Posted by Fiona on April 16, 2006 at 11:38:17 from 213.78.74.207 user Fiona.
In Reply to: Re: Nancy growing up? posted by Peter H on April 15, 2006 at 19:27:18:
"she was squashed by all those late Victorian/Edwardian proprieties" When I wrote that, I was writing from the point of view of NOW, rather than suggesting that the GA would have FELT that she was undergoing such a process. Perhaps convention would have been a better term to use. I've always felt that inside the somewhat prickly and very precise exterior of the GA, there as a Nancy waiting to burst forth. And that Nancy had never been allowed to be seen, past the GA's childhood as it was just not done for women, particularly, of that time to behave in such a way. I had an ancestress who was a little younger than Victoria but she managed, in spite of having to wear corsets/bustles and the like with all their contraints, to travel to India, Japan, Fiji, voyage in French Man 'o war, and do all sorts of exciting things. (She painted pictures, as all good women did, of all these places and even wrote books and kept a journal which is fascinating reading!) So I am quite aware that not all women were bound by such convention. And it is interesting that Capt Flint, was allowed to travel the globe and Molly was the stay at home. Given there doesn't appear to be any males in Nancy/Peggy's generation of the Blacketts, it seems to me as if the adventurous behaviour which Nancy, Peggy And Capt Flint have all got in spades, could have been simmmering beneath the surface of the GA. She must have had a married brother who produced Capt Flint and Molly but we never hear about him, do we?
All intriguing, all in our imaginations but all gleaned from the snippets dropped by AR - fascinating!!