OVERVIEW: Two Foundlings
Mar. 10th, 2013 07:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllI happened to read two books about two foundlings recently: Blue of the Sea by L. T. Meade and The Star of Kazan by Eva Ibbotson. The former is an example of a potentially good story, failed by a lack of care and, to a modern day reader, rampant and unsustained snobbishness. The latter I can recommend if you want to curl up to a satisfying read.
Both are set in around the same period, but in different locations Devonshire and Yorkshire for one and Vienna and Germany for the other. Meade was writing much closer to the time in question than Ibbotson, of course. There's an element of fairy tale to both stories as the question of the parentage of the two foundlings is a mystery resolved in typically contrasting ways. Meade's heroine is rescued from a ship that drowned in the cruel sea* by a brave man who gives her over to the care of a kind farmer's wife and, after stating that she's of noble birth and a great heiress, dies. Ibbotson's heroine is left at an Alpine church a few days after her birth and is found by a cook who has come to the mountains for a day trip with her best friend. They name the baby Annika, after Ellie-the-cook's mother; circumstances force them and their bosses to keep the baby for long enough for her to become a part of their lives they have no desire to give up. She is taught to work hard and shows a flair for cooking.
Meanwhile, despite the fact that their charge was clothed in an outfit initialled L.F.F. (and if that fact had been shared with the local squire who made inquiries about the child's parentage, the story wouldn't have gone the way it did), Farmer Barfoot and his wife name her Oceana and bring her up with their own children as well as they can. But she is not like them in appearance or in her personality. And the time will have to come when Mary must tell the girl she loves more than her own children (!) the truth.
At around the same age - 12/13, our heroines' lives are transformed. The squire's cousin Lady Margaret Manners offers to pay for a proper education for Oceana, while Annika's mother, Edeltraut von Tannenberg, finally comes for her as she has in all her dreams. She is a German aristocrat and - doing something Annika hadn't actually dreamed about - succeeds in taking her away from Vienna and the people and life she loves. Annika is devoted to her mother and so must try to behave like a 'von', which means not being helpful or practical and is a rather joyless experience.
Oceana's education is glossed over, the story being more about her involvement with her mysterious benefactress's family, and how she takes to becoming an 'eddicated' lady - her natural state. Although she criticises some of the behaviour she sees among the upper classes, declaring they need to be shaken up and to really live, Meade doesn't really follow through on this strand. Oceana comes by 'her rightful place' in a convoluted manner. Ibbotson, however, does satirise the growing German imperialism and the belief of the upper classes that they were the betters of the people who kept them fed, warmed and clean.
One foundling learns the true facts of her birth; the other doesn't, but is happier with her 'found family'. One never comes into her fortune directly, but marries into it (which might have seemed romantic and even a way to teach a moral lesson to Meade, but I thought it short-changed the hero's development). The other gains and keeps a fortune through friendship, which we know she will share in friendship, and the romance hinted at in Ibbotson's book, a book for children rather than 'girls', is, like everything else, a far more satisfactory story.
*Referred to as such in Blue of the Sea or even 'the cruel, cruel sea'.
Both are set in around the same period, but in different locations Devonshire and Yorkshire for one and Vienna and Germany for the other. Meade was writing much closer to the time in question than Ibbotson, of course. There's an element of fairy tale to both stories as the question of the parentage of the two foundlings is a mystery resolved in typically contrasting ways. Meade's heroine is rescued from a ship that drowned in the cruel sea* by a brave man who gives her over to the care of a kind farmer's wife and, after stating that she's of noble birth and a great heiress, dies. Ibbotson's heroine is left at an Alpine church a few days after her birth and is found by a cook who has come to the mountains for a day trip with her best friend. They name the baby Annika, after Ellie-the-cook's mother; circumstances force them and their bosses to keep the baby for long enough for her to become a part of their lives they have no desire to give up. She is taught to work hard and shows a flair for cooking.
Meanwhile, despite the fact that their charge was clothed in an outfit initialled L.F.F. (and if that fact had been shared with the local squire who made inquiries about the child's parentage, the story wouldn't have gone the way it did), Farmer Barfoot and his wife name her Oceana and bring her up with their own children as well as they can. But she is not like them in appearance or in her personality. And the time will have to come when Mary must tell the girl she loves more than her own children (!) the truth.
At around the same age - 12/13, our heroines' lives are transformed. The squire's cousin Lady Margaret Manners offers to pay for a proper education for Oceana, while Annika's mother, Edeltraut von Tannenberg, finally comes for her as she has in all her dreams. She is a German aristocrat and - doing something Annika hadn't actually dreamed about - succeeds in taking her away from Vienna and the people and life she loves. Annika is devoted to her mother and so must try to behave like a 'von', which means not being helpful or practical and is a rather joyless experience.
Oceana's education is glossed over, the story being more about her involvement with her mysterious benefactress's family, and how she takes to becoming an 'eddicated' lady - her natural state. Although she criticises some of the behaviour she sees among the upper classes, declaring they need to be shaken up and to really live, Meade doesn't really follow through on this strand. Oceana comes by 'her rightful place' in a convoluted manner. Ibbotson, however, does satirise the growing German imperialism and the belief of the upper classes that they were the betters of the people who kept them fed, warmed and clean.
One foundling learns the true facts of her birth; the other doesn't, but is happier with her 'found family'. One never comes into her fortune directly, but marries into it (which might have seemed romantic and even a way to teach a moral lesson to Meade, but I thought it short-changed the hero's development). The other gains and keeps a fortune through friendship, which we know she will share in friendship, and the romance hinted at in Ibbotson's book, a book for children rather than 'girls', is, like everything else, a far more satisfactory story.
*Referred to as such in Blue of the Sea or even 'the cruel, cruel sea'.
