The CBB :: View topic - Would Rob be able to fulfill her vocation?

Robin arrives unwell so it means that the excellent Canadian air can fix them both! Unfortunately for Robin (unlike Josette and Margot) the air doesn't set her up for life and she is never supposed to live in England's wet climate again, so is packed off to a Canadian convent!

I thought somewhere it's mentioned that she got caught in a rainstorm, got soaked to the skin, but carried on with whatever case she was working on and became seriously ill? Have I dreamed that?

But doesn't she also say that she's felt as if she should be a nun for some time, and it was only not wanting to leave her family behind in England that stopped her from joining straight away? So I've always read that as social work being a compromise for her that she was glad to give up when she had the excuse to, and presumably the time away from Joey in Canada gave her the courage to make the decision to become a nun as she'd always wanted to.

Robin seemed perfectly healthy to me by the time she left school, and seemed to've become a sturdy, sporty CS girl - didn't she go off ski-ing with Zephyr Burthill whilst she was a student?

But doesn't she also say that she's felt as if she should be a nun for some time, and it was only not wanting to leave her family behind in England that stopped her from joining straight away?

I can imagine a heated conversation between Jem and Robin about whether she was physically strong enough to do it.

JB wrote:

I can imagine a heated conversation between Jem and Robin about whether she was physically strong enough to do it.

Does anyone fancy writing this :lol:

? "For crying out loud, Jem, I know you mean well but you don't think I should get married in case I have children and they somehow inherit a tendency to TB, you don't think I'm strong enough to do settlement work and now you don't think I'm strong enough to become a nun. Exactly what do you think I should be doing?"

I can't se her coping in a pre-Vatican 2 convent. There would be no-one to send her to bed, force-feed her rich creamy milk or cossett her. In fact, she would be encouraged,as a postulant, to make life as uncomfortable for herself as possible.

I think grown-up Robin is lovely as well

I shall do my medical course and when I've got my MB I hope to enter the Order of Blue Nuns and from there I shall go to the School of Tropical Nursing and work for my diploma in tropical medicines

I'm not sure whether EBD was just having a general clear-out, so to speak...

But I'm not sure EBD quite got her head around the fact that a very pious/'angelic' girl, or a girl with a genuine desire to be a nun, might nonetheless be rejected as unsuitable by a convent.

It's also in the Jeeves and Wooster books. Bertie Wooster is supposed to be nice-but-dim and he went to Oxford. Maybe there was a generally held belief in fiction then that if you came from the right sort of family and went to the right sort of school then the Oxbridge colleges would let you in regardless of academic achievment. Perhaps there were more than a few backhanders, sorry, donations to college funds going on, quite apart from the costs of maintaining sons and daughters through uni.

It hasn't disappeared, either. My sister's college at Cambridge had some students with poor A Level results (Ds and Es) but who were on the edge of the England rugby team. Sport at University level is pretty important to some.

I wish we'd seen the scenes in which Robin told Madge and Joey about her decision. Everyone seems surprised by it.

I think grown-up Robin is lovely as well . I'm not sure whether EBD was just having a general clear-out, so to speak -

Alison H wrote:

I wish we'd seen the scenes in which Robin told Madge and Joey about her decision. Everyone seems surprised by it.

*nods* this would have been interesting, however like Joey's conversion to Catholicism, is something which presumably EBD or her publisher felt was inappropriate for a children's book.

Since they (I can't for the life of me remember now whether it is Madge or Joey - or even Jem or Jack - but I'm sure it is one of them) are so very snooty about her doing settlement work, saying something along the lines of "it isn't at all what I'd imagined her doing with her life" I'd always assumed that, within the family, they knew she was headed for a life within religion.

I understand that at the time many people believed that TB could be hereditary, but why does it only seem to apply to Robin? No-one ever suggests that Gillian and Joyce Linton, for example, shouldn't marry and have children, or that their health needs to be more closely monitored than that of anyone else.

