REVIEW: Barbara at School
Oct. 22nd, 2022 04:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllBarbara at School: Josephine Elder, Blackie
How lovely to be able to sink into a boarding school story where the characters are realistic and their doings are credible. It wasn’t unexpected given that Josephine Elder is the author of this book, but still, I have read many a Girls Own book about a new girl who has grown up with brothers and doesn’t think much of girls, who ends up at a school full of them, homesick and shy, but finds her place as a person of note by the end of the book. This is much better than most of them.
There are some things that seem typical of the author, heroine Barbara Valenntine will eventually develop a friendship with little Judith, who sometimes has a ‘wise-monkey’ look on her face. Their personalities are different, Judith is an ideas person, a sprinter, in mind and body, whereas Barbara is a sturdier, long-distance runner herself and a doer, but they complement each other. Elder shows her usual interest in motivation and developing personalities, and thinking things through. A variety of schoolgirls and their mistresses are depicted and considered.
There were some things that stood out about this book and its setting. It seems to be set ‘before’ the today of its writing and reading, although I doubt Elder thought of a twenty-first reader. Barbara’s school is Prep House at Gray Friar School. Gray Friar School apparently has a great reputation, and is known as ‘Big School’ to the Prep House girls. Prep House seems to be modelled on the preparatory system that I’d associate more with boys’ schools, so girls that in most fictional boarding schools would be called juniors and middles attend what is essentially a satellite school and have very little to do with their elders. Barbara arrives at the age of 11, and we follow her as she progresses through the third and fourth forms.
Unfortunately for her, she’s put into the East Dormitory, whose head is a girl named Belinda, who takes an instant dislike to the new girl. She bestows Barbara with the nickname of ‘Sargeant Buzz-Fuzz’ on account of her short, curly, sticking-out hair. It soon becomes apparent that Belinda is a bully, and Barbara is her first victim, although there are some things she won’t put up with, one of which is when Belinda also tries to bully the smaller Judith. Belinda is fond of having late-night feasts in the dorm, sending someone out to the landing to watch, and sometimes forgetting about them.
I couldn’t help wondering what the mistresses were playing at, not noticing that the girls weren’t getting enough sleep and that such bullying was going on. The first part of the book is entitled ‘Nightmare’ (!) after all.
But Elder cleverly addresses this. Belinda wanes in power, partly through Judith’s help in getting the house to see Barbara’s real strengths of character and Belinda’s deficiencies through a clever play for an 11 year old author. A new mistress comes to take charge of their form, Miss Trinder, an invalid who tends to see the worst in girls. Belinda’s legacy to Barbara was to give her a reputation for mischief, and certainly where Miss Trinder is concerned, Barbara tends to live down to it.
But Elder is subtler about the familiar battle between the girl with a bad reputation and the bad mistress. Barbara could be described as a madcap or a hooligan with justice by this stage, even if she is also unfairly castigated. But Elder also shows us how the other mistresses at the Prep House, from its housemistress Miss Price, to the dry Miss Dryden, to inattentive Mademoiselle, are human. But you don’t wonder why they became schoolteachers as you do with Miss Trinder!
When Barbara and Judith get into the fourth, Miss Price decides it is time to take her charges in hand, bringing in a new mistress who will institute organised games, previously thought unsuitable due to rather old-fashioned notions, when it is clear that the girls are bursting with energy that needs directing. Miss Price asks them to consider the honour of the house, which has acquired a poor reputation in the Big School and beyond. She even appoints prefects and makes the girls take responsibility for themselves and their behaviour. The decent material in Barbara and Judith, which has increasingly made them leaders or people who get things done, respond. They are rewarded, ultimately, and by the end of the summer term, the girls of the Big School may even welcome Prep House girls joining their ranks.
I have to note that right towards the end, Elder treats us and her heroine, as a reward for her virtuous endeavours, with a peach of a ‘siege’ cum pillow fight, which isn’t often to be found in fictional girls’ boarding schools, whatever people who’ve never read them think.
Perhaps it starts slowly, but the book increased its hold on me as the characters of the girls mature and develop in good ways. Judith’s precociousness is balanced by Barbara’s slower maturation, and by showing that mistreses are fallible and even human beings (a novel concept for Barbara to grapple with) is thoughtful.
