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praising to the face
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Author:  MJKB [ Thu Jan 15, 2009 3:46 pm ]
Post subject:  praising to the face

Do people think that Joey is excessively concerned about strangers praising children's looks? Even poor Phoebe Peters got a slap on the wrist for commenting on Sybil's appearance in Rescue, and it wasn't even said in front of the her. I know that she was concerned that such praise could go to the child's head and, possibly, encourage her to define herself only in terms of her looks, which is quite a reasonable concern. However, Sybil's looks are generally regarded as quite out of the ordinary so it is highly likely that she will always be the recepient of admiration. I can just about empathise with Joey's attitude on the subject if the praise is lavished in front of the child, particularly if there are other children there, but I think children should be thought how to accept compliments as graciously as they are taught how to receive constructive criticism with humility.
Some poor unfortunate lady very kindly commented on how pretty the triplets looked as bridesmaids at Daisy's wedding - a fairly standard thing, I would have thought - and Joey's angry retort was forestalled by Len's pert (imho) retort to the woman, which must have embarrassed her horribly. Can't quite remember what Len's quote was, something about"praise to the face is something something...disgrace and we have nothing to do with our appearance because it come from God." (Sorry, that sounds garbled., I know). Anyway, whatever it was it sounded most ungracious and really quite rude coming from an eleven year old to an adult. Joey seemed to be both entertained by Len's response and proud of her astuteness.

Author:  Alison H [ Thu Jan 15, 2009 4:21 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: praising to the face

Len said something about their looks being a gift from God, which I agree was rather rude and ungracious: it's pretty much expected that people will say how lovely the bride and the bridesmaids look (even if they don't :lol: ).

I suppose it's the puritanical view - quite common in some North American literature in which the main characters come from strict Calvinistic backgrounds - that vanity is a sin, but in CS land it only ever seems to apply to members of the clan! Joey refers to Marie and Wanda, soon after meeting them, as "those pretty girls like fairy princesses" (or words to that effect), and in Prefects Mary-Lou says something to Vi along the lines of "You always were the school beauty" which to me is a very odd way of greeting a friend whom you haven't seen for months! Not to mention Miss Norman (I think) making some bizarre comment about how she can't imagine that many schools have such a good-looking staff as they do.

I feel sorry for Sybil: she is made to feel guilty about her good looks to the extent that she gets very narky if anyone refers to them, and she can't help being beautiful any more than others of us can help not being beautiful. You may as well say that you shouldn't comment on people's musical talent or sporting talent on the grounds they they're God-given.

The argument that the reason Sybil was messing about with the kettle when she shouldn't have been was due to people talking about how pretty she was just doesn't add up: we never particularly see anyone making a big deal of Sybil's looks, and plenty of other characters are badly behaved without it having anything to do with how pretty they are. When Robin is little, people are always saying how pretty she is, and she's held up as a model of good behaviour!

Author:  Nightwing [ Thu Jan 15, 2009 10:43 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: praising to the face

Maybe Sybil is the reason that Joey becomes so worried about people praising her own children? I think it's fair to say that she's very kind to Sybil herself about the incident, but as it's commonly accepted that Sybil's vanity is the cause of her disobedience I can see why Joey would be very concerned that the same thing would happen to the triplets - especially as Margot, the 'naughty' one, is often seen as the most attractive, at least superficially.

As to directly linking Sybil's vanity and her disobedience... :roll: . It does seem a bit extreme. On the other hand, Sybil is shown as being prideful and having a very dominant personality as a small child, and if she is always being praised as being very pretty perhaps she somehow comes to think that she has the right to do as she wants because she's so good-looking. Although I think it's as much a fault of Madge's parenting as it is of all the people that praised her to her face.

Author:  CBW [ Thu Jan 15, 2009 11:25 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: praising to the face

Given the setup in the Russell nursery, maybe the attention she got because of her looks was the only thing that make Sybil feel special and so she played up to it.

