Re: [GO] No boats on Bannermere
Rosamond, degraded? Even Maidlin works as a waitress at one point. Tig wrote Their mother takes up a trade - and a very menial one (judging by the standards of the period when serving in a teashop can be seen as the ultimate degradation) and not only doesn't bat an eyelid but finds it fun. -- Barbara Dryden -- Girlsown mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] For self-administration and access to archives see http://home.it.net.au/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/girlsown For FAQs see http://www.club-web.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/girlsown/faq-0.htm
Re: [GO] No boats on Bannermere
- Original Message - From: Barbara Dryden [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, November 10, 2004 8:26 AM Subject: Re: [GO] No boats on Bannermere Rosamond, degraded? Even Maidlin works as a waitress at one point. Tig wrote Their mother takes up a trade - and a very menial one (judging by the standards of the period when serving in a teashop can be seen as the ultimate degradation) and not only doesn't bat an eyelid but finds it fun. I'm not sure being a waitress was still in the 'common little shopgirl with painted nails' class in the 1950s. Mrs M runs her own business (always far more respectable than being an employee. Indeed I have a GOP annual for 1926 which recommends running a teashop as a genteel occupation) and working in canteens was exactly the sort of warwork middle class women often did. Plus it is stressed that the teashop is really for pin-money (given that Mr M doesn't send any maintenance, and she hasn't worked for several years prior to the book, I always wonder where her income does come from). I know Joey is so horrifed at the idea of Carla working as a waitress that she insists she come to work as a nanny but we never find out Carla's view on this (though since she never appears at Freudesheim, I think we can guess !). The Bannermere books are written around the same time as Mollie Chappell's Sugar and Spice in which running a teashop is perfectly respectable. Indeed my father would have been an exact contemporary of Bill at Oxford and came from an identical background (single parent scholarship boy) and it was there his met my mother, then working as a waitress and also from a fairly conventional middle class background (private school ). Both my grandmothers were terrific old-school snobs but I don't think wither of them objected to my mother's lowly occupation (both of them having had to do some odd things themselves as widows often do) Nicky -- Girlsown mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] For self-administration and access to archives see http://home.it.net.au/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/girlsown For FAQs see http://www.club-web.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/girlsown/faq-0.htm
[GO] No boats on Bannermere
On 9 Nov 2004 at 11:16, nicky smith wrote:
Trease seemed to have gradually moved to the right until the
Bannermere books
Then Sue said:
Actually, I think Trease stayed the same (roughly), though less strident as
he grew older; but society moved towards him, so he appears to have moved
rightwards.
I think you;re right, Sue, but I also think NBOB is more alternative than it
looks now. Trease was trying to write something that offered a reflection
of the experience of a wider band of children than the very narrow group of
the upper middle class, public school educated child who so often formed the
subject of this sort of book (although not exclusively the readership). His
children don't have a dead father, or one serving overseas, they have,
almost uniquely for this period, one who's just gone off and left them and
doesn't write and has divorced their mother. They aren't visiting the
countryside as a holiday alternative to their town base, they're moving
there, full of trepidation, and misconceptions to start with, but they come
to love and appreciate it. They're not churchgoers, at least not initially.
Their mother takes up a trade - and a very menial one (judging by the
standards of the period when serving in a teashop can be seen as the
ultimate degradation) and not only doesn't bat an eyelid but finds it fun.
