REVIEW: Over the Sea to School
Sep. 25th, 2017 08:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllOver the Sea to School: Mabel Esther Allan. Blackie
I didn’t realise that the title was a play on the song ‘Over the Sea to Skye’ until I read the book. Dillian Harvie – the first name is a new one on me and weirder than the book acknowledges – is aged fourteen and well established at her high school, but has had a bad bout of influenza. In their wisdom, her parents decide to send her to a boarding school in Skye, partly for her health, without discussing it with her.
You come to assume that it was because they wanted to shake her out of her set ways and give her the resilience to face and adapt to what life might throw at her. The school, Dundonay House, has ‘progressive’ tendencies, with few rules and the girls run things for themselves, leading on the formulation of their individual timetables. This is all anathema to the order of things at Dillian’s beloved High School.
There is also a family connection to Skye. Dillian’s father’s mother, Marsali MacKellaig, left the island of Skye to work as a maid in Glasgow and married an Englishman. Despite being partly named after her, Dillian considers herself entirely English, and after her uncle lets slip that the remaining MacKellaigs on Skye are crofters i.e. poor, she has no desire to acknowledge the connection, even though there is a cousin about her age, and the MacKellaigs live close to the school.
MAE goes a great job of showing how Dillian’s unhappiness and set thinking patterns make matters worse for her. Determined not to like Skye or Dundonay, used to an orderly existence at a big high school and never having questioned whether that is the best way to run all educational establishments, the democratic nature of her new school, the wildness of the country, and the ‘foreigness’ of a Scotland where people speak in the Gaelic appal her rather than thrill her. These are the things that have thrilled other English girls who have come to the school. But Dillian makes a habit of rushing off and getting into literal scrapes.
At the same time MEA makes it clear what a little idiot Dillian is being. The schoolgirls are nice, from young, confident Emmeline and Beathag, to Dillian’s dorm mates Catriona and Mariot (another unusual name, which is striking because the writer is trying to make a point about English baselines, so, to me, names such as Gillian instead of Dillian and Harriet or something instead of Mariot would have made more sense), Mariot has bags of imagination and sympathy. All the girls at the school delve rather deeper into things than Dillian, who has passively swallowed much and yet radiates a sense of superiority, most of all towards her unacknowledged cousin Morna.
For Morna, the village girl, is a favourite at the school. The headmistress and girls know she is clever and try to help her, but she’s at an age where she must work and that probably means leaving Skye and setting aside dreams of further education. Dillian is a snob about it, and also a liar, because of her determination not to admit the family connection. Dillian’s transformation, then, is only complete when things are made right between her and her cousin.
However, it occurred to me that Dillian never really comes to terms with her lower-class, Scottish grandmother. The woman is dead, but she was a foremother of hers. Perhaps if Morna had been named Marsali (the name is given to a younger sister who is less important in the story), she would have had to address the fact that it was the earlier Marsali marrying ‘up’ (socially, if not geographically) that led to Dillian being born to the wealthier life and the position she believed was more superior – even if her rationale didn’t hold water.
While something drastic needed to happen for Dillian to overcome her ‘worst nature’ according to Morna, and the school is island based, the adventure bits towards the end of the book feel like a bit too much. MEA has her cake (there is gunfire!) and eats it (the girls realise they should have shared their suspicions and the good reasons for them with the school authorities sooner and lived up to their so-called sensible natures.)
On the other hand, the school is attractive and fun. The girls are encouraged to be sensible and to develop as individuals who respect all others, regardless of age or class. MEA had obviously come under the sway of Skye and did her best to cast a spell on her readers. For a few reasons, I was reminded of the early Tirol-set Chalet School books, but this goes one better, by having the girls learn Gaelic and appreciate Gaelic literature (at a time when I imagine it enjoyed lowly status in Scottish education, going by what was happening in Wales and that Welsh has enjoyed more status than Gaelic over the twentieth century). E B-D certainly never gave the girls Welsh lessons when the Chalet School was in Wales, for all that she was big on French and German. I always wondered if they butchered the pronunciation that time they sang ‘O Deued Pob Cristion’. Unfortunately, Dillian never takes an interest in learning the language, so we don’t sit in on a lesson.
For all MEA’s best efforts, it struck me that it was clear the authoress was writing as a non-Gaelic speaker. There were a few situations where it seemed to me that Gaelic speaking characters would have turned to their mother tongue with each other, but they implausibly stick to English because in MEA’s experiences, her very presence would have made them turn to English – the observer effect.
But in the character of Morna, she brings the dilemma facing bright young islanders to vivid life. Without enough work available locally, and certainly work making the most of her abilities, she was facing leaving her community, which was also a Gaelic-speaking community, for the city, where English was spoken, unlikely to return. She might even retrace her great-aunt’s footsteps, to give birth to a branch of the family that counted itself English. It is noted that setting up Dundonay House itself was an opportunity to counter this, giving Highlanders like Catriona and Beathag an opportunity to be educated in Scotland, rather than starting their going away. MEA manages to find a happily after for Morna (and Dillian) that fits the genre.
