really blame Gwen for getting away with it. Everyone tries to chuck a sickie at one stage of their school careers. Gwen is a known malingerer, she’s never had heart trouble before, and only one person can attest to having seen it. If that had been me, my mother would have had no trouble in dismissing my ‘illness’ as being what it truly was – a bunch of crap. Yet Gwen is portrayed as sly and sneaky and all types of nasty names and creditied with being a mastermind. Oh well, I suppose that in the land of rotting grapes, a raisin can be queen …

This episode, if it happened today, would be regarded as a cry for help. If someone these days was so desperate to get out of ‘one of the finest schools in the country’, people would be asking her what was going on to make her so averse to the idea of staying at school. Counselling sessions would be ordered – probably mediation with her peers as well. Here, Gwen is considered a failure and allowed to sit (and fail) her exams – to ‘teach her a lesson’. What that lesson is I don’t know, but Gwen has had enough experience of failure over her career at school not to really let it worry her … so Sucks to you, Malory Towers!

In other news, new students Ruth and Connie have different problems. Fraternal twins, Ruth is dominated by her larger twin Connie, who does everything for her. Ruth is smarter than Connie, and Connie, afraid of failing the School certificate, asks her to deliberately fail the test. It’s then when Ruth’s creepy side comes out. Connie’s things mysteriously start being destroyed by an unknown vandal. Through her usual methods of clever sleuthing (making a large assumption and then accusing someone), Darrell finds out that Ruth is behind the vandalism. So she goes to see her teacher (a first – I bet it’s because she’s brown-nosing, I mean, she does get back her form-bitch status from this) and dobs. Miss Williams, seeing the potential for Ruth to become a crazy axe-murderer or something (my money is on the idea of killing and eating her sister) and tells Darrell that it will all work out next term, so run along and let the grown ups deal with the problem. The end, all is well with the world again. Seriously.

One issue I have with this is the resolution. Ruth knows what happened, Darrell finds out, and a teacher is told. But Connie is left out of this circle of knowledge. Why not? Well, it boils down to the fact that Connie isn’t smart enough to understand. Ruth talks to Darrell about Connie’s dominance, but they decide to keep the vandalising to themselves. They also decide to just let things roll out naturally (Ruth moving up, Connie staying down) instead of sitting the twins down and having a talk about their issues. So Connie, has no clue of what is happening, nor why her sister is about to start cold-shouldering her, because she is deemed not smart enough to understand. It’s a prime example of Blyton’s ability to write people off who are not good enough for her. Snob

Another issue is that despite everyone else being given a second chance in the school, as soon the items start being destroyed, fingers start pointing at Gwendoline. This is based on one incident dating back to her first term – and she has made it to FOURTH FORM without a repeat. Do we ever hear of people missing items and blaming Daphne? Or bruises being blamed on Darrel (even though they probably were her work)?

Portrait Game

2010-06-19T12:37:00.004+10:00

So here's the game. Look at the face carefully and tell me what you think the person is thinking.

For example I think he's thinking "are you sure you know what you're doing, Mr painter-man? You're an artist, you say? Could have fooled me."

BTW,the portrait is by Van Dyke.

Upper Fourth at Malory Towers Pt 1

2010-06-09T13:48:00.002+10:00

Another example of the mid-nineties misleading advertising - is there anything in that picture that screams mid-century boarding school? Yeah, that's what I thought.

You thought I’d forgotten Darling Darrell, hadn’t you? I haven’t. She’s still on my mind, even while I’m supposed to on holidays. Enid didn’t take holidays (well she did, but she used all of the information in her books, so it more like research trips ...)

I thought I’d start writing this as I sat in LAX terminal three waiting for my delayed plane, tired, queasy and watching a bunch of children play a game in which the main action is hitting one another and giggling. Happy days. It has been 7 June for 2 days, and I have come to the decision that I am over this particular day. (I fell asleep in the terminal soon after writing the above – I’m now in San Francisco, hiding from the chilly wind and Karaoke night)

But back to the matter at hand, which is Darrell’s latest stint in juvie. We have some fun in this book – so much that I am going to break up this into at least two, perhaps three, entries.

My fist entry is going to be background information and Super Smackdown, the second will be fourth form bitches and the last will be MT: the next generation.

So, I shall begin.

Many people have made a comparison between the two most beloved authoresses of children’s literature over the past century: Enid Blyton and JK Rowling. Detractors will say that Ms Rowling stole (or borrowed heavily on) this tradition of going-away-to-school stories, of which Enid was a past mistress. It’s so clear that JK hasn’t an original bone in her body given the blatant copying: Enid’s books are set at school, so are Rowling’s; most of Enid’s characters are students, so are Rowling’s. Do you see all of the similarities? CLEAR copying).

You might notice that I don’t really subscribe to this view of HP plagiarism. At least I didn’t, not until I started reading Upper Fourth at Malory Towers. All at once, I was overcome by the clear deception that I had bought into, thinking that JK was an original writer. If you read Upper Fourth and then HP and the Order of the Phoenix, you’ll start seeing strange similarities. Darrell has her School Certificate (precursor to the O-levels, which then became the GCSE exams – I actually wrote an entire entry on this topic, but fortunately you are to be spared this piece of nerdiness – I left my usb with it at home); Harry has his OWLs. Darrell faces the challenge of being head-girl of the form; Harry has Voldemort’s return to contend with. Both deal with these pressures in the same way – by retreating into a bubble of anger that eventually bursts forth. Harry yells at Dumbledore – Darrell beats the crap out of a first-former.

Can you see how Rowling has copied? Taking this highly original story by everyone’s favourite author, Rowling callously appropriated it and planted it in her story – the responsibility, the anger, and spurts of irrational violence. Harry might as well wear a sign saying “I’m a PMS-y school-girl with a stupid name”.

So this is basically the storyline – Darrell goes back to school, gets made head-bitch of the form, the form does something naughty and a first-former (who I’ll talk about in my ‘next gen’ post) finds out. When she threatens to snitch, Darrell loses it well and truly – and is found a couple of minutes later violently shaking a pre-pubescent girl as violently as a person such a Darrel can. Unfortunately, because a teacher actually witnessed the violence, they can’t turn a blind and sack her as head bitch (in spite of her clear skills in the area). She mopes around for the rest of the term about not being head-girl (OH OH OH – HARRY KEPT BITCHING ABOUT NOT BEING MADE PREFECT! Rowling strikes again!). All turns out just fine in the end, by the way – Darrell solves a perplexing mystery and earns enough brownie points to earn back the posish. Hoorays all-round as the mindlessly violent triumph again!!

I’ve mentioned before how fortunate Darrell was in her choice of victims – all vulnerable and alone at the time of the attack – well the little first-former is no different. Darrell can’t be more that a foot taller than her and no more that 10-20 kgs heavier – there was nothing wrong with what she did – she was probably just teaching the stupid girl a lesson. And the punishment? The teachers basically say “I’m going to do the worst thing I can think of – I am going to take away my trust ...” They don’t send her to the headmistress? No detention? Suspension? Court-appointed psychologist? Nope – just their trust ... how terrible!

Look at me, being all laconic! I am actually going to finish the post here ... but keep looking out for the next two for this book – I have some plane flights coming up, so I’ll write them then ...

Laters!

Holiday reading suggestions

2010-05-28T21:29:00.002+10:00

I'm going on holidays soon, and there will be a lot of flights involved.

So I need books (budget airlines being low on entertainment)

What would you consider good holiday reading - or what would you like to see reviewed (I can write gut reactions - excellent multi-tasker, I am).

Treeks and Xenophobia

2010-05-26T11:35:00.000+10:00

I had a great opening, but I think I’ll keep it for another day … it’s good but it doesn’t fit here. It did give me an idea for another post, however … the workings of the REGIME …

I want to look briefly at the tricks in the story, the standard comic set piece of every book. As a child, I thought them hilarious, and wondered why I couldn’t be so clever. Looking back at them, I wondered how anyone would ever think it worth the time it took to write them. They are weakly

Alicia is the main perpetrator of these practical pleasantries, coming up with jokes that are (so we are led to believe) clever and foolproof. But there’s a catch — they can only ever be played on the French mistresses, as they are the only ones gullible enough to be taken in by such ‘treeks’. The English mistresses, of course, are far too clever, and far too familiar with the regime from the students’ end, to ever be taken in

I’ll give you a run down on the ‘treeks’ played on Mam’zelle:

Form 1 – Alicia pretends to be deaf. When Mam’zelle says something too her, she deliberately misunderstands, and much hilarity ensues as the students repeat what the teacher says at the top of their lungs. Mam’zelle is completely taken in; Miss Potts susses it out in a second …

Form 2 – Invisible chalk. Alicia’s friend Betty brings invisible chalk that cannot be detected on a surface, but when it comes into contact with another surface, leaves a bright pink chalk mark (No one ever explains why the chalk can be seen on one surface and not another, nor why, if it needs heat to be activated, it stays visible once cooled).
Although first played on the singing master, it is later played on Mam’zelle Dupont — Darrell incurs Alicia’s ire by writing ‘OY’ on Mam’zelle’s seat, thus gaining the upper Forms’ admiration – talk about thunder stealing. The trick is never detected.

