REVIEW: Monica Turns up Trumps
Sep. 25th, 2010 09:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllMonica Turns Up Trumps: Elinor M. Brent-Dyer. Lutterworth Press 1944
I read this at the start of the month, but only got around to finishing typing up my review tonight.
This story features a character who is mentioned, at least, in the Chalet School series when she is older, if she doesn’t become a Chalet girl herself. (I’m too lazy to check). At the start of the book, Monica is that typical figure (see Peggy’s Last Term for another example): the spoiled girl who has brains and personality who has got into a great deal of mischief at school. Like several such girls, she loves being a Guide for kicks, while missing the point of Guiding’s chief tenets – although Guides are only raised in passing in this book, where the focus is on school and family life.
After another shocking school report, Monica’s father puts his foot down and insists that she will not be returning to her boarding school, The Gables, but will stay at home instead and attend a local school in their town of Medbury. Miss Cundell’s school is small and select. In the main, the girls are put into sets according to their ability rather than age, and they are expected to work, not rag. Monica goes there both angry and upset. She believes that her father is ruining her life - and as the new school is small, it does not offer the sports and gym in which she wants to make her career. She decides to continue the cheeky behaviour that she indulged in at The Gables with an added contempt for the different way that things are done at her new school, although she never showed such respect for her old school’s way of doing things when she was there. This makes the deeply unpopular with both girls and staff.
‘Monny’s’ older brother, Barney, is still at his boarding school, carving out a sparkling career in the sixth form, although he gets several visits during term time. At home, their aunt runs the home, because their mother is dead, while their doctor father is very busy, but now insisting on bringing more discipline in Monica’s life. In addition to the upheaval of a new school and staying at home, her life is to be further disrupted by the arrival of two girl cousins from Kenya who are to stay with them. Vicky is a little older than Monica and very much used to being the ‘older sister’, while Alixe is younger and much less bossy. Indeed, her comparative weakness brings out Monica’s softer side. Meanwhile, Vicky sees that Monica has been the spoiled darling of the home, and both girls rub each other the wrong way. Neither acts creditably, and they fight. But Monica is starting to learn under the home influences, particularly the surprisingly stern under her gentle exterior Aunt Peggy. However, Vicky has to do something wrong that goes very wrong before both girls can be reconciled, (no snowstorms or near drowning!) and Monica earns what the title says about her.
I liked the probing into motives and influencing factors on the girls. The school is interesting and the character of Peggy is intriguing - initially you think of her as weak, as it is pointed out that she stepped in to help after her sister's death when she was barely an adult, but it is not her doctor brother-in-law who, in the end, has the most to do with the girls and their morals. But she manages them all beautifully.
There was a interesting reference to the freemasonry of headmistresses (was Brent-Dyer speaking from experience or wanting to disabuse naughty schoolgirls of the idea that they could move from good school to good school without authority figures knowing about their bad deeds?)
I read this at the start of the month, but only got around to finishing typing up my review tonight.
This story features a character who is mentioned, at least, in the Chalet School series when she is older, if she doesn’t become a Chalet girl herself. (I’m too lazy to check). At the start of the book, Monica is that typical figure (see Peggy’s Last Term for another example): the spoiled girl who has brains and personality who has got into a great deal of mischief at school. Like several such girls, she loves being a Guide for kicks, while missing the point of Guiding’s chief tenets – although Guides are only raised in passing in this book, where the focus is on school and family life.
After another shocking school report, Monica’s father puts his foot down and insists that she will not be returning to her boarding school, The Gables, but will stay at home instead and attend a local school in their town of Medbury. Miss Cundell’s school is small and select. In the main, the girls are put into sets according to their ability rather than age, and they are expected to work, not rag. Monica goes there both angry and upset. She believes that her father is ruining her life - and as the new school is small, it does not offer the sports and gym in which she wants to make her career. She decides to continue the cheeky behaviour that she indulged in at The Gables with an added contempt for the different way that things are done at her new school, although she never showed such respect for her old school’s way of doing things when she was there. This makes the deeply unpopular with both girls and staff.
‘Monny’s’ older brother, Barney, is still at his boarding school, carving out a sparkling career in the sixth form, although he gets several visits during term time. At home, their aunt runs the home, because their mother is dead, while their doctor father is very busy, but now insisting on bringing more discipline in Monica’s life. In addition to the upheaval of a new school and staying at home, her life is to be further disrupted by the arrival of two girl cousins from Kenya who are to stay with them. Vicky is a little older than Monica and very much used to being the ‘older sister’, while Alixe is younger and much less bossy. Indeed, her comparative weakness brings out Monica’s softer side. Meanwhile, Vicky sees that Monica has been the spoiled darling of the home, and both girls rub each other the wrong way. Neither acts creditably, and they fight. But Monica is starting to learn under the home influences, particularly the surprisingly stern under her gentle exterior Aunt Peggy. However, Vicky has to do something wrong that goes very wrong before both girls can be reconciled, (no snowstorms or near drowning!) and Monica earns what the title says about her.
I liked the probing into motives and influencing factors on the girls. The school is interesting and the character of Peggy is intriguing - initially you think of her as weak, as it is pointed out that she stepped in to help after her sister's death when she was barely an adult, but it is not her doctor brother-in-law who, in the end, has the most to do with the girls and their morals. But she manages them all beautifully.
There was a interesting reference to the freemasonry of headmistresses (was Brent-Dyer speaking from experience or wanting to disabuse naughty schoolgirls of the idea that they could move from good school to good school without authority figures knowing about their bad deeds?)
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Date: 2010-09-26 07:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-02 07:40 am (UTC)Monica is pretty good. I don't know whether it the benefits of being a standalone (not having to worry about updating what's happened to other characters) that freed EBD or that it's about getting sent to a day school and coming under home influence - because usually this type of girl gets reformed in a different boarding school. Certainly the character and influence of Peggy Primrose was interesting.