REVIEW: A Dancer from the Abbey
A Dancer from the Abbey: Elsie J. Oxenham Collins 1953
The Abbey Girls books that I own have been acquired over the years in a random order. This book clearly follows on the very next morning from the previous book, which I assume would be Rachel in the Abbey in which Queen Lavender (aka Rosalind Kane aka Nanta Rose) is crowned, and I don’t own it, or any of the other books focusing on Damaris and Rachel. But as the book also begins with the arrival of Brian Grandinson to the Abbey, a newcomer to the series who has been living in Rhodesia, everything that happened is explained to both him and the reader. By ‘everything’ I’m barely exaggerating. I doubted that he cared about all the detail, although he seems charmed, but it was useful to learn how characters were connected to each other, as, by this point in the series, it’s extremely involved what with the Kanes and the Robins. For instance. I might have been irritated by the exposition if I had just read the last book, actually, but I’m more curious about how I would have felt about Damaris’s choices having read that build-up.
This is Damaris and Rachel’s story. Damaris, a former ballerina, has been gardening at the Abbey, with the stalwart help of Benedicta, while Rachel, Damaris’s elder sister is the Abbey Guardian, responsible for showing visitors around, with a sideline in writing. Damaris has recently discovered that she is recovered enough, after what she thought was a career-ending injury, to consider returning to the stage and is in high alt about it when Brian, whose family know her, looks her up. Rachel has to fight her very natural feelings about giving her sister up to the London stage again. Brian is very taken by ‘Pirouette’ and finds himself being swept up by all her Abbey connections.
I have to admit I wasn’t taken by Damaris. To put this in context, I always preferred Joan and Jen over Joy. Here, Rachel and Benedicta are much more stable than impulsive, overly excitable, ‘artistic’ and brattish Damaris. It doesn’t help that the central conflict feels really manufactured. Written in the 1950s, it is presented as a choice between a career or marriage, certainly not both in the case of ballet dancers. This struck me as bizarre as, in the meantime, Rachel’s writing career takes a new and better turn as an author for children, following Mary-Dorothy as a model. Rachel’s story is also about how working in the Abbey is her vocation as she becomes a confidante to the girls of the Hamlet Club. Benedicta is clearly ready and willing to take over the gardening job and these are presented as valid, positive choices for them.
Howeverm almost as soon as Damaris announces she believes she can dance again, her well-meaning family and friends decide they want to match-make for her, because what she clearly, unquestionably needs in their eyes isn’t to return to the life that she worked for so long and that was stolen from her. I did grasp the argument that Damaris’s personality needed to be rounded, but wouldn’t going without dancing for a long period and rebuilding her life have done that? The fact that it didn’t seem to have perhaps fed into my dislike of the character. The contrivance of Brian’s arrival and falling for her and then the ensuing tension over whether she’d love him more than dancing bored me, because even in the 1950s, a long engagement wouldn’t be the most radical departure and really, that’s what happened, with a lot more tension.
It’s just odd that the stark choice is between being a happy single cat lady (Rachel) or following in the Queen Abbey Girl tradition (marry a rich man, have lots of girls to be future queens) (other Queens are enabling nannies). I was more interested in Rachel’s feelings about losing her sister to distance, ballet and a husband, because inevitably the sisters’ closeness will change. I was also interested in the latest with the Abbey Girls, from worried mothers and mother figures to Queen Lavender’s troubles to young Brownie starting at school.
The other striking thing about this series is that you are no-one (or a mere man) if you don’t have a nickname or two, or even three. Damaris is known as Marry, Dammy Rose or Pirouette and her stage name Mary Damayris. Benedicta is Blessing and Rachel has to choose a new pen name. Queens are known by their colour/flower of choice, and all these nicknames must be acquired and/or explained.
When reading this, you can certainly tell it’s late on in the series, but there’s a part of me that will always remember being about Rosemary and Hermione’s age, devouring my first Abbey stories with the pleasure that those girls show in listening to Rachel’s serial story.
