Cricket Term, chapters 10-12

[coughingbear]

The final section of the book - the Play, the Match, and the End. Just about in time, but my apologies that it's so late; long day at work and trouble with laptop.

Comments

Re: Miranda and her mother

[nnozomi]

(I seem to be talking a lot today, sorry)
I have a lot of headcanon about the West parents, to the effect roughly that both of them came from British-Jewish families which had become well-off by the traditional routes--finance or merchants like Rothschild or even diamond merchants in Hatton Garden. Mrs. West expected that her husband would continue this tradition, but--like Miranda--he actually would have liked to go into music or art. He couldn't quite be _that_ rebellious, and like Miranda also knew he wasn't that talented, so he compromised on the Shop (perhaps with a donation from a helpful relative, or buying up a junk shop from a poorer one and building it up). Miranda takes after her father in her tastes this way, and Mrs. West resents it, not out of jealousy but from the clash of values; this is a large part of the distance between them.
whew, very sorry. Anyway, that was a long-winded way of saying that I think Miranda knows perfectly well her mother would be uninterested in the Play, and doesn't much mind, probably, as long as her father's happy.

Re: Miranda and her mother

[antfan]

That's fascinating. But the one thing we know about Mrs W is she's very into refugee committees/Zionism. Would this interest in "causes" also fit with her being so into material success (especially as the Wests are still very wealthy even despite (or perhaps because) of Mr West's career choices)?

Re: Miranda and her mother

[colne_dsr]

What day is Speech Day? Open Day at 11, Speech Day at 3, Kay's children present - I think it must be Saturday. The Wests aren't officially Orthodox, but could Mrs. West be reluctant to travel and/or attend a play on the Jewish Sabbath?

Re: Miranda and her mother

[nineveh_uk]

It could be a clash of values in that she sees the fine arts as a waste of time, dilettantism, while she is working hard on something "real" to make the world better.

Re: Miranda and her mother

[nnozomi]

That's a detail which fascinates me, and which I wish we were told more about. nineveh_uk suggests one take on it below which I like; as well, my vague ideas suggest that Mrs. West's problems with Mr. West having chosen the Shop are not related so much to material success (since he's obviously a very successful businessman) but with the professions one expects one's family to follow, i.e. not all artsy and hanging around with dubious theater people ("Theater managements who need it, furniture from our shop") and so on. It's not a very strong theory ;)

(I also wish Mrs. West had a canonical first name, since Mr. West gets one. I wrote her into a fic as Miriam, probably inspired by Miranda, but I guess given Miranda's middle name her mother ought to be Naomi.)

Edited to reflect the fact that I also wish LJ would be a little more responsible about putting replies under the comment they were actually replying to, in this case antfan's, and not in random nearby locations!

Re: Miranda and her mother

[mrs_redboots]

Actually, doesn't Miranda say somewhere in End of Term that her family is Polish in origin? She certainly calls her great-grandmother "Prababka"

Re: Miranda and her mother

[nnozomi]

She does, and I was careless in my wording, sorry--eliding "immigrant" into "British-Jewish." (Fourth-generation Jewish descendant of immigrants here, just like Miranda, but in America.)