Posted by Terence McManus on December 18, 1998 at 02:24:34:
In Reply to: Dot and Dick posted by Robert Dilley on December 17, 1998 at 15:50:44:
I certainly don't remember planning to live with my sister. One thing that may have made a difference was that I was the older of the pair: friends who had older sisters would tell me how fortunate I was to have a younger sister since older sisters were so bossy. I do however have two much younger sisters (by twelve and fourteen years) who have shared a house for more than ten years (since the youngest graduated), and had been making plans to do so for some time prior to that.
I have the impression that it used to be fairly common for unmarried brothers and sisters to live together. I can think of a couple of cases from personal experience: an English master at school living with his sister, and a friend of my mother who lived with a brother. Both of these couples would have been of much the same generation as the Ds.
Victorian literature seems to have many examples of brother and sister living together: the Murdstones (spelling?) in David Copperfield for example. No incest there I think - but perhaps a touch of mutual flagellation? In other books man and wife (or mistress) live together as brother and sister (to help the plot along) and the sibling relationship is taken for granted by their neighbours (e.g. Dr. Wortle's School and the Hound of the Baskervilles).
The more I think about this the more examples come to mind of books in which adult brother and sister live together. Some were written in the 1950s - again the Ds' generation, now young(ish) adults
Given that the Ds were close and Dorothea's literary bent it may well have seemed normal to Dot to think in terms of their sharing a home. Dick and Dorothea are shown to be very close. Dot is always anxious that Dick should be well thought of by the S & As. Dick needs Dot's social skills. The Ds are accepted by the others as a pair - would either have been accepted alone? Indeed if, as one reviewer suggests, they are two aspects of AR's character - could they exist alone? I suspect that they would have been solitary children at school and relied on each other during the holidays for social interaction.
Another example of children planning to live together as adults has just come to mind. In Family Afloat by Aubrey de Selincourt (another thread) the older sister, Anne, day-dreams of when she and Elizabeth are grown up and they sail away together in a topsail schooner.