Verity Ann Carey
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#1: Verity Ann Carey Author: Josie, Location: London PostPosted: Mon Aug 15, 2005 9:03 am

Please discuss Verity here...

 

#2:  Author: Alison H, Location: Manchester PostPosted: Mon Aug 15, 2005 10:30 am

I think it's a shame the way EBD treats her! Verity starts off as a very independent and strong-minded person, as much as she can be when she's only 10, and then she ends up as a "broken reed" who's dependent on Mary Lou and then on her husband Alan Trevor for everything! She's quite an interesting character, and she can still be stubborn e.g. when she insists on leaning out of the window to collect snow in "Trials", but I think EBD could have made a lot more of her.

 

#3:  Author: Laura, Location: London (ish) PostPosted: Mon Aug 15, 2005 12:19 pm

*shamefaced* I never even thought about the transition from VERY strong minded to, well, pretty feeble and weak, very occasionally 'stubborn'. I completely agree with Alison: EBD could have done so much with her - she was a more important character in three go than ML, really! - but, like many others, she just drifted into the background..

 

#4:  Author: jennifer, Location: Taiwan PostPosted: Mon Aug 15, 2005 5:52 pm

And the way she gets progressively weaker as time goes on. My theory is that she and Mary-Lou had a parasitic relationship. Mary-Lou sucked energy from Verity, making her progressively weaker, as ML became stronger. Drabble anyone?

In Three Go, she's quiet and reserved, and very precise but also relentlessly stubborn, very lonely, and inexperienced at interacting with other girls. By the time the school moves to Switzerland, she's described as a 'mooner' and relentlessly slow, and Mary-Lou has taken over her dormitory chores (which she was able to do several years ago). By the time she's at St Mildred's, she's variously described as a leaner, a broken reed, a clinging vine and a liablity! I expect that by the time she's 30, she'll be

[SHAMELESS DRABBLE PLUG]

I'm working on a drabble, starting with Verity at the Royal College of Music in London, and covering her marriage and Doris Trelawny's death from Verity's perspective. It's in St Therese, and is intended to be consistent with the story line in the books from Triplets on.

[/SHAMELESS DRABBLE PLUG]

 

#5:  Author: patmac, Location: Yorkshire England PostPosted: Mon Aug 15, 2005 8:07 pm

jennifer wrote:

[SHAMELESS DRABBLE PLUG]

I'm working on a drabble, starting with Verity at the Royal College of Music in London, and covering her marriage and Doris Trelawny's death from Verity's perspective. It's in St Therese, and is intended to be consistent with the story line in the books from Triplets on.

[/SHAMELESS DRABBLE PLUG]


*g* I've found it already!

I agree, she was a strong character in 3 Go and I think I detected some reluctance to be 'lumped in' with Mary Lou. I always felt that Doris Trelawny marrying Roland Carey was rather weird. It sounds more like a marriage of convenience than a love match!

I think EBD over reached herself sometimes with the number of characters she included. Jennifer's superb masterlist lists 700 girls in the series - and then there were teachers, doctors, domestic staff, families, the clan's boys and non school characters. Probably 1,000 or so in all Shocked

I don't see how anyone could have kept track of them all and been consistent.

 

#6:  Author: joelle, Location: lancashire, england PostPosted: Mon Aug 15, 2005 8:10 pm

sounds a great drabble jennifer! cant wait.....waiting.... anyways, ive just reread three go and verity is so different in that to later books. as everyone has commented where did it go?? (mary lou=parasite is a good theory) and something that occured to me while reading this book-why is mary lou only girl who can "understand people" from living with older people? verity did, but according to ebd that only gave her negative characteristics that are quickly over ridden. and there must be more girls who lived with older people. i can think of polly heriot at least. oops! offtopic, forgive me!

 

#7:  Author: francesn, Location: away with the faeries PostPosted: Tue Aug 16, 2005 12:22 am

Verity was one of those characters, like Vi Lucy, who got sucked in and spat out by the grandness that was Mary-Lou (sorry not a Mary-Lou fan here)

I think EBD stereotyped her as a very musical perons - I certainly see parallels to Nina Rutherford in terms of dreaminess and her apparent difficulty in interacting with her peers. It's a shame she got pigeonholed really as she was far more interesting than Mary-Lou to begin with, who was, in all honestly, just a jolly little schoolgirl.

 

#8:  Author: Kathy_S, Location: midwestern US PostPosted: Tue Aug 16, 2005 3:24 am

I have to agree that, though the "silvery voice" remains consistent throughout, there's a serious disjunct between Verity-Ann the self-possessed and Verity-Ann the "mooner." However, for me the strong, central character of Three Go is clearly Mary-Lou. Of course, my first exposure was via the paper-back, but reading the transcript of the hardback hasn't changed my mind. Mary-Lou's the one whose character we see developing, and whose story links the "Three." Verity-Ann mostly comes across as stereotypically holding on to the perspectives she's developed from a stilted upbringing, pretty much along the lines of Eustacia or Prunella, to be transformed by ML and the CS into "just like one of us this time next year." Her change of heart on the German issue, after one short session with the father she's known so little that his survival can't make her "really excitingly glad," never really rang true to me.

The best I could come up with continuity-wise was that the appearance of her father allowed her to switch from leaning on the brittle authority structure she'd built from her pre-CS experience, to the relief of a "natural" EBD-style male authority figure. Thereupon, she went on to lean happily for the rest of the series: on her father, on ML, on the CS in general, on Alan ....

 

#9:  Author: Pado, Location: Connecticut, USA PostPosted: Tue Aug 16, 2005 3:25 pm

Or perhaps she just made everyone think she was a leaner so that she could take advantage of Mary Lou's doing her cubicle work for her every morning? Twisted Evil

 

#10:  Author: Jennie, Location: Cambridgeshire PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 1:00 pm

I think EBD had to make a choice of which character to develop, ans she chose OOAO. I personally think it is a pity as I found Verity intrinsically more interesting, with greater talents than M-L.

And don't forget, that OOAO came to the fore only in 'Barbara', which is also where she started to get so irritating. Before that book, she was a heedless, careless person who relied on other people to sort things out for her and manage her things. Remember when she left her white socks at home?

I wonder how much of it was her loud voice?

 

#11:  Author: Nineveh,  PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 2:36 pm

Quote:
My theory is that she and Mary-Lou