Re: the 'people's sheep' factor (was UHT milk


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Posted by Peter Ceresole on December 06, 2006 at 17:28:06 from 80.177.22.49 user PeterC.

In Reply to: Re: the 'people's sheep' factor (was UHT milk posted by PeterH on December 06, 2006 at 16:10:10:

having been made aware of the Lakeside class set-up I can never quite take warmly to all the characters as I used to.

Like the vast majority of people of their set time, the characters won't have felt that anything was wrong with their attitude. And at the time they were right; they were nice people, being themselves and being nice to others. They'd have no reason to regard themselves as patronising, or exploitative; in fact by any contemporary standards they were neither. If we want to understand and enjoy the stories, we simply can't project the values of our own time onto the '20s and '30s. Although in fact they're not so dreadful- it's not as though they were slave owners. However, missing (understandably) from AR's stories is the background story, the 'noise of history'. The rise of Fascism, the hunger marches, the Spanish Civil war, the subjugation of Ethiopia, all of those would have been very much part of the concerns of all the adults but not of the children, and the children are what the books are about. So I'd agree that AR certainly didn't set out with those sociological matters in mind, although from the history of his life he was very clearly aware of them. And the books contain contain fascinating, collateral glimpses of English society then. And it's fun to speculate.


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