Form 3 – Alicia’s brother sends a package of home-made sneezing powder – which is always guaranteed to end well … When played on Mam’zelle, the pellets are found to be too strong and Mam’zelle has the rest of the day off sick from exhaustion.

Form 4 – tablets stuck to the ceiling of the classroom created bubbles that the girls pretended not to see (or hear, as they apparently burst with an audible noise – WTF?). Mam’zelle thinks she is the only one seeing bubbles and becomes hysterical. Miss Potts is called and thinks it good fun to tell Mam’zelle to ask a maid to sweep the ceiling.

Form 5 – the Empire strikes back! Although a first former tries a trick with balloons under her shirt, Mam’zelle hits back with hideous false teeth. She wanders round the school grounds randomly smiling at people. She manages to scare the crap out of a heap of students, half the teachers and Miss Grayling with a couple of parents. IMO, this is the best trick of the series. It inverts the idea of making one person believe a big thing, and instead makes everyone believe a little thing. Once the trick is outed, all of the teachers are quite disapproving, but Mam’zelle is quite unrepentant.

Form 6 – there’s a recurring trick regarding a magnet, hairpins and hissing gas pellets. With improbably perfect timing, random and disparate elements come together to form an ‘astounding’ trick in which the French teachers’ (yes BOTH of them) hair pins are removed with a magnet and stashed around the classroom. The teachers never figure out how it’s done, despite the obvious set up …

If you look at the tricks, they’re not very ingenious. They are utterly dependant on convincing Mam’zelle of something highly improbable. Like clockwork, the students manage to pull these unworkable and rather weak tricks on teachers whose mental powers are repeatedly called into question. The fact that these tricks are only ever played on the French mistresses is the flagship example of Enid’s xenophobia in this series. Readers are expected to believe that the one teacher (it’s always Mam’zelle Dupont) will continually fooled by the same people over and over. No-one is that stupid.
Seriously, this is an upper-class school. Are we really expected to believe that they would hire someone so stupid? All those parents would not be happy that their precious monsters would be getting such bad service, especially given the money they are paying. Besides, the woman has been there for years – where’s her cynicism? Has she the memory of a goldfish? Dealing day-in and day-out with these monsters, are we really going to believe that she will be taken in every time something strange happens?

But she’s French. That’s apparently meant to be reason enough for her stupidity.

And I really hate that reason. It’s not just xenophobic and socially inaccurate, it’s bad literature. It makes, and forces the reader to accept, large assumptions about all French people. Mam’zelle is too vain to wear glasses, is silly and plays favourites with the pretty girls; therefore all French people are shallow. She’s not a strict disciplinarian and is quite a drama queen, therefore French people are – and that’s why they make worse teachers than English. It’s not stated outright, but the general tone is a dismissive ‘oh, she’s French’. I would love to see how the character is portrayed in French (I’ve tried to research it, but only came up with one article that didn’t really mention the teachers).

Each ‘treek’ scene is ended by an English teacher coming in to bring order to the chaos. Mam’zelle is always in near-hysterics, saying ‘oh-la-la’ in a very French way (that’s all French people say, apparently. I think I wasted nine years learning French – all I needed to learn was ‘oh-la-la’). Funnily enough, the girls only ever get in trouble once – with the sneezing incident. It’s as though the teachers are of the opinion that you either sink or swim in this world.

So basically, it’s fine to play a trick on your teacher – so long as they are French (or at least foreign) …

(BTW, I absolutely love the fact that until the 50s, when her popularity could not be ignored, the BBC had a pseudo-policy of not broadcasting any of EB’s works. Despite numerous attempts (she was a shameless self-promoter) to branch out into broadcasting, the BBC steadily refused our Enid, insisting that her works was ‘second rate’. They hated her dialogue and her plots, thought her work waffly and limited in its vocabulary – and just all round NOT GOOD ENOUGH. This is in addition to the publishers, librarians and academics that also disliked her books on literary and social grounds – she was considered racist and overly class conscious even in her own time!)

Next generation is coming up!

Third Year at Malory Towers

2010-05-20T12:11:00.004+10:00

Look at those crazy eyes, people – she looks like she is thinking about smaking you down … the crazy eyes of Darrell Rivers …

Sorry for the delay. I really liked some of the feedback I got about my Gwendoline post – I’m glad I’m growing the love for big G. Since then I’ve been super busy reading stuff for class, and catching up on my grown-up reading. This week it is Monkey Grip by Helen Garner (I’m going through some neglected classics … thank you Penguin for your cheap and plentiful supply!)

So on to Third year at Malory Towers, or Assimilating Rogue Elements into Your Regime For Dummies. This is arguably my favourite book — it’s certainly the last ‘classic’ Malory Towers. You’ll see what I mean in the next book.

Ladies and gentlemen hold on to your hats – we have and AMERICAN!!! That’s right, one of the great Blytster’s favourite stereotypes has come to the party with a Bang, and doesn’t our E have a field day with the cultural stereotypes!

This is part of a long tradition of UK v US culture-clash. If this were an American production, the American would go to the stuffy English school and really teach them how to live, while simultaneously learning some deep lesson about life that has escaped all those British people. She would also fall in love with the token handbag boy (‘cos it’s that kind of story).
As it is British, the American is loud, clueless and too old for her age. She pretends to be a grown-up and is taught how nice it is to be a child, after being properly humbled.
I’m not sure that Enid ever got over the War of Independence, as she really doesn’t have much time for the new inmate of Malory Towers Juvenile Detention Facility. Our new inmate bangs on a bit about waving the stars and stripes and not letting her country down, but spends the term being indoctrinated into the ways of the regime and learning to love the regime.

First up – the name: Zerelda Brass. That’s right, all Americans give their children silly names like Zerelda, rather than sensible names like Darrell. Zerelda could be an homage to Jesse James (whose wife and mother were both called Zerelda – he married his cousin), or it could just be that she Enid assumed a foreign character needed a foreign name … just so that we really KNOW that they are foreign and don’t confuse them with a normal person.

We first meet the lovely Z at the beginning of the book, as Darrell’s parents are giving her a ride to school. Normally they’d be picking up Sally, but Sally’s in quarantine for mumps or something, so she is separated from her wifey …

(Sidenote: I do find the whole issue of illness at school to be fascinating. An event that occurs at the beginning of each book is the characters handing in Health Certificates, which certify that they haven’t been in contact with infectious diseases – without one they are isolated. Ah, the days before immunisation.
I don’t know whether EB is just using it as a plot device or whether people really did come down with all these illnesses. So far in the series we have had flu, appendicitis, some imperfectly diagnosed stress disorder, now mumps and whooping cough. Later we’ll have a heart condition, measles and injury. I really wanted someone to have had Polio – just because it would have been interesting to see how it was viewed back when it was still common. Up until the 1950s, when the vaccines were developed, Polio was endemic. We probably don’t see it in MT because the recovery is not always as graceful as the other illnesses, but I would have loved to have seen a character dealing with a fairly common illness of the time.
I should really shut up about this now .)

Zerelda is very good natured, but is considered rude as she hasn’t been primed to worship the regime and falls asleep while Darrel waxes lyrical about the Towers. Frankly, I say GO ZERELDA! I would prefer to sleep too. Darrell is quite miffed and decides to cold shoulder her. Zerelda doesn’t notice.

The main thing that strikes me as off when I read the first few chapters is how Zerelda is treated as a sort of exhibit in a zoo. It is as if a wild animal has been let to roam the halls of the school for everyone to stare at. I half expected an Attenborough-like narration to follow her: ‘the American shows no sign of apprehending the approaching danger, letting out its cries of ‘Gee’ and ‘Wunnerful’ upon spying humans …’. The girls, meanwhile, stand around staring and saying “golly” and laughing behind her back, because, as we all know, being different gives the majority licence to deride. And she really is the school freak – even if her mother is English (although ‘she’s forgotten that she ever was English’ says Zerelda). Even the teachers are a bit at a loss as to how to deal with her. Her teacher, Miss Williams, is wrong-footed a couple of times, not recognising her after she’d taken off her make-up (seriously, how many Americans were there at the school that the teacher couldn’t identify her by accent alone?).

