REVIEW: A Head Girl's Difficulties
Aug. 30th, 2018 09:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllA Head Girl’s Difficulties: Elinor M. Brent-Dyer Chambers, Reprint 1957
The passenger sitting next to me on a train observed that I was really enjoying this. I suppose I was, but I was a little frustrated with the book overall, because if E B-D had tightened up a few things and relied less on stock plot devices or turns of phrase, this could have been a better, deeper book.
But then, I have an admission to make, I grasped from the references to past events that this was a sequel. What I didn’t remember was that I’d read the prequel, Gerry Goes to School, reviewed here, and I didn’t realise that was E B-D’s first published full-length school story and this was the second.
Set in the early to mid-1920s, it references world war one, which the young people remember. The head girl is Rosamund Atherton, and the book is a tale of her year in that role at St Peter’s school and, through her younger sisters and their friends, what the rest of the school gets up to as well. It is an eventful year. For all their differences, the Athertons are all born leaders.
The opening chapter joins Rosamund on the eve of term starting. She knows she is to be the youngest head girl in St Peter’s history and is ‘funking it’. A talk with her young mother lends her a wider perspective. Because of my amnesia, I was a little surprised that St Peter’s turns out to be a day school, but that means that there’s an ‘at home’ dimension to the story. The Athertons are a slightly complicated family because Mrs Atherton adopted her stepsister, Cesca, who is older than Rosamund, who thinks of her as her sister while knowing she’s not. All told, they are five girls and one boy.
Term starts dramatically with an event that will appear again in E B-D’s oeuvre: the headmistress having an accident and being unable to work. Indeed, Miss Catcheside’s life is in danger, a shadow over the whole term.
This gives idealistic Rosamund the impetus to call on the school to do its best. It is gradually revealed than she and the other prefects are reacting to the last two head girls’ weaknesses. A spirit of slackness has come into the school, and the prefects are determined to check it. Their juniors, who included fourth former Allegra and third former José (Josephine) aka Rose’s youngest sisters, resent this.
The school and surrounding area also faces a diphtheria attack, which not only means the school breaks up early, but that some St Peter’s girls fall ill, some never recovering. I sided with Mrs Atherton exclaiming at her doctor brother’s ‘tough it out’ attitude in response to Rosamund’s expression of distress that girls she knows had lost their life. Different times? But I didn’t see her reaction as proof she was heading for a nervous breakdown or even an over-reaction.
Rosamund is working hard to win a scholarship as well as in her role, which means scotching defiance of authority or signs of sentimentality. Meanwhile, senior mistress Miss Phillips has to step up during a year when it feels as if everything is going wrong without their headmistress. Kipling seems to be the girls’ favourite author, although Jean Webster’s ‘Just Patty’ helps the prefects come up with a solution for a problem girl (with a daft name). Learning that, as I said, this was only E B-D’s second published book, confirmed my feeling that it could have been a more polished affair.
The passenger sitting next to me on a train observed that I was really enjoying this. I suppose I was, but I was a little frustrated with the book overall, because if E B-D had tightened up a few things and relied less on stock plot devices or turns of phrase, this could have been a better, deeper book.
But then, I have an admission to make, I grasped from the references to past events that this was a sequel. What I didn’t remember was that I’d read the prequel, Gerry Goes to School, reviewed here, and I didn’t realise that was E B-D’s first published full-length school story and this was the second.
Set in the early to mid-1920s, it references world war one, which the young people remember. The head girl is Rosamund Atherton, and the book is a tale of her year in that role at St Peter’s school and, through her younger sisters and their friends, what the rest of the school gets up to as well. It is an eventful year. For all their differences, the Athertons are all born leaders.
The opening chapter joins Rosamund on the eve of term starting. She knows she is to be the youngest head girl in St Peter’s history and is ‘funking it’. A talk with her young mother lends her a wider perspective. Because of my amnesia, I was a little surprised that St Peter’s turns out to be a day school, but that means that there’s an ‘at home’ dimension to the story. The Athertons are a slightly complicated family because Mrs Atherton adopted her stepsister, Cesca, who is older than Rosamund, who thinks of her as her sister while knowing she’s not. All told, they are five girls and one boy.
Term starts dramatically with an event that will appear again in E B-D’s oeuvre: the headmistress having an accident and being unable to work. Indeed, Miss Catcheside’s life is in danger, a shadow over the whole term.
This gives idealistic Rosamund the impetus to call on the school to do its best. It is gradually revealed than she and the other prefects are reacting to the last two head girls’ weaknesses. A spirit of slackness has come into the school, and the prefects are determined to check it. Their juniors, who included fourth former Allegra and third former José (Josephine) aka Rose’s youngest sisters, resent this.
The school and surrounding area also faces a diphtheria attack, which not only means the school breaks up early, but that some St Peter’s girls fall ill, some never recovering. I sided with Mrs Atherton exclaiming at her doctor brother’s ‘tough it out’ attitude in response to Rosamund’s expression of distress that girls she knows had lost their life. Different times? But I didn’t see her reaction as proof she was heading for a nervous breakdown or even an over-reaction.
Rosamund is working hard to win a scholarship as well as in her role, which means scotching defiance of authority or signs of sentimentality. Meanwhile, senior mistress Miss Phillips has to step up during a year when it feels as if everything is going wrong without their headmistress. Kipling seems to be the girls’ favourite author, although Jean Webster’s ‘Just Patty’ helps the prefects come up with a solution for a problem girl (with a daft name). Learning that, as I said, this was only E B-D’s second published book, confirmed my feeling that it could have been a more polished affair.