I didn’t realise that the title was a play on the song ‘Over the Sea to Skye’ until I read the book. Dillian Harvie – the first name is a new one on me and weirder than the book acknowledges – is aged fourteen and well established at her high school, but has had a bad bout of influenza. In their wisdom, her parents decide to send her to a boarding school in Skye, partly for her health, without discussing it with her.
You come to assume that it was because they wanted to shake her out of her set ways and give her the resilience to face and adapt to what life might throw at her. The school, Dundonay House, has ‘progressive’ tendencies, with few rules and the girls run things for themselves, leading on the formulation of their individual timetables. This is all anathema to the order of things at Dillian’s beloved High School.
There is also a family connection to Skye. Dillian’s father’s mother, Marsali MacKellaig, left the island of Skye to work as a maid in Glasgow and married an Englishman. Despite being partly named after her, Dillian considers herself entirely English, and after her uncle lets slip that the remaining MacKellaigs on Skye are crofters i.e. poor, she has no desire to acknowledge the connection, even though there is a cousin about her age, and the MacKellaigs live close to the school.
MAE goes a great job of showing how Dillian’s unhappiness and set thinking patterns make matters worse for her. Determined not to like Skye or Dundonay, used to an orderly existence at a big high school and never having questioned whether that is the best way to run all educational establishments, the democratic nature of her new school, the wildness of the country, and the ‘foreigness’ of a Scotland where people speak in the Gaelic appal her rather than thrill her. These are the things that have thrilled other English girls who have come to the school. But Dillian makes a habit of rushing off and getting into literal scrapes.
At the same time MEA makes it clear what a little idiot Dillian is being. The schoolgirls are nice, from young, confident Emmeline and Beathag, to Dillian’s dorm mates Catriona and Mariot (another unusual name, which is striking because the writer is trying to make a point about English baselines, so, to me, names such as Gillian instead of Dillian and Harriet or something instead of Mariot would have made more sense), Mariot has bags of imagination and sympathy. All the girls at the school delve rather deeper into things than Dillian, who has passively swallowed much and yet radiates a sense of superiority, most of all towards her unacknowledged cousin Morna.
For Morna, the village girl, is a favourite at the school. The headmistress and girls know she is clever and try to help her, but she’s at an age where she must work and that probably means leaving Skye and setting aside dreams of further education. Dillian is a snob about it, and also a liar, because of her determination not to admit the family connection. Dillian’s transformation, then, is only complete when things are made right between her and her cousin.
However, it occurred to me that Dillian never really comes to terms with her lower-class, Scottish grandmother. The woman is dead, but she was a foremother of hers. Perhaps if Morna had been named Marsali (the name is given to a younger sister who is less important in the story), she would have had to address the fact that it was the earlier Marsali marrying ‘up’ (socially, if not geographically) that led to Dillian being born to the wealthier life and the position she believed was more superior – even if her rationale didn’t hold water.
While something drastic needed to happen for Dillian to overcome her ‘worst nature’ according to Morna, and the school is island based, the adventure bits towards the end of the book feel like a bit too much. MEA has her cake (there is gunfire!) and eats it (the girls realise they should have shared their suspicions and the good reasons for them with the school authorities sooner and lived up to their so-called sensible natures.)
On the other hand, the school is attractive and fun. The girls are encouraged to be sensible and to develop as individuals who respect all others, regardless of age or class. MEA had obviously come under the sway of Skye and did her best to cast a spell on her readers. For a few reasons, I was reminded of the early Tirol-set Chalet School books, but this goes one better, by having the girls learn Gaelic and appreciate Gaelic literature (at a time when I imagine it enjoyed lowly status in Scottish education, going by what was happening in Wales and that Welsh has enjoyed more status than Gaelic over the twentieth century). E B-D certainly never gave the girls Welsh lessons when the Chalet School was in Wales, for all that she was big on French and German. I always wondered if they butchered the pronunciation that time they sang ‘O Deued Pob Cristion’. Unfortunately, Dillian never takes an interest in learning the language, so we don’t sit in on a lesson.
For all MEA’s best efforts, it struck me that it was clear the authoress was writing as a non-Gaelic speaker. There were a few situations where it seemed to me that Gaelic speaking characters would have turned to their mother tongue with each other, but they implausibly stick to English because in MEA’s experiences, her very presence would have made them turn to English – the observer effect.
But in the character of Morna, she brings the dilemma facing bright young islanders to vivid life. Without enough work available locally, and certainly work making the most of her abilities, she was facing leaving her community, which was also a Gaelic-speaking community, for the city, where English was spoken, unlikely to return. She might even retrace her great-aunt’s footsteps, to give birth to a branch of the family that counted itself English. It is noted that setting up Dundonay House itself was an opportunity to counter this, giving Highlanders like Catriona and Beathag an opportunity to be educated in Scotland, rather than starting their going away. MEA manages to find a happily after for Morna (and Dillian) that fits the genre.
