REVIEW: Jill Makes Good
Oct. 26th, 2015 02:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllJill Makes Good: Elizabeth Tugwell, Nelson
Of course, such a title begs you to decide whether the author has made good with this book.
Fourteen year old Jill Ross is headed for Cornwall at the start of the story, having been suddenly orphaned by her mother’s death. She is leaving London to live with her mother’s younger sister, Pamela Merrick, and her companion-secretary, Miss Trevone at a house on the coast. Miss Trevone is actually Vivien, just seventeen, shorter than Jill and with her own tragic story. Meanwhile, Aunt Pamela writes thrillers to support herself, having had to give up violin playing and dreams of publishing something that isn’t ‘trash’. The house is homely, but shabby.
Jill had taken and failed a scholarship exam to Beechdene School, her dream school – mainly for the games and companionship it offered – and her mother had caught a bad cold the day she tried to cheer her daughter up. The school is famous for another scholarship, one given to a girl who has shown tremendous courage or some such. At one point, Jill confides in Vivien that she’d love to get it, but will she get the chance? In the meantime, nothing is done for her education, just tramps, which, at a stretch, work as nature studies.
Vivien has her own dreams too, and the trouble is that the writer is more interested in Vivien, and even Aunt Pam, than the titular character, although the younger girls' doings take up the most pages. Jill’s characterisation just isn’t given due attention and she’s an inconsistent figure. Granted, she wasn’t left alone and destitute in a foreign country, but apart from thinking her new home awful at first, her likely grief over being an orphan is barely attended to. She's introduced as a mischievous sort, but actually comes off as a brat who acts much younger than her age – and there was an episode lifted out of Anne of Green Gables that would make me direct readers to that book over this one a thousand times. It’s bizarre that Aunt Pamela couldn’t even make it to London for her own sister’s funeral, lending a Gothic touch to a twentieth-century book about the artistic middle class. Jill's mother's role in her upbringing is neglected - her nanny Lambie gets more attention and it's as if Jill and her author believe that Jill's behaviour should be solely regulated by her school life.
Although they can and do get on, eventually there is tension between the girls because of jealousy over how close they are to Aunt Pammie. Jill is related by blood, while Vivien, a little older and closer to adulthood, was the sole keeper of most of her secrets and dreams until an old ‘friend’ from the past – Keith Middleton – fortuitously turns up, never to explain why he lost contact with his great ‘friend’ Pamela when they were younger. He is an artist, like the beloved father whose death left Vivien so lonely until she crossed paths with Pamela, and able to see the real talent Vivien inherited. In fairness, he doesn’t entirely get to play knight errant, as it is Pamela’s talent and work, and Vivien and especially Jill’s pluck, which blow away the refrain of ‘can’t afford’, so that Jill can be educated (perhaps to control herself a little more) at the best boarding school ever, Vivien can be trained in art and Pamela need only write what she wants to. But they will do so in Keith’s villa.
Tugwell should have realised that her heart lay with Vivien, or seen the problems with how she wrote Jill, who is, in turns, tactless and thoughtful as the plot requires. This is not one of those books that are ‘awfully true to life’ that Pamela aspires to write. Oh, there are no ‘cops and robbers’ but it’s not a good example of its type either – it’s a decided risk to write a book featuring an author and use ‘good’ in the title.
I came across this discussion about the author (which dates this book somewhere between 1938 and 1955. I don’t know if my copy is a reprint or not.) I don’t believe Tugwell went on to write about Jill at school with new friend Lesley and holidaying in France with the other characters.
Of course, such a title begs you to decide whether the author has made good with this book.
Fourteen year old Jill Ross is headed for Cornwall at the start of the story, having been suddenly orphaned by her mother’s death. She is leaving London to live with her mother’s younger sister, Pamela Merrick, and her companion-secretary, Miss Trevone at a house on the coast. Miss Trevone is actually Vivien, just seventeen, shorter than Jill and with her own tragic story. Meanwhile, Aunt Pamela writes thrillers to support herself, having had to give up violin playing and dreams of publishing something that isn’t ‘trash’. The house is homely, but shabby.
Jill had taken and failed a scholarship exam to Beechdene School, her dream school – mainly for the games and companionship it offered – and her mother had caught a bad cold the day she tried to cheer her daughter up. The school is famous for another scholarship, one given to a girl who has shown tremendous courage or some such. At one point, Jill confides in Vivien that she’d love to get it, but will she get the chance? In the meantime, nothing is done for her education, just tramps, which, at a stretch, work as nature studies.
Vivien has her own dreams too, and the trouble is that the writer is more interested in Vivien, and even Aunt Pam, than the titular character, although the younger girls' doings take up the most pages. Jill’s characterisation just isn’t given due attention and she’s an inconsistent figure. Granted, she wasn’t left alone and destitute in a foreign country, but apart from thinking her new home awful at first, her likely grief over being an orphan is barely attended to. She's introduced as a mischievous sort, but actually comes off as a brat who acts much younger than her age – and there was an episode lifted out of Anne of Green Gables that would make me direct readers to that book over this one a thousand times. It’s bizarre that Aunt Pamela couldn’t even make it to London for her own sister’s funeral, lending a Gothic touch to a twentieth-century book about the artistic middle class. Jill's mother's role in her upbringing is neglected - her nanny Lambie gets more attention and it's as if Jill and her author believe that Jill's behaviour should be solely regulated by her school life.
Although they can and do get on, eventually there is tension between the girls because of jealousy over how close they are to Aunt Pammie. Jill is related by blood, while Vivien, a little older and closer to adulthood, was the sole keeper of most of her secrets and dreams until an old ‘friend’ from the past – Keith Middleton – fortuitously turns up, never to explain why he lost contact with his great ‘friend’ Pamela when they were younger. He is an artist, like the beloved father whose death left Vivien so lonely until she crossed paths with Pamela, and able to see the real talent Vivien inherited. In fairness, he doesn’t entirely get to play knight errant, as it is Pamela’s talent and work, and Vivien and especially Jill’s pluck, which blow away the refrain of ‘can’t afford’, so that Jill can be educated (perhaps to control herself a little more) at the best boarding school ever, Vivien can be trained in art and Pamela need only write what she wants to. But they will do so in Keith’s villa.
Tugwell should have realised that her heart lay with Vivien, or seen the problems with how she wrote Jill, who is, in turns, tactless and thoughtful as the plot requires. This is not one of those books that are ‘awfully true to life’ that Pamela aspires to write. Oh, there are no ‘cops and robbers’ but it’s not a good example of its type either – it’s a decided risk to write a book featuring an author and use ‘good’ in the title.
I came across this discussion about the author (which dates this book somewhere between 1938 and 1955. I don’t know if my copy is a reprint or not.) I don’t believe Tugwell went on to write about Jill at school with new friend Lesley and holidaying in France with the other characters.
