REVIEW: A Girl of Mettle
Sep. 16th, 2008 06:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllA Girl of Mettle: Frances West. Collins.
Amazon dates this book at 1908 and 1922 - there's no indication which my copy is, or whether it was published at another time entirely. My research (Googling) doesn't bring up much on Frances West and this book. But I'm assuming that she should not be confused with a mid-nineteenth century namesake and a more recent namesake who writes romance. Still, it's a disappointment to discover that - like Desmond Skirrow who was the first children's book author I looked up online - this Frances West didn't write anything else (okay, Skirrow did write more, but it was for adults), because I enjoyed this.
In one sense it's the oft-told story of a child getting through the barriers of a disapproving relative, with all the symbolism of life and rebirth that that entails, but heroine Gerrie (Geraldine) is older than most of the Heidi types. It's the question of her future after she leaves school that has excercised her godmother and aunt to invite her to stay for a summer, after mostly ignoring Gerrie and her family for most of her life. There's an instant conflict between them, because Miss Lorrimer is old-fashioned with set views on what a lady should and shouldn't do, ie she should stay in the bosom in her family and be a comfort to the male members of said family. She certainly should not be thinking about further training with a view to teaching all sorts of girls in a school, even tradesmen's daughters!, as Gerrie plans to do.
Furthermore, Miss Lorrimer has lived alone with no-one to resist her autocratic tendencies in the Devonshire village of Easton since Gerrie's father left to live his life and create a family. The book is set in a time before cars or telephones, when villages like Easton were pretty isolated -with all that that entails. Gerrie is a town girl. although the town/country clash isn't played up, and Gerrie grows to love the Devonshire countryside that she claims as her own.
Whenever at the turn of the twentieth century that the book is set precisely, Gerrie is the embodiment of the vibrant modern schoolgirl type that is so recognisable in later books. Although we only meet her out of school, and the bulk of the book is over her summer holidays, it's clear that her school life has greatly influenced her - she keeps thinking of how the girls she meets would fit in (or not) at her school, and returning to said school as a teacher is her dearest wish.
At Easton, she meets two girls who are both extreme contrasts to her and each other, which shows off Gerrie and her education's superiority, because these young ladies were educated at home, and are done with that, but Gerrie refuses them as examples for herself. The reader is quicker to see this than the proud, disapproving aunt. Belle is a languid laze, who trades on her good looks, while Gwen is energetic and rude. Neither prove to be ladylike.
Gerrie is one of eight children, six boys and two girls. Her swottishness is balanced by being enough of a tomboy to cope with those six brothers, with whom she gets on well (another contrast with Belle and Gwen who don't get on with or understand their brother).
By spending a summer with her Aunt Sophia, standing up to her when she is being unfair, and generally showing the good of her upbringing, Gerrie's influence is clear when an accident leads to a further invitation being offered to her brother Brian (who is slightly spoiled, but the writer seems to have a blind spot for that, as do all the female characters). He's welcomed warmly, and at the end of the book Aunt Sophia goes to London with the children, with the breach in the family effectively healed.
I was expecting Gerrie to prove her mettle by a Daring Rescue - there's a stream in the village and quite a few scamps among the kids - but she doesn't, and I'd rather a story about the influence of personality and day-to-day behaviour, so I was pleased to be surprised. There is some latent chauvinism in the treatment of Gerrie, though, her brothers mostly work less hard than her, and though they expect her to receive training as well as them, from one hundred years' distance, with my prejudice, I rather thought she'd get more out of an university training than those patronising lazy-bone spongers aka her brothers. I suppose there's an argument to be made too that the pile of virtues that Gerrie has may have something to do with an old-fashioned view of what a heroine should be/the virtues of femininity, although I think that the liveliness of her portrayal undercuts that. Despite some Victorian fustiness, and the author getting in the way of the story, this book has a lot of charm, and I laughed out loud at some of the characters' escapades - particularly the local doctor's two young sons and their games. Fun, then.