Just to rub in the UK superiority, Zerelda turns out to be stupid. Due to the dreadful teaching at ‘those American Schools’ the 16-year-old Zerelda gets bumped down into a class with all of the 14-year-olds. Everyone from her old form was most happy to see her go – the novelty of having an exotic pet obviously wore off when they realised that she wasn’t properly potty-trained (they really objected to cleaning up her droppings). Really, the staff just put her in the too hard basket. Like Gwendoline, Zerelda is considered to be not regime material. So she is ignored. The solution of the teachers is to move her around so that she won’t be in the way of the real children. Miss Grayling is claims that bumping her down will be good for her, which makes me wonder why she doesn’t use phrases like ‘moving forward’ or ‘wellness’ – Grayling is a BS queen.

Zerelda’s defining character trait is her determination to be a film actress. With true devotion to the art, our intrepid American discovered early what it required to make it big in the movies – looks. The girl is obsessed about her looks, constantly fixing her hair, make-up and nails (she wears lipstick in school – oooOOOooo), and doesn’t really bother with honing talent. Seriously, the girl knows the business. Today she would be a megastar with a sex tape floating around, or something like that.

Coincidentally, the Form has rehearsal for a play this term – Romeo and Juliet, with a never before and never after mentioned drama mistress. Zerelda’s world is devestated on finding that the teacher thinks that she is a dreadful actor (can I just point out that after the rehearsal, all mention of the play ceases? PLOT DEVICE!!!). She turns up to the play all ready for her close-up, and gets a complete verbal bitch-slap from the Mistress, much to everyone’s delight. Belatedly, they kind-of realise that it might have hurt her feelings, but no-one thinks of apologising …

OH! And Zerelda has Gwendolinitis, as does another girl, Mavis. With Zerelda going to be an actress and Mavis a self-centred opera singer, there is something of an epidemic. After Zerelda is told she’ll never be an actress, and Mavis possibly loses her voice (she gets caught in the rain after running off to the local village to enter a talent contest – the others poo-hoo the idea because it would certainly be too lowbrow for them, but Mavis is an applause whore), both decide that it would be ever such a good idea for them to be friends and are thus magically cured of the life-threatening illness of Gwendolinitis. Suddenly they are perfect little English school-girls. The opinion of girls? Sucks to be Gwendoline.

When I step back and look at the Zerelda story, all I really see is the Regime breaking an individual. Held captive in this fortress by the sea (ooooOOOOoooo – how very Mrs Radcliffe), Zerelda is first stripped of her individuality (hair and makeup), isolated (the Zoo exhibit treatment by all of the girls), humiliated (twice – class and drama), then, when she is at the nadir of her existence, she receives scraps of praise from her captors. It’s all very Stockholm Syndrome-ish. By the end of term, she is identifying with her captors and mimicking their behaviour in order to earn their praise. And what has she taught them about America? That it isn’t as good as Britain — so all is well with Blyton world again! Hooray!

Other stuff

Sorry – I had such fun with Zerelda, I forgot about the others. Really, Zerelda really is the star of this book. Darrell is a lazy protagonist. She shows up and goes through the motions of doing stuff, but it’s always the new girls who do the heavy lifting (dare I say it, but apart from the smackdowns … Darrell is a boring cow). She probably sits in her trailer and refuses to come out until her scene.

Let’s see. There’s another new girl, Wilhelmina (Bill for short), who is brown and freckled (ten points for anyone who can remember what that means, apart from Enid’s lack of comprehension regarding skin types – tanned AND freckled? BTW – hello skin cancer!) and is horse mad. She constantly gets into trouble with the she-man third form teacher, Miss Peters, and is forbidden to see her horse, which is apparently a tragedy for her (I’m thinking there is something potentially Equus-like in her devotion to her horses – but loving animals is so very British, so jolly good for her! Incidentally, we never hear of the school stables until this book …PLOT DEVICE). Right at the moment of this ban, the horse develops colic, and Bill, with Darrel to help her (why, I don’t know. As I told you, LAZY protagonist!) simply has to disobey the rules and go down to him. I suppose Darrell has to go down because, as a devotee of the regime, she fetches the she-man teacher to help. She-man teacher rides off into the night to fetch the vet (why the school doesn’t have a car is beyond me – did she really have to ride the horse?) and on the way back, she coincidentally finds Mavis collapsed on the road.

I should put in a word about Mavis. I don’t really mention her because she is not introduced as a new girl – she was new during an invisible term and is part of the furniture by the time we are ushered into their little world. She has an amazing voice and is ‘going to be an opera singer’ one day. She apparently has extra singing classes every week, but I have some misgivings. She has the classes at night with the singing master Mr Young without supervision. Does that seem dodgy to anyone else? I find it extremely disturbing – all I can think is ‘grooming’.

The horse survives, Mavis gets sick (and thus gets her come-uppance for being so vain about her voice) and bill and She-man become firm friends. All wrapped up ready to go home at the end of term!

Darrell Smackdown

Is there one? Alas no, my children, and there are two very good reasons for this.

First off, Darrell has to play peacemaker in a cat-fight between Alicia and Sally. Alicia’s friend Betty is off for most of the term with whooping cough, so Darrell and Alicia, both friendless, become temporary BFFs. But when Sally returns, Alicia doesn’t want to stop playing BFFs with Darrell, much to the jealousy of wifey Sally. Cue schoolgirl bitch-fight! WOOT!! Darrell thinks they are both being silly; they should both just chill - there’s enough Darrell for everyone. With no handy mud-pit around, Darrell is disinclined to let them fight it out, and spends most of the time placating Sally (you know, talking about Alicia behind her back ‘she is soooooo annoying – I can’t wait until Betty comes back next week and she leaves us alone’ — so very schoolgirl). The PMS is spread out too thinly for sufficient smackdown concentration in Darrell. Sigh.

Secondly, Darrell is given an outlet for her violence – Lacrosse! Given a stick and a piece of field, Darrell is licensed to kill … as long as the victim is from another school. Darrell has played tennis before this, but there’s nothing like ‘accidentally’ hitting another person with a stick and being praised for it, is there? Darrell is the only third-former picked as the ‘third reserve’ (which means she sits on the bench in uniform and watches). I think a quiet word from the head was had, as later on she gets bumped onto the team (I know it’s supposed to be because she practices so hard, but I can’t help it – it feels like she is put on as an enforcer) runs around hitting people with sticks and winning the game. WOOT!

So no smackdown. I was most upset over this turn of events, until I remembered what book was coming up (happy dance for mindless violence!!).

I realised that I’m well over 2000 words, so I’m going to shut up now. Next up is the 4th book, which might well be titled Malory Towers: The Next Generation.

PS. If you’re reading this, and you haven’t already, can I humbly request that you click the little ‘follow’ button in the sidebar? I’m not going to stalk you down, I just wouldn’t mind knowing how many people are actually reading.
Thanks,
Fen

Gwendoline Mary - a Heroine of Our Time

2010-05-14T13:15:00.003+10:00

Let’s talk about Gwendoline Mary. I really want to talk about Gwendoline Mary. I have been restraining myself over the past two books, knowing that I have a good one or two thousand words to say on the girl. I’ve been waiting to tell you my revelations about the Draco Malfoy prototype. Yes that’s right, Gwendoline Mary is the original Draco Malfoy (more of that later).

I have to admit, on re-reading this series, particularly after discovering the manipulation by Blyton of the reader, I have come to see Gwendoline in an entirely new light. I don’t love her, but I certainly identify with her a whole lot more than I thought I did (in fact, I see a bit of my teenage self in her, something I would never have admitted when I first read this series – I thought I was the greatest thing since sliced bread). And I certainly have a lot of sympathy for a girl who is really given no chance to fit into the school, but who is constantly bullied and ostracised for no reason other than the fact that she is different.

Why you don’t like Gwendoline

Gwendoline is sulky, she’s lazy, she has a high opinion of herself, she’s catty, and she doesn’t play well with others. The others don’t like her, and by extension you the reader don’t like her (you little conformist). You even think that it’s fine to not like her. But there are two things you have to remember about darling Gwen when you are disliking her:

1) Gwen might have all of these bad qualities, but so do the other girls. EB just doesn’t dwell on them. Alicia is catty and has a high opinion of herself, Belinda is lazy, Darrell doesn’t play well with others. You see this, but it does not register through the EB glasses. The others fit EB’s idea of the perfect child, so the imperfections are seen as only further perfection. To EB, these girls sweat champagne and flush little nuggets of gold down the toilet every day.

