REVIEW: Norah O'Flanigan, Prefect
Norah O’Flanigan, Prefect: Maud S. Forsey, Nelson
Tremadon House, a high school for girls on the outskirts of London has a peculiar school year. It seems to start with the summer term, and they hold their exams in mid-November. Another of its customs is for the form prefects of the lower school to be chosen by the staff, but when the girls reach the upper school, starting with the Fourth form, they are allowed to vote for her.
It is never made clear who the form’s previous form prefect was. In the first chapter, most of the new Fourth votes for Norah O’Flanigan, over Sybil Barnard, the mistresses’ favourite. But the girls who aren’t in her crowd reject Sybil, as they’d rather not be reported for every single misdemeanour. Norah is all too aware that she’s guilty of many such misdemeanours and is perhaps not the best choice for prefect.
The book follows Norah’s year as the prefect of the Fourth, the way she always seems to be caught at her worst by mistresses, the scrapes the form’s members get into and the fun they have. It reminded me of Angela Brazil, because the Fourth are a lively, fair-minded bunch. We follow Norah home for lunch, evenings and holidays; family life is an important background to the school doings, in a way that would be more familiar to the readers than in a boarding school story and is often the case with Brazil.
Norah is the only daughter of a widowed mother and big pals with big brother Pat. Their Irishness isn’t emphasised (as Rikki’s was in ‘ The New Girls at Netherby’). Norah’s high spirits aren’t attributed to her ethnicity, as she is equalled in that regard by her chum Olive Saunders, and surpassed by other girls as she shoulders her responsibilities. We don’t even know if her mother is Irish. Nora’s father was a doctor who caught ann infectious disease he was treating, leaving the family - there are five children - slightly circumscribed, although they have a maid and the children are well educated. Norah can’t buy a new outfit as often as some as her school fellows or go on holidays abroad.
There’s more seriousness here than is to be found with Brazil. Having said that, it’s quite an episodic tale, with no more than a trajectory where Norah grows up a little, being let into her mother’s confidence, and she wins over the mistresses and her sometime rival by dealing honourably with the ‘form matters’ that arise. Looking back, I see that there was a similar trajectory in ‘Mollie Hazeldene’s Schooldays’ by the same author, although I think this is a more polished story.
There is a whole play script (it shockingly deals with the doubts older children have about Santa Claus!) and a long letter recounts a school trip to Paris. All the events and characterisations are realistic. I’m not sure when exactly it was set, but it was a time when boys had sisters to make their beds for them.
This entry was originally posted at https://feather-ghyll.dreamwidth.org/160222.html. Please comment wherever you prefer to.
Tremadon House, a high school for girls on the outskirts of London has a peculiar school year. It seems to start with the summer term, and they hold their exams in mid-November. Another of its customs is for the form prefects of the lower school to be chosen by the staff, but when the girls reach the upper school, starting with the Fourth form, they are allowed to vote for her.
It is never made clear who the form’s previous form prefect was. In the first chapter, most of the new Fourth votes for Norah O’Flanigan, over Sybil Barnard, the mistresses’ favourite. But the girls who aren’t in her crowd reject Sybil, as they’d rather not be reported for every single misdemeanour. Norah is all too aware that she’s guilty of many such misdemeanours and is perhaps not the best choice for prefect.
The book follows Norah’s year as the prefect of the Fourth, the way she always seems to be caught at her worst by mistresses, the scrapes the form’s members get into and the fun they have. It reminded me of Angela Brazil, because the Fourth are a lively, fair-minded bunch. We follow Norah home for lunch, evenings and holidays; family life is an important background to the school doings, in a way that would be more familiar to the readers than in a boarding school story and is often the case with Brazil.
Norah is the only daughter of a widowed mother and big pals with big brother Pat. Their Irishness isn’t emphasised (as Rikki’s was in ‘ The New Girls at Netherby’). Norah’s high spirits aren’t attributed to her ethnicity, as she is equalled in that regard by her chum Olive Saunders, and surpassed by other girls as she shoulders her responsibilities. We don’t even know if her mother is Irish. Nora’s father was a doctor who caught ann infectious disease he was treating, leaving the family - there are five children - slightly circumscribed, although they have a maid and the children are well educated. Norah can’t buy a new outfit as often as some as her school fellows or go on holidays abroad.
There’s more seriousness here than is to be found with Brazil. Having said that, it’s quite an episodic tale, with no more than a trajectory where Norah grows up a little, being let into her mother’s confidence, and she wins over the mistresses and her sometime rival by dealing honourably with the ‘form matters’ that arise. Looking back, I see that there was a similar trajectory in ‘Mollie Hazeldene’s Schooldays’ by the same author, although I think this is a more polished story.
There is a whole play script (it shockingly deals with the doubts older children have about Santa Claus!) and a long letter recounts a school trip to Paris. All the events and characterisations are realistic. I’m not sure when exactly it was set, but it was a time when boys had sisters to make their beds for them.
This entry was originally posted at https://feather-ghyll.dreamwidth.org/160222.html. Please comment wherever you prefer to.