Posted by Jock on August 16, 2007 at 01:18:38 from 87.105.81.146 user Jock.
In Reply to: Re: Reverse engineering the Blackett family? posted by Prue Eckett on August 15, 2007 at 21:47:16:
Prue, A few comments re your comments.
Nancy was certainly authoritarian but was Peggy?
Peggy went along with Nancy's approach to the outside world. She didn't feel it was in any way extraordinary for Nancy to lecture Sammy the Policeman, organise the Doctor or ignore the GA's dictats. Contrast this to the way Roger was reined back and told not to be cheeky.
And was Nancy that way because she had no father and to an extent had taken over the role of father in the family
At the end of PM there is a flash of mutual understanding between Nancy and the GA. I rather see this as both of them suddenly understanding, that cultural differences notwithstanding, their characters are basically similar.
And, was the Swallow family's wealth earned or did Ted and Mary have an inherited income?
Some librarian (or hostile reviewer) accused AR of writing for toffs. AR replied that his characters were ordinary children - sons and daughters of a naval captain, a doctor and a boatbuilder. [note nothing about the province of the Amazons] So we have AR's word for it - the Swallows are supposed to be 'ordinary', so no inherited wealth there.
Finally, just consider the way James Turner speaks to John near the beginning of S&A, it's very much like an upper class landowner ordering the village lad off his land. There's a very interesting dynamic going on in SA between the S's and the A's and their mutual struggle to be fleet commodore. In the end the Swallows ordinary folk like you and me triumph. Did the tumultuous economic and political upheavals of the 1920's and 1930's have any impact upon AR's mind when he wrote the books?