Alison H wrote:

A friend of my mother's developed tb when she was 14. She spent the rest of her teenage years in hospital, and, like Robin, was taught implicit obedience to the doctor. She was virtually ordered not to marry, and she was so used to doing what she was told, that she didn't question this. Years later she met a lovely man - my mother met him - but the child in her was so used to doing what she was told, that she turned him down. It wasn't until she was heading towards her old age that she bitterly regretted her decision.

Could it be because of religion? Robin is Roman Catholic but Phoebe, presumably, is Anglican and therefore not ruled by the Vatican and their stance on birth control/marriage for children.

Lesley wrote:

Could it be because of religion? Robin is Roman Catholic but Phoebe, presumably, is Anglican and therefore not ruled by the Vatican and their stance on birth control/marriage for children.

I think that must certainly figure in the distinction. I may be showing my ignorance of Anglicanism here, but would it be correct to say that Phoebe, as an Anglican, could technically marry and either not consummate the marriage by prior agreement or use birth control to be certain of not conceiving for health reasons? (Am I right in thinking marriage is not a sacrament for Anglicans?) Or at least no one is going to police their sex life.

Author:	julieanne1811 [ Thu Feb 25, 2010 11:51 am ]
Post subject:	Would Rob be able to fulfill her vocation?
This has come into my mind after reading Rob's post on 'Madge's selfishness'. He said: Quote: Robin arrives unwell so it means that the excellent Canadian air can fix them both! Unfortunately for Robin (unlike Josette and Margot) the air doesn't set her up for life and she is never supposed to live in England's wet climate again, so is packed off to a Canadian convent! Now, I ask as someone who has very little real understanding of convent life - I have read some autobiographies (I leap over the wall, Through the narrow gate) and that's about it. Given these, it occurs to me that living in a Convent of the time would not be a soft option. The marvellous healing properties of mountain air are a theme in Elinor's CS books, and I suppose that if one was to become a Nun and one was delicte, it would be better to be in a mountainous region than somewhere low and damp. But Convent life (as far as I understand it) was extremely rigorous and I do not really see how Rob could have coped. We know that she tried some kind of social work and became ill. Was it the fact that the social work was in a poor climate that led to her poor health rather than the work itself? In that case, if she had worked somewhere else she might have been able to continue her social work. But if it was because the work itself was too physically stressful I don't see how she could have coped with convent life. Especially as, IIUC, she would have no choice about where she would be sent. If work of some kind is too hard for Rob, surely a life lived in convents would be beyond her? If it's just the place that's the problem, Rob would have no choice about where she would be sent, and that could jeopardise her health. Put together - the strenuous life of a Nun, plus possibly working in an unsympathetic climate, I do not see how Rob would be able to fulfill her vocation.

Author:	Alison H [ Thu Feb 25, 2010 12:08 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Would Rob be able to fulfill her vocation?
Robin seemed perfectly healthy to me by the time she left school, and seemed to've become a sturdy, sporty CS girl - didn't she go off ski-ing with Zephyr Burthill whilst she was a student? - but, as you say, if we're expected to believe that she couldn't cope with doing settlement work then I don't see how she was supposed to cope with being a nun. Settlement houses in Britain at the time were mainly in what would now be called inner city areas. In the days of pea-souper fogs it's quite possible that living in an inner city area would upset the health of someone who was "delicate" anyway, but the way it's put in the books does sound more as if it was the rigour of the work that caused the problem, rather than the climate.

Author:	cestina [ Thu Feb 25, 2010 1:13 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Would Rob be able to fulfill her vocation?
I thought somewhere it's mentioned that she got caught in a rainstorm, got soaked to the skin, but carried on with whatever case she was working on and became seriously ill? Have I dreamed that?

