"Delicately balanced on a razor edge of mutual toleration": Rowan Marlow, Saint or ?

[CreativeGreen]

Apologies if the quotation isn't quite right there: no Forests to hand.

Inspired by a post on another thread, I need to talk about the Marlows. Is Rowan spectacularly awful, and Lois an Unsangered heroine? Is Giles ghastly? (I think yes). What's your Marlow Family Liking List?

(I will be posting and running for now but I have many thoughts and wanted to start the thread while I remembered to)

But in Autumn Term, Lawrie is every bit as naively determined to excel at Guides, netball and schoolwork as Nicola, so they can catch up with their sisters — even more than N, as she’s naive enough to pour all this out to Tim.

And yes, she calms down about it all and is less high-achieving generally than Nicola is, but she’s on the netball team and is good enough to be mistaken for Nick, plays cricket well and is in A forms, as well as her acting — and though we never hear anything more about it, she’s good at art (Jennings criticises her work with the seriousness she reserves for people who draw well in End of Term). She’s no slouch at things in general, even if she’s not managerial like Nick re games and the Tidiness picture. She’s good at lots of things, apart from lighting gas and singing!

Oh yes - she's a Marlow, she's good at things! But I think the earnestness all came from Nicola, didn't it? She was the one with the plan in Autumn Term, and Lawrie followed it. Lawrie is never seen to try: Nicola very much is. And I think that's what Tim doesn't care for.

I think Tim likes Lawrie best because Tim sees herself as "different/special", and everyone else likes Nicola best, so Tim goes the other way.

Lawrie is also brilliant in a way that Tim really rates. Tim spots this clearly before anyone else does, except perhaps the teacher who states that Lawrie mimes convincingly as opposed to Nicola who mimes with enthusiasm. I think Tim is also a true artist in her field, she directs plays superbly well and does try to be involved in any way, like trying to design costumes for The Tempest. She is driven to make performances really good, even the carols. There is a recognition from Tim that Lawrie is much more driven by pure ego rather than social niceties and she finds this amusing and recognises that this is one of the reasons for Lawrie's genius.

I find the Tim and Lawrie relationship extremely compelling even though I am generally on Nicola's side when it comes to falling out episodes.

I also think that the characters tend to fall broadly into one of two categories that are quite important, in terms of how they think about the individual vs the group.

Lawrie and Tim love the idea of being 'brilliant eccentrics': Tim is very happy to take the highly individual status of 'Headmistress's Niece' and resents Me Auntie's preference for 'a great collective effort' at a number of points. Ginty, too, tends to fall into this category, as does Karen, just making her thing happen and pooh to the rest of us.

Nicola is more in this category than not, but this is tempered by the way that she, for example, nurtures even the less talented members of the form for the cricket team. Indeed, sport is often the way this plays out: Tim doesn't see the point of it, Lawrie wavers, Ginty much prefers swimming - solo effort in most cases, as in the diving cup - and flounders when asked to play for a team quite often. Nicola and Rowan ('always plays best on a losing side') can see the value of the collective in this context, though generally lean more toward the individualistic side. See also Ginty and Nicola in particular, with their hero-worship of Churchill and Nelson respectively.

And it's no surprise that both those men are more easily appropriated as heroes for someone on the right, politically, than the left. (AF doesn't say which party Anthony Merrick is an MP for, but she really doesn't need to, does she?). And Nicola's rueful reflection that the death penalty doesn't apply, even to vandals on a rural trainline, feels telling....

Being anti-individualism, possibly correlating with a more left-wing POV, is almost invariably coded negatively, except in team sports. Miss Keith's preference for collective effort over celebrating individual achievement, for example. Edwin Dodd's Guardian reading, too, feels deliberate. Pacifist, 'just boys', Ann never seeks recognition and it's hard to imagine her having a hero to worship. When cast as Mary, she seems to see this as a devotional act rather than .... acting. But just as Nick and Rowan can temper the impulse to individualism for the sake of the sports' team, so Ann is, paradoxically, willing to stand out alone when the rest of the Fifth decide to play to lose in the form cricket.