Reality is not so simple. Teenage girls are complex creatures. Not quite children, not quite grown up, they are often very insecure. At the same time, there is this enormous amount of excitement that the future is coming for them and that they are going to be BIG. So you get this situation where all these children are starting to see themselves as superior beings, yet having a pressing need to shore up that opinion of themselves with the good opinion of others. That combination of mental workings can turn female adolescence into a nightmare of cats and claws. (I was going to say that all teenage girls are bitches, but I know a couple of my readers are teenage girls. Of course I’m not referring to you, dear reader. You are an amazing, wonderful person – but please, do come back and re-read this description in a decade or so …)

Malory Towers positively seethes with this tension – the girls have no reprieve from one another. They eat, sleep, study and relax within metres of each other. Do you honestly think that there are girls who are immune to the pull of raging hormones? So why is Gwendoline singled out?

2) You don’t like Gwendoline because you ARE Gwen. Don’t deny it. As a teenager reading the books you secretly identify most with Gwen’s antics and attitudes. You may like to think that you are Darrell, but you know that you are Gwen. This scares you, as you want to be friends with the popular girls. So you pretend that you are like them, become complicit in the bullying of little Gwen, and hope against hope that they don’t realise what you are really like.

Just like real life.

Essentially, this is high school idealised – a world in which you can become one of the popular crowd by being ostensibly individual, but essentially conformative. Giving up cozy little bitch-fests with Gwen is a small price to pay for popularity in your imagination …

Malfoy?

This is just a side-note, but anyway …

I know there are a couple of you desperate to know what Gwendoline and Draco could possibly have in common, apart from being the designated baddies of their respective series. There has to be a ‘baddie’, but really, neither of them are in the true sense. They are really just people that the ‘goodie’ doesn’t’ like.

It’s actually that ‘baddie’ designation that is part of the similarity of the characters. From the very start, we know that they are the baddies because of who they are. They are the children of their parents, and as such, they are judged before given a real chance to show themselves. Of course, as children of their parents, they are influenced by the example shown them by said parents, and act in accordance with that example as young children. Malfoy’s parents were the magical equivalent of Nazis. Gwen has a dim, superficial mother and an absentee father from whom she learnt her values. Both children display those values early on, but later do try to reform a bit (with varying levels of success – we’ll talk about Gwen’s transformation later). Neither will ever be completely accepted by the mainstream, but you do tend to like them better as adults.

… And that’s enough Harry Potter for one day.

Treatment

From the beginning, the regime doesn’t like Gwendoline, and sets out to break her. Unfortunately, the regime is a self-glorifying and stupid beast; in its wisdom, it decides that negative reinforcement is necessary to cure her 'bad' character.

Looking at the facts:

• she is an only child,
• she has been homeschooled (presumably in the country – you can’t be proper aristo without a country manor),
• she hasn’t really had that much interaction with children her own age, and
• her chief companions are her mother and governess.

At the age of twelve, her father summarily decides that this isolation is a bad idea and ships her off to boarding school, without integrating her into outside interaction with children her age first. Is it any wonder she is socially awkward?

Thrust out of her native surroundings, she begins to behave in a manner that has always been rewarded in the past, yet that only brings down scorn and mockery from her fellow students, tacitly encouraged by Miss Potts, who hears but ignores the malice of the ‘well brought up’ girls. So begins Gwendoline’s induction to Malory Towers. In my reading, I really cannot say that I have come across any instances in which anyone was nice to Gwendoline, yet she is treated as though her lack of friends is her own fault. Darrell is accepted quickly because she has learned the rules to the whole ‘school game’ long before she attended this centre of re-programming. There is no buddy system that would help Gwen acclimate to her surroundings, there is no praise for any good work done (carrot and stick doesn’t work without the carrot) – just because we don’t see her good moments doesn’t mean that Gwen is consistently bad (at one point Gwen starts working hard, but this is really not rewarded by the teacher, so she gives up).

The rest of the girls feel that they are teaching her by giving her harsh treatment, but all they are really doing is replacing one sort of behaviour with another. A pattern is established by which malice is exchanged on both sides, but with unequal power bases it was never going to be a fair fight. Gwendoline, hobbled by the animosity of the author as well as the general unfairness of the situation, retreats from the precepts of the school – she has not benefited from them, she has had no experience of them, therefore she sticks with what she knows – the lessons of her mother, reinforced every holidays. I don’t really blame her – it’s the only positive experience she has during her school years.

Case Study: Daphne

Take as an example the similarities between Gwen and Mary-Lou and their friendship with Daphne in book 2.

Gwen starts out as friends with Daphne, as Gwen sees her as pretty and of a similar social standing to her. With the precepts of her mother drummed into her, she makes friends with the one person who would earn her mother’s praise. Having made the friend, she is happy to be the lesser party in the friendship, listening to Daphne’s stories of her family and wealth, running errands, and generally being something of a slave.

Mary-Lou is captivated by Daphne’s prettiness and sets about becoming something of a dogsbody to her. She is happy to be treated as something like an also-ran to Gwen. She does Daphne’s homework, listens to her long stories, runs errands for her, and generally acts as a slave.

There is very little difference in the two separate friendships. Both are founded on rather superficial facets of Daphne’s make-up. Both are subservient, slavish type roles that leave no room for a friendship based on equality.

YET, Gwen is seen to be rather silly over Daphne, and Mary-Lou a true friend.

Later, when it is revealed that Daphne is not only not rich, but the class thief, Gwen is portrayed as being small minded for not wanting to forgive her straight away. It’s never pointed out that Gwen has been the main victim both of Daphne’s lies and her stealing (Daphne steals money off her and then borrows more from her, which she never pays back), nor is Gwen given any time to digest this information – she is just expected to suck it up and forgive Daphne because she is a hero. Let me be clear: GWEN IS THE WRONGED PARTY. If it were you, you would be quite rightly pissed off. I would want some sort of repercussion. But no – under duress from the rest of the form, particularly knuckle-dragging Darrell, Gwen is forced to capitulate.
(AND Gwen is honest about money – she won’t borrow money of anyone, even when she is short, and is shocked when Daphne wants to share borrowed money with her. I actually rather liked her at that point. It showed that she was taught ethics and follows them, even when she has the opportunity to ignore them.)
Mary-Lou is grateful to Daphne for the whole saving-her-life thing, but is that really enough on which to base a friendship? Daphne is still a rather obnoxious person – and we don’t know if she gets better, as she only turns up from time to time after book two.

I really feel that this skewed perception of Gwendoline is misleading, given her similarity to the rest of the girls.

Gwendolinitis

Book two is not the only book in which people make friends with Gwen, only to dump her at the end. It happens in book three and book four. It is as though friendship with Gwen is an illness that one must be cured. Generally the people friends with Gwen are have a character flaw, usually an ego, and enjoy having Gwen run around after them. When their fault is cured, they automatically dump Gwendoline for some new BFF. Gwen generally hasn’t done anything to warrant such treatment, so I always get annoyed when I get to these parts and find that everyone is happy that another student has been ‘cured’ of Gwen.

It is odd. After Book one, Gwen really doesn’t do anything cruel to the other girls. She’s generally sulky, but fairly innocuous. Even her tricks in book one don’t get any worse than smashing someone’s pen and sneaking a spider into someone’s desk. But there are only a number of second chances that are on offer at MT, and Gwen is always passed over. Bashing up a fellow student – free pass; stealing from your classmates – free pass and a pat on the back; poison pen (this comes later) – a stern talking to , but ultimately reprieve. But being unpopular? You have no chance.

Of course, this is news to no-one in the real world, but I really object to the Way Blyton dresses it all up. I really object to the idea that being unpopular is the fault of the unpopular, rather than intolerance on the part of the right thinking element.

Conclusion

There is hope for Gwen. There really is. I really feel that she actually comes out the best character in the end (I won’t spoil the story – I know you are all on the edge of your seat, but you have to calm down!). I like her because I get her. And so do you. She is that little ball of insecurities that haunted you during adolescence. She is all those fights you had with friends and former friends. She is how you look back at yourself (if you’re being really honest). Gwendoline is what you see when you take off the rose coloured glasses.

Gwendoline IS adolescence.

Second Form at Malory Towers

2010-05-09T22:57:00.003+10:00

Welcome back, boys and girls! Are you ready to dive back into the heady world of post-war boarding school? I am. After a short break of reading On the Road by Jack Kerouac and watching the old Olivier version of Pride and Prejudice (which is so bad it’s funny), I am all ready for my next Blyton adventure.