This entry was originally posted at http://feather-ghyll.dreamwidth.org/104458.html. Please comment wherever you prefer to.
The Abbey Girls books that I own have been acquired over the years in a random order. This book clearly follows on the very next morning from the previous book, which I assume would be Rachel in the Abbey in which Queen Lavender (aka Rosalind Kane aka Nanta Rose) is crowned, and I don’t own it, or any of the other books focusing on Damaris and Rachel. But as the book also begins with the arrival of Brian Grandinson to the Abbey, a newcomer to the series who has been living in Rhodesia, everything that happened is explained to both him and the reader. By ‘everything’ I’m barely exaggerating. I doubted that he cared about all the detail, although he seems charmed, but it was useful to learn how characters were connected to each other, as, by this point in the series, it’s extremely involved what with the Kanes and the Robins. For instance. I might have been irritated by the exposition if I had just read the last book, actually, but I’m more curious about how I would have felt about Damaris’s choices having read that build-up.
This is Damaris and Rachel’s story. Damaris, a former ballerina, has been gardening at the Abbey, with the stalwart help of Benedicta, while Rachel, Damaris’s elder sister is the Abbey Guardian, responsible for showing visitors around, with a sideline in writing. Damaris has recently discovered that she is recovered enough, after what she thought was a career-ending injury, to consider returning to the stage and is in high alt about it when Brian, whose family know her, looks her up. Rachel has to fight her very natural feelings about giving her sister up to the London stage again. Brian is very taken by ‘Pirouette’ and finds himself being swept up by all her Abbey connections.
I have to admit I wasn’t taken by Damaris. To put this in context, I always preferred Joan and Jen over Joy. Here, Rachel and Benedicta are much more stable than impulsive, overly excitable, ‘artistic’ and brattish Damaris. It doesn’t help that the central conflict feels really manufactured. Written in the 1950s, it is presented as a choice between a career or marriage, certainly not both in the case of ballet dancers. This struck me as bizarre as, in the meantime, Rachel’s writing career takes a new and better turn as an author for children, following Mary-Dorothy as a model. Rachel’s story is also about how working in the Abbey is her vocation as she becomes a confidante to the girls of the Hamlet Club. Benedicta is clearly ready and willing to take over the gardening job and these are presented as valid, positive choices for them.
Howeverm almost as soon as Damaris announces she believes she can dance again, her well-meaning family and friends decide they want to match-make for her, because what she clearly, unquestionably needs in their eyes isn’t to return to the life that she worked for so long and that was stolen from her. I did grasp the argument that Damaris’s personality needed to be rounded, but wouldn’t going without dancing for a long period and rebuilding her life have done that? The fact that it didn’t seem to have perhaps fed into my dislike of the character. The contrivance of Brian’s arrival and falling for her and then the ensuing tension over whether she’d love him more than dancing bored me, because even in the 1950s, a long engagement wouldn’t be the most radical departure and really, that’s what happened, with a lot more tension.
It’s just odd that the stark choice is between being a happy single cat lady (Rachel) or following in the Queen Abbey Girl tradition (marry a rich man, have lots of girls to be future queens) (other Queens are enabling nannies). I was more interested in Rachel’s feelings about losing her sister to distance, ballet and a husband, because inevitably the sisters’ closeness will change. I was also interested in the latest with the Abbey Girls, from worried mothers and mother figures to Queen Lavender’s troubles to young Brownie starting at school.
The other striking thing about this series is that you are no-one (or a mere man) if you don’t have a nickname or two, or even three. Damaris is known as Marry, Dammy Rose or Pirouette and her stage name Mary Damayris. Benedicta is Blessing and Rachel has to choose a new pen name. Queens are known by their colour/flower of choice, and all these nicknames must be acquired and/or explained.
When reading this, you can certainly tell it’s late on in the series, but there’s a part of me that will always remember being about Rosemary and Hermione’s age, devouring my first Abbey stories with the pleasure that those girls show in listening to Rachel’s serial story.
This entry was originally posted at http://feather-ghyll.dreamwidth.org/104458.html. Please comment wherever you prefer to.