![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
emma_in_dreamThe Family at Misrule - Ethel Turner (1895)
The sequel to *Seven Little Australians* was originally titled *Growing Up*. Ethel Turner embraced her child characters developing into adulthood. At this point in her career she was hoping to write adult novels as well as the children’s novels she became famous for.
It is a domestic novel - the plot is a succession of melodrama. Bunty is falsely accused of theft at school and runs off; Poppet believes in him and convinces his headmaster to clear his name; Meg gets engaged to Alan Courtney (with whom she flirted in *Seven Little Australians*); Pip gets engaged to an unsuitable, lower class woman; Meg intervenes and stops it; Nellie visits their parvenu neighbours, is embarrassed by their vulgarity, and repents; she brings back scarlet fever which infects Essie; Essie survives with Meg’s nursing; Meg then gets scarlet fever and both Pip and Nellie repent; then, to wind up a loose end, there is a fire which kills off Meg’s old suitor from *Seven Little Australians*.
It sounds ridiculous when I list it like this, but Essie’s illness and the despairing prayers of her siblings made me cry when I reread it. Though, OK, I was reading it five days after having a baby, so there were a lot of hormones floating about.*
The theme I’d like to discuss is class.
It is directly addressed in Pip’s ill-advised engagement to Mabelle Jones, a grocer’s daughter. It is obvious that Meg is right that she is unsuitable because when she meets Mabelle, Mabelle over-dresses garishly. Her costume is in contrast to Meg’s quiet gentility.
Nellie makes a disastrous foray into adult-hood. She illicitly visits the ‘gilt edged mushrooms’ who the other Woolcotts see through. The evening is a disaster and she realises the newly wealthy Fitzroy-Brownes are vulgar and that the Woolcotts shabby gentility is preferable.
And, most interestingly for me, in the background there is the servant Martha (ha!). She gets a day off a month and is engaged. Part of me finds the description of her engagement funny:
Malcolm was a Scotchman, and was saving up to buy a house of his own he did not believe in lining landlords' pockets with his earnings. It would, with
the strip of land he wanted, be four hundred odd pounds, and he had already saved 70 pounds. Martha had 15 in the bank, but then hers would have to go in furniture and clothing. Pip calculated that Malcolm would be seventy-two, and Martha a gay young thing of sixty-nine, by the time
the house was built and furnished; but Martha was more hopeful, and did not leave such a margin for the " strikes" Malcolm seemed to revel in.
Part of me finds it horrifying. Just pay her a living wage, for goodness sakes. This was written in the 1890s, in the midst of the burgeoning labour movement and a depression so bad that it was called the Great Depression until the next one came along. Also, in Australia, there was a hideous drought and rabbits were decimating the land in a way it has never recovered from. Clearly the intended audience is middle class and is presumed not to identify with the servant or the unionists or the lower-class seamstress or the parvenu Fitzroy-Brownes.
I believe the books originally sold for 3s6d (I can’t remember where this figure comes from to confirm it). In 1907 the Harvester decision decreed that a family of five could live in 'frugal comfort' on an income of seven shillings a day, so a Turner book would be one fourteenth of the weekly income of a working class family.
I know that her publishers were very keen that she not alienate librarians and Sunday school teachers as her books were often given as prizes in schools and churches. For this reason, Pip’s speech was edited in *Seven Little Australians* - ‘my oath!’ became ‘my word!’
I’ve drifted a little here - my point is that the reader is positioned as a member of the middle classes. We are meant to identify with the quiet, shabby gentility of the Woolcotts. We are meant to accept that what is good for them is what is good for everyone (though, in the case of Martha, it would actually be better if they were even more shabbily genteel and she had her wages doubled).
At one point Martha takes Poppet out for lunch on her day off - that’s when Poppet finds Bunty. I can’t help but feel it’s a bit above and beyond for Martha. But I guess I am looking for a kind of *Upstairs Downstairs* in which Martha’s story is valued as much as Poppet’s, and that’s perhaps a bit much to expect from a children’s book.
* I read the books for this challenge in advance, as soon as I know what they will be. This helps when there is a big one, like *War and Peace*.