Actually, the second book in the series is more interesting than the first. Once all of the introduction rubbish is out of the way, we are clear to actually get into the story proper, and Enid obliges to the extreme – this book is almost epic in the scope of its action. I would give this book the alternate title of ‘Mary-Lou Finds an Owner!’ or ‘Extreme Sports at Malory Towers’

I do want to note something about the cover - it's meant to be Mary-Lou hanging off a cliff, but she looks like she's had a really bad bleach job done. On my cover her hair looks orange ... and she has one abnormally big hand. This artist is crap!

Claws Come Out

So, we start the story with a good ‘ole bitch-fest. That’s right. Wifeys Darrell and Sally spend the trip to Cornwall discussing and passing judgment on their classmates. Specifically, they discuss who would make a good Head of Form. I understand that this is a very prestigious position: middle management of the school. The teachers can’t really be arsed actually supervising the kiddies all the time, so they deputise loyal adherents to the regime to enforce obedience and general right-thinking. For the adherent, it’s a bit of a power trip – you get to tell the other kiddies when to go to bed, administer punishments (mostly with a hairbrush – I can’t help but think of Sebastian Flyte and Aloysius in Brideshead Revisited:

“What do you suppose Lord Sebastian wanted? A hairbrush for his teddy-bear; it had to have very stiff bristles, not, my Lord Sebastian said, to brush him with, but to threaten him with a spanking when he was sulky.”

)

Sally gets this coveted position, bringing about the underlying of tension of the book. Alicia, thinking that she should get the posish as she is just so damn cool, spends the majority of the book sniping at the wifeys for being such goody two shoeses. This situation isn’t helped by Darrell one-upping them in the practical joke department (a most amusing prank involving invisible chalk on teachers' seats). So Alicia spends most of the book being a snarky bitch, until her snarkiness sets off a chain of events that almost gets the class puppy killed. Of course, from this Alicia learns her lesson: snarking at the establishment is not cool – the establishment is there to protect us, we should love the establishment ...

It is interesting to note that Sally and Alicia never really seem to like one another at all until the very end of the series, when they have grown out of their teenage angst to an extent. Until then, it’s all on for young and old between the ‘establishment’, headed by sally, and the ‘rebels’, with Alicia in charge. Of course, in the environment in which the girls live it is impossible that the rebels will ever win, so of course Alicia ‘learns her lessons’ and is finally brought into line. It’s a shame really: the death of the individual at the hands of the ‘man’. Damn the man.

How much is that Doggy in the Window?

Anyway, on to Mary-Lou’s new owner. After trotting faithfully at Sally and Darrell’s heels for the past few terms, this term Mary-Lou is captivated by the new girl Daphne. Daphne is pretty (although her eyes are too close together, and we all know that that is a very clear indication of character), is friends with Gwendoline (red flag number 2) and claims to have heaps of money. After using Mary-Lou all term, copying her homework and having her run errands, Daphne finds herself in a spot of bother (having stolen possessions off most of her classmates, Daphne decides she has to get rid of the evidence for fear that the police will come looking for fingerprints) which leads to Mary-Lou being blown over a cliff (I wouldn't be surprised if she jumped). Daphne fortuitously finds the dangling damsel and manages to save Mary-Lou (in a highly dramatic scene, Daphne knots her two belts together and lowers it to Mary-Lou – Enid seems to have a great deal of faith in the strength of both the belts and Mary-Lou’s upper body, as they manage to hang in position for roughly half an hour ...)and earn everyone’s favourite puppy’s eternal gratitude.

Of course, the responsibility of having a pet opens Daphne’s eyes to the fact that she would have to give up her wicked ways or spend her days in prison – and who would look after the puppy? All the girls forgive her for stealing their stuff because she was so damn brave about saving Mary-Lou, and she magically becomes a better person immediately, despite being aspiteful cow the entire book (in addition to the stealing). Can anyone tell me what a deus ex machina is?

The ‘Right Sort’

While on the subject of Mary-Lou, this throwaway comment really got to me:

Mary-Lou had become exceedingly good at French, for her mother had had a French girl in to look after her in the holidays for the past year.

Where to start?

Mary-lou’s mother. Hires. a maid. To look after her during the holidays.

I just wanted to make sure we all understood that (I was tempted to ask why she didn’t just send ML to a kennel, but that would just be too easy). I’m going to repeat this again: Mary Lou’s parents, who send her away for months at a time, hire someone to look after her for the few weeks a year that she is home, because they don’t want to interrupt their life for the annoyance of a child coming home to visit.
I’m sorry to harp on about this, but I’m somewhat taken aback. Living in the post-war austerity era, these people feel it is still necessary, nay, desirable, to hire a maid to care for their 13-year-old daughter?
Of course this is all perfectly normal. Blyton herself sent her children away to school at a young age so that she could concentrate on her writing. Children can be such a bother, can’t they, young E?

I just find it absurd that this sort of arrangement is considered not in the least unusual. Look at the wording – ‘Mary-Lou’s mother had had a French girl in’ – we are all expected to know what it’s like to have ‘a girl’ in. This subversive snobbery is extremely seductive. When you add up the other little hints that are dropped throughout the series, this series really isn’t about your average group of girls, as it purports to be. Gwendoline’s governess continues to live with Gwen’s family even though little G had gone off to school (I always feel that the governess has something going on with Gwen’s dad ... or perhaps her mum ... I can’t see why she remains with the family throughout Gwen’s entire schooling career). The school must have a pretty big community of servants – maids, kitchen staff, etc – as the girls never do any cleaning, but we never see any of them. They basically do not exist – I mean, they are only servants, after all. Even Darrell has to go around and say goodbye to all of the household servants before.

There seems to be a bit of a theme of the rich/poor divide throughout this book, as shown in the two characters to whom we are introduced. We have Daphne, apparently a spoilt rich girl, and Ellen, a scholarship student. Despite the obvious red flags regarding Daphne, particularly her eyes being too close together (I kid you not – EB is HUGELY into judging books by their cover: Sally is sturdy [sensible], Miss Potts has a firm chin [disciplinarian], tomboys have freckles, sporty girls are tanned, non sporty girls are spotty, the list goes on and on!) when push comes to shove, she is seen as one of the girls while Ellen is not. There is an outbreak of stealing in the form, and the finger is firmly pointed at the scholarship girl (because all poor people steal – it’s just in their nature) rather than her more well off compatriots. It eventually turns out that it was Daphne, whih is incomprehensible until she explains that she wasn’t rich after all, so the world makes sense again! Of course, the effects of this class bias causes Ellen to have a breakdown, but that’s of no real consequence ... she's just a scholarship girl.

Smackdown

Do we have any moments of Darrell’s spectacular murderous rages? But of course!
In this latest instalment, our intrepid and enraged heroine stalks down the stressed-out Ellen, who is going to steal exam papers. In the middle of the night, she tracks down Ellen in a class room and proceeds to beat all kinds of crap out of her. But it’s Ellen’s fault, naturally, because Darrell ‘can’t bear cheats’ (as good a reason as any to give someone a smackdown, I suppose).

Then Darrell lost her temper! She flew at Ellen, shook her fiercely and slapped her hard on the cheek! Ellen fell over the legs of a desk and dragged Darrell down with her. She struggled and Darrell pummelled her well.
‘You wicked girl!’ shouted Darrell.

I have to note that Darrell has a knack for picking out the weak and really going for them. She never dares to attack Alicia, for instance, even though Alicia spends the whole book picking a fight. All of her outbursts are against those weaker than herself: Gendoline, Sally (with appendicitis) and Ellen (who is having some sort of stress episode). The latter two of these attacks exacerbates the victim’s condition to such an extent that they end up in the ‘san’ (today they would be sent to hospital, but the ‘san’ sounds so much less serious). And yet we admire the little shit. She rubs her nose and grimaces, saying ‘Oh dear, I have such a temper. It’s a real fault of mine’ and everything is fine again – hooray!
Maybe … ooooh, I just had an idea … maybe Darrell is a special needs student. I never thought of that possibility. Think about it: even after confessing that she was
a) out after curfew;
b) in a fight with another, sick student; and
c) possibly complicit in an attempt to cheat at an exam ( if you think about it logically, she is either complicit or a vigilante)
The headmistress STILL fails to do anything. There is no punishment. There is no conference with the Form teacher, or the House Mistress. Nothing. Just a bit of tutting and ‘what is the world coming to’ sort of thing.

WTF?

The only explanation is that Darrell is a special case. There has to be some sort of under-the-table arrangement between Darrell’s parents and Miss Grayling. In lieu of mood suppressants or electro-shock therapy, these stiff upper-lip stalwarts are opting for the more conventional method to deal with Darrell’s mental illness: send the girl to boot camp and keep her in line just until she can be foisted off on some other poor sod. Then when the shit hits the fan, you can blame the poor husband; ‘she was such a good little girl’.

