REVIEW: 'Guard Your Daughters'
May. 22nd, 2022 03:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllGuard Your Daughters: Diana Tutton (The Reprint Society, 1954)
This post-war book rewards careful reading, and at times made me shout with laughter, at its narrator’s artlessness (and sometimes artfulness), which was welcome. I found the hopeful ending satisfying.
Food rationing is still a reality, there’s a passing mention of the new National Health Service. Our narrator is lively Morgan Harvey, writing about what happened when she was nineteen. She’s the middle daughter of five, and yes, they are aware of which other family that will make you think of, although you can’t draw many parallels. More pertinent I that there’s a touch of ‘I Capture the Castle’ about this book The Harveys are readjusting after the eldest daughter Pandora recently married and moved away to London.
Their names are staggering, Pandora, Thisbe, Morgan, Cressida and, the one with the ordinary(!) name because their father picked it rather than their mother, Teresa. At fifteen, she’s three years younger than Cressida, so all the oldest girls are young women. It quickly becomes apparent that it is not just their names that are extraordinary, and they know it. It’s a fact of their lives that they don’t socialise; Pandora meeting her future husband James is in itself remarkable. Morgan and Cressida, and even the cooler Thisbe, are rather desperate to be in the vicinity of young men, which leads to Morgan having plenty of embarrassing accounts to relate. But it’s as much what the young men and marriage represent – a wider social circle, an escape from their cloistered life that they’re desperate for as sex and romance. It also means that they are sometimes stricken about how to act in the few social situations they do find themselves in.
The ban comes from their mother, whom they adore and who seems to be an invalid, and mostly enforced by their father, who they hero worship. Tom Harvey writes popular murder mysteries that has also got literary respect. But very early on in the book, for all the abundant use of ‘darling’ and Morgan’s expressions of love for everybody, it’s patently clear that the behaviour demanded to show that love isn’t healthy. The older girls are planning rebellions, successful or otherwise, but then going back on them. And those rebellions are things like…going to London, or asking a young man over for a meal.
As a reader, I was most worried about young Teresa, ‘Little T.’ who has had nothing like a secondary education (there used to be a governess) and goes about reading books that are too old for her (I know I always did, but not to this extent) and shirking much of the social activity the others crave. To her, boarding school, Guides, even badly needed French lessons are a terror. I was reminded a bit of anecdotes about introverted children and young people struggling to return to school life these days, but that’s after the events of 2020-22, and what everyone acknowledges were infringements because of the pandemic. Teresa’s living conditions are moulded by something else entirely.
But as it turns out, it’s another daughter who is more badly affected, and who in a way causes the crisis at the end of the book. (This is a tough book to review without giving too much away, and I’ve probably failed at that.) So, for all the laughs and charm, it isn’t an entirely light read. While I, at times, winced in sympathy at the social awkwardness, I also realised some things that passed Morgan by or sooner than she did, especially about Patrick True. But it’s also good on sisterhood – the shifting alliances, the support for each other when they face the world and the clash of personalities in a confined situation. I wasn’t surprised to learn from GoodReads’s blurb that the author was the youngest of four sisters.
On the other hand, I was irritated by Morgan’s complacent belief in the Harveys’ good looks, and not mollified by her admission that her legs were her least attractive feature, although this is nicely undermined as a girl Morgan thinks is ugly seems to attract plenty of male attention. Ultimately, Morgan gains a bit more perspective on cruelty and kindness.
My next post will probably be on The Great British Sewing Bee, but not, alas, on the TV coverage of the French Open.
This post-war book rewards careful reading, and at times made me shout with laughter, at its narrator’s artlessness (and sometimes artfulness), which was welcome. I found the hopeful ending satisfying.
Food rationing is still a reality, there’s a passing mention of the new National Health Service. Our narrator is lively Morgan Harvey, writing about what happened when she was nineteen. She’s the middle daughter of five, and yes, they are aware of which other family that will make you think of, although you can’t draw many parallels. More pertinent I that there’s a touch of ‘I Capture the Castle’ about this book The Harveys are readjusting after the eldest daughter Pandora recently married and moved away to London.
Their names are staggering, Pandora, Thisbe, Morgan, Cressida and, the one with the ordinary(!) name because their father picked it rather than their mother, Teresa. At fifteen, she’s three years younger than Cressida, so all the oldest girls are young women. It quickly becomes apparent that it is not just their names that are extraordinary, and they know it. It’s a fact of their lives that they don’t socialise; Pandora meeting her future husband James is in itself remarkable. Morgan and Cressida, and even the cooler Thisbe, are rather desperate to be in the vicinity of young men, which leads to Morgan having plenty of embarrassing accounts to relate. But it’s as much what the young men and marriage represent – a wider social circle, an escape from their cloistered life that they’re desperate for as sex and romance. It also means that they are sometimes stricken about how to act in the few social situations they do find themselves in.
The ban comes from their mother, whom they adore and who seems to be an invalid, and mostly enforced by their father, who they hero worship. Tom Harvey writes popular murder mysteries that has also got literary respect. But very early on in the book, for all the abundant use of ‘darling’ and Morgan’s expressions of love for everybody, it’s patently clear that the behaviour demanded to show that love isn’t healthy. The older girls are planning rebellions, successful or otherwise, but then going back on them. And those rebellions are things like…going to London, or asking a young man over for a meal.
As a reader, I was most worried about young Teresa, ‘Little T.’ who has had nothing like a secondary education (there used to be a governess) and goes about reading books that are too old for her (I know I always did, but not to this extent) and shirking much of the social activity the others crave. To her, boarding school, Guides, even badly needed French lessons are a terror. I was reminded a bit of anecdotes about introverted children and young people struggling to return to school life these days, but that’s after the events of 2020-22, and what everyone acknowledges were infringements because of the pandemic. Teresa’s living conditions are moulded by something else entirely.
But as it turns out, it’s another daughter who is more badly affected, and who in a way causes the crisis at the end of the book. (This is a tough book to review without giving too much away, and I’ve probably failed at that.) So, for all the laughs and charm, it isn’t an entirely light read. While I, at times, winced in sympathy at the social awkwardness, I also realised some things that passed Morgan by or sooner than she did, especially about Patrick True. But it’s also good on sisterhood – the shifting alliances, the support for each other when they face the world and the clash of personalities in a confined situation. I wasn’t surprised to learn from GoodReads’s blurb that the author was the youngest of four sisters.
On the other hand, I was irritated by Morgan’s complacent belief in the Harveys’ good looks, and not mollified by her admission that her legs were her least attractive feature, although this is nicely undermined as a girl Morgan thinks is ugly seems to attract plenty of male attention. Ultimately, Morgan gains a bit more perspective on cruelty and kindness.
My next post will probably be on The Great British Sewing Bee, but not, alas, on the TV coverage of the French Open.
