Posted by andyb on February 25, 2008 at 20:03:10 from 86.158.87.52 user beardbiter.
In Reply to: Re: Is S&A 'political'? (was This isn't about 'dinner' posted by Peter H on February 24, 2008 at 13:48:03:
It is clear that AR didn't set out to use his fiction to promote an overt philosophy in the way that writers such as Dickens, C.S. Lewis and Pullman have done. Despite this, there are times when a bit of such a programme pokes through the artfully naturalistic flow of Ransome's narrative.Towards the end of SD, for example, AR appears to be advocating that parents should encourage liveliness and independence in their children. Then there is the pro-bird anti-Hullabulloo-ism of CC and so on.
Overall, I doubt that AR's politics extended much beyond a fondness for the unconventional, a dislike of bullies and a general loyalty to his Bolshevik friends.Even if he had been a systematic Marxist, I suspect the S & A etc would have behaved as he would have liked his children to have behaved, much like how he himself behaved as a child but writ large and in happier circumstances. It seems to me that 1920s-30s Marxism had yet to take on the notion of the 'personal is the political'.