Miss Grayling is nothing if not a savvy business woman. She knows the value of a well bred vigilante, especially one whose parents are prepared to pay her to look the other way every so often …

Conclusion

Midnight wrestling, abseiling ... this school's actually starting to sound fun! But with all of the drama in this book, can the next book pip such gripping chapters as 'Daphne is Annoyed' or 'OY'? Who can say?

Call For Book Suggestions

2010-05-04T12:22:00.002+10:00

I’ve come to the realisation that a diet consisting solely of EB goodness might be a little damaging to my psyche. Ra Ra Ra and all that. I might decide that Pauline Hanson, although very common, has her heart in the right place about … ‘foreigners’. I might start smacking down people who do things I don’t like, wielding my hairbrush with a mighty and vengeful hand. I might start thinking nostalgically of my high school, remembering it fondly rather than as the truly horrific place that it was. No one actually likes being a teenager, especially when they are one, so why is it perfectly acceptable to look back fondly at those years of misery?

Anyway, I propose that I intersperse my reviews of EB books with other childhood ‘favourites’ and just random crap that I happen to come across. I’ll try and keep it old school, but as a child of the 90s, there are a few gems from that era bound to sneak in …

First up on my hit list (at the moment – this is a working list, some books might not really suit my style of deconstruction …):

Hating Alison Ashley (at my primary school, everyone studied that in year six)
Are you there God, it’s me, Margaret – Judy Blume (Just ‘cos it’s so awesome)
Baby-Sitters Club (do you know that Anne M. Martin is writing a prequel?)
Tomorrow When the War Began (Film tie-in – am I showing my age when I say I remember waiting for these books to come out?)
Sweet Valley (??? Really not sure about that, I thought they were kinda lame, even for my low standards)
Grug (he’s awesome)
Random books I happen to find (‘cos that’s always fun)

I was also thinking of dipping into other old favourites such as Goosebumps, Biggles, Trixie Belden, Hardy Boys … the older the book/s, the better.

I sat down to write a comprehensive list and I drew something of a blank – I read so many books growing up that they mixed together and petrified in that chaotic mess. Look into the crystallised lump of words and you might find a gymnast, much like one of these (Oh, how I loved these books in primary school! I borrowed them from my school library about 50 times each! And I think I now love this blog – totally on my wavelength …) I must find old copies of them.

So I want to know what you would like to see reviewed, and why. Feel free to stick the knife in if you think the book truly worthy of such treatment.

Oh and Malory Towers book two is coming … I just have to go back and re-read Darrell’s latest smack-down one more time!

P.S. I now have the theme tune to the old Baby-Sitters Club TV show … GAH!!!

First Term at Malory Towers

2010-04-30T00:25:00.004+10:00

I have to apologise in advance for this post, as it isn’t as good as I would like. I’ve re-written the damn thing about 3 times, but this book really is quite boring. I never realised how little plot there is. If I were to rename it, it would be ‘random stuff that happened at school this term’ or ‘Gwendoline joins a cult’ (or something near enough as makes no difference – the school is a very strange splinter of society)

It must be because most of the book is introduction. I’ve already done that, so I’m trying not to cover new ground. Most of the book is really just those ‘housekeeping’ issues that Blyton mentions to readers so that later on we all understand what she is talking about. Darrell just wanders through the scenes with wide eyes thinking ‘golly, this is all grand’ and we tag along, vicariously awed … without the rose-coloured glasses, it is so dreadfully dull. Or perhaps that’s just the caffeine talking – I’ve pulled an overnighter to write an essay this week, then decided that it would be ‘fun’ to go to IKEA after work today (after vowing not to buy anything, I came out with a heap of kitchen stuff and a bag of Swedish meatballs ...), so I’ve been hitting the tea with a vengeance. Everything around me seems slow ...

I just have to note one thing: the covers to my books. I judge a book by its cover Always have, always will. These Dean covers from the mid 90s were the images that I have always associated with MT ... although why they are all dressed circa 1993, I’ll never know.

Please note the school bags with the drawstring top and buckled flap over the top. These were ever so cool in the mid 90s. I almost expect them to be wearing Doc Martens and wearing a ‘Nirvana’ t-shirt under their uniform, or wearing those black rubber bands on their wrists. Sigh ... those were the days ...

But on to the story:

Basic plot: our heroine, Darrell Rivers, begins the book by being excited about going to school. She goes to school, she settles into the institution, and is indoctrinated into the ways of the regime, shit happens, then more shit happens. Dung beetle Blyton then rolls all of this tightly up in a ball and squashes it in time for everyone to catch the train home for hols. Hurrah all round, I say.
I won’t bore you with the details – Darrell fits in and joins a ‘gang’ (seriously – she becomes friends with the class trouble-makers Alicia and Betty … they are so cool), but Gwendoline doesn’t. Chapters have highly imaginative titles such as ‘First Night and morning’, ‘Miss Potts’ Form’, ‘The first week goes by’ … the excitement inherent in those chapters is almost palpable.

We get a class prank from too-cool-for-school Alicia (she pretends to be deaf), who then runs into trouble by really going (temporarily) deaf … oh, how we chuckle at the poetic justice! Darrell also learns that being in a gang lowers her intelligence, so she downgrades her full membership to an associate membership. Gwendoline gets bullied, but finds no support from the teaching staff (having been told by her teacher not to ‘sneak’ on her classmates ... even going so far as to threaten to tell the class that Gwen is ‘sneaking’ so that they can punish her). It is almost like Darrell came home from school and sat down with her mum and a pot of tea and developed verbal diarrhoea, spilling out a heap of little anecdotes, unconnected except for the fact that they happened at school ...

What to notice: Darrell’s uniform: Brown and Orange. Need I say more? Well yes, I do – although my mum would be horrified. The only redeeming feature is the tunic – you know, the ones with three box pleats down the front and back. I love those things, but when I bought one from an op-shop, my mother just about had flashbacks to ‘Nam. She couldn’t believe I would actually choose to wear one, but they are seriously cool. However, it is the only bright spot of the outfit – again I say Brown and Orange.

Parents: Daddy has buggered off to work, so mummy (Enid) takes Darrell to the train station (I should point out that an Enid Blyton book is like that scene in Being John Malcovich where John Malcovich goes through the hole … she’s everywhere). Cue big smug pat on the back for mummy being so sensible about dumping her daughters with strangers. They turn up to the station, Darrell is deposited with the teacher and then Mummy happily toddles off. She is there all of a couple of minutes – doesn’t even see the train off … Yes, that’s what I call good parenting. I just love the callousness of the whole set up. All these parents who routinely send their little beloveds off without a qualm – I wonder what they would think of all the stories of violence in these institutions. The other new girl, Sally, turns up sans parents. Just think: a 12 year old girl, with luggage, was sent off to London to catch a train all by herself. Nice.

By contrast, Gwendoline Mary, my new favourite character, is seen off by a mother who is actually sad to see her go … but she is instantly condemned for failing at the whole ‘stiff upper lip’ thing. I think we can see here the very moment when Gwendoline’s torture begins – I’d say more (in fact I did say more) but I realised I have entire post that may be devoted to darling Gwendoline Mary. I love Gwen.

The accommodation: Finally we get to the ‘dormy’ – home for the next year. Basically, it’s a row of cubicles, separated by curtains, with minimal furnishings and … well that’s it really. Don’t think Harry Potter here with four poster beds and awesome little tower windows. I have a vision of an old-fashioned hospital ward – all metal bed frames, whitewashed walls and thin mattresses. There are wash basins at either end but no bathrooms, and it is a comfort to us all to know that the girls won’t be bathing regularly? It wouldn’t be a proper traditional English school story if there were hygiene standards!

Shit happens

The real highlight of the book on is our glimpses of Darrell’s anger management problems.
Gwendoline, who I am choosing to call socially inept, triggers the first psychotic episode form Darrell by tormenting the class puppy Mary-Lou, and Darrell lays into Gwendoline, giving her several ‘stinging slaps’.

‘Darrell’s hand was strong and hard, and she had slapped with all her might, anywhere she could reach as Gwendoline hastily tried to drag herself out of the water. The slaps sounded like pistol shots.’

Everyone is most shocked, not because Darrell hit Gwen, but that it wasn’t her job to do so. I am not joking – the head-girl of the form wanted to punish Darrell for taking away her right to ‘discipline’ Gwen. But of course, all is well once Darrell apologises – so like an abusive husband (I was really hoping that the class would collectively develop battered woman’s syndrome and take Darrell down by the end of the series, but, alas, I have never been so fortunate as to have the ending of the series change between readings). Later on, she attacks Sally, who takes offence at Darrell being nosy:

‘Darrell could not bear to be touched when she was in a temper, and she shoved back with all her might, and she sent Sally flying across the little room. Sally fell across the chair, and lay there for a minute.
She put her hand on her stomach. ‘Oh, it hurts,’ she said. ‘Oh you wicked girl, Darrell!’’

