Re: What happened to the Depression?


[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] [ Previous # Next ] [ Start New Thread ] [ TarBoard ]

Posted by Peter Ceresole on November 06, 2008 at 01:14:57 user PeterC.

In Reply to: Re: What happened to the Depression? posted by LukeDolman on November 05, 2008 at 20:55:01:

I think you can make a pretty good case for his writing of these books being a form of escapism, into a world of his own invention, where real life worries such as the depression don't really feature at all.

Yes. I've maintained this before on Tarboard, with specific reference to PM, p.26, the end of chapter II where he describes the D's first night at Beckfoot and Dot going to sleep in the spare room bed, listening to the owl outside and smelling the new-mown hay on the other side of the river. 'There isn't a lovelier place in all the world' she thinks as she drifts off. It's the nearest to an idyll that he gets...

I find it interesting that Evgenia took so violently against PM, and made AR's life such a misery over it. Along with WH, it's my favourite of all the books. Certainly the most mature one, and the one in which he best explores the pleasures of simply being there, as a child.

It's worth remembering that he wrote it in the middle of the war, when they had just been living through dark days around Ipswich and had to move back to the Lakes to avoid the bombing. AR's sketch of the air raids is reproduced in Christina Hardyment's 'Arthur Ransome and Captain Flint's Trunk', p.124. He was also chronically ill. An escape to childhood in the Lakes would have been a great relief. I'm sure he wrote the books for himself, as much as for the children they were ostensibly written for.


Follow Ups:



Post a Followup

Name:
Eel-Mail:

Existing subject (please edit appropriately) :

or is it time to start a New Thread?

Comments:

Optional Link URL:
Link Title:
Optional Image URL:

post direct to TarBoard test post first

Before posting it is necessary to be a registered user.


[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] [ TarBoard ]