The sequel to *Seven Little Australians* was originally titled *Growing Up*. Ethel Turner embraced her child characters developing into adulthood. At this point in her career she was hoping to write adult novels as well as the children’s novels she became famous for.
It is a domestic novel - the plot is a succession of melodrama. Bunty is falsely accused of theft at school and runs off; Poppet believes in him and convinces his headmaster to clear his name; Meg gets engaged to Alan Courtney (with whom she flirted in *Seven Little Australians*); Pip gets engaged to an unsuitable, lower class woman; Meg intervenes and stops it; Nellie visits their parvenu neighbours, is embarrassed by their vulgarity, and repents; she brings back scarlet fever which infects Essie; Essie survives with Meg’s nursing; Meg then gets scarlet fever and both Pip and Nellie repent; then, to wind up a loose end, there is a fire which kills off Meg’s old suitor from *Seven Little Australians*.
It sounds ridiculous when I list it like this, but Essie’s illness and the despairing prayers of her siblings made me cry when I reread it. Though, OK, I was reading it five days after having a baby, so there were a lot of hormones floating about.*
The theme I’d like to discuss is class.
It is directly addressed in Pip’s ill-advised engagement to Mabelle Jones, a grocer’s daughter. It is obvious that Meg is right that she is unsuitable because when she meets Mabelle, Mabelle over-dresses garishly. Her costume is in contrast to Meg’s quiet gentility.
Nellie makes a disastrous foray into adult-hood. She illicitly visits the ‘gilt edged mushrooms’ who the other Woolcotts see through. The evening is a disaster and she realises the newly wealthy Fitzroy-Brownes are vulgar and that the Woolcotts shabby gentility is preferable.
And, most interestingly for me, in the background there is the servant Martha (ha!). She gets a day off a month and is engaged. Part of me finds the description of her engagement funny:
Malcolm was a Scotchman, and was saving up to buy a house of his own he did not believe in lining landlords' pockets with his earnings. It would, with
the strip of land he wanted, be four hundred odd pounds, and he had already saved 70 pounds. Martha had 15 in the bank, but then hers would have to go in furniture and clothing. Pip calculated that Malcolm would be seventy-two, and Martha a gay young thing of sixty-nine, by the time
the house was built and furnished; but Martha was more hopeful, and did not leave such a margin for the " strikes" Malcolm seemed to revel in.
Part of me finds it horrifying. Just pay her a living wage, for goodness sakes. This was written in the 1890s, in the midst of the burgeoning labour movement and a depression so bad that it was called the Great Depression until the next one came along. Also, in Australia, there was a hideous drought and rabbits were decimating the land in a way it has never recovered from. Clearly the intended audience is middle class and is presumed not to identify with the servant or the unionists or the lower-class seamstress or the parvenu Fitzroy-Brownes.
I believe the books originally sold for 3s6d (I can’t remember where this figure comes from to confirm it). In 1907 the Harvester decision decreed that a family of five could live in 'frugal comfort' on an income of seven shillings a day, so a Turner book would be one fourteenth of the weekly income of a working class family.
I know that her publishers were very keen that she not alienate librarians and Sunday school teachers as her books were often given as prizes in schools and churches. For this reason, Pip’s speech was edited in *Seven Little Australians* - ‘my oath!’ became ‘my word!’
I’ve drifted a little here - my point is that the reader is positioned as a member of the middle classes. We are meant to identify with the quiet, shabby gentility of the Woolcotts. We are meant to accept that what is good for them is what is good for everyone (though, in the case of Martha, it would actually be better if they were even more shabbily genteel and she had her wages doubled).
At one point Martha takes Poppet out for lunch on her day off - that’s when Poppet finds Bunty. I can’t help but feel it’s a bit above and beyond for Martha. But I guess I am looking for a kind of *Upstairs Downstairs* in which Martha’s story is valued as much as Poppet’s, and that’s perhaps a bit much to expect from a children’s book.
* I read the books for this challenge in advance, as soon as I know what they will be. This helps when there is a big one, like *War and Peace*.