Definitely yes to the pro individualism and I would also add very anti progressive. Look at how Patrick's school fares, AF couldn't be more damning!

I can't see Patrick joining the army - he hates team games and isn't very 'hard' in some senses - look at his realistic assessment of his own ability to withstand torture, even in his imagination. Nicola's disgust at this is such a telling moment - Patrick has really gone there in his imagination but Nicola has not. Although she is tough enough perhaps! I always saw him becoming a gentleman farming type who wrote his book on Richard III.

Oh yes to the anti-progressive strand - we love our Fab Trads!

Wrt Patrick and religion, I always felt he got into it when he was stuck at home after the cliff fall, rather like slightly nerdy teenagers in the 80s might do Dungeons and dragons, or be obsessed with LOTR. I felt it was a passing phase, that would fade once he discovered anything more interesting.

I always saw him becoming a gentleman farming type who wrote his book on Richard III.

He says at one point, doesn't he, that what he is ultimately destined to do is take over from his father running the family estate. But as I recall Anthony says something to the effect that that's a long time in the future and he needs to do something in the interim.

There's a fanfic where he takes over as farm manager at Trennels because Rowan wants to go and do her own thing and is fed up with everyone assuming she's happy to run Trennels indefinitely.

Wrt Patrick and religion, I always felt he got into it when he was stuck at home after the cliff fall, rather like slightly nerdy teenagers in the 80s might do Dungeons and dragons, or be obsessed with LOTR. I felt it was a passing phase, that would fade once he discovered anything more interesting.

I knew several girls, at different times, who went through an intensely religious phase in their teens. They all grew out of it.

Yes, I don’t doubt the sincerity of Patrick’s belief but I do feel it feeds his adolescent sense of the dramatic. The Latin mass! The ritual! The martyrs! You can see a similar mindset in his Rupert persona. I suspect he would always be a Catholic but would leave behind the more traditional aspects eventually.

I had never thought that Thalia rhymed with Failure, although I was dismally aware that my parents wanted a boy, so wasn’t surprised by Lawrie’s assumption.

It’s a horrible horrible thought, that Patrick will turn into Jacob Reese Mogg. Please no.
I know he’s arrogant, but he’s in some ways very privileged. Not in every way. Forced into a truly ghastly school, because it is what one does.
is Claudie pregnant when she is sent home?

Sally Hayward's continuation novel has Claudie sent home pregnant. The last we hear of her from AF is her snogging the jubilant Patrick when he's booted from school; I don't think she's mentioned in RAH.

Claudie is having her friend Charles for 'bed and breakfast' in Attic Term, so pregnancy is a possibility, it depends I suppose whether her disregard of Catholic rules extends as far as using contraception!

I know a little Thalia and it's pronounced Tarlia. Her mum is half German, though, which may have some bearing on that.

As an Irish child reader, I never really grasped how Thalia could sound like 'Failure', even in a noisy train corridor. It seemed somewhat more probable when I had a child in London, many of whose friends, when small, pronounced 'th' as 'f'.

Even so, I just think AF couldn't resist the meetcute punchline, which establishes Lawrie as tactless but funny, and the Marlowverse as one in which the character in whose POV we chiefly are prefers boys to girls, despite being a girl.

(Doesn't Tim in that initial meeting scene on the train also grin at Nicola and say she likes the navy 'better than anything'? Does this ever come up again? Why would Tim have any particular feelings about the navy?)

Talking of AF meetcutes, could there be a worse one (though brilliantly written!) than when Nick meets Patrick up a tree freeing a trapped Jael (or is it Regina?) in Falconer's Lure? He's so foully rude to her, scoffs at her not knowing the precise vocabulary of hawking, and couldn't be less interested in her being quite badly cut up by his bird.

I like when Nicola and Esther meet when Sprog flies off from the train in the middle of Esther's abortive runaway attempt and walk to school together (though Esther is much more snubbing and less timid and well-meaning than she is later on?)