Amazon dates this book at 1908 and 1922 - there's no indication which my copy is, or whether it was published at another time entirely. My research (Googling) doesn't bring up much on Frances West and this book. But I'm assuming that she should not be confused with a mid-nineteenth century namesake and a more recent namesake who writes romance. Still, it's a disappointment to discover that - like Desmond Skirrow who was the first children's book author I looked up online - this Frances West didn't write anything else (okay, Skirrow did write more, but it was for adults), because I enjoyed this.
In one sense it's the oft-told story of a child getting through the barriers of a disapproving relative, with all the symbolism of life and rebirth that that entails, but heroine Gerrie (Geraldine) is older than most of the Heidi types. It's the question of her future after she leaves school that has excercised her godmother and aunt to invite her to stay for a summer, after mostly ignoring Gerrie and her family for most of her life. There's an instant conflict between them, because Miss Lorrimer is old-fashioned with set views on what a lady should and shouldn't do, ie she should stay in the bosom in her family and be a comfort to the male members of said family. She certainly should not be thinking about further training with a view to teaching all sorts of girls in a school, even tradesmen's daughters!, as Gerrie plans to do.
Furthermore, Miss Lorrimer has lived alone with no-one to resist her autocratic tendencies in the Devonshire village of Easton since Gerrie's father left to live his life and create a family. The book is set in a time before cars or telephones, when villages like Easton were pretty isolated -with all that that entails. Gerrie is a town girl. although the town/country clash isn't played up, and Gerrie grows to love the Devonshire countryside that she claims as her own.
Whenever at the turn of the twentieth century that the book is set precisely, Gerrie is the embodiment of the vibrant modern schoolgirl type that is so recognisable in later books. Although we only meet her out of school, and the bulk of the book is over her summer holidays, it's clear that her school life has greatly influenced her - she keeps thinking of how the girls she meets would fit in (or not) at her school, and returning to said school as a teacher is her dearest wish.
At Easton, she meets two girls who are both extreme contrasts to her and each other, which shows off Gerrie and her education's superiority, because these young ladies were educated at home, and are done with that, but Gerrie refuses them as examples for herself. The reader is quicker to see this than the proud, disapproving aunt. Belle is a languid laze, who trades on her good looks, while Gwen is energetic and rude. Neither prove to be ladylike.
Gerrie is one of eight children, six boys and two girls. Her swottishness is balanced by being enough of a tomboy to cope with those six brothers, with whom she gets on well (another contrast with Belle and Gwen who don't get on with or understand their brother).
By spending a summer with her Aunt Sophia, standing up to her when she is being unfair, and generally showing the good of her upbringing, Gerrie's influence is clear when an accident leads to a further invitation being offered to her brother Brian (who is slightly spoiled, but the writer seems to have a blind spot for that, as do all the female characters). He's welcomed warmly, and at the end of the book Aunt Sophia goes to London with the children, with the breach in the family effectively healed.
I was expecting Gerrie to prove her mettle by a Daring Rescue - there's a stream in the village and quite a few scamps among the kids - but she doesn't, and I'd rather a story about the influence of personality and day-to-day behaviour, so I was pleased to be surprised. There is some latent chauvinism in the treatment of Gerrie, though, her brothers mostly work less hard than her, and though they expect her to receive training as well as them, from one hundred years' distance, with my prejudice, I rather thought she'd get more out of an university training than those patronising lazy-bone spongers aka her brothers. I suppose there's an argument to be made too that the pile of virtues that Gerrie has may have something to do with an old-fashioned view of what a heroine should be/the virtues of femininity, although I think that the liveliness of her portrayal undercuts that. Despite some Victorian fustiness, and the author getting in the way of the story, this book has a lot of charm, and I laughed out loud at some of the characters' escapades - particularly the local doctor's two young sons and their games. Fun, then.