They aren't plentifully supplied with boats, climbing equipment, ponies and
caravans. Their one boat is only a rowing one, and they can't use it
anyway. The children in their school are of every class, many with marked
regional accents about which they don't feel the need to comment overly or
judge (let alone offer to help them get rid of them). The local bookseller
is revered as a man of culture ( see Feud in the Fifth Remove for opposite
view, albeit over ten years earlier). The local farmer is not seen as a
means of supplementary childcare ( Oxus, Fell Farm, Arthur Ransome) nor as a
local Tescos ('can we have half a dozen eggs and some milk please' - Enid
Blyton) but as a respected and knowledgeable man. I love the moment where
Bill spots a copy of - is it The Listener? - in the parlour and realises
this is an intelligent man he's dealing with. They consult the farmer on
legal and social matters and value his opinion, whereas when the Famous Five
meet farmers they tend to talk to them like servants or children. The
adventures aren't to do with apprehending working class cardboard villains
but with understanding the more devious ways unscrupulous adults and
bureaucracies can twist and fudge the law to cause injustices (Coroner's
courts, Army requisitions) or with the way research can help to uncover
truth and right old wrongs (a wartime theft in BBA, and a wartime loss in
The Gates of Bannerdale).)
(I was going to say it's also unusual to have the villain be a man who
speaks with a decent accent and comes from the upper classes, but Sir
Anthony is clearly arriviste and nouveau (like Mr Jemmerling in Great
Northern?) so I don't think that counts).
Having said all that, I do think Trease falls down horribly on the subject
of girls. I wince every time Bill makes some patronising comment about
girls' fuss and chatter and flutter, and I think he treats Penny abominably
in Black Banner Abroad. Trease's feminism must have come a long time after
his socialism, if at all.
Incidentally, although Ransome's frame of wealthy children having adventures
on the lake aided by local farmers acting as background support is more
traditional I wouldn't like for a moment to imply I think this means he's a
weaker writer. In my mind he's as good as they getbut I have do also,
on a different level, enjoy reading Trease. I think the more one thinks
about it, the more his reworking of the traditional adventure story subtly
and gently broadens its scope.
Tig
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Re: [GO] No Boats on Bannermere
I'm not going to put spoilers because I don't think I'm giving away any of the plot. - Original Message - From: Barbara Dryden [EMAIL PROTECTED] I'm glad you partly enjoyed No Boats on Bannermere, Barbara! Then there are hits at the boarding school story, with Bill wondering why writers never set books in day schools (they did, of course) Of course there were some, but I think not very many by the 1940s, and even fewer set at boys' days schools, which was the part of the genre I suppose Trease was more familiar with. I agree that Sir Arthur is not one of his most successful characters. Personally I think the books get better later in the series, and I'd be interested in what you think of The Gates of Bannerdale, for example. Sally's interesting introduction to the book explains a lot. I do think that Trease had a rather high opinion of himself as a writer of 'different' stories for children. In fact, Arthur Ransome had got there years before Trease even started writing. Oh, not that long! Swallows and Amazons was only 1930, 4 years before Trease's first book was published, and none of Ransome's handful of previous children's books were in the least bit unusual or different. In Tales Out of School, Trease himself said about Ransome The outstanding literary landmark of this period is Arthur Ransome. His name will go on into the short list of writers like Talbot Baines Reed, who have deflected the stream of fiction into new channels. What Reed did for the school term, Mr Ransome did for the holidays. But, personally, I do think Ransome is much more a safe kind of writer, in that he only wrote one kind of book, whereas Trease was much more ambitious in trying his hand at a variety of types and settings, and also trying to introduce a world-view that was almost unrepresented in fiction for children at the time - Ransome didn't challenge any prevailing world-view, he just ignored it. Sometimes Trease's approach certainly doesn't come off, but for me (and of course not for everyone!) it very often does. Sally -- Girlsown mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] For self-administration and access to archives see http://home.it.net.au/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/girlsown For FAQs see http://www.club-web.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/girlsown/faq-0.htm
[GO] No Boats on Bannermere - extra
I wrote; But, personally, I do think Ransome is much more a safe kind of writer, in that he only wrote one kind of book, To avoid confusion, I should say I mean he stuck to one kind of book in his different or groundbreaking work for children (i.e. the Swallows and Amazons books), not his output as a whole. Sally -- Girlsown mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] For self-administration and access to archives see http://home.it.net.au/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/girlsown For FAQs see http://www.club-web.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/girlsown/faq-0.htm