When that was destroyed she spent the rest of her life trying not to be noticed

Author:  Sunglass [ Fri Jan 16, 2009 11:20 am ]
Post subject:  Re: praising to the face

The emphasis on not praising looks to your face comes off particularly oddly given that EBD is absolutely obsessed with women and girls' relative prettiness and plainness! I mean, I know the CS has a huge cast of characters and there are lots of 'flat' characters who only exist to fill out the school/staff and as a set of physical characteristics so we need references to looks as a sort of mnemonic as to who's who, but people's looks are almost invariably described in terms of their beauty or lack of it, even when it would seem to have no relevance to their story: eg. Robin looks like an angel, Verity like a fairy, the von Eschenaus like fairy princesses, while Ted Grantley is 'no beauty', Mary-Lou before her accident will only 'pass with a shove', Joan Baker's prettiness is 'commonplace' etc. Even the Staff's looks are continually described in terms of their attractiveness! -

Quote:
Dr Benson was an attractive woman. The Seniors realized it and congratulated themĀ¬selves on gaining another highly presentable mistress.


It seems very odd to me then, that given the interest of the books in beauty, that EBD continually presents her most 'perfect' character as being right to be extremely rude to people who make entirely conventional, polite comments on the looks of a child, either in a situation where that's expected (a wedding) or when the child isn't even present (Sybil and Phoebe in Rescue).

Also, if EBD really intends us, as she seems to, to see Sybil's beauty as contributing to her problem character as a child, it would work better if the books weren't full of other exquisitely beautiful girls who appear to have no such problems! (I mean, Sybil would have shared a nursery with Robin and Peggy Bettany, both presented as extremely lovely girls.) And we are never actually shown Sybil being vain at all - when we see her being unpleasant as a child, it's when she's insisting that she 'belongs' to 'Die Rosen', whereas the Bettanys are just cousins. Which is pathetic, as well as a bit obnoxious, but nothing to do with her looks!

Author:  Alison H [ Fri Jan 16, 2009 1:04 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: praising to the face

Maybe Joey was just jealous because she wasn't pretty herself and her husband was "no film star". Everyone in the books is so obsessed with looks! When Bride Bettany went up to receive a presentation, someone said to Mollie that Bride was improving in looks and maybe the Bettanys would end up with three pretty daughters instead of just two: I appreciate that it was meant as a compliment but it was really incredibly rude. And poor Janie Lucy has it in her head that the first thing people think when they see her is how plain she is compared to her two half-sisters.

Incidentally, did anyone ever "congratulate themselves" at school on the fact that a new teacher was "an attractive woman" :roll: ?!

Author:  MJKB [ Fri Jan 16, 2009 4:08 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: praising to the face

"Maybe Joey was just jealous because she wasn't pretty herself and her husband was "no film star"" Quote from Alison H
I thought that too and it would be a justifiable reason for Joey's anger in Rescue when the 'Sodger' picked out Sybil to the exclusion of the other children, including the trips. People who praise one child to the exclusion of another are horribly insensitive and deserve every bit of rudeness they get. But obviously that was not the case since Len was allowed snub the effusive woman in Oberland.

Author:  Fiona Mc [ Sat Jan 17, 2009 8:14 am ]
Post subject:  Re: praising to the face

Alison H wrote:
Maybe Joey was just jealous because she wasn't pretty herself and her husband was "no film star". Everyone in the books is so obsessed with looks! When Bride Bettany went up to receive a presentation, someone said to Mollie that Bride was improving in looks and maybe the Bettanys would end up with three pretty daughters instead of just two: I appreciate that it was meant as a compliment but it was really incredibly rude.


The person your thinking of was Joey herself. The silly thing is Bride was easily the most popular of all the Bettany girls despite her plainess!

Author:  jennifer [ Sat Jan 17, 2009 9:41 am ]
Post subject:  Re: praising to the face

I had remembered that happening when the triplets were small - say about 3 years old. At that age, it's pretty common for kids to repeat adult sayings to other adults, mimicking their parents (Eat your vegetables before you get dessert). It would be understandable then.

But it was in Oberland! The triplets at that point are ten, going on eleven, and supposed to be mature for their age. That's plenty old enough to be taught to be polite interaction with adults. I can see a kid that age being embarrassed by a public compliment on their looks, but not giving the complimenter a moral lecture in response.

Author:  Sunglass [ Sat Jan 17, 2009 4:15 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: praising to the face

jennifer wrote:
I had remembered that happening when the triplets were small - say about 3 years old. At that age, it's pretty common for kids to repeat adult sayings to other adults, mimicking their parents (Eat your vegetables before you get dessert). It would be understandable then.

But it was in Oberland! The triplets at that point are ten, going on eleven, and supposed to be mature for their age.


