disjointed ramblings of the nouveau riche and schoolgirls

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.

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

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 horridly 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 apparently the model for Felicity, but she was more like June in reality – the story goes that she, 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 not 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

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 I was 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)?

Upper Fourth at Malory Towers Pt 1

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 be on holidays. Enid didn’t take holidays (well she did, but she used all of the information in her books, so it was 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 eye, 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!

Treeks and Xenophobia

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

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

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

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?

First Term at Malory Towers

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

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

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!