REVIEW: Elizabeth at Grayling Court
Apr. 13th, 2012 09:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllElizabeth at Grayling Court: Margaret W. Griffiths. Warne, 1947
When you start reading a book with the above title and the first thing that happens is a discussion about whether a girl named Diana is to go to school, you’re entitled to some shock. Even to double check the cover and flick through the pages. Diana is seventeen and has never been to school before due to an accident that made her an invalid for several years until she was cured, leaving her slightly delicate and shy of girls her own age.
Of course, she wins the argument and it’s arranged that she’ll spend a year at school.
On her first day at Grayling Court, she meets two new girls, who will become fast friends with her – one of those ‘ill-assorted’ trios who balance each other out – also seniors, although younger than Diana. One is Jane – who answers to Copsy (from her copper-coloured hair) and the other is the titular Elizabeth. What’s remarkable about Elizabeth – the Remarkable New Girl - and the most striking feature about this book, which features staples of the boarding school genre, is that she’s a Native American. She faces some prejudice, although mainly the enmity she faces as time goes on is jealousy of the standing she gains at the school.
Diana takes to her immediately and, despite her reserve and self-control, Elizabeth opens up to her and tells her that she’s an orphan and her (rich) grandfather wanted her to spend some time in an English school. (I never really understood why.) The headmistress is to act as her guardian and it’s Elizabeth’s wish to train to be a medical missionary (there’s talk of morality and doing the right thing, but not explicity in a spiritual/Christian context. One of the girls at the school, Sandra, is the daughter of the Vicar where Diana comes from, but that’s almost coincidental.)
Elizabeth is clever, good at games, capable of great derring-do – so is Copsy, but Elizabeth has more common sense – but the question of her standing in the school is a key one. Two girls, at various times, take against her and Elizabeth is unfairly believed by the school at large to be a thief because of one of them starting rumours. It doesn't help because she almost inevitably takes it on herself to search for the money that the previous owner of Grayling Court wished to leave to his widowed daughter but instead of leaving it in the safe, he had to go and hide it in a secret spot in the house and leave a cryptic clue, didn’t he? All’s well that ends well – we are told in a coda that Elizabeth attained head girldom, but the main focus is on Diana’s year at school, which improves her health, gives her Elizabeth and Copsy true friendship and, in a small way, reforms the two girls who did the most against ‘devastatingly perfect’ Elizabeth (as a pithy teacher calls her.
Apart fom Elizabeth’s ethnicity, the story is fairly standard – pranks go wrong, there's a fire and a brave rescue, schoolgirl honour and the three friends have an adventure because of Copsy’s impetuosity while staying up on one of the Scottish isles with Diana’s parents. The author has a mildly annoying tendency to drop in a few ‘little did she knows’, which are unnecessary, because any reader of school stories could guess what’s likely to happen next. There’s also a strange formality to some of the dialogue. Apparently there’s a prequel about Elizabeth’s life in Canada, which I’ll be happy to read if it comes my way.
When you start reading a book with the above title and the first thing that happens is a discussion about whether a girl named Diana is to go to school, you’re entitled to some shock. Even to double check the cover and flick through the pages. Diana is seventeen and has never been to school before due to an accident that made her an invalid for several years until she was cured, leaving her slightly delicate and shy of girls her own age.
Of course, she wins the argument and it’s arranged that she’ll spend a year at school.
On her first day at Grayling Court, she meets two new girls, who will become fast friends with her – one of those ‘ill-assorted’ trios who balance each other out – also seniors, although younger than Diana. One is Jane – who answers to Copsy (from her copper-coloured hair) and the other is the titular Elizabeth. What’s remarkable about Elizabeth – the Remarkable New Girl - and the most striking feature about this book, which features staples of the boarding school genre, is that she’s a Native American. She faces some prejudice, although mainly the enmity she faces as time goes on is jealousy of the standing she gains at the school.
Diana takes to her immediately and, despite her reserve and self-control, Elizabeth opens up to her and tells her that she’s an orphan and her (rich) grandfather wanted her to spend some time in an English school. (I never really understood why.) The headmistress is to act as her guardian and it’s Elizabeth’s wish to train to be a medical missionary (there’s talk of morality and doing the right thing, but not explicity in a spiritual/Christian context. One of the girls at the school, Sandra, is the daughter of the Vicar where Diana comes from, but that’s almost coincidental.)
Elizabeth is clever, good at games, capable of great derring-do – so is Copsy, but Elizabeth has more common sense – but the question of her standing in the school is a key one. Two girls, at various times, take against her and Elizabeth is unfairly believed by the school at large to be a thief because of one of them starting rumours. It doesn't help because she almost inevitably takes it on herself to search for the money that the previous owner of Grayling Court wished to leave to his widowed daughter but instead of leaving it in the safe, he had to go and hide it in a secret spot in the house and leave a cryptic clue, didn’t he? All’s well that ends well – we are told in a coda that Elizabeth attained head girldom, but the main focus is on Diana’s year at school, which improves her health, gives her Elizabeth and Copsy true friendship and, in a small way, reforms the two girls who did the most against ‘devastatingly perfect’ Elizabeth (as a pithy teacher calls her.
Apart fom Elizabeth’s ethnicity, the story is fairly standard – pranks go wrong, there's a fire and a brave rescue, schoolgirl honour and the three friends have an adventure because of Copsy’s impetuosity while staying up on one of the Scottish isles with Diana’s parents. The author has a mildly annoying tendency to drop in a few ‘little did she knows’, which are unnecessary, because any reader of school stories could guess what’s likely to happen next. There’s also a strange formality to some of the dialogue. Apparently there’s a prequel about Elizabeth’s life in Canada, which I’ll be happy to read if it comes my way.
