REVIEW: The Lark in the Morn
Aug. 10th, 2016 05:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllThe Lark in the Morn: Elfrida Vipont Oxford University Press 1959
I had vaguely heard of this book and had the impression that it was well thought of, having read it, I agree, although a modern-day writer might have been even more immersive. There is the interest of the fact that this story is set in a Quaker community as well as being the story of a motherless girl growing up and learning to be true to the real her. It looks at three distinct periods in the heroine’s life.
Kit, short of Jane Kitson Haverard, is, and there’s no getting around it, a ‘difficult’ child, constantly clashing with her cousin Laura, who likes order and, despite being a Quaker, is conventionally minded. This is an issue because Kit is the youngest child and only daughter of a professor and his wife. She was born a few years after three sons, and, unfortunately, her mother died when Kit was born and Cousin Laura came to look after the family. Laura’s managing ways make her blind to what makes sensitive Kit tick, and she goes too far in her position, choking off connections with one part of the family. It is only when Kit falls ill and needs to convalesce that she gets to visit the place where her mother grew up.
There, she finds kindness and love. Her cousins are brought up in entirely different ways to her. In challenging Aunt Henrietta, Kit stands up for herself, but it isn’t one of the rebellious tantrums Laura has elicited over the years. Most importantly, it is at at Gramercie that Kit learns that music is not what she thought it was. It is bigger, deeper and more important.
Kit is then sent to Heryots, a Quaker-run boarding school for girls, along with her longstanding friend Pony, whose abilities at sport make her popular. Dreamy Kit must find herself and, indeed, find out who her real friends are, and it is not something that happens over a term.
There’s a lot going on: psychological acuity, for Laura is thoughtlessly cruel in trying to do the right thing, although it’s suggested that she (and Pony) senses Kit’s latent potential and perceives it as a threat, colouring her behaviour. In Kit’s family history, gradually revealed to her, Vipont shows the chances that were historically denied to women, especially in strict Quaker familes, where music other than hymns was unacceptable. Kit and her peers are not free of these limitations – another childhood friend, Helen, is clever, but has to fight her mother, who wanted only a pretty daughter, to be allowed to study. Kit is influenced by a variety of people, who help her to wake up.
The free friends’ vivid, tomboyish pretending is interesting. It’s a cause of conflict in that Laura doesn’t like how untidy and dirty Kit gets, but there’s the question of Pony wanting to be centre of attention and how something that was a simple, uniting pleasure becomes a cause of tension. We follow Kit from childhood to the end of her school life, and there are burgeoning romances, even if Kit is barely aware of that. Her focus is on deciding, for herself, that she wants to sing, and given how feelingly she performs the folk song that gives this book its title, it is no surprise.
I had vaguely heard of this book and had the impression that it was well thought of, having read it, I agree, although a modern-day writer might have been even more immersive. There is the interest of the fact that this story is set in a Quaker community as well as being the story of a motherless girl growing up and learning to be true to the real her. It looks at three distinct periods in the heroine’s life.
Kit, short of Jane Kitson Haverard, is, and there’s no getting around it, a ‘difficult’ child, constantly clashing with her cousin Laura, who likes order and, despite being a Quaker, is conventionally minded. This is an issue because Kit is the youngest child and only daughter of a professor and his wife. She was born a few years after three sons, and, unfortunately, her mother died when Kit was born and Cousin Laura came to look after the family. Laura’s managing ways make her blind to what makes sensitive Kit tick, and she goes too far in her position, choking off connections with one part of the family. It is only when Kit falls ill and needs to convalesce that she gets to visit the place where her mother grew up.
There, she finds kindness and love. Her cousins are brought up in entirely different ways to her. In challenging Aunt Henrietta, Kit stands up for herself, but it isn’t one of the rebellious tantrums Laura has elicited over the years. Most importantly, it is at at Gramercie that Kit learns that music is not what she thought it was. It is bigger, deeper and more important.
Kit is then sent to Heryots, a Quaker-run boarding school for girls, along with her longstanding friend Pony, whose abilities at sport make her popular. Dreamy Kit must find herself and, indeed, find out who her real friends are, and it is not something that happens over a term.
There’s a lot going on: psychological acuity, for Laura is thoughtlessly cruel in trying to do the right thing, although it’s suggested that she (and Pony) senses Kit’s latent potential and perceives it as a threat, colouring her behaviour. In Kit’s family history, gradually revealed to her, Vipont shows the chances that were historically denied to women, especially in strict Quaker familes, where music other than hymns was unacceptable. Kit and her peers are not free of these limitations – another childhood friend, Helen, is clever, but has to fight her mother, who wanted only a pretty daughter, to be allowed to study. Kit is influenced by a variety of people, who help her to wake up.
The free friends’ vivid, tomboyish pretending is interesting. It’s a cause of conflict in that Laura doesn’t like how untidy and dirty Kit gets, but there’s the question of Pony wanting to be centre of attention and how something that was a simple, uniting pleasure becomes a cause of tension. We follow Kit from childhood to the end of her school life, and there are burgeoning romances, even if Kit is barely aware of that. Her focus is on deciding, for herself, that she wants to sing, and given how feelingly she performs the folk song that gives this book its title, it is no surprise.