Author:	Alison H [ Thu Feb 25, 2010 1:23 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Would Rob be able to fulfill her vocation?
That does sound familiar, now that you mention it. Then, IIRC, she was packed off on holiday to recover, which apparently took ages . That makes it even sillier: why change her career plans because of a one-off incident? It is a great mystery to me why, given all the fuss that's made about Mary-Lou and various other people nearly losing their umbrellas on trains, no-one in CS-land ever seems to have an umbrella with them when the weather's bad! I know that weather can change suddenly, especially in lake/mountain areas, and that not everyone is like me and carts a small brolly about in their handbag at all times , but I can't remember a single CS occasion on which someone had their brolly to hand when they actually needed it! Sorry, that is totally beside the point.

Author:	Sunglass [ Thu Feb 25, 2010 1:29 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Would Rob be able to fulfill her vocation?
cestina wrote: I thought somewhere it's mentioned that she got caught in a rainstorm, got soaked to the skin, but carried on with whatever case she was working on and became seriously ill? Have I dreamed that? Yes, she gets caught in the rain and doesn't immediately change her clothes, which makes her ill. I always thought that this making her unfit for settlement work was a bit of a stretch, as presumably she could have got wet during a walk, or for reasons completely unconnected with her work, and the result would have been the same? It would have been a different story if she'd been unable to live in fairly spartan conditions in the East End, or kept catching nasty infections from the impoverished people with whom she was working.... I'd entirely agree with Julieanne - pre-Vatican II convents had an extremely vigorous regime which would have tested even someone with an unproblematic medical history. Limited amounts of sleeping time, spartan food, a long, exhausting day of work and prayer. The postulancy was in part designed to weed out those who were psychologically and/or physically unsuited to the life - I'd be surprised if, in a real life situation, someone with a history of serious delicacy and a recent failed attempt to do social work in tough conditions for health reasons was even taken on as a postulant. I certainly doubt a real Robin would have made it to final vows.

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Would Rob be able to fulfill her vocation? http://www.the-cbb.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=7392

Author:	ChubbyMonkey [ Thu Feb 25, 2010 2:51 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Would Rob be able to fulfill her vocation?
But doesn't she also say that she's felt as if she should be a nun for some time, and it was only not wanting to leave her family behind in England that stopped her from joining straight away? So I've always read that as social work being a compromise for her that she was glad to give up when she had the excuse to, and presumably the time away from Joey in Canada gave her the courage to make the decision to become a nun as she'd always wanted to.

Author:	Loryat [ Thu Feb 25, 2010 3:36 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Would Rob be able to fulfill her vocation?
ChubbyMonkey wrote: But doesn't she also say that she's felt as if she should be a nun for some time, and it was only not wanting to leave her family behind in England that stopped her from joining straight away? So I've always read that as social work being a compromise for her that she was glad to give up when she had the excuse to, and presumably the time away from Joey in Canada gave her the courage to make the decision to become a nun as she'd always wanted to. I think you're right about that. Was Robin going to become a teaching nun? I've always assumed that she was because it seemed that she was joining the convent where the triplets were being educated, but maybe I'm wrong? Maybe EBD felt that the teaching nun's lifestyle wasn't as rigrous as that of a contemplative nun? Though teachers might disagree on that... Alison H wrote: Robin seemed perfectly healthy to me by the time she left school, and seemed to've become a sturdy, sporty CS girl - didn't she go off ski-ing with Zephyr Burthill whilst she was a student? Ah, but didn't she go ski-ing after she got ill, so as to recoup her strength? Naturally that couldn't be done in the damp English climate which appears to be practically fatal except during WWII!

Author:	JB [ Thu Feb 25, 2010 3:58 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Would Rob be able to fulfill her vocation?
ChubbyMonkey wrote: But doesn't she also say that she's felt as if she should be a nun for some time, and it was only not wanting to leave her family behind in England that stopped her from joining straight away? So I've always read that as social work being a compromise for her that she was glad to give up when she had the excuse to, and presumably the time away from Joey in Canada gave her the courage to make the decision to become a nun as she'd always wanted to. This is how i've always read it too. Doesn't Robin say something to Joey in Oberland about how, when she recovered from her illness, she saw it as a sign that she should follow her vocation? I can imagine a heated conversation between Jem and Robin about whether she was physically strong enough to do it.

