Posted by Katharine Edgar on August 08, 2003 at 10:03:24 from 81.96.140.67 user Katharine.
In Reply to: Re: Intrusions of Real Life posted by David Chorley on August 08, 2003 at -1:40:06:
Both my parents read Ransome in the 1940s. They were from working/lower middle class backgrounds but went to grammar school - it was the time when grammar schools provided a mechanism by which a large number of children were able to move out of their original social class. This was in London (my mother) and a south Yorkshire mining village (my father). The lack of paperback editions would have had nothing to do with it, as it was a recognised thing for them that you got your books out of libraries. My father owned a few books of which most seem to have been Jennings (prep school), Just William (plenty of cooks and housemaids) and the odd Frank Richards.
My mother's best friend, Karen, was the daughter of a politically active bricklayer with a house full of books... Come to think of it I think there was something about Karen's brothers having built a canoe which they used on the Thames. I would put money on that household also reading Ransome!
It had never occurred to me before, but I suppose this is the reason why my parents, neither of whom had anything watery in their ancestry, moved to the coast as soon as they were married and are now living on a boat! (Engine not sails, but then my father's name is Roger.)
There has already been much excellent discussion on Tarboard about Ransome's portrayal of working class characters, but to put it another way, what he did _not_ do, which some writers (eg Blyton!) did, was to use lower social class as a marker of moral depravity. There is an Enid Blyton St Clare's story where money starts going missing and it's perfectly obvious to the alert reader familiar with Blyton's world view that new girl Kathleen is to blame - not only does she have greasy hair and spots, but her upbringing is distinctly less privileged than the other girls.... As a working class reader reading Ransome, you might not find 'people like you' at the heart of every story, but more importantly, you would not find 'yourself' making an appearance as the bad guy. Ransomites will of course be divided as to whether they see this as a sign of Ransome's simple decency or his left-wing politics (or both), but I imagine both sides would concur in finding this kind of classlessness appealing and admirable.