The triplets never do grow out of that Parroting Mamma stage, though, as far as I can see - I was saying this on some other thread a while ago, in relation to something else. Most people grow out of saying 'Well, my mother says so! So there!' or 'My mum says...' at a very young age, but, probably because they've so thoroughly absorbed a sense of Joey's utter importance from their surroundings - not just Famous Author, Sister of Foundress, Head of San's Wife, Mother of Millions, but Spirit of the CS etc - the triplets still quote her with total faith all over the place, as if she were the Bible or the Constitution of the Rules of the Road, in their final years at school.

The one that cracks me up is when a new girl in one of the Swiss books is taken aback at the continentals dunking their rolls into their coffee at breakfast, and Len reassures her by saying something like 'It's OK, they do that here - Mamma told us ages ago!' Joey is the authority here, rather than the girls with whom she's eaten breakfast every day for several years!

Which is a long-drawn-out way of saying that it doesn't surprise me that the triplets would have been parroting Joey on the subject of God-given looks at virtually any age.

Author:  MJKB [ Sun Jan 18, 2009 1:29 am ]
Post subject:  Re: praising to the face

It's really sad when you hear adults constantly quoting their parents. My mother had a friend who still quoted from her father's extremely rigid code of morality when she was hitting ninety! She used to go into regular paroxyms of rage at the 'filth' being shown on tv."My father would have been appalled!" I think it's really important that children are aware, age appropriately, that their parents are capable of error. Joey held on frimly to her pedestal while Jack topped up the cement!
To be fair, they are depicted as very loving parents, and it is obvious that JOey, in particular, loves babies and is pretty hands on with the minutae of child rearing. But they continue to exert almost total control over their near adult children at a stage when they should be encouraging them to think for themselves.

Author:  Fiona Mc [ Sun Jan 18, 2009 5:28 am ]
Post subject:  Re: praising to the face

Maybe for Joey its a way of making up for not having had a Mother. It could be she felt the lack despite her closeness with Madge and thought that was the norm and she did think highly of Madge for years even when she was an adult

Author:  Emma A [ Mon Jan 19, 2009 10:25 am ]
Post subject:  Re: praising to the face

I was skim-reading A Chalet Girl from Kenya last night, and there's a bit in that where Leila asks for Con after her op (and everyone rushes round dragging her out of lessons so that Leila's wish can be satisfied); Mrs Elstob thanks Con profusely for her help (Leila has fallen asleep, possibly as a result of seeing and listening to Con); and Con gets embarrassed and says, rather rudely, that she didn't do anything, it was God who made Leila well. I appreciate that EBD was trying to make obvious Con's embarrassment at Mrs Elstob's fulsome thanks, and Con was only eleven, but still, she could have said, "you're very welcome, but I don't think I did much, really," or words to that effect. Or would that have been a bit adult, even for a Maynard Triplet?

Author:  MJKB [ Mon Jan 19, 2009 1:14 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: praising to the face

I agree with Emma A's point above. Surely there is no need for children to be ungracious in those situations, and that's where training comes in.
Joey and Jack were supposed to be sticklers for good manners and yet on a few occasions their children come across as brusque and even insensitive. The basis of good manners is to make other people feel comfortable, so an offhand reply to a heartfelt thank you is likely to make the other person feel snubbed or uncomfortable.

Author:  Sunglass [ Mon Jan 19, 2009 1:50 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: praising to the face

Fiona Mc wrote:
Maybe for Joey its a way of making up for not having had a Mother. It could be she felt the lack despite her closeness with Madge and thought that was the norm and she did think highly of Madge for years even when she was an adult


Reading this, it occurred to me that Joey as mother is actually replicating the precise circumstances of her own early schooldays, where, until Madge married, the teenage Joey's only home was the CS, her sister/mother-figure was her Head, and private 'family' time with Madge had to mingle with remembering not to call her by her first name at school etc. The triplets' situation is not unlike this in some ways - their home is almost in the CS, their mother is virtually a member of staff, and they're continually having to remember not to call the Head, a family friend, 'Auntie' in public. Maybe Joey herself at some level thinks that the lack of separation of home and school spheres is normal, even though she's hardly in Madge's situation of needing this to be the case because of financial necessity.

Although I'd have found it almost more natural for Joey, after her own school/home mingled experience, to decide on the opposite policy - that school and home would be entirely separate for her own daughters, with no confusion between family/staff and home/school space etc.

