Has anyone ever read Malory towers?

[Orangejelly1]

I used to love the books as a child! I read them cover to cover so many times and my favourite character was Darrell. I recently found my old collection and re read parts of them just for old times sake and I was actually really disappointed to see, as an adult, how awful some of the popular characters were. I know it was a product of its time and a different era, but Darrell, Alicia and some of the most popular girls would be called nasty bullies nowadays. I also felt so sorry for Gwen, which surprised me because as a child rearing the books she was my least favourite character.

just wondered if anyone else re read the books and thought this too!

Yes and I loved these books as a child- it described a completely different, fascinating world. But a scary one too; I hated the thought of the bullying and being unable to escape to home in the evening.

@MrsFionaCharming Yeah, there's a fine line between Gwen being both a wimp and manipulative and Gwen deserving a bit of sympathy. Blyton redeems her a bit in the end with her father's illness; she grows up a bit. But we all know people who are a bit of a Gwen and while I think times have changed in exactly how we judge her, I won't be defending her unreservedly!

She fakes serious illness to get out of exams, she bullies Mary Lou. She sucks up to Clarissa and because she sees she's rich and then drops her when she thinks she isn't. She has clearly been spoilt and is a bit of a drama queen. Is it her who damages a fountain pen too?

Six Bad Boys was certainly an interesting read. Enid Blyton gives a kitchen sink drama a go. Widowed mum who liked wearing lipstick, has a job (!) and going out at night. Of course her son was destined for the clink. I seem to remember one of the other mums nagged her poor husband out the door.

I remain very annoyed that Darrell became Head Girl. She clearly was not the best candidate, but was inevitably slated for that role from Book 1.

I mean this is real life. Liz Truss clearly wasn't the best candidate for the but was slated for it from weeks ago.

Oh yes. But you might like the BBC TV adaptation. They made it more palatable.

Alicia is a bully, so is Belinda. Darrell has an anger disorder and a violent history. Daphne escaped expulsion for stealing because she saved Mary-Lou (who wouldn't have been in trouble at all if not for her), but Jo got expelled for the same thing a few years later. Darrell and the others have healthy appetites, Gwendoline is a greedy pig.

I didn't particularly care for The Thuggery Affair, but the beginning is a real indication of Lawrie' s future career as an actress. She basically creates the scene play in her head as events are unfolding. As she does in The Marlows and the Traitor, when the children are caught by Foley and she escapes. She is squirreling away all the emotions she's feeling, in order to be able to recreate them in a theatre or film production.

Foley is one of my favourite fictional characters of all time - so clearly a troubled and warped person. I remember how Nicola was distraught when she found that he was a traitor. He is one of AF's most complex characters and wouldn't be out of place in a P D James book.

I also enjoyed The Thursday Kidnapping, the only book she wrote that didn't feature the Marlow's. I believe she wrote it for a competition, and didn't win.

I write fiction, and I would absolutely love to be able to write like AF, but I know it isn't possible. I'm just not as talented unfortunately.

It is her with the fountain pen.

Agree that Gwen does some genuinely nasty stuff. I still have sympathy for her because it feels like everyone - including her father - is mean to her from day 1. The other kids have flaws but still have people like them. Sally actually is not particularly nice to anyone in the first book and still gets a best friend. Daphne and Mavis are both pretty unlikeable but still given more of a chance by the others

Weirdly my favourite characters are Gwen and Alicia - I identify with both of them in different ways. Like Gwen I am not physically intrepid and was teased for it, like Alicia I can sometimes be catty.

This is a sad little piece of fan fiction about what Gwendoline got up to after Malory Towers.

I think some of them are over £100 now. I have the set, bought ex library copies over the years. I liked attic term and loved the one where they did their imaginary story, as I love the Brontes.

Agree. The others are easily forgiven for sins readers are encouraged to see as irredeemable in Gwen, who let's face it, is on the receiving end of bullying from Blyton as much as the less than palatable characters she creates.

Plenty of them behave very poorly, and receive extremely harsh lessons for their transgressions into the bargain (particularly poor old Amanda, Mirabel's equivalent in Malory Towers, who is guilty of nothing more than being too brusque and too proud of her talents).

In the end, their sins are redeemed and they're reassimilated into the Regime's narrow-minded strictures of what means 'good sound women the world can lean on', to quote their sanctimonious Head Mistress.

That Gwen's standards of behaviour are given a free pass in others are confirmed by Blyton's conclusion that she'd 'grumbled, wept and boasted her way through Malory Towers', when in fact she's spent six miserable years being bullied, ridiculed and ostracised.

