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Margot's devil
http://www.the-cbb.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=7348
Author:  Miss Tinsel [ Wed Feb 17, 2010 9:13 am ]
Post subject:  Margot's devil
This has probably been done before - if so, apologies; I'm new here! :)

I was wondering what folk here make of Margot's "devil"? Is it EBD's way of making Margot closer (in the sense of more similar to) to her beloved Joey, ie by suggesting what amounts to an outside agency at work rather than acknowledging that there's any real badness in Margot herself?

Does he/it evolve in any way like the regular characters?

Wondered what views on him were... :?
Author:  Alison H [ Wed Feb 17, 2010 10:03 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Margot's devil
Welcome to the CBB, Miss Tinsel :D .

Views on this seem to be divided ... one line of thought is that "my devil" is a sort of imaginary friend and that the continued references to him even when Margot's in her late teens are just some sort of family joke (with the devil being one of those little cartoon devils you sometimes see in adverts for "naughty" chocolate), another is that it's the idea that everyone has a guardian angel but also has a devil, and another is that it's a serious religious thing and that Margot's decision to become a nun and her struggle with her devil are closely intertwined. I don't think EBD intended us to think in terms of Biblical-style possession, but I suppose that's another way of looking at it.

I'm inclined to think that "my devil" did start out as an imaginary friend for Margot to blame for "telling" her to do things she shouldn't, but, whilst that's not unusual with young children, I do find it odd that she's still talking about him when she's in her late teens. She does sometimes seem to take the view that she's the only one who ever has any sort of struggle with her conscience - there's a scene somewhere in which she seems quite shocked when Len points out that she and Con and everyone else also have to struggle to overcome their faults - which is quite concerning.

I don't think he's particularly meant to externalise Margot's faults. She does get away with some horrendous behaviour - blackmailing Ted and nearly killing Betty Landon - which other girls might well have been expelled for, and I find it irritating that, despite Margot's behaviour, everyone is always parroting on about how other girls' faults are caused by poor parenting but that Joey and Jack are perfect parents (although the same happens when we're told that Sybil's poor behaviour can't possibly be due to Madge's parenting). However, I think that that's linked more to the hero-worship of the MBR clan than to blaming Margot's behaviour on an external force. Interestingly, Mike Maynard is also "naughty", but no-one ever seems to suggest that he's got a devil.
Author:  julieanne1811 [ Wed Feb 17, 2010 10:15 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Margot's devil
As a very young child, when asked 'who did this?', I would reply, 'Mr Nobody'. I was the 'good' one - I never did the (expected now and therefore allowed, a lot of times) teenage rebellion.
Of course I did wrong things - I'm using 'good' here in the way my next sister was the 'pretty' one and last the 'kind' one. I suppose children in families do get labelled like this, however inaccurate the labels. It's sad when others believe the labels and expect a certain kind of behaviour ....
Any, back OT we go! Mr Nobody died out very quickly, and was treated by the family as a bit of a joke. Not in the way of allowing me to escape the just rewards of any wrong-doing, but simply laughing, ignoring my claim, and doing what needed to be done, since my claim proved my own guilt ...!
I do rather think that Margot uses her 'devil' as an excuse for her misdemenours, which I find grating. She rarely seems, IIRC, to acknowledge her guilt and take full responsiblity for it. And this is condoned by others around her. 'Oh, it's just (just!!! - as if that's OK!!!) Margot and her devil'. Nobody ever seems to say that she should drop this and take responsibility for her actions herself. People sighing and saying 'it's her devil' does her no good at all.
Author:  JB [ Wed Feb 17, 2010 12:04 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Margot's devil
I don't think Margot's devil is mentioned until the early Swiss books, when the triplets are 11, although the poor child's been tagged as the "naughty one" since birth.

I agree that she uses her devil as an excuse and i'm amazed that no-one sat down with her and talked about taking responsibility for her actions. Or, that as an intelligent girl, she hadn't worked out by her mid-teens that everyone has their own struggles. Perhaps this is what Joey means when she says that Margot's maturity is very much on the surface. She doesn't consider or have insight into other people in the way her sisters do.

