Posted by Robert Hill on July 15, 1999 at 17:44:20 from 129.11.153.35 via proxy proxy1.leeds.ac.uk:
In Reply to: Age & size posted by Anne LeVeque on July 15, 1999 at 14:34:14:
Of course, as Anne says, age doesn't always correlate with size, but
in S&A Peggy is specifically said to be about the same _size_ as John
(when the Swallows are sizing up the Amazons and wondering what would
happen if it came to a fight), whereas in Missee Lee it's unambiguous
that Peggy is _smaller_ than Susan (and that Susan is smaller than
John).
If we are desperate to avoid claiming a contradiction, we can assume
that, in the time between S&A and (the in any case "fictional") Missee
Lee, Peggy has grown less than John and been overtaken in size by Susan.
We could even hypothesize that in S&A Peggy has already had, rather
early, a pubertal spurt of growth which comes later to John and Susan!
But I think it's more probable that Ransome changed his mind about
Peggy's age (and size) after writing S&A and before most or all of
the other books.
Another change that seems to occur in Peggy is that early in S&A
she's presented as an incessant chatterer, but even by the end of the
book, let alone in the later books, she seems no more talkative than
anyone else.