Plus one bout of measles seems to have cured Alicia of her hideous behaviour toward others - forgiveable presumably because she has a wit and sense of humour Gwen lacks - but in Miss Grayling's assessment 'there is only one real failure, sad failure' in the soon-to-graduate sixth form.

But of course. Gwen.

NB. Catherine of the fifth form is a second Gwen, but is only given one outing in that particular book. The bullying of the poor girl is horrendous: she is only trying to be kind.

Anyone remember Violet? She's in the first book, never says a word and is described as so quiet that the form doesn't usually notice if she's there or not. I kept waiting for the "Violet comes out of her shell" story and it never came, in fact she's never mentioned again after the first book. I think she was so quiet that Blyton forgot she was there too!

I liked the story in St Clare's when Anne-Marie got sick of Miss Quentin or whoever it was being a cow about her poetry, so she submitted a poem by Matthew Arnold and got glorious revenge when the teacher tore strips off it. Never understood why the other girls shunned her after that. She was right! Didn't like them all telling her to stop writing because her poems weren't good either. Surely you're allowed to write shit poems at 15?

Yeah, even as a kid I was uncomfortable with that one. She was obviously lacking in confidence and trying to be nice, and she was right when she stopped them from having huge bitchfests about other kids.

I remember an enjoyable episode (though I can’t remember the names of the characters) in which one of the pupils wrote poetry which was treated very scornfully by one of the teachers.
One day the teacher set the class to write a poem for homework and the pupil poet copied a poem (by I think Matthew Arnold) and passed it off as her own writing.
Of course the teacher absolutely slated it saying how awful and pretentious it was etc., and then the student owned up about the real author.

X post renebums!

We were obviously supposed to see Gwen's father as some virtuous hero, but he chose to marry a witless sap. I always wondered why and as I got older, the only reason I could think of was that she was pretty and he married her for her looks. Nice guy.

Yes.

I never understood the ages in the year groups in St Clare's.
When the twins join they go into the First Form but are said to be 14. Another character (Kathryn I think) is described as being 15. So is First Form for 14 -15 year olds? How old were they by the time they got to 6th form. Mid 20s 😂
It has always annoyed me.

The ages of the children in The Naughtiest Girl also confused me. Elizabeth is meant to be about 10 and there are younger children so I assume the school is a Prep school. So the oldest children would be 12/13 or so? But the illustrations in the books made the oldest kids look like they were much much older.

I loved the Matthew Arnold poetry revenge, it was a poem called 'Despondency' and Anne-Marie submitted it as 'Thoughts'. Miss Willcox tore it to shreds, mocking lines such as 'like stars on life's cold sea'.

I think the girls viewed it as not quite the done thing to set a trap like that for a teacher, and Miss Willcox framed it as 'cheating' because Anne-Marie had submitted it as her own work, although of course her motive wasn't to cheat.

It would have been interesting if Miss Willcox had said instead, 'Anne Marie - this is the first decent poem you've written all year, well done!'

I actually preferred St Clare's, but the structure of the series is very weird - first three books on first form, then second, fourth, fifth - feels like whole chunks missing!

I was always fascinated by the character of Miss Winter. She was Gwen's governess, so should have been surplus to requirements when Gwen went off to Malory Towers, but she carries on living with the Laceys, Is she a sort of companion to Gwen's mother? Is there 'history' between her and Mr Lacey? Does she secretly hate Gwen and her mother? Miss Winter deserves a book of her own.

And I always picture Miss Winter looking like the 70s era Madge Hindle

Is Lotta in the Galliano's Circus books the same person as Carlotta in St Clare's? Galliano's circus does come to town in St Clare's so they are in the same universe. Lotta and Carlotta are both somewhat wild circus girls who love horses.

I like to think they are the same person even though their back stories regarding their parents don't match up. Lotta's parents are both from the circus. Carlotta's mother was from the circus bur her father had a much more conventional background, and he was rich. He tracked her down after her mother ran away with her and then died. I have decided that Carlotta's story is the true one and Lotta's parents in the circus adopted her after her mother died. They hoped to keep it a secret and keep her in the circus but when it came to her father's town, he recognised her and claimed her back, and as she was his daughter there was nothing they could do.

That's what happened.

Yes, definitely, Rene. And I don't buy Carlotta's father 'marrying a circus girl who ran away from him taking the baby' - for sure, she was the result of an affair and he didn't find out Carlotta existed till some way down the line. Perhaps her mum 'hid her' with Lal and Laddo because she didn't want her father to claim her. It might explain why Lotta doesn't call them 'mum' and 'dad'.

An interesting thing about the Galliano books - apparently they derived from an adult novel EB had written, which was rejected. She recycled much of it for the children's novels - and that's why there are relatively few child characters in them.

I would love to read the adult version, but I imagine it was destroyed.