For all these reasons, I feel uncomfortable with her desire to become a nun and feel that she sees this maybe another way of someone else taking responsibility.
Author:  Tor [ Wed Feb 17, 2010 1:08 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Margot's devil
Quote:
For all these reasons, I feel uncomfortable with her desire to become a nun and feel that she sees this maybe another way of someone else taking responsibility.


JB, you have put into words just what I feel about Margot's 'calling', but haven't been able to articulate. With Robin, I was just a bit sad that it effectively wrote her out of the series; with Margot I just don't like it at all.
Author:  ChubbyMonkey [ Wed Feb 17, 2010 3:02 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Margot's devil
One reason that I think I never questioned the Devil was - and I am quite embarrassed to admit this! :oops: - that I used to see ghosts. I can think of at least three occasions when I saw one. Not to go into that debate, but it first happened at quite an early age, so I was always quite open to the idea of things that you couldn't see or understand having an influence.

Now I tend to view it as something more Freudian. I "like" psychoanalysis, but I don't think all of it is that "good", despite the influence it's had. But I do think that the devil would be a fairly good example of both repression and displacement. Plus I like to think that EBD was a little of that school, with all her references to the childhood shaping a person!
Author:  Sunglass [ Wed Feb 17, 2010 5:45 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Margot's devil
ChubbyMonkey wrote:
One reason that I think I never questioned the Devil was - and I am quite embarrassed to admit this! :oops: - that I used to see ghosts. I can think of at least three occasions when I saw one. Not to go into that debate...!


Why ever not? Tell us about your ghosts, Chubbymonkey. We have a family one, too, though I don't know that anyone's seen her in a while, as the house is empty.

I'm one of those who gets rather annoyed by Margot's devil, or at least by the way in which everyone is prepared to go along with the fiction, long after the 'imaginary friend' stage, when Margot should be taking full personal responsibility for her own actions, and doing without the childhood crutch of ascribing them to bad inspirations from her personal anti-Guardian Angel. I think EBD thinks it's kind of cute, but I'd see it as an unhealthy product of Joey's rather sickly tendency to discipline the children, when young, with cries of 'Do you want to make the little Christ-Child weep?' when they've been naughty.

As other people have said up the thread, I think Margot's devil is EBD's way of trying to rationalise why, despite the perfect parenting and utterly happy environment of Freudesheim, it has still produced an angry, confused girl like Margot with a rather violent and possessive streak. (Especially when all other cases of problem girls are ascribed to poor parenting or an un-ideal home environment.) The idea that Margot has a particular personal problem inherent to her own nature - symbolised by her devil - gets Jack and Joey off the hook as parents, as does the retrospective fiction that Margot was too fragile to be properly disciplined as a small child.
Author:  ChubbyMonkey [ Wed Feb 17, 2010 6:03 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Margot's devil
Sunglass wrote:
Why ever not? Tell us about your ghosts, Chubbymonkey. We have a family one, too, though I don't know that anyone's seen her in a while, as the house is empty.


If you insist! There was one when I was very little, who came and asked to speak to my granddad who'd been a pilot but was dead now. Not very believable until we learnt that my great-grandfather died in a plane crash (that still spooks me a little!) Then there was the tramp, who used to walk across the bottom of my room and into the cupboard. I think that I saw him twice, and mum used to say that she'd hear people walking about upstairs when she was in the house by herself - humouring me and my childishness, I'm sure :oops:

Doesn't it say in 'Jo to the Rescue' that Margot had inherited Jack's temper? But I can see that maybe even that was blaming them too much for EBD. She doesn't seem to mind that much at the beginning, though - again in 'Rescue' we're told that Joey tries to hide Margot's tempers from Jack, which surely she can't have thought of as responsible parenting... This seems to be another instance of EBD steadily growing to think of Jo as more and more perfect.

I can't help picturing Hilda sat in her office gritting her teeth and muttering to herself "Believe in the Devil, just pretend you believe in it, if you upset Joey you could lose your job..."
Author:  RubyGates [ Wed Feb 17, 2010 6:08 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Margot's devil
When I was a child I never really questioned the concept of Margot's devil because I was brought up going to an evangelical church which firmly believed in Satan and demon possession. We were told that all the bad things you did like lying or stealing etc were all caused by demons. If you had the demons cast out you would, presumably, be a perfect human being.
Jo saying "do you want to make baby jesus cry?" may be sickly but it seems less cruel than being told, like I was, that I'd burn in Hell for all eternity for my sins.
Author:  emma t [ Wed Feb 17, 2010 6:14 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Margot's devil
Margot's devil; I was always under the impression that it was just an excuse for her temper tantrums! I never did think it was an imaginary friend or such like; but it is an interesting take on it, though :)

