REVIEW: Audrey's Awakening
Apr. 26th, 2019 01:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllAudrey’s Awakening: E.L. Haverfield Oxford, 1924 reprint.
This is a book with improving quotes at the head of each chapter, and it has much to say to ‘bibliomaniac girls’ who are so involved in their reading that they’re selfishly guarded and reticent with others, but I was quite out of charity with the author on one character. I thought the mother was much more culpable than I was meant to.
Audrey and Lionel Davison never knew their father. They have been brought up in ease at delightful Lingwood House. Aged fifteen and a half, Audrey has been at school (boarding, of course) for one term, but she is coming home for summer holidays where everything will be entirely different. Self-contained and self-reliant, Audrey has never been tested, felt very deeply or known her own character. Her mother and brother barely know it either. But her mother informed Audrey before she left for school that she was to remarry. Audrey has met her new stepfather once, but he and his own son will now be living at Lingwood House. Audrey knew this, but it is only by arriving there and living through it that Audrey realises that her life as she knew it is upended.
Paul Forbes is a little older than her, a lively boy, interested in life, familiar with the idea of sharing, which Audrey and Lionel can’t be said to be. Audrey’s ideas of boys have been entirely based on the volatile Lionel, but Paul’s almost casual acceptance of the situation and his place in the house badly ruffles her, and the way it is assumed that she will be fine with him borrowing her pony when she isn’t leads to problems. Paul is baffled by her, with no idea of the turmoil awakening inside her, but wherever she goes, he is either there or being talked about and praised.
There is good stuff in her, but Haverfield shows all the other stuff – it’s almost funny the contrast between what others make of her: ‘Is she shy? Stolid?’ wonders her new stepfather, ‘She’s always been reserved,’ says her mother, and what is really going on inside. Bookish introverts might sympathise with Audrey’s desire to be left alone to read, but it is extreme and partly because she is unhappy about what is going on. You can't condone her behaviour, but being privy to her interior life, you do sympathise with her.
However, you’d have thought a mother might have tried to enter into her daughter’s confidence, or to have tried to deal with Lionel’s tantrums. Mrs Forbes is praised as gracious, never criticised for having left a gaping hole of guidance in her children’s life, or queried about whether she adequately prepared her children for having a new authority figure and sibling figure. Audrey and Lionel both behave badly, and Paul isn’t perfect. Acts of thoughtlessness by him and Lionel are compounded by Lionel’s mean cowardice and the wronged Audrey’s angry lack of forgiveness, making the latter two glad to return to school.
At school, a new girl has the ability to see that there is something worth cultivating in Audrey. Partly this is because Margot sees the best in everyone. Anyone familiar with the various nicknames accorded to Margots and Margarets will not be surprised by a twist that means both that Margot and Audrey’s nascent friendship is stymied and that Margot has a chance to put things right for the unhappy Davisons. A Christmas holiday ends with a thoroughly awakened Audrey coming to self-knowledge and becoming a much better human being because of it, while Lionel has a chance of doing the same. All this is thanks to Margot, who has more sympathy for others’ point of view than boyish Paul, and was able to do what Mrs Forbes couldn’t.
It holds together, although Audrey is quite an extreme case, and some of the things that happen are melodramatic, while Margot is almost too good to be true. Perhaps one could argue that the well-meaning Forbes are newlyweds and that’s why they assume their children will think and do as they expect, instead of noticing them as an outsider does. I did find it a page-turner. The passage at school is like passages at home or on holiday are in most school stories. But I’m not sure that authorial intent thoroughly carried the day with this book, even if Haverfield was mainly thinking of her readers taking responsibility for their own self-absorption and characters. Although I rank Haverfield as decent, the standard of her books varies. She usually does have an important central friendship.
This is a book with improving quotes at the head of each chapter, and it has much to say to ‘bibliomaniac girls’ who are so involved in their reading that they’re selfishly guarded and reticent with others, but I was quite out of charity with the author on one character. I thought the mother was much more culpable than I was meant to.
Audrey and Lionel Davison never knew their father. They have been brought up in ease at delightful Lingwood House. Aged fifteen and a half, Audrey has been at school (boarding, of course) for one term, but she is coming home for summer holidays where everything will be entirely different. Self-contained and self-reliant, Audrey has never been tested, felt very deeply or known her own character. Her mother and brother barely know it either. But her mother informed Audrey before she left for school that she was to remarry. Audrey has met her new stepfather once, but he and his own son will now be living at Lingwood House. Audrey knew this, but it is only by arriving there and living through it that Audrey realises that her life as she knew it is upended.
Paul Forbes is a little older than her, a lively boy, interested in life, familiar with the idea of sharing, which Audrey and Lionel can’t be said to be. Audrey’s ideas of boys have been entirely based on the volatile Lionel, but Paul’s almost casual acceptance of the situation and his place in the house badly ruffles her, and the way it is assumed that she will be fine with him borrowing her pony when she isn’t leads to problems. Paul is baffled by her, with no idea of the turmoil awakening inside her, but wherever she goes, he is either there or being talked about and praised.
There is good stuff in her, but Haverfield shows all the other stuff – it’s almost funny the contrast between what others make of her: ‘Is she shy? Stolid?’ wonders her new stepfather, ‘She’s always been reserved,’ says her mother, and what is really going on inside. Bookish introverts might sympathise with Audrey’s desire to be left alone to read, but it is extreme and partly because she is unhappy about what is going on. You can't condone her behaviour, but being privy to her interior life, you do sympathise with her.
However, you’d have thought a mother might have tried to enter into her daughter’s confidence, or to have tried to deal with Lionel’s tantrums. Mrs Forbes is praised as gracious, never criticised for having left a gaping hole of guidance in her children’s life, or queried about whether she adequately prepared her children for having a new authority figure and sibling figure. Audrey and Lionel both behave badly, and Paul isn’t perfect. Acts of thoughtlessness by him and Lionel are compounded by Lionel’s mean cowardice and the wronged Audrey’s angry lack of forgiveness, making the latter two glad to return to school.
At school, a new girl has the ability to see that there is something worth cultivating in Audrey. Partly this is because Margot sees the best in everyone. Anyone familiar with the various nicknames accorded to Margots and Margarets will not be surprised by a twist that means both that Margot and Audrey’s nascent friendship is stymied and that Margot has a chance to put things right for the unhappy Davisons. A Christmas holiday ends with a thoroughly awakened Audrey coming to self-knowledge and becoming a much better human being because of it, while Lionel has a chance of doing the same. All this is thanks to Margot, who has more sympathy for others’ point of view than boyish Paul, and was able to do what Mrs Forbes couldn’t.
It holds together, although Audrey is quite an extreme case, and some of the things that happen are melodramatic, while Margot is almost too good to be true. Perhaps one could argue that the well-meaning Forbes are newlyweds and that’s why they assume their children will think and do as they expect, instead of noticing them as an outsider does. I did find it a page-turner. The passage at school is like passages at home or on holiday are in most school stories. But I’m not sure that authorial intent thoroughly carried the day with this book, even if Haverfield was mainly thinking of her readers taking responsibility for their own self-absorption and characters. Although I rank Haverfield as decent, the standard of her books varies. She usually does have an important central friendship.
