REREAD: Princess Anne
Feb. 14th, 2012 06:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllPrincess Anne: Katherine L. Oldmeadow. The Chirldren's Press (this edition published some time before Oct 1961, and wonderously, the previous owner's name was...Anne.
I finished reading this book this morning as I couldn't sleep, so that may influence what I type next.
I'm gradually rereading all my Oldmeadows and hoping I'll come across new-to-me copies of her books soon because of it. (Since reviewing Princess Charming, I reread Princess Prunella, and never got around to reviewing it.) Princess Anne never left that much of an impression on me, and I vaguely wondered if it was because I got Princess Charming and other books first. Having reread it, I think it's caused by more than that.
Princess Anne clearly amused the writer as she wrote it, but it's less rooted in reality, in many ways, than Princess Charming and the rest. It's a story of two halves, with an episode at the end that ties them together. We open with a newly orphaned Anne Golden, who lives up to the name in appearance, and, more importantly at heart, having left the Dartmoor moors for Manchester to stay with her aunt Alice. Said aunt is a penny-pinching, selfish moaner who cares more for her dog than people. Heart-sore Anne becomes something of a drudge, helping out and getting little praise for impetuous gifts and acts of kindness from her aunt. She makes friends with three children staying next door over Christmas - Wiston and co., three boisterous, happy children whose lives are a total contrast to hers - but this gets her into an accident. She has made other friends among the lodgers staying at her aunt's house and they arrange for her to have a year's schooling at a boarding school on the Yorkshire moors.
Said school is Graywalls - I remembered this as a Lowoodesque institution, which isn't quite fair, but one can't argue with Anne's description of it as a queer school. It is run by the Misses Plant, the younger sisters of the founder, very cheaply, to train poorer girls by having them undertake most of the domestic duties and, in some cases, teach each other the extras. No attention is paid to the tone of the school, and discipline is very slack in some ways. Anne gains the nickname Princess Nobody because of her fairy tale princess looks and her poor background. She's also not that popular, because she tends to make the best of things, which doesn't fit in with the juniors' plans. She won't sneak, she takes the punishments meted out to her and she thinks of others in a way the other girls mostly don't - certainly not the remarkable Juanita MacDonald, a fantastic fabulist who 'adopts' Anne and then promptly takes advantage of her.
You can't escape the fairy tale parallels - indeed, Oldmeadow makes a point of them. Anne's 'fairy godmothers and fathers' (although the phrase isn’t used as it is in Princess Charming) turn out to be the Wistons, who, by chance, can give her a much better Christmas a year after they met her. The opening half strongly reminded me of a Frances Hodgson Burnett type of book. (Princess Anne was first published around the time of FHB's death, as it turns out), and although it moves to a boarding school, it's an unusual one. The juniors are, well, the juniors you'd meet in most stories, only a little more liable to copy each other's work and bicker, and yet the set-up is exaggerated, with the various Misses Plants' failings highlighted. The girls claim their mother is a witch. Anne is a little too good to be true (there's a good Anne and a bad Anne at war inside, but she mostly remembers the strictures of her beloved father and lives by them.) Although the instances of her talking to herself when times are hard are quite touching, Oldmeadow is too fond of pointing out how her heroine suffers from worse in silence than the OTT Juanita, whose catchphrase is the exclamation Ay de mi.
The charm that Oldmeadow normally conjures up for me wasn't quite there with this book, I'm sorry to say, not when I first read it aged around the same age as Anne and not now.
I finished reading this book this morning as I couldn't sleep, so that may influence what I type next.
I'm gradually rereading all my Oldmeadows and hoping I'll come across new-to-me copies of her books soon because of it. (Since reviewing Princess Charming, I reread Princess Prunella, and never got around to reviewing it.) Princess Anne never left that much of an impression on me, and I vaguely wondered if it was because I got Princess Charming and other books first. Having reread it, I think it's caused by more than that.
Princess Anne clearly amused the writer as she wrote it, but it's less rooted in reality, in many ways, than Princess Charming and the rest. It's a story of two halves, with an episode at the end that ties them together. We open with a newly orphaned Anne Golden, who lives up to the name in appearance, and, more importantly at heart, having left the Dartmoor moors for Manchester to stay with her aunt Alice. Said aunt is a penny-pinching, selfish moaner who cares more for her dog than people. Heart-sore Anne becomes something of a drudge, helping out and getting little praise for impetuous gifts and acts of kindness from her aunt. She makes friends with three children staying next door over Christmas - Wiston and co., three boisterous, happy children whose lives are a total contrast to hers - but this gets her into an accident. She has made other friends among the lodgers staying at her aunt's house and they arrange for her to have a year's schooling at a boarding school on the Yorkshire moors.
Said school is Graywalls - I remembered this as a Lowoodesque institution, which isn't quite fair, but one can't argue with Anne's description of it as a queer school. It is run by the Misses Plant, the younger sisters of the founder, very cheaply, to train poorer girls by having them undertake most of the domestic duties and, in some cases, teach each other the extras. No attention is paid to the tone of the school, and discipline is very slack in some ways. Anne gains the nickname Princess Nobody because of her fairy tale princess looks and her poor background. She's also not that popular, because she tends to make the best of things, which doesn't fit in with the juniors' plans. She won't sneak, she takes the punishments meted out to her and she thinks of others in a way the other girls mostly don't - certainly not the remarkable Juanita MacDonald, a fantastic fabulist who 'adopts' Anne and then promptly takes advantage of her.
You can't escape the fairy tale parallels - indeed, Oldmeadow makes a point of them. Anne's 'fairy godmothers and fathers' (although the phrase isn’t used as it is in Princess Charming) turn out to be the Wistons, who, by chance, can give her a much better Christmas a year after they met her. The opening half strongly reminded me of a Frances Hodgson Burnett type of book. (Princess Anne was first published around the time of FHB's death, as it turns out), and although it moves to a boarding school, it's an unusual one. The juniors are, well, the juniors you'd meet in most stories, only a little more liable to copy each other's work and bicker, and yet the set-up is exaggerated, with the various Misses Plants' failings highlighted. The girls claim their mother is a witch. Anne is a little too good to be true (there's a good Anne and a bad Anne at war inside, but she mostly remembers the strictures of her beloved father and lives by them.) Although the instances of her talking to herself when times are hard are quite touching, Oldmeadow is too fond of pointing out how her heroine suffers from worse in silence than the OTT Juanita, whose catchphrase is the exclamation Ay de mi.
The charm that Oldmeadow normally conjures up for me wasn't quite there with this book, I'm sorry to say, not when I first read it aged around the same age as Anne and not now.
