Posted by Dave Thewlis :
In Reply to: Dot and Dick posted by Robert Dilley on December 17, 1998 at 15:50:44:
For some reason my posting wound up with "no data" so I'm going to try and post more or less the
same comment again. I don't think we need to impune hidden incestuous feelings to Dick and Dorothy
to make sense either of their relationship or their stated intent to live together when they are older.
Children often have fairly firm plans as to what they will do when they are "older" which evolve as they
grow, and just as adults they are frequently based on experience (good or bad). Personally I always got the
impression that Dick and Dorothea's parents functioned very much as a team (it's even possible that their
mother, like their father, was actually in academia -- at least in Winter Holiday they had gone off together
to an archaeological dig leaving the D's alone for the holidays, rather than mother being home). I think with
that role model both their future plans and their functioning as a team where each member has certain strengths
such that they defer based on those strengths rather than age or other hierarchy may be explicable.
And for another example of future plans, what about Mrs. Walker at the end of Swallowdale, talking about the
GA:
"Well, I wonder," said mother, "in thirty years' time, when I come to stay with you ..."
"We'll never let you get away," said Susan.
"There won't be any coming about it," said John, "becuase there won't be any going. You're fixed."
Future plans which may well mutate over the next years. And John & Roger in other places are clear that they
plan to go into the Navy, but will always come "home" to Wild Cat Island.