REVIEW: Shirley at Charterton
Apr. 8th, 2023 10:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllShirley at Charterton: Christobel Marlowe, Nelson
This must be quite an early example of girls own – the fictional schoolgirls are daring to dream of becoming aviators or politicians when they grow up, but even at a privileged boarding school their education is a precarious thing. Some are threatened with having to leave when there’s a threat to family finances, another can only hope to go to university on a scholarship, because in both cases, a brother's education is considered more important. It hasn’t calcified into stereotype, but you can see the process happening on the book’s pages.
We meet Shirley Arden at home, Croft Lodge, with her widowed mother and younger sister Jill, anxiously awaiting to hear if she has won a scholarship to Charterton. (Of course, she has, otherwise there wouldn’t be a story.) It’s described as a dream school, located in a wonderful building, with a private swimming pool, Shirley waxes lyrical about having seen it once, its garden a valley landscaped into terraces. But once Shirley arrives, the author does very little with this amazing location.
On the train journey to Charterton, Shirley meets two red-headed twins and two other new girls of her own age. They are accompanied by the school’s strict second mistress, Miss Richardson-Turpin, who is inevitably nicknamed Dick Turpin, and is the main pedagogic nemesis. Bridget and Veronica own the quaint nicknames Bicky and Nicky, but they’re outdone on the name front by the calm and collected Shelmerdine. Angela Brazil would be proud of that one (for all I know, she may even have used it in a book of hers I haven’t read.) A cursory Google search reveals that it’s a surname. By the end of the book, I wondered whether the inspiration for Shelmerdine was Sherlock Holmes (who is referenced in the book) for schoolgirl Shelmerdine turns out to have quite the sense of justice and detective brain.
The other new girl who will also enter the Middle Fifth alongside Shirley is Rhoda Weston, who Shirley doesn’t find as attractive as the twins and Shelmerdine, but who claims friendship with Shirley from the off. Shirley is too soft-hearted to snub her, even though Rhoda starts showing some dishonourable traits, until she really goes too far, and Shirley too has to label her a cad.
Mischievous twins and questions of honour, a head girl Shirley admires tremendously, while our heroine is a scholarship girl - all these are familiar elements in the genre. I didn’t warm to it, but told myself that at least the events were credible. They become less so in the second half, with a dramatic injury and a black cloud hanging over Shirley’s innocent head, which proves who her real friends are.
The characterisations felt consistent, though. But, although Shirley has imposter syndrome, Marlowe doesn’t do all that much with her heroine’s scholarship girl status, other than prove that she is a capable student. There isn’t exactly a plot, some things that I presumed were set-ups in the early chapters don’t develop. It’s more a case of progression: Shirley becomes accustomed to being at Charterton, she and her friends gain their remove from the Middle Fifth to the Upper Fifth at the end of the Christmas term (!) but continue to act like middles, even though they are technically seniors. It’s the interpersonal stuff that maybe provides a throughline to the episodes of school life, with Shelmerdine demonstrating true friendship, Rhoda the opposite, and ‘the clan’ expanding.
The N-word is used once in passing, but it’s Shirley earnestly pressing a swastika on her idol, head girl Margaret, for luck for important examinations that made me shake my head and think, ‘You’ll rue that.’ It dates the book more thoroughly than the gas lights in a relative’s house.
I also took issue with the narrative’s attitude to how schoolgirls get a confession from a classmate who had definitely acted both maliciously and selfishly. I really couldn’t approve of how they coerced her, unlike the adult relatives who later found out about it and seemed to condone the interrogation techniques used.
[Edited for typos and flow 13/4/25.]
This must be quite an early example of girls own – the fictional schoolgirls are daring to dream of becoming aviators or politicians when they grow up, but even at a privileged boarding school their education is a precarious thing. Some are threatened with having to leave when there’s a threat to family finances, another can only hope to go to university on a scholarship, because in both cases, a brother's education is considered more important. It hasn’t calcified into stereotype, but you can see the process happening on the book’s pages.
We meet Shirley Arden at home, Croft Lodge, with her widowed mother and younger sister Jill, anxiously awaiting to hear if she has won a scholarship to Charterton. (Of course, she has, otherwise there wouldn’t be a story.) It’s described as a dream school, located in a wonderful building, with a private swimming pool, Shirley waxes lyrical about having seen it once, its garden a valley landscaped into terraces. But once Shirley arrives, the author does very little with this amazing location.
On the train journey to Charterton, Shirley meets two red-headed twins and two other new girls of her own age. They are accompanied by the school’s strict second mistress, Miss Richardson-Turpin, who is inevitably nicknamed Dick Turpin, and is the main pedagogic nemesis. Bridget and Veronica own the quaint nicknames Bicky and Nicky, but they’re outdone on the name front by the calm and collected Shelmerdine. Angela Brazil would be proud of that one (for all I know, she may even have used it in a book of hers I haven’t read.) A cursory Google search reveals that it’s a surname. By the end of the book, I wondered whether the inspiration for Shelmerdine was Sherlock Holmes (who is referenced in the book) for schoolgirl Shelmerdine turns out to have quite the sense of justice and detective brain.
The other new girl who will also enter the Middle Fifth alongside Shirley is Rhoda Weston, who Shirley doesn’t find as attractive as the twins and Shelmerdine, but who claims friendship with Shirley from the off. Shirley is too soft-hearted to snub her, even though Rhoda starts showing some dishonourable traits, until she really goes too far, and Shirley too has to label her a cad.
Mischievous twins and questions of honour, a head girl Shirley admires tremendously, while our heroine is a scholarship girl - all these are familiar elements in the genre. I didn’t warm to it, but told myself that at least the events were credible. They become less so in the second half, with a dramatic injury and a black cloud hanging over Shirley’s innocent head, which proves who her real friends are.
The characterisations felt consistent, though. But, although Shirley has imposter syndrome, Marlowe doesn’t do all that much with her heroine’s scholarship girl status, other than prove that she is a capable student. There isn’t exactly a plot, some things that I presumed were set-ups in the early chapters don’t develop. It’s more a case of progression: Shirley becomes accustomed to being at Charterton, she and her friends gain their remove from the Middle Fifth to the Upper Fifth at the end of the Christmas term (!) but continue to act like middles, even though they are technically seniors. It’s the interpersonal stuff that maybe provides a throughline to the episodes of school life, with Shelmerdine demonstrating true friendship, Rhoda the opposite, and ‘the clan’ expanding.
The N-word is used once in passing, but it’s Shirley earnestly pressing a swastika on her idol, head girl Margaret, for luck for important examinations that made me shake my head and think, ‘You’ll rue that.’ It dates the book more thoroughly than the gas lights in a relative’s house.
I also took issue with the narrative’s attitude to how schoolgirls get a confession from a classmate who had definitely acted both maliciously and selfishly. I really couldn’t approve of how they coerced her, unlike the adult relatives who later found out about it and seemed to condone the interrogation techniques used.
[Edited for typos and flow 13/4/25.]
no subject
Date: 2023-04-09 03:51 pm (UTC)