Chubby Monkey, did you feel scared when you saw the ghosts? I once saw my granny in the oven mirror, and did not feel scared at all ( I have always been taught that the dead can never hurt you) plus I was more afraid of upsetting my mum and put it off telling her that I'd seen granny! Sorry for going off topic but I find it interesting :mrgreen:
Author:  Shander [ Wed Feb 17, 2010 6:43 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Margot's devil
I'd always equated Margot's devil with the scene in Little Women where Jo March talks about her temper and how it gets the best of her. I took Margot's devil as a way of expressing a part of her personality that she struggles with.
Having said that, I also don't have much trouble with the idea of her becoming a nun. Most people I know with vocations tend to struggle mightly and often go and do the exact opposit of what their vocation might suggest in an effort to prove that they don't have one, an action which in the end only seems to prove that they do have a vocation.
Author:  Lesley [ Wed Feb 17, 2010 8:08 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Margot's devil
I always considered that Margot blaming 'her devil' was her way, as a young child, of placing responsibility for her bad behaviour. It's something any number of children do - the thing is though she doesn't seem to grow out of it. At age 12 she's talking about listening to her devil when Emerence hits Mary Lou and even later she's still using it as an excuse. I would not have expected any 12 year old to still be using a baby excuse - and i would expect her parents to tell her in no uncertain terms that she should take responsibility for her own actions now.
Author:  Nightwing [ Wed Feb 17, 2010 8:46 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Margot's devil
I think the first time that Margot herself speaks of her devil in any way that suggests that she no longer sees him as a separate entity but as a childish fancy is in Prefects, when she tells her sisters she wants to become a nun, and says something along the lines of "remember all those problems I had with 'my devil'?" I think by that point she's actually grown up a lot, and I don't think she was hasty when she made her decision - you can see its roots as far back as Problem.

Margot definitely is one of those people who, as a child at least, thinks that everything revolves around her. 'Selfish' isn't quite the word for it - it's more like she's unable to see, or simply doesn't care, that her actions can affect other people. Although she's quite capable of being selfish, too! But I don't think it's surprising that she's never quite noticed that her sisters have faults, just as she does. I always thought it was a bit rich of Len to equate her untidiness with Margot's almost murderous temper, though :roll:

When does Margot first mention her devil? I know it Jo to the rescue she talks about her guardian angel, but I don't have any memory of her talking about her devil before she comes back from Canada, and always assumed it must have been something she came up with there (perhaps in the convent school?)
Author:  Miss Tinsel [ Wed Feb 17, 2010 10:43 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Margot's devil
I wondered also whether the origin of Margot's devil was actually in Jo's sense of mischief...it was said in one of the books that the triplets each inherited a part of Jo's character: Len her sense of responsibility, Con her imagination and Margot her mischief...maybe without the other "two thirds" of her personality to dilute the mischief, Jo would have had her own "devil"? Although in its "purer", more concentrated Margotian (is that a word?!) form it does evolve into something much nastier than mischief/naughtiness, it's true... :?
Author:  Alison H [ Wed Feb 17, 2010 11:24 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Margot's devil
I love the word "Margotian" :lol: .

It definitely mutates into something nastier in Margot. We see Jo doing things like putting sherbet in the water basins, encouraging everyone to use Shakespearian language and playing the St Swithin's day prank, and occasionally doing something really "naughty" like sneaking out to the ice carnival. Ailie is quite like her in that respect. We hardly ever see Margot doing things like that, though, apart from the odd time - she played some prank in one of Kathie's lessons in New Mistress, and she fell into Lake Lucerne as a result of messing about but that was more carelessness and lack of common sense than mischief. Instead, we get her blackmailing Ted, having a go at younger kids when she's Games Prefect and chucking a bookend at poor Betty Landon.