Author:	julieanne1811 [ Thu Feb 25, 2010 4:05 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Would Rob be able to fulfill her vocation?
ChubbyMonkey wrote: But doesn't she also say that she's felt as if she should be a nun for some time, and it was only not wanting to leave her family behind in England that stopped her from joining straight away? But even wanting to be a nun isn't enough if she can't do it. The resaon I'm interested is that from the age of 4 I knew I had to become a nurse and be a missionary in India. My whole life was planned to enable me to do this - what subjects I chose at school, nursing and further training ... I managed to do it for just over a year and then ill-health overtook me. Now I am retired from nursing and can't even work as a primary school teacher (which I trained for afterwards). The desire or calling isn't enough unless you're prepared to die in the service of your calling... A friend offered me a free holiday doing a cruise up the Amazon but, being sensible, I had to turn it down. The thought of being in the middle of the jungle and becoming ill doesn't bear thinking about ..! I suppose it's a question of the strength of the calling. I know mine was strong, but I also know that we should be sensible too. I do not know how Rob actually managed to do her nun training given her state of health.

Author:	Alison H [ Thu Feb 25, 2010 4:08 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Would Rob be able to fulfill her vocation?
JB wrote: I can imagine a heated conversation between Jem and Robin about whether she was physically strong enough to do it. Does anyone fancy writing this ? "For crying out loud, Jem, I know you mean well but you don't think I should get married in case I have children and they somehow inherit a tendency to TB, you don't think I'm strong enough to do settlement work and now you don't think I'm strong enough to become a nun. Exactly what do you think I should be doing?"

Author:	JB [ Thu Feb 25, 2010 4:55 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Would Rob be able to fulfill her vocation?
And, of course, Jem would be wondering what had happened to Robin's "instant obedience".

Author:	julieanne1811 [ Thu Feb 25, 2010 5:28 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Would Rob be able to fulfill her vocation?
Alison H wrote: JB wrote: I can imagine a heated conversation between Jem and Robin about whether she was physically strong enough to do it. Does anyone fancy writing this ? "For crying out loud, Jem, I know you mean well but you don't think I should get married in case I have children and they somehow inherit a tendency to TB, you don't think I'm strong enough to do settlement work and now you don't think I'm strong enough to become a nun. Exactly what do you think I should be doing?" Ha ha ha! Love it!!!!

Author:	ChubbyMonkey [ Thu Feb 25, 2010 5:38 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Would Rob be able to fulfill her vocation?
Well, I'm sure that Robin could cope with the not heavy demands of working at the CS After all, if she meets a nice doctor it will mean being in good hands, and if she ends up teaching it's hardly a stressful environment - plus they will know to send her to bed with plenty of rich, creamy milk if she so much as sneezes!

Author:	Mel [ Thu Feb 25, 2010 10:38 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Would Rob be able to fulfill her vocation?
In a way it is surprising that Rob was allowed to go to Oxford as it is years before they all go as a matter of course. Peggy who is 'an infant prodigy' in one book, stays to 'help Mummy' which I think she would have done even if Mollie hadn't been ill. Rob could have helped Jo with all the kids. I can't se her coping in a pre-Vatican 2 convent. There would be no-one to send her to bed, force-feed her rich creamy milk or cossett her. In fact, she would be encouraged,as a postulant, to make life as uncomfortable for herself as possible.

Author:	Cel [ Thu Feb 25, 2010 10:48 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Would Rob be able to fulfill her vocation?
Mel wrote: I can't se her coping in a pre-Vatican 2 convent. There would be no-one to send her to bed, force-feed her rich creamy milk or cossett her. In fact, she would be encouraged,as a postulant, to make life as uncomfortable for herself as possible. To be fair, Rob herself never looks for this sort of treatment, and we don't really see instances of her overdoing it and having to be sent to bed and so on as we do with Joey - not after they leave Tirol, anyway. As Alison said above, by the time she leaves school she's a normal healthy young woman. I agree that having to give up her settlement work because of one illness seems premature, but this seems to be a bit of an anomaly - otherwise there's nothing in Robin's recent history that should preclude her doing whatever sort of work she wants. Grown-up Robin is one of my favourite characters - I think she's just lovely.

