REVIEW: About Peggy Saville
Dec. 11th, 2022 02:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllThis was meant to be an overview, but has stubbornly insisted on being a truncated vewiew.
About Peggy Saville: Mrs George De Horne Vaizey, The Religious Tract Society, inscribed 1923, but it’s the fourteenth impression and Googling suggests it was first published in 1900.
I didn’t get on with this, largely because I wasn’t quite as charmed by Peggy Saville as the authoress intended me to be. In fact, for the first few chapters, I rather wished that future schoolmarm Esther were the heroine, even if Peggy is one of those characters things happen to and who gets things done.
As a result, I had less patience with some irritating aspects of the writing – how the author inserts herself in the narration, the fact that it’s meant to be an improving book but doesn’t have much true spirituality. In fact, the moralistic aspect (where Vanity and Pride must be punished) makes the plot creak, when until then everything that happened was believable. I’ve read books by this author before, as you can see from the tag below, including a couple of the Pixie O’Shaughnessy books, and I was better pleased with them.
This has an interesting set-up, though. Mr Asplin is a vicar who has discovered he has a genius for tutoring, and when the mother of his first pupil, Arthur, turns to him and his wife, asking them to take care of and educate her fourteen-year-old Peggy while she rejoins her husband in India, they agree. Peggy is aged between their two daughters, Esther and Mellicent (sic). The household also includes their son Max, Oswald, a local squire’s son, and the determined Robert Darcy (do you see what the authoress did with the surname there?) Peggy and Rob strike up a ‘partnership’ and you can see romance coming in a sequel there.
Peggy is not at all what the young people were expecting, and it turns out her Christian name really is Mariquita (sic)! She loves long words, is artistic, careless but neat, and a touch delicate. She became more sympathetic when Rosalind, Robert’s very beautiful sister, came on the scene and threatened Peggy’s Queen Bee status which also highlighted how Peggy’s own people were far away – her big brother is training to be a soldier
The book is of its time. Colonialism, imperialism and militarism are unquestioned, and it’s full of period typical racism (Indians, the Irish, black people, basically anyone who isn’t English should know their inferior place). There’s a bit more chafing at prejudices about what girls are capable of, but only a bit, they’re generally depicted as delicate and in need of protection.
About Peggy Saville: Mrs George De Horne Vaizey, The Religious Tract Society, inscribed 1923, but it’s the fourteenth impression and Googling suggests it was first published in 1900.
I didn’t get on with this, largely because I wasn’t quite as charmed by Peggy Saville as the authoress intended me to be. In fact, for the first few chapters, I rather wished that future schoolmarm Esther were the heroine, even if Peggy is one of those characters things happen to and who gets things done.
As a result, I had less patience with some irritating aspects of the writing – how the author inserts herself in the narration, the fact that it’s meant to be an improving book but doesn’t have much true spirituality. In fact, the moralistic aspect (where Vanity and Pride must be punished) makes the plot creak, when until then everything that happened was believable. I’ve read books by this author before, as you can see from the tag below, including a couple of the Pixie O’Shaughnessy books, and I was better pleased with them.
This has an interesting set-up, though. Mr Asplin is a vicar who has discovered he has a genius for tutoring, and when the mother of his first pupil, Arthur, turns to him and his wife, asking them to take care of and educate her fourteen-year-old Peggy while she rejoins her husband in India, they agree. Peggy is aged between their two daughters, Esther and Mellicent (sic). The household also includes their son Max, Oswald, a local squire’s son, and the determined Robert Darcy (do you see what the authoress did with the surname there?) Peggy and Rob strike up a ‘partnership’ and you can see romance coming in a sequel there.
Peggy is not at all what the young people were expecting, and it turns out her Christian name really is Mariquita (sic)! She loves long words, is artistic, careless but neat, and a touch delicate. She became more sympathetic when Rosalind, Robert’s very beautiful sister, came on the scene and threatened Peggy’s Queen Bee status which also highlighted how Peggy’s own people were far away – her big brother is training to be a soldier
The book is of its time. Colonialism, imperialism and militarism are unquestioned, and it’s full of period typical racism (Indians, the Irish, black people, basically anyone who isn’t English should know their inferior place). There’s a bit more chafing at prejudices about what girls are capable of, but only a bit, they’re generally depicted as delicate and in need of protection.
