REVIEW: The Head Girl at the Gables
Sep. 29th, 2014 08:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllThe Head Girl at the Gables: Angela Brazil Blackie (the inscription on my copy suggests that this was published in 1931 or earlier)
The story begins with the headmistress of the Gables and her lieutenant considering who to appoint to the titular post of head girl of the school. The Gables is a smallish but select day school in a Cornish town Porthkeverne, and the time is at some point during the first world war. Of the three girls seriously considered for the role, it is Lorraine Foster who is chosen, and at first, it looks as though the most difficult part for her will be dealing with the two other girls in contention – Dorothy and Vivien. What is particularly tricky with Vivian is that she is Lorraine’s cousin and likes to be in charge.
A middle daughter, Lorraine has not put herself forward much before, but her new responsibilities demand that she does, using the tact and judgement the mistresses believed that she possessed. For one thing, she’s aware that there has been a growing rift between the seniors, especially the monitresses, and the junior girls. Can she put realistic schemes into place to bring the school together? Will Vivien always be unhelpful?
The story branches out from the school to other aspects of Lorraine’s life. A relatively new sixth former, Claudia, is a link to an artists’ colony that Lorraine, whose life has seemed rather staid up til now, has never had much contact with. Claudia’s family fulfil the daft names requirement of every Brazil book: Morland, Claudia, Landry, Beata, Romola and their half-siblings Constable, Lilith and Perugia.
For a moment, I thought that the story would become about Claudia, but Lorraine remains the main character, and it covers her worries over older sister Rosemary, who has left home to study music, her tussles with younger sister Monica, also known as Cuckoo, who Lorraine maintains is spoilt and the slight tensions as her parents come to realise that, in the school year she turns seventeen, Lorraine can no longer be treated as a child. Lorraine’s artistic vein is discovered and encouraged; Rosemary finds a way of using her musical abilities, even if it isn’t as she thought it would be.
For the first half of the book, I had some concerns about Brazil’s handling of the war. In the main, her focus is naturally on the home front, and we see how rationing and military regulations affect Lorraine and her schoolfellows. Many of the women are involved in work for the local Red Cross hospital and much of the girls’ fun comes from fundraising activities at the school. The location on the Cornish cost allows for some spying on potential spies, but the focus is on the girls, and there’s a line, which feels very much like the author expounding, on how the war has been good for girls’ characters. But I didn’t think that the references to what their brothers and cousins were going through were more than glancing, even allowing for the understandable bias towards propaganda and concentrating on the positives. Then one of the girls loses a brother, and although the shadow isn’t dwelled upon, Morland, Claudia’s older brother, whoi has become Lorraine’s chum, is called up, causing much distress to his developmentally challenged younger brother Landry. Again, Brazil doesn’t go into great detail about Morland’s military career, but the treatment of the effects of war is not as bad as I first thought it would be.
(It would be interesting to look at how Brazil specifically covered the first world war as a contemporary author.)
There’s a half chapter where the monitresses, as part of a ‘bean fest’, read compositions of their own making for their own entertainment. While it isn’t as grim as these chapters can be in Brazil’s books, I do wonder if she really got fan letters with readers claiming that those were their favourite bits of her books. There is too, as ever, a great love for the natural world – the flowers in bloom at different seasons are detailed and, through artist characters like Margaret Lindsay, who becomes an influence on Lorraine, an interest in the artistic effects of the landscape and seascape weaves through the story. There’s a bit more reference to Christianity than normal, I think.
Brazil doesn’t delve as deeply into Lorraine’s psychology as some other writers would, but she is shown to grow and to be a good head girl because of it. She leaves school having found her metier, and, although she hasn’t perhaps fully realised it, a future suitor. Perhaps Vivien never gave Lorraine her dues, but the other girls at the Gables did.
The story begins with the headmistress of the Gables and her lieutenant considering who to appoint to the titular post of head girl of the school. The Gables is a smallish but select day school in a Cornish town Porthkeverne, and the time is at some point during the first world war. Of the three girls seriously considered for the role, it is Lorraine Foster who is chosen, and at first, it looks as though the most difficult part for her will be dealing with the two other girls in contention – Dorothy and Vivien. What is particularly tricky with Vivian is that she is Lorraine’s cousin and likes to be in charge.
A middle daughter, Lorraine has not put herself forward much before, but her new responsibilities demand that she does, using the tact and judgement the mistresses believed that she possessed. For one thing, she’s aware that there has been a growing rift between the seniors, especially the monitresses, and the junior girls. Can she put realistic schemes into place to bring the school together? Will Vivien always be unhelpful?
The story branches out from the school to other aspects of Lorraine’s life. A relatively new sixth former, Claudia, is a link to an artists’ colony that Lorraine, whose life has seemed rather staid up til now, has never had much contact with. Claudia’s family fulfil the daft names requirement of every Brazil book: Morland, Claudia, Landry, Beata, Romola and their half-siblings Constable, Lilith and Perugia.
For a moment, I thought that the story would become about Claudia, but Lorraine remains the main character, and it covers her worries over older sister Rosemary, who has left home to study music, her tussles with younger sister Monica, also known as Cuckoo, who Lorraine maintains is spoilt and the slight tensions as her parents come to realise that, in the school year she turns seventeen, Lorraine can no longer be treated as a child. Lorraine’s artistic vein is discovered and encouraged; Rosemary finds a way of using her musical abilities, even if it isn’t as she thought it would be.
For the first half of the book, I had some concerns about Brazil’s handling of the war. In the main, her focus is naturally on the home front, and we see how rationing and military regulations affect Lorraine and her schoolfellows. Many of the women are involved in work for the local Red Cross hospital and much of the girls’ fun comes from fundraising activities at the school. The location on the Cornish cost allows for some spying on potential spies, but the focus is on the girls, and there’s a line, which feels very much like the author expounding, on how the war has been good for girls’ characters. But I didn’t think that the references to what their brothers and cousins were going through were more than glancing, even allowing for the understandable bias towards propaganda and concentrating on the positives. Then one of the girls loses a brother, and although the shadow isn’t dwelled upon, Morland, Claudia’s older brother, whoi has become Lorraine’s chum, is called up, causing much distress to his developmentally challenged younger brother Landry. Again, Brazil doesn’t go into great detail about Morland’s military career, but the treatment of the effects of war is not as bad as I first thought it would be.
(It would be interesting to look at how Brazil specifically covered the first world war as a contemporary author.)
There’s a half chapter where the monitresses, as part of a ‘bean fest’, read compositions of their own making for their own entertainment. While it isn’t as grim as these chapters can be in Brazil’s books, I do wonder if she really got fan letters with readers claiming that those were their favourite bits of her books. There is too, as ever, a great love for the natural world – the flowers in bloom at different seasons are detailed and, through artist characters like Margaret Lindsay, who becomes an influence on Lorraine, an interest in the artistic effects of the landscape and seascape weaves through the story. There’s a bit more reference to Christianity than normal, I think.
Brazil doesn’t delve as deeply into Lorraine’s psychology as some other writers would, but she is shown to grow and to be a good head girl because of it. She leaves school having found her metier, and, although she hasn’t perhaps fully realised it, a future suitor. Perhaps Vivien never gave Lorraine her dues, but the other girls at the Gables did.