Author:	Alison H [ Thu Feb 25, 2010 11:49 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Would Rob be able to fulfill her vocation?
I think grown-up Robin is lovely as well . I'm not sure whether EBD was just having a general clear-out, so to speak - Madge and Jem were left behind when the school moved to Switzerland, and Grizel moved to New Zealand, and so moving Robin to Canada may just have been part of something wider - or whether she always intended Robin to become a nun as she thought it'd fit with her "angelic" personality.

Author:	Sunglass [ Fri Feb 26, 2010 11:57 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Would Rob be able to fulfill her vocation?
Alison H wrote: I think grown-up Robin is lovely as well . She was practically a saint, given her prompt and generous response to a summons from Joey to come to Many Bushes and befriend Zephyr Burthill at a moment's notice! I mean, I entirely understand some CS girls' grudging responses to being asked to take care of a new girl, and the way they try to draw distinctions between sheepdogging and actually becoming friends with someone they don't know, but Robin appears to actually genuinely befriend Zephyr on a longterm basis at Joey's request, which seems quite a tall order, given that everything we hear about her suggests Z is pretty superficial, snobbish and unpleasant! I still think, though, that given what we are told about adult Robin's inability to cope with settlement work (and the fact Jem still hoped she wouldn't marry on health grounds, despite the fact that she seems to have been perfectly strong for extended periods before 'lapsing' into her earlier delicacy after a wetting), that she'd have had difficulty making it through the gruelling postulancy, despite her best efforts and a genuine desire to be a nun. The Mistress of Postulants and convent authorities would have considered her as a whole package, and their estimate of the strength of her vocation would have had to include her physical abilities to cope with the life without cosseting. I know the Rule of St Clare has traditionally required a postulant to be 'of strength and good health, free from disease and serious physical defect'. But I'm not sure EBD quite got her head around the fact that a very pious/'angelic' girl, or a girl with a genuine desire to be a nun, might nonetheless be rejected as unsuitable by a convent. She has Margot mapping out an ambitious future - Quote: I shall do my medical course and when I've got my MB I hope to enter the Order of Blue Nuns and from there I shall go to the School of Tropical Nursing and work for my diploma in tropical medicines - without appearing to realise that once she is a nun, she will simply not be in a position, under rules of obedience, to say what or where she will go or study. The Order might send her to study tropical medicine, but if it needs or wants her to do something else entirely, then, as a vowed nun, she is obliged to do that instead, without reference to her personal wishes.

Author:	ChubbyMonkey [ Fri Feb 26, 2010 1:12 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Would Rob be able to fulfill her vocation?
Alison H wrote: I'm not sure whether EBD was just having a general clear-out, so to speak... This has always puzzled me, given the earlier insistance on keeping them in the series no matter what! So we get Grizel coming back to teach, Madge and Jem buying a holiday home close by so that they can pop into the school at a moment's notice etc. I wonder if she'd been told that the series was becoming too stale, and reader's complaining that you had to have read all of them for it to make sense, and so she was told to change the characters more, leading to her policy of one new girl in one out a term?

Author:	Alison H [ Fri Feb 26, 2010 1:35 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Would Rob be able to fulfill her vocation?
Sunglass wrote: But I'm not sure EBD quite got her head around the fact that a very pious/'angelic' girl, or a girl with a genuine desire to be a nun, might nonetheless be rejected as unsuitable by a convent. No-one from the CS is ever: 1. Rejected by the university of their choice. 2. Dumped by a boyfriend (except Juliet, and they soon made up). So I suppose no CS girl who wanted to become a nun would ever be rejected either! People's plans sometimes go awry because of bossy parents (Grizel), illness in the family (Mary-Lou) or abandoning career plans in order to get married (Julie), but CS girls are never rejected . If anyone ever so much as fails an exam, we never hear about it. One thing that's very hard to accept when you're leaving school is that you may well be rejected by your first choice university, or be unable to get a job doing what you want, however hard you work, but it never seems to happen to CS people. Oh joyous world to live in !