I quite agree about the Maynard children's acquired responses to compliments being extremely bad manners - it's a form of moral superiority being rubbed in the other person's face and taking precedent over basic politeness: The rightness of my private philosophy about God being responsible for someone's looks is more important than making you feel comfortable, or making my children behave politely.It's as if I were ill in bed and an acquaintance brought me some exotic fruit, and I took the opportunity to read them a lecture about air miles instead of thanking them.

Author:  JS [ Mon Jan 19, 2009 3:52 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: praising to the face

How many of us are actually any good at accepting compliments, though? I know I have had to try to accept them graciously and mostly manage now, but still sometimes go scarlet and try to belittle whatever it is has been praised. And I'm 42 and should know better.

Author:  Emma A [ Mon Jan 19, 2009 4:06 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: praising to the face

JS wrote:
How many of us are actually any good at accepting compliments, though? I know I have had to try to accept them graciously and mostly manage now, but still sometimes go scarlet and try to belittle whatever it is has been praised. And I'm 42 and should know better.

That's true. Antonia Forest notes in Cricket Term, IIRC, that one of Ginty's gifts was to accept a compliment with grace and charm - contrasting this to her friend Monica's more gauche response (to their form mistress's pride that they'd been chosen for the school swimming team against a rival school). I find it interesting that Forest calls it a gift, and it's one of the few times the author approves of Ginty!

Author:  MaryR [ Mon Jan 19, 2009 5:30 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: praising to the face

JS wrote:
How many of us are actually any good at accepting compliments, though? I know I have had to try to accept them graciously and mostly manage now, but still sometimes go scarlet and try to belittle whatever it is has been praised. And I'm 42 and should know better.

Same here, JS, and I've reached the ripe old age of 62! It was only when I had it pointed out to me these last couple of years that a) I was insulting the person who passed the compliment and b) I was implying that my friends didn't speak the truth, that I tried to change. But I still find it hard, having been brought up to regard thinking I'm good at something as the sin of pride - and needed to go to confession. Old habits die hard. :roll:

And I rather think that expecting Con at the age of 11 to accept a compliment gracefully is expecting too much. Like most of us at that age at that time she would have had it instilled in her that hearing good of oneself makes one vain. Autres temps, autre moeurs, I'm afraid.

Author:  Sunglass [ Mon Jan 19, 2009 6:07 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: praising to the face

MaryR wrote:
And I rather think that expecting Con at the age of 11 to accept a compliment gracefully is expecting too much.


I know what you mean about being trained to self-deprecation, but I think there's a difference between a child blushing and feeling awkward when praised (as I remember well from being a child, growing up in Ireland, where parents being self-deprecating on behalf of their children was practically compulsory! You should have heard my mother disparaging my Leaving Cert results to the neighbours because she was afraid of seeming too pleased with herself!) and a child essentially stating that the praising adult is behaving incorrectly by paying the compliment to her rather than God.

When I was eleven, my mother would have been outraged if I'd simply accepted a compliment (she would have seen it as stuck-up and suggesting I had a very high opinion of myself), but she'd have taken me out the back and murdered me if I'd said 'God gave me my brains, so it's nothing to do with me, really' or something, because that would be implying I knew better than whoever had praised me!

I don't in the least blame the children - they're simply parroting what they've heard around them. I still find it a bit strange, though, that Joey hasn't trained them to some politer formula for public complimenting, especially as she herself very much enjoys being extraordinary and talked-about for having triplets etc - it's not as though the Maynard children grow up in a family that desperately clings to the notion of being ordinary. They see their mother hogging attention and basically showing off a lot, after all, and they're used to being 'special' at school!

Author:  Margaret [ Mon Jan 19, 2009 9:29 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: praising to the face

Margaret

Yes, I agree with all the above, even at 66 I can't accept complements "with grace and charm", but I have had it drummed into me enough that "Oh, Thank you" is the reply. Anything like the trips' comments would have got me into serious trouble

Author:  Dreaming Marianne [ Sat Jan 24, 2009 9:24 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: praising to the face

This bit always stuck with me because of just how astonshingly rude Con was. And even worse Joey backing her up!

Author:  MJKB [ Sun Jan 25, 2009 5:44 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: praising to the face

It's their moralistic tone that is so objectionable as Sunglass has pointed out.

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