Jan Scott
Jan Scott - gorgeous, glacial Sabrina Fair; psychopathically uninvolved?
I was reading The Cricket Term lately, and noticed particularly Jan's response to Nicola's attempt to thank her for having been kind when N is shocked by her mother's letter telling her she's possibly in her final term at Kingscote. Nicola says (again, I haven't got my copy to hand, so am not claiming accuracy)'Thanks, Jan [...] I know you don't like to be bothered.' Jan is portrayed as being genuinely bemused by this, as apparently she has been by various staff comments down the years to the effect that she is uncommitted, uninterested (plus a couple of adjectives I can't remember). Certainly, she is always portrayed as utterly neutral, apparently contentedly isolated, completely self-reliant. Is she really so unaware of her own effect, given that she is presented as an excellent reader of others, whether Lois's machinations, Nicola's sensibilities, or staff moods?
Also, do we intuit a subtext giving some context for Jan's isolation? I can't remember which novel includes the reminiscence about her refusal to do voluntary weeding and being marked down thereafter as an unco-operative type, but in Cricket Term we get Rowan's brief account of Jan's background (father a surgeon in Lincolnshire, presumably why he doesn't attend the play, leaving Jan to talk briefly to Rowan and make her 'unobtrusive exit') and her apparent motherlessness, with the possibility that the absent mother is not dead but Mad or Criminal, or Adulterously Elsewhere? (A propos of not much, AF can be rather harsh on mothers - Esther's is 'no nicer than Nicola expected', Helena Merrick is a cypher, also disliked by N, Edward Oeschli's mother doesn't come up trumps, Miranda is dubious about her mother, Pam Marlow is another cypher, and Madame Orly is from hell...)
In a set of novels full of characters getting madly involved in everything from the tidiness picture to the diving cup, and where people are continually looking at lists to see if they're in plays or on teams, the only other character who at all resembles Jan for uninvolvement is Latimer, the gorgeous Jersey cow, too lesirely to scold, but both are depicted as admirable.
Anyway, thoughts on Jan?
I was reading The Cricket Term lately, and noticed particularly Jan's response to Nicola's attempt to thank her for having been kind when N is shocked by her mother's letter telling her she's possibly in her final term at Kingscote. Nicola says (again, I haven't got my copy to hand, so am not claiming accuracy)'Thanks, Jan [...] I know you don't like to be bothered.' Jan is portrayed as being genuinely bemused by this, as apparently she has been by various staff comments down the years to the effect that she is uncommitted, uninterested (plus a couple of adjectives I can't remember). Certainly, she is always portrayed as utterly neutral, apparently contentedly isolated, completely self-reliant. Is she really so unaware of her own effect, given that she is presented as an excellent reader of others, whether Lois's machinations, Nicola's sensibilities, or staff moods?
Also, do we intuit a subtext giving some context for Jan's isolation? I can't remember which novel includes the reminiscence about her refusal to do voluntary weeding and being marked down thereafter as an unco-operative type, but in Cricket Term we get Rowan's brief account of Jan's background (father a surgeon in Lincolnshire, presumably why he doesn't attend the play, leaving Jan to talk briefly to Rowan and make her 'unobtrusive exit') and her apparent motherlessness, with the possibility that the absent mother is not dead but Mad or Criminal, or Adulterously Elsewhere? (A propos of not much, AF can be rather harsh on mothers - Esther's is 'no nicer than Nicola expected', Helena Merrick is a cypher, also disliked by N, Edward Oeschli's mother doesn't come up trumps, Miranda is dubious about her mother, Pam Marlow is another cypher, and Madame Orly is from hell...)
In a set of novels full of characters getting madly involved in everything from the tidiness picture to the diving cup, and where people are continually looking at lists to see if they're in plays or on teams, the only other character who at all resembles Jan for uninvolvement is Latimer, the gorgeous Jersey cow, too lesirely to scold, but both are depicted as admirable.
Anyway, thoughts on Jan?