Having said which, I don't think Len's obsessive sense of responsibility bears much resemblance to Joey's so-called protectiveness, and I don't think Joey was ever as dreamy as Con sometimes was, so maybe all Joey's personality traits mutated when they were apparently divided into three parts :wink: .
Author:  Miss Tinsel [ Wed Feb 17, 2010 11:38 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Margot's devil
Alison H wrote:


I don't think Len's obsessive sense of responsibility bears much resemblance to Joey's so-called protectiveness, and I don't think Joey was ever as dreamy as Con sometimes was, so maybe all Joey's personality traits mutated when they were apparently divided into three parts :wink: .


Yes - on the basis that all extremes are in some way suspect, and balance is preferable and safer?

Glad you liked Margotian - it's got me playing around with descriptors for the other triplets now! Connian? Leninine? Oh deary me... :oops:
Author:  Nightwing [ Wed Feb 17, 2010 11:43 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Margot's devil
I think that EBD gave each one of the triplets a distinct character trait as children because it made it easy to separate them - the problem was that as the grew older, she never quite managed to overcome their one-trick-ponyness. And she even recognised that herself - Theodora basically deals with each triplet having to confront their biggest flaw (and almost single personality trait) and try to overcome them.

But I don't think EBD ever quite manages to overcome them. I think Con is the triplet this is most noticeable in, because at times she shows insight which is quite as, er, insightful as Len's, but EBD continues to say that Len's the one with all the understanding. The triplets keep trying to become real people, but they never quite succeed - sort of like that scene in an early book, where Jo is happily plotting stories which will never work because her characters keep trying to go their own way.
Author:  Nicci [ Fri Feb 19, 2010 12:30 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Margot's devil
Returning to the comment about Margot being too delicate as a child to discipline properly, I think there is a direct reference/explanation/excuse about this in Rescue. However, it seems pretty outrageous that after all the criticism of Lydia and her lack of discipline toward Ralf, they end up doing exactly the same!
Author:  trig [ Fri Feb 19, 2010 7:49 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Margot's devil
"Too delicate to discipline properly" is a phrase that makes me feel sick. Surely if a child is well enough to be naughty they're able to withstand some stern talking-to or even a hard slap? I'm sure EBD felt this herself as she has scenes where Robin has to apologise - and this is a sound punishment for any child - how I used to hate it myself! It's just part of her excuse for how Margot is still badly behaved even though Jo and Jack are such wonderful parents :shock:

I'd have liked the triplet storyline more if all three of them had had more realistic personality issues. I've known two sets of triplets in my life, both sets when they were teenagers, and they were generally more naughty and attention-seeking than other children (quite naturally!). One of the mothers was a friend of mine, and she already had two small children when she had the triplets (and had to manage completely without "help"). She looked absolutely haggard and admitted quite freely that most of the time she couldn't control the triplets.

Even with such help as Joey has, it can't have been easy, and how much more interesting it would have been to have some real antagonism between the trips.
Author:  Sunglass [ Sat Feb 20, 2010 10:09 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Margot's devil
trig wrote:

I'd have liked the triplet storyline more if all three of them had had more realistic personality issues. I've known two sets of triplets in my life, both sets when they were teenagers, and they were generally more naughty and attention-seeking than other children (quite naturally!). One of the mothers was a friend of mine, and she already had two small children when she had the triplets (and had to manage completely without "help"). She looked absolutely haggard and admitted quite freely that most of the time she couldn't control the triplets.

Even with such help as Joey has, it can't have been easy, and how much more interesting it would have been to have some real antagonism between the trips.


I agree, only I think that there are little nuggets of antagonism between the triplets - for me, it's one of the places where EBD is, probably unconsciously, a more interesting writer than the idealising chronicler of the Perfect Family that she sets out to be. It's never explored in any real way, but I think you could see in Margot's possessiveness, outbreaks of temper, and refusal to slog academically like her sisters, a kind of resentment at Len and Con for being goodygoodies, and a desire to set herself apart as an individual, rather than one of three. Len's premature elderliness and over-developed sense of responsibility can look like she's been overburdened as the 'eldest' from too young an age, having been essentially appointed a Freudesheim 'prefect' from toddlerhood, which must have led to her envying her less obviously burdened sisters. And Con's 'dreaminess' to me sometimes looks she's just zoning out, and refusing to be either the Bad Triplet or the Good Triplet.

And of course they are all three also obliged to deal with, not just being one of three (and one of eleven), but also 'famous' within their school, and the overwhelming personality of their mother.
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