Posted by Alex Forbes on August 19, 2009 at 04:11:03 user Pitsligo.
In Reply to: Re: P&M and SW posted by Duncan on August 18, 2009 at 10:52:24:
But given the era, wouldn't an "adult" role necessarily be a female role?
I really *don't* mean to be sexist, but at that point in time, wouldn't Nancy, to become a successful (by my impression of contemporary standards) adult, have to become somewhat more (horrors!) domesticated? Feminine, even?
Certainly she has little interest in such trappings as choosing a menu, and she wouldn't be Nancy if she didn't accomplish her objectives of hiding the Ds and getting Timothy his assay equipment with a piratical panache. I don't think her fetters restrain her *style* in the least. But the meat of the situation seems to be about putting others first. Which, from my (admittedly very sketchy) awareness of 1930s sociology, was a sort of prime directive for housewives. The finale, on the Beckfoot lawn, when the GA returns, and Nancy steps in and saves the GA from the embarrassment of having to admit she'd pulled a bonehead maneuver going off without telling anyone what she was about, seems a classic example of an idealized feminine social grace.
And, as a tangent, was AR trying to soothe those parents who worried whether their daughters were too much like Nancy, and that if they were tomboys (a term I use as high praise) they might never be happy/domestic? Was he --consciously or otherwise-- trying to head off being labled as a Bad Influence for young girls, even if he was a Good Influence for young boys?
(I'm not saying he was --I haven't a clue how he was regarded during the era of the first printings of his books-- I'm just tossing the question out there.)
And I am COMPLETELY open to being told I'm utterly full of manure.
I keep thinking about what successful lives would mean to each of the characters --Dick, a research professor; John, a navy officer-- and when I get to the female characters, I'm terribly frustrated that they did not, in the '30s, have such opportunities for professional careers (with the possible exception of Dot, a novelist) than had the stories taken place today. I console myself that the impending WWII would have opened doors for them, but it's still maddening that I can't extend the stories forward in my mind and have Nancy commanding a Whitbread boat, or Titty as Program Director for an Outward Bound school, etc.
Alex