I always find the one at the start of the Nick/Miranda friendship slightly puzzling, and I like Miranda. OK, we're told that they'd gradually been growing friendlier since the Kitchen and Jumble days, but suddenly they're holding hands and swinging their joined hands together running down a path at school? It always sounds much younger than their age at that point.

Maybe the pronunciation of Thalia has changed over the years. I only met one but it was definitely Tarlia.
The meetcutes are great! Miranda and Miss Cromwell in the play rehearsal is another nice one. And Patrick and Rowan at the christmas play.

I don’t think Tim does have particular feelings for the navy let alone like it better than anything. I think at this stage she’s fascinated by the twins and wants to get in with them. So she makes up an interest that we never hear about again.

Yes, I think mostly that too - I guess maybe 'liking the navy' was more a thing for schoolgirls in 1948, but also Tim's trying to ingratiate herself with Nicola here.

But also, as careful a writer as AF is, she does forget things or go wrong sometimes, I think. In Peter's Room, Karen has asserted all her life that she could never be a teacher because 'think of 40 like NIck and Lawrie bobbing up in front of one' - and then they get to the Merrick party and she Ann help with the hide-and-seek because they 'positively like' small children and are good with them!

Also who is or isn't in the sixth form at any given time, and who overlaps with whom, isn't right - Jan Scott, Lois, Karen and Rowan all go awry on this.

And if Ginty is 'rising fifteen' in Peter's Room, and Nicola 14 and a half in RAH, that's at the very least Irish quads for poor old Pam.

Doesn't Tim in that initial meeting scene on the train also grin at Nicola and say she likes the navy 'better than anything'? Does this ever come up again? Why would Tim have any particular feelings about the navy?)

Tim had rather offended Nicola by talking about the Marlows being 'frightfully esteemed' and Nicola was being short with her - I always took it that she'd sensed Nicola's pride when she said Giles was in the navy, and said it to thaw her out.

But I might be reading too much into it, and it was a potential strand of Tim's character that was never developed or 'lost on the cutting room floor'.

I do think sixth forms are looser at least in the earlier years. Not everyone took A levels, some had three years, some had retakes...
Karen's facility with small children does indeed fade away! I always feel sorry for Fob and co, plot device or not.

Didn't AF justify Karen and small children by saying she was OK when they were really small but not once they got to school age? Not sure where I read that, it might have been in 'The Marlows and Their Maker'. It was the 'smallest and frilliest' contestants Karen helped at the Merricks' party.

There's some inconsistency in Ann's attitude to animals. One of the early books says it was always Ann who was most upset when an animal died, but later she describes Esther's affection for Daks as 'babyish' (whereas Nicola thinks it is 'scary' - presumably because it is inevitable Esther will outlive him).

I think Nicola finds Esther’s love for Daks as scary because it’s so intense. Clearly poor Esther doesn’t get much affection or interest from her parents so Daks is all she has. In fact her feelings for Nicola are similarly intense- look how she can’t face her after letting her down, as Esther sees it , over the solo in Attic Term. Nicola herself is momentarily annoyed but realises quite quickly that she should have expected it.

And if Ginty is 'rising fifteen' in Peter's Room, and Nicola 14 and a half in RAH, that's at the very least Irish quads for poor old Pam.

Yes, as I said upthread, it really only works if the twins came early - which they might well have done.

Ginty's birthday is early January. We're never told when the twins' birthday is, but I think it must have been in mid-late July, soon after the end of the summer term.

Leaving aside the extremely obnoxious use of 'Irish' there, has anyone worked out the ages and spacings of the Marlows? Giles seems to be quite a lot older than the twins.

Giles is indeed a lot older than the twins: he's the eldest Marlow in a family of eight and they are the two youngest 🙂.
Apologies for the phrase, should have thought that through and I hope not too many people were made uncomfortable or unhappy with it.

Thanks for that.

I was wondering about the exact spacing.