It is interesting to note that after this lovely little scene, Sally and Darrell become besties ... If I hit you, would you become my friend?

What happens to the other characters?

Well, Mary-Lou becomes friends with Gwen after Darrell figuratively hits her on the nose with a rolled up newspaper. Gwen plays tricks on her new pet and blames Darrell, so Darrell gets ‘sent to coventry’.

(Sidenote: sending someone to Coventry is an awesome name for a punishment. The mechanics of it is that everyone around the ‘sent’ person ignores them for a set period of time, not speaking to them or acknowledging their existence. No one knows with any degree of certainty why people are sent to Coventry, but I really want to go there and see whether people talk to me!
Note 2: I should like to point out that this punishment was also widespread in the unions during the early part of the 20th century. One wonders why upper-class school-girls would employ such a low-class practice. Tsk tsk …)

Mary-Lou faces her fears (after having her courage bucked up by possibly the worst ruse known to man – getting the puppy to save a supposedly drowning Darrell. Truly, it was a sickening scene) and proves Darrell innocent. Hurrah! This drops Gwendoline in the shit, for which everyone is happy!

Gwen runs foul of everyone and gets picked on over every perceived wrong, from missing home on the first night, to wearing her hair out to class (‘you can’t have your hair like that – not in school!’ I especially like EB’s editorial comment after her hair is tightly plaited ‘She did look much nicer now’), and has a pretty rotten term.

Everyone ignores Sally (I bet you forgot her!) because she is a moody, cold fish, but it comes out that Sally was sent to school because her mother had a second child. So she is a girl with abandonment issues, who also contracts appendicitis during term (exacerbated by Darrell’s hissy-fit as described earlier). Of course, after Darrell’s ‘daddy’ (cue family propaganda) comes and whips out the offending organ, Darrell is sent in to fix all her mental issues. Do but see how the expert manages such a feat:

‘I’ve got a little sister, too. It’s lovely to have a sister. [...]’
Sally’s ideas of sisters underwent a sudden change ....'

Hallelujah!! Can I hear an Amen? She’s cured!! And from that moment on, Sally and Darrell are BFFs.

As for Irene, she seems to have lost her last name – how silly of her. I never realised that she is never given a last name. Jean says ‘och’ a couple of times, and apparently is good with money. The other girls do stuff, and it’s amazing because it’s at boarding school and everything there is amazing, don’t you know.

GAH!! This post isn’t really up to standard. Taking the rose goggles off is harder than I thought ... the next one shall be better, I promise. I just need to adjust to this new sight ... it’s so overwhelming!

Malory Towers 101

2010-04-22T13:31:00.004+10:00

All right, I am ready to start delving into the murky world of a boarding school full of adolescent girls. I have an old school jumper on (it might say BSB rather than Malory towers, but it was a good school dammit – on a side note, is it sad that I still have the jumper 13 years after attending my school? It’s such a comfortable jumper …) and I’m ready to show some school spirit, or to destroy it, whatever.

Welcome to the world of Malory Towers – a world in which parents cheerfully abdicate their parental responsibility and dump their pre-adolescent daughters in an isolated school on the coast in Cornwall. At this school, girls will learn the joys of institutional living, become conditioned into the ‘right’ way of thinking (this process involves some spanking and hair brushes), and gain an inflated sense of their worth in society (based on the school they attended). They will be forced to play sports, learn to sew, and be educated just enough to be regarded as decent marriage material (because we all know that marriage is the only real career path for any female, don’t we Enid?), not to mention network with the ‘right’ people, as that is the pool from which eligible husbands will later be sourced.

I feel that it is necessary to introduce you to this wonderful world before I dump you headfirst into the wild and heady adventures that take place within the books. Part of the attraction of the stories is the familiarity with which we come to regard the characters, shaking our heads over Irene’s latest mad escapade, predicting the demise of Gwendoline’s latest friendship …

This post may be a little boring, and I apologise – but it really is necessary.

Setting

Malory Towers itself is a boarding school in Cornwall, and is (so I understand) the place from which the sun rises and sets every day. It is a utopia filled (mainly) with the right thinking element of society, all from the right sort of families (you will see in a later post what happens when the nouveau riche try to infiltrate the ranks of this fine establishment …). It must be the sort of school that Blyton wished she had gone to (alas for poor E, she was doomed to be a day girl at a local school – no heady delights of communal living for her). As a point of interest, the school was probably based on the school to which Enid shipped her own two daughters from the age of about ten.

The building itself appears to be an old converted stately home (although no one ever speculates as to why anyone would be so stupid as to build a stately home on an exposed headland). It has four towers, imaginatively called the north, south, east and west towers, in which the girls reside. We are told from the start that only the North tower is worth living in, as that is where our heroine resides, so anyone not in that house is of no value and is hence ignored (thus does the indoctrination begins – the hierarchy of the school boarding houses is of the sort that gives birth to the larger bigotries later – remember that Hitler had only lately been defeated when she started writing these books). Apart from the details about the towers, we are not given much information about the geography of the school. There are sports fields, tennis courts, classrooms, a swimming pool and so on, but the layout is a closely guarded secret that would only be familiar to those who have actually been to the school. We are just meant to know. (It’s a clever little trick of Enid’s – we are given details that we can fill in ourselves in order that we might have some ‘ownership’ of the setting. While controlling that section, she takes over in more subversive ways …) Let us take as given that the layout doesn’t matter and that the girls all just magically appear where they are supposed to be…

Oh and there is a uniform, but I’ll save the joys of that until the next post.

Characters

There are new characters introduced in each of the six books, as variety is the spice of life (and reading about the same boring brats does tend to get tedious), but there are a few core characters with whom you must be conversant to really appreciate the subtle intricacies of this deep and philosophical epic.

Darrell Rivers: Our heroine. A ‘sensible girl’ who happens to have serious anger management issues – but these aren’t seen as a major character flaw as she always apologises after beating the shit out of some poor unfortunate. Potential domestic abuser in later life. Likes any sport that involves some sort of instrument that can be used to hit people (tennis, lacrosse, hockey). Nominally based on Blyton’s daughter Gillian, but seems more to channel how Blyton may have seen herself at school.

Alicia: The coolest girl in the class – clever and good at sports. She is an absolute bitch, but gets away with it as she is just so bloody wonderful and has school spirit (very important) – perhaps also because she admits that she is a ‘hard’ girl (I think one can get away with character flaw at Malory Towers so long as they admit that flaw. It’s a licence to misbehave). She likes to play pranks. Probably a fairly accurate depiction of Blyton at school (based on what I’ve read).

Sally: Darrell’s best friend. She has a tendency to be a possessive, jealous bitch – but that’s fine apparently because it shows her loyalty. She’s a good all-rounder, but obviously not as good as Darrell, because no one can be as good as Darrell. She seems to be the most normal of the lot, and hence quite boring. She really only exists to be a hassle-free foil for Darrell – almost wifely in her unquestioning devotion.

Mary-Lou: There are no super-intelligent pets in this series, so little Mary-Lou stands in for one. Doormat, co-dependent and possessing a tendency to fawn, Mary-Lou is seen as the class puppy. She gains an owner later in the series, which makes everyone happy for her.

Irene: budding musician. She is a stereotypical artist-type (forgetful, temperamental etc.) and is made the butt of many jokes because of it. Her idiosyncrasies appear to be programmed out of her throughout the series – making her much less interesting ...

Jean: Stock Scots-girl. Think of a Scottish stereotype and she is it. Says ‘och’ at least once a book so that everyone knows that she is from Scotland – but is seen as a good egg because she has many fine English attributes ... (please be aware that, in Blyton books, only English people can have or teach acceptable character traits – anyone who is a good egg obviously learnt their winning ways from one of this fine nation). She disappears later in the series

Gwendoline: supposedly the anti-heroine, Gwendoline is really the tragic victim of this institutional system. Sadly unprepared for the jungle into which she is thrown, Gwendoline does not react well to the constant negative reinforcement that she receives at the school. The rest of the staff and student body, however, are too stupid to try any other tactic than ‘sitting on her’. Constantly bullied and friendless, Gwendoline is the type from whom you hide any sharp implements. Today, she probably would have been the emo rebellious type and dyed her hair black (yet listened to Girls Aloud).

Miss Potts: House mistress and form mistress who enables the girls in their bullying of the misfits. She has a fanatical dislike of the wrong-thinking element and does not recognise the damage she causes by allowing her pet students to torment the outcasts. This mindset seems to be the same for all the teachers.

