Peter's Room

[jackmerlin]

Peter's Room is probably my favourite AF and I've reread it many times, but I've never properly thought this thought through before, why when they invent their fantasy world do all the female Marlows choose to be male characters? It's not just the era, although I know the Marlow 'boys are better than girls ethos, women can't join the navy' must

Comments

[thekumquat]

I'm no expert, but it wasn't a world they invented themselves from scratch, it was the Brontes' Gondal, which appeared to be all about knights riding about on adventures and not much for women to do. Rather as if they'd bought a copy of "Dungeons & Dragons" if AF had set that book 20 years later...

21st century roleplayers seem to exhibit the same tendency, IME.

[ethelmay]

Yes, it was too a world they invented from scratch, or as close to scratch as anyone with a head full of adventure stories can get: it was *not* Gondal. Probably a lot of the adventure stories they'd read (The Scarlet Pimpernel, Hornblower, Redgauntlet, etc.) were mostly about men, and certainly the exploration narratives were.

[thekumquat]

Are you named after Ethel in The Daisy Chain?

[ethelmay]

Yes -- but it's not my real name, of course.

Are you named after that Anon. who writes so much poetry? ;-)

[anonymous]

the Marlow females in general are not very girly, and don't seem to have any problems identifying with men/boys. Nicola's favourite reading - Hornblower - seems fairly atypical for most teenage girls. So I guess taking on male characters for an adventure tale was not difficult for them.

I suppose they were what then might have been termed "tom boys" - but then, it seems to me, so were a lot - most? - of the heroines of girls' fiction. Are they typical/atypical of their times? Have things changed? It seems to me that there's been a big growth in girliness subsequently in childrens/teenage books, do others have the same impression? and why?

[nzraya]

It's a great point. For that matter, why do so many women fans prefer reading and writing M/M stories rather than F/F ones? Part of the same continuum, I'd guess. In the case of the Marlows, I think the *kinds* of adventures they wanted to have, and maybe more importantly the kinds of emotions they wanted to experiment with, were "band of brothers" type emotions and narratives. And they wanted to leave the genre intact and "remake" themselves to fit it, rather than the other way around. They weren't trying to be themselves in another story, or to shape a conventional story to fit them; they wanted to fit themselves into the conventional story.

Just my initial thoughts on the topic, am ready to change my mind if someone has something more convincing.

[jackmerlin]

The whole concept of 'tomboys' doesn't seem to exist in the same way. Now girls can wear anything, do anything and aspire to any career, there isn't the same sense of 'wishing you were a boy' if you'd rather wear trousers and do outdoor/sporting activities. Girls can join the Navy and go to sea and wearing make-up/being interested in clothes etc. isn't imcompatible with that.
The marlows choosing to be boys must be down to more than just the period though, as I said in my first post. As well as Crowns, I've also thought of Swallows and Amazons in which Nancy and Peggy were happy (and proud) to be female pirates.
There is a lot of girly fiction around now,with all those pink sparkly covers, but when it comes to serious fiction I think female characters are very tough - Phillip Pullman's Lyra, Hermione in Harry Potter, Tracy Beaker, for example.

[jackmerlin]

Is there a way of editing your own posts on here so you don't have to do two posts in a row if you think of something you should have added? Anyway, i meant to say, I think you're right about the Marlows trying to fit themselves into the sort of adventure story genre that they were used to reading. Females in fiction do seem to have more solitary adventures, or be involvd in a more complex set of relationships than male heroes, you don't get 'band of sisters' stories in the same way.
I suppose as well pretending to be men was a reaction to living in an all female environment so much of the time. No doubt someone will tell me which, but didn't Freud or Jung observe that women living on their own become more 'male' in their characteristics, and men on their own become more 'female'.

[ankaret]

It varies depending on which layout you're using, but if you're logged in and looking at your own post there ought to be an 'edit' link somewhere at the bottom of your original post, on the same line as 'leave comment'.

[ankaret]

I found it jarring too, like Nicola's remark about six sons all in the Service.

Who is 'Crowns' by? It sounds fascinating.

[jackmerlin]

Katherine Hull and Pamela Whitlock. I absolutely LOVED it as a child, recently reread it as an adult and was horrified to find that my favourite character was an obnoxious brat to my adult eyes! I'd still recommend it though.