Author:	Loryat [ Fri Feb 26, 2010 4:31 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Would Rob be able to fulfill her vocation?
It's not only CS. In the Melling books madcap Helen decides, apparently about half way through her last term at school, that she'll go to Oxford and she isn't even that clever (or else doesn't work very hard) especially when compared with the brainy CS girls! And then in the next book she's at Oxford, apparently having had no trouble getting in at all.

Author:	RubyGates [ Fri Feb 26, 2010 4:39 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Would Rob be able to fulfill her vocation?
It's also in the Jeeves and Wooster books. Bertie Wooster is supposed to be nice-but-dim and he went to Oxford. Maybe there was a generally held belief in fiction then that if you came from the right sort of family and went to the right sort of school then the Oxbridge colleges would let you in regardless of academic achievment. Perhaps there were more than a few backhanders, sorry, donations to college funds going on, quite apart from the costs of maintaining sons and daughters through uni.

Author:	trig [ Fri Feb 26, 2010 6:28 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Would Rob be able to fulfill her vocation?
Quote: It's also in the Jeeves and Wooster books. Bertie Wooster is supposed to be nice-but-dim and he went to Oxford. Maybe there was a generally held belief in fiction then that if you came from the right sort of family and went to the right sort of school then the Oxbridge colleges would let you in regardless of academic achievment. Perhaps there were more than a few backhanders, sorry, donations to college funds going on, quite apart from the costs of maintaining sons and daughters through uni. I think at that time (1920s/ 30s) the male colleges did take students of this type - doesn't Dorothy Sayers talk about it being unfair in Gaudy Night? Besides, Bertie would have gone to a good public school (quite often enough to get in) and perhaps been sent to crammers. It hasn't disappeared, either. My sister's college at Cambridge had some students with poor A Level results (Ds and Es) but who were on the edge of the England rugby team. Sport at University level is pretty important to some.

Author:	MJKB [ Fri Feb 26, 2010 7:50 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Would Rob be able to fulfill her vocation?
trig wrote: It hasn't disappeared, either. My sister's college at Cambridge had some students with poor A Level results (Ds and Es) but who were on the edge of the England rugby team. Sport at University level is pretty important to some. ' That's the strenght and weakness of the UCAS system. There is little or no flexibility in the Irish points system. Anyway, to return to Rob. I have older relations and family friends who entered convents. Some of them remained and others did not finish their postulancy because of lack of stamina. Being a nun pre V2 was verytough. As a very small child I watched The song of Bernadette, the story of Bernadette of Lourdes. It terrifiedme for years. I was so afraid that Our Lady would appear to me (as if!), and I'd have to become a nun and wash floors and have horrible mother superiors kicking the bucket of water over or deliberately trampling mud over my nice clean floor when Id finished so that I'd have to wash it over and over again in order to teach me humility and patience......(breath!)

Author:	sealpuppy [ Fri Feb 26, 2010 8:04 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Would Rob be able to fulfill her vocation?
Maybe something was going on that EBD didn't know about? When Robin was doing her social work, perhaps she fell in love - with a nice suitable doctor (because, to be realistic, she's not going to fall for some poor cockney bloke with rickets! ) And maybe he dumped her? And that's why she was so careless about getting wet (btw I don't think the small, telescopic handbag sized brollies were around at that time, were they?) Or - shock horror - she could have fallen for an Anglican vicar, because they tend to be doing settlement work in GO books, don't they. Or even worse shock horror (in Joey's eyes) - maybe the nice suitable doctor had one fatal flaw - he was a she? Enough to make a Chalet School girl trained to instant obedience, turn at once into a spineless jellyfish and get wet, leading to an inflammation on the lungs.