Miss Grayling: Head mistress. Woefully out of touch with the students in the school, she only gets involved when there are PR implications. Recites a stock speech at the beginning of every term to new girls that introduces them to the idea that they owe their school for their education (quite apart from the exorbitant fees they pay) so they should pitch in and ‘give back’ to the school. How one may do this is never set out … I can just see those words paving the way for a sexual assault case down the track …

The mam’zelles: two French mistresses, one fat and jolly, the other thin and sour. They are major French stereotypes – often get into cat-fights (in the gallic style – no English woman would behave so inappropriately). Fat and jolly Mam’zelle Dupont is often the butt of practical jokes, being nothing but a silly French woman (as all Frenchies are apparently). Both have a fierce temper. I can’t really think of a way in which these depictions could be more derogatory, but I’m sure that it will come to me throughout the series.

Matron: The closest thing to a mother figure many of these girls have. The parents turn up like toys to be played with every half term, leaving the actual caring to Matron. Has been at the school long enough to look after Alicia’s mother when she attended. She seems to go rabid over darning.

Darrell’s Family: Mummy, daddy and little sister Felicity. Mummy is (again) Enid Blyton, and Felicity stars later on in the series (does it surprise you that Blyton had a second daughter called Imogen?), but it is Daddy who excites my interest.
Daddy is a surgeon. This is relevant because it highlights a habit Blyton had – that of whitewashing her own history. The father of Blyton’s daughters was not a surgeon – he was E’s first husband and he was a publisher. E and husband number one, however, divorced when the girls were about ten and six, and she never let him see the girls again (she apparently had a history of cutting people out of her life). She did, however, provide them with a substitute father in husband number two. His last name happened to be Darrell Waters (sound familiar?) and he was a surgeon. Read these books and the references to ‘Daddy’, particularly in light of the other parallels one can draw with the Rivers family, and you will definitely feel a little manipulated …

Here endeth the lesson. To be honest, going through the characters in this series really does remind me of the movie Being John Malcovich - you know, the part where John Malcovich goes through the hole - ALL of the characters are basically Enid. Yes, I know that she wrote the damn books, but my point is that the different aspects of the Great E are not even very well disguised - if you know anything about her, you just keep seeing her pop up everywhere ...

I will actually start dissecting the books in the next post. I've been working up the courage. It doesn't help that the characters all start out so young and stupid - if they were old and stupid I wouldn't care, but this still feels like kicking a puppy! Anyway, The first cab off the rank in the series is First Term at Malory Towers If you're very interested, dig up a copy and take a look, but it isn't absolutely necessary in order to enjoy this blog. Reading the bog, however, is obligatory: keep reading or you may find yourself on the receiving end of some sharp slaps from a hairbrush!

The Dilemma

2010-04-16T15:57:00.001+10:00

Something strange happened when I actually started writing my first post.

The moment I finished my first paragraph I began to feel guilty about the whole enterprise. The review felt ... low and backstabby, as though I had decided to kick a puppy. This worried me for a while.

I thought that it may have something to do with the fact that I’m beginning my Blyton odyssey with Malory Towers, a series I read and re-read growing up. My feeling of treachery seemed to stem from the idea that I was betraying my alma mater (of sorts), ridiculing something that had given me so much (in the words of Miss Grayling, the Head-mistress). Then I started re-reading the books and I realised what the matter REALLY was.

I’d been brainwashed.

That’s right. Wholesome Malory Towers is actually an arm of the cult of Blyton. It is not just a set of amusing stories about school life, it is social conditioning – behaviour modification of pre-adolescents. Seriously, those girls never have to deal with a single growy-uppy type of issue. None ever seemed to have periods ("Irene, I've told you a thousand times - THROW your pads AWAY!"), or talk about boys ("Alicia, could you hook me up with your brother, he is sooo cute"), or anything like that - because the characters aren't meant to reflect reality. They exist solely to further the teachings of the great EB: toe the line, the majority is always right, Keep Britain Great ...

I’m amazed that I had never noticed how willing I was to take Enid’s point of view when reading this series. Enid’s way of writing just assumes that you agree exactly with her idea of what a ‘decent’ person is: English, solid upper-middle class, English, from a good school, English, sporty, English, smart and English. Any one not meeting these requirements, well, toe the line and they might let you join the posse. They were all jolly nice at Malory Towers, and if I wanted to be liked I had to be just like them ...

Just look at the characters in this series – they all start out as individuals, but over the course of the series all come to conform to the norms of the structure in which they live. And so does the reader, in a way. Continual reinforcement of certain ideas indoctrinated me into a certain way of thinking – even a certain way of viewing the characters and their actions. It was highly seductive and masterfully done by EB. I tip my hat to her twisted genius.

I’ll admit to being brainwashed, and to enjoy being so manipulated. There is a certain sort of smugness that we get from identifying with ‘nice’ characters, when really, deep down we are all have more in common with the ostracised and disliked characters (particularly as teenagers – teenage girls can be utter wenches). I read these books numerous times, and at one point, when there was a possibility that I might be sent to boarding school, I was adamant that I should go to that school or one just like it, and I was sure that I would be a Darrell and not a Gwendoline … oh stop looking at me like that – I was 13! No one is particularly smart at that age, AND I was misled by the covers of my books (more about that in a later post), so I was envisaging a mid-90s utopia rather than the mid-40s reality of the series. I think that I am still a little disillusioned by the shattering of that little dream.

... You do realise that Blyton ran at least 2 fan clubs. That woman was a master programmer – she not only wrote books, but maintained newsletters for these groups, as well other periodicals and so on - just to support her agenda. I conjecture that this agenda was world domination, using children as her minions. I can see the progression: she spent a few years teaching in order to understand children better, then spent the rest of her life preaching at and indoctrinating them into her way of thinking. The children joined the fanclub and became more and more involved in the groups and forming squads, before graduating into full militant Blytonians ... I’m not sure what would have happened if she had lived to see her legion of fans grow up … history might have been very different … (I had a brief image of a Blyton-style empire, and it was not pretty).

I find it amusing that Blyton’s works are now being censored for being racist and generally politically incorrect. It’s being touted as some grand revelation that she didn’t like ‘nasty foreigners’, or people of ‘inferior’ classes … or anyone much, for that matter. If you go back into E’s early writing, however, you’ll find that this bigotry was always there – 15 year old E’s postcard to a friend (during one of her very few trips abroad) from France complained of how ‘greedy’ the French were and how much they ate (this from the woman whose narratives are often dominated by food!) – can anyone say Mein Kampf? Early indication, people, that’s all I’m saying.

So coming back to the series after a hiatus of about 10 years (during which all of my Blytons sat in a box awaiting an as yet unforthcoming next generation) is a bit like returning to school after graduating (which can be a little pathetic). You can’t believe that you actually thought the place was the centre of the universe, but you feel a bit guilty because it was instrumental in shaping you into the person you have become. There is one small problem: I never went to Malory Towers because IT DOESN’T EXIST. I am not an ‘old girl’, nor am I in any way indebted to this series of books. My feeling of guilt is due solely to the brilliant manipulation of a woman with a megalomaniacal disposition. I must break free of this false sense of obligation!!!

This deconstruction is therefore therapy for me, I’m de-programming myself. This incoherent and disjointed rant is just the beginning! I’m glad I have it all justified in my mind – otherwise this might just seem sad. Take the view that you’ve been corrupted (even if you have never read Blyton – I assure you that prevention is better than cure) and read on for the cure!

Tea and Scones

2010-04-03T17:44:00.000+11:00

I have a box of books under my bed. It's hidden behind the boxes of old textbooks and chicklit I am too embarrassed to put on my bookshelf, and it's my deepest, darkest, most guilty secret. It's the box of books that I turn to in my hours of trial to give me a little glow of happiness.

It's a box of Enid Blyton books.

They can be read in an hour, they have as much emotional depth as a teaspoon, and you always reach the end feeling morally superior because you would never be that politcally incorrect ... all in all, they are the perfect antidote to a shitty week at work!

I'm not sure that I will ever outgrow that desire to become an inmate of Malory Towers, but coming back to them a decade later, I'm pulled back in not by the wholesome jolly school children who manage to have so many unlikely adventures, but by all the other things that you can read into those stories, the twisted aspects of Blyton's mind that find their way onto paper.

Well, that and the food - the woman's obsession with food is legendary - I swear that she is the only writer who has ever made me feel like eating pickles.

Anyway, over the course of this blog, I plan to share with you the sick genius of Madame Blyton, and any other childhood favourites that come to mind ...

Watch this space ...