feather_ghyll (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
feather_ghyll) wrote2013-08-22 05:34 pm
feather_ghyll) wrote2013-08-22 05:34 pm
REVIEW: The Castle School
The Castle School: Nancy M Hayes Cassell 1924
One of the most notable things about this book – which was enjoyable enough – is that the school in question is for both sexes. It wouldn’t be strictly true to say that I can count the mixed boarding school stories that I’ve read on one hand (one of which was Sylvia Little’s Castle School*), but they are rare. Many of them seem to be unorthodox in other ways or to have an outdoorsy ethos, which the Castle School shares. Many of its pupils haven’t been well.
Its arrival at the big house by the castle ruins that will give it its name fill twins Neil and Dinah Morris with dismay. They live nearby and have made a den in those ruins, deserted for as long as they’ve known them. Out of their Castle Nook, they can look out to the sea and build dreams. Learning they will have to give up their ‘ownership’ of this nook dismays them, and being brought up by their lenient mother and having been taught by tutors at home (the latest couple have recently got married and left them) they are self-centred and undisciplined. Deciding to hate the school and filled with wild ideas of making life there too difficult for the school to stay in its new grounds, they make nuisances of themselves – actually, it’s worse than that, as an ill-advised prank hurts one of the pupils.
Worse is to come. Rather predictably, as Dinah was pooh-poohing school in the first chapter, their mother decides to leave the country with some friends ‘for her health’ and to send the twins to the new school in the neighbourhood. Aghast and sullen, they are bundled over there, where they have no intention of keeping to the rules, no self-control and so behave very badly. Several of their stunts injure other school children and put them at serious risk. Although at times they sense that they could almost like the school – or Dinah certainly does – it takes an extraordinary event to change their attitudes and show ‘the terrible twins’ at their best to the rest of the school.
A couple of things that are worth noting is that, as a very young school, its most senior pupils are in the fourth form. There’s a head boy, Brian, who isn’t perfect, but does manage to behave better than Neil, which is why he was given the position. Phyllis is his counterpart and shares a sleeping hut with Dinah. Neil dislikes being ordered about by girl prefects intensely. He also dislikes the fact that his form teacher is a mistress, but Miss Parham, Brian and Phyllis show their worth – Phyllis’s feeling for the school has rooted quickly, she very much likes the idea of building up a new school. We can see why they all deserve respect and the authority that they should have.
The book is about instilling school spirit within the twins, rooting out than selfishness. They learn that by sharing, they have a greater appreciation of what they have. It’s interesting that it’s twins that learn this lesson, although Hayes makes the point that they’re decent enough kids under the previously unchecked bad behaviour.
I almost wished that this was the start of a series.
*I know it was a pseudonym for a male author
One of the most notable things about this book – which was enjoyable enough – is that the school in question is for both sexes. It wouldn’t be strictly true to say that I can count the mixed boarding school stories that I’ve read on one hand (one of which was Sylvia Little’s Castle School*), but they are rare. Many of them seem to be unorthodox in other ways or to have an outdoorsy ethos, which the Castle School shares. Many of its pupils haven’t been well.
Its arrival at the big house by the castle ruins that will give it its name fill twins Neil and Dinah Morris with dismay. They live nearby and have made a den in those ruins, deserted for as long as they’ve known them. Out of their Castle Nook, they can look out to the sea and build dreams. Learning they will have to give up their ‘ownership’ of this nook dismays them, and being brought up by their lenient mother and having been taught by tutors at home (the latest couple have recently got married and left them) they are self-centred and undisciplined. Deciding to hate the school and filled with wild ideas of making life there too difficult for the school to stay in its new grounds, they make nuisances of themselves – actually, it’s worse than that, as an ill-advised prank hurts one of the pupils.
Worse is to come. Rather predictably, as Dinah was pooh-poohing school in the first chapter, their mother decides to leave the country with some friends ‘for her health’ and to send the twins to the new school in the neighbourhood. Aghast and sullen, they are bundled over there, where they have no intention of keeping to the rules, no self-control and so behave very badly. Several of their stunts injure other school children and put them at serious risk. Although at times they sense that they could almost like the school – or Dinah certainly does – it takes an extraordinary event to change their attitudes and show ‘the terrible twins’ at their best to the rest of the school.
A couple of things that are worth noting is that, as a very young school, its most senior pupils are in the fourth form. There’s a head boy, Brian, who isn’t perfect, but does manage to behave better than Neil, which is why he was given the position. Phyllis is his counterpart and shares a sleeping hut with Dinah. Neil dislikes being ordered about by girl prefects intensely. He also dislikes the fact that his form teacher is a mistress, but Miss Parham, Brian and Phyllis show their worth – Phyllis’s feeling for the school has rooted quickly, she very much likes the idea of building up a new school. We can see why they all deserve respect and the authority that they should have.
The book is about instilling school spirit within the twins, rooting out than selfishness. They learn that by sharing, they have a greater appreciation of what they have. It’s interesting that it’s twins that learn this lesson, although Hayes makes the point that they’re decent enough kids under the previously unchecked bad behaviour.
I almost wished that this was the start of a series.
*I know it was a pseudonym for a male author