Author:	Alison H [ Sat Feb 27, 2010 12:32 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Would Rob be able to fulfill her vocation?
I wish we'd seen the scenes in which Robin told Madge and Joey about her decision. Everyone seems surprised by it. When Jack tells the CS staff that he's got some news about Robin, they all assume that he means that she's getting married. Someone asks if she's "developed a young man" - which makes it sound as if she'd have one growing out of her head or something - and someone else asks if she's engaged, and these are people who know her well.

Author:	Pado [ Sat Feb 27, 2010 1:38 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Would Rob be able to fulfill her vocation?
Well, of course, Margot wouldn't have been able to be an independent single woman doctor in EBDland, so having her join a convent effectively, er, emasculates her ambition, so to speak. By which I mean to say that it allows her to push the envelope of available careers without making her seem over the top ambitious. And naturally it completes her redemptive battle over her devil. Even Daisy gets married off and drops her career like a shot, and she only has a collateral relationship to Joey. Robin, I think, EBD just ran out of suitable ideas for. The Engelkind, so, so good, but with no appreciable skill set...off to a nunnery with her! Tom Gay, with her boyish ways, can handle social work, but surely that's not appropriate for Our Robinette.

Author:	Rob [ Sat Feb 27, 2010 1:42 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Would Rob be able to fulfill her vocation?
Alison H wrote: I wish we'd seen the scenes in which Robin told Madge and Joey about her decision. Everyone seems surprised by it. nods this would have been interesting, however like Joey's conversion to Catholicism, is something which presumably EBD or her publisher felt was inappropriate for a children's book. Since they (I can't for the life of me remember now whether it is Madge or Joey - or even Jem or Jack - but I'm sure it is one of them) are so very snooty about her doing settlement work, saying something along the lines of "it isn't at all what I'd imagined her doing with her life" I'd always assumed that, within the family, they knew she was headed for a life within religion. Unless she was allowed to go to Oxford (did she read Modern Lanaguages?) as they thought she would return to teach at the CS where Jack and Jem could keep an eye on her? Or even that they assumed she would remain with Jo as some sort of companion/mother's help? Alison H wrote: I think grown-up Robin is lovely as well . I'm not sure whether EBD was just having a general clear-out, so to speak - I love grown up Robin too, she always seems so much more sensible than Jo, whilst remaining destinctly young. Sadly I think you are probably right Alison and EBD was simply pruning her cast. Once she starts hinting about Switzerland she ships Grizel to New Zealand, Robin to Canada, leaves Madge and Jem in England and marries off Daisy - all or any of whom might have taken on some of the roles that Jo adopts on the Platz. Actually, now I think about it though, she did much the same thing in order to give Joey so many of the roles in the first place when she moved the school from Austria to Guernsey/England; Margot and Mlle Lepattre die, Madge becomes less involved, and we lose close contact with Juliet, Gisela etc. even though they have also moved to Guernsey/England.

Author:	Sunglass [ Sat Feb 27, 2010 9:30 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Would Rob be able to fulfill her vocation?
Rob wrote: Alison H wrote: I wish we'd seen the scenes in which Robin told Madge and Joey about her decision. Everyone seems surprised by it. nods this would have been interesting, however like Joey's conversion to Catholicism, is something which presumably EBD or her publisher felt was inappropriate for a children's book. But we do later get Margot talking in quite a lot of detail about her vocation, about knowing that she won't have children or a non-supernatural marriage, etc. and dealing with someone else's (Carmela's?) slightly baffled questions about it - and of course there are other CS girls who do enter convents, like Luigia di Ferrara (I think?) early on. I find it quite surprising that, given that these scenes weren't considered inappropriate, that EBD doesn't seize te opportunity for a big emotional scene between Joey and Robin, with Robin confessing her vocation and Joey being all wise and understanding, and a bit sad. Rob wrote: Since they (I can't for the life of me remember now whether it is Madge or Joey - or even Jem or Jack - but I'm sure it is one of them) are so very snooty about her doing settlement work, saying something along the lines of "it isn't at all what I'd imagined her doing with her life" I'd always assumed that, within the family, they knew she was headed for a life within religion. I don't know, but Joey certainly says (when Robin has finally announced her intention of becoming a nun) that Jem had always hoped she wouldn't marry (implicitly on health grounds) as if that kind of contextualises the decision, and blunts the force of surprise from whoever she's speaking to, who's assuming that the news about Robin is that she's 'developed a young man' (a process which always sounds rather like a disease!) And I do wonder, for someone like Robin who had grown up so intensely cosseted and worried about, with Jem, Madge (and Joey, later on) as beloved authority figures whom she'd been trained to obey on the word, whether Jem's expectation would have conceivably influenced her life decisions. After all, nearly all of Robin's early experiences are of having to give up something (the CS, long walks, the company of her beloved Joey) on health grounds - love and marriage might just have been the latest in a long line of sacrifices she'd long ago learned to accept were 'for the best'. It's a slightly grim thought - I do hope Jem kept his thoughts on Robin's marriage to himself, but if so, how did Joey know about them..?

