Posted by Peter H on November 18, 2002 at 21:52:17 from 213.122.133.165 user Peter_H.
In Reply to: Re: George Owdon, is that his name? posted by John Wilson on November 18, 2002 at 09:46:55:
Two years ago, I went through CC and BS and made a note of everything which George Owdon said. (I hope Ed K is proud of me, and if he has time to check out these details . . . . .)
The results from CC were minimal. GO says hardly anything, and is really just a brooding presence. We have to assess him from what the other characters say about him. E.g. Tom Dudgeon admits that George is ‘Norfolk, like himself’. We are told that GO has much more pocket money than any of the Coots, and augments this by selling birds’ eggs to a man in Norwich. The first thing GO says is ‘You’re in a hurry, young Tom’.
In BS, GO has a much higher profile. ‘ ‘Interfering young pups’, said one of the larger boys.’ ‘Same sort’ said Bill, ‘He’s visiting at George’s uncle’s.’ The remaining remarks by GO don’t tell us much about his class, but when he says ‘Well, don’t say we haven’t warned you’, his voice is described as ‘rather high’. He says ‘Ralph and I’, not ‘Ralph and me’.
From all the clues given, I deduce the following. GO is what we would call middle, perhaps upper middle, class, but not so elevated that he would reject a chance to make some extra money. He might have attended a local grammar, but as he knows a man in Norwich, perhaps he goes to Norwich School, where I expect an expression like ‘young pups’ would fit in. He might be from a good family but ‘gone to the bad’. It seems that he lives with his uncle, so he is not under parental control. His uncle may have spoilt him, and maybe he has the whining higher-pitched voice of a querulous unhappy child.
AR has his characters talk in dialect when they would obviously do this in real life. Otherwise, he leaves it to us to figure it out. The S and A and D’s use expressions and phraseology which seem to me to be totally ‘boarding school’, but they could have an accent as well. Do Nancy and Peggy have a faint Lakes accent? I like to think that they do (but not the West Riding accent that BBC Radio 5 gave them some years ago). So where does that leave George? I suggest that he speaks with a ‘posh Norfolk’ accent. I don’t know what that is like, but I do know what a ‘posh Merseyside’ accent sounds like because I’ve got one unfortunately, so I’m sure there’s a ‘posh Norfolk’.
I suggest that the absence of an obvious accent or dialect for AR’s main characters enables children to identify with them more easily. As usual, AR knew what he was doing.
Usual disclaimer: the above are my personal thoughts. Feel free to disagree.