How lovely to be able to sink into a boarding school story where the characters are realistic and their doings are credible. It wasn’t unexpected given that Josephine Elder is the author of this book, but still, I have read many a Girls Own book about a new girl who has grown up with brothers and doesn’t think much of girls, who ends up at a school full of them, homesick and shy, but finds her place as a person of note by the end of the book. This is much better than most of them.
There are some things that seem typical of the author, heroine Barbara Valenntine will eventually develop a friendship with little Judith, who sometimes has a ‘wise-monkey’ look on her face. Their personalities are different, Judith is an ideas person, a sprinter, in mind and body, whereas Barbara is a sturdier, long-distance runner herself and a doer, but they complement each other. Elder shows her usual interest in motivation and developing personalities, and thinking things through. A variety of schoolgirls and their mistresses are depicted and considered.
There were some things that stood out about this book and its setting. It seems to be set ‘before’ the today of its writing and reading, although I doubt Elder thought of a twenty-first reader. Barbara’s school is Prep House at Gray Friar School. Gray Friar School apparently has a great reputation, and is known as ‘Big School’ to the Prep House girls. Prep House seems to be modelled on the preparatory system that I’d associate more with boys’ schools, so girls that in most fictional boarding schools would be called juniors and middles attend what is essentially a satellite school and have very little to do with their elders. Barbara arrives at the age of 11, and we follow her as she progresses through the third and fourth forms.
Unfortunately for her, she’s put into the East Dormitory, whose head is a girl named Belinda, who takes an instant dislike to the new girl. She bestows Barbara with the nickname of ‘Sargeant Buzz-Fuzz’ on account of her short, curly, sticking-out hair. It soon becomes apparent that Belinda is a bully, and Barbara is her first victim, although there are some things she won’t put up with, one of which is when Belinda also tries to bully the smaller Judith. Belinda is fond of having late-night feasts in the dorm, sending someone out to the landing to watch, and sometimes forgetting about them.
I couldn’t help wondering what the mistresses were playing at, not noticing that the girls weren’t getting enough sleep and that such bullying was going on. The first part of the book is entitled ‘Nightmare’ (!) after all.
But Elder cleverly addresses this. Belinda wanes in power, partly through Judith’s help in getting the house to see Barbara’s real strengths of character and Belinda’s deficiencies through a clever play for an 11 year old author. A new mistress comes to take charge of their form, Miss Trinder, an invalid who tends to see the worst in girls. Belinda’s legacy to Barbara was to give her a reputation for mischief, and certainly where Miss Trinder is concerned, Barbara tends to live down to it.
But Elder is subtler about the familiar battle between the girl with a bad reputation and the bad mistress. Barbara could be described as a madcap or a hooligan with justice by this stage, even if she is also unfairly castigated. But Elder also shows us how the other mistresses at the Prep House, from its housemistress Miss Price, to the dry Miss Dryden, to inattentive Mademoiselle, are human. But you don’t wonder why they became schoolteachers as you do with Miss Trinder!
When Barbara and Judith get into the fourth, Miss Price decides it is time to take her charges in hand, bringing in a new mistress who will institute organised games, previously thought unsuitable due to rather old-fashioned notions, when it is clear that the girls are bursting with energy that needs directing. Miss Price asks them to consider the honour of the house, which has acquired a poor reputation in the Big School and beyond. She even appoints prefects and makes the girls take responsibility for themselves and their behaviour. The decent material in Barbara and Judith, which has increasingly made them leaders or people who get things done, respond. They are rewarded, ultimately, and by the end of the summer term, the girls of the Big School may even welcome Prep House girls joining their ranks.
I have to note that right towards the end, Elder treats us and her heroine, as a reward for her virtuous endeavours, with a peach of a ‘siege’ cum pillow fight, which isn’t often to be found in fictional girls’ boarding schools, whatever people who’ve never read them think.
Perhaps it starts slowly, but the book increased its hold on me as the characters of the girls mature and develop in good ways. Judith’s precociousness is balanced by Barbara’s slower maturation, and by showing that mistreses are fallible and even human beings (a novel concept for Barbara to grapple with) is thoughtful.
no subject
Date: 2022-10-23 12:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-10-29 12:41 pm (UTC)I always remember the teacher who had a TB hut in the grounds. I think it's the same book?
Presumably. I don't think it's explicitly stated that the arrangement is for TB.
I'm surprised she was allowed to teach.
Was that because of the illness or the unsuitednes for teaching?
no subject
Date: 2022-10-29 01:04 pm (UTC)