Author:	Alison H [ Sat Feb 27, 2010 1:44 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Would Rob be able to fulfill her vocation?
I understand that at the time many people believed that TB could be hereditary, but why does it only seem to apply to Robin? No-one ever suggests that Gillian and Joyce Linton, for example, shouldn't marry and have children, or that their health needs to be more closely monitored than that of anyone else.

Author:	ChubbyMonkey [ Sat Feb 27, 2010 3:25 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Would Rob be able to fulfill her vocation?
Presumably they weren't showing the same delicate tendencies that Robin was?

Author:	Loryat [ Mon Mar 01, 2010 2:51 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Would Rob be able to fulfill her vocation?
Maybe EBD thought that Robin's spiritual strength would carry her through. And Robin does say that it's all she's ever wanted to do but she's been holding off. Maybe settlement work was supposed to be a compromise? I think Joey suspects before Robin announces her vocation. Doesn't she write something in a letter to the effect that she has an idea of what Robin wants to do, and it's her life, or something like that? Perhaps surrounded by nuns as they seemingly were in Canada, Robin's vocation became increasingly evident. When it comes to EBD's tendency to marry her characters, I think that is basically a reflection of the fact that as a single women herself who desperately wanted to marry, she couldn't bear to deprive her characters of what she craved (except the long term school staff). So while we see Daisy's marriage as shockingly anti-feminist, EBD is only giving Daisy what she herself wants.

Author:	Alison H [ Sat Mar 27, 2010 9:30 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Would Rob be able to fulfill her vocation?
I'm just (getting excited about going to Salzburg again this summer, and) reading the autobiography of Maria von Trapp. She says that she suffered from severe headaches when she first entered Nonnberg Abbey, and that the doctor said (how CS-ish is this ?) that the transition from wandering around the mountains to life in a convent had been too much and that she needed to spend some time in an ordinary domestic environment as a kind of halfway house between the two, and that was why the Reverend Mother selected her when Captain von Trapp was looking for a governess. Just reminded me of this thread .

Author:	julieanne1811 [ Sat Mar 27, 2010 11:55 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Would Rob be able to fulfill her vocation?
Oh Alison H - I am sooooooo jealous!!!! Lucky you! I do hope you have a fab - u - lous time ...!

Author:	MJKB [ Sat Mar 27, 2010 9:58 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Would Rob be able to fulfill her vocation?
Alison H wrote: I understand that at the time many people believed that TB could be hereditary, but why does it only seem to apply to Robin? No-one ever suggests that Gillian and Joyce Linton, for example, shouldn't marry and have children, or that their health needs to be more closely monitored than that of anyone else. A friend of my mother's developed tb when she was 14. She spent the rest of her teenage years in hospital, and, like Robin, was taught implicit obedience to the doctor. She was virtually ordered not to marry, and she was so used to doing what she was told, that she didn't question this. Years later she met a lovely man - my mother met him - but the child in her was so used to doing what she was told, that she turned him down. It wasn't until she was heading towards her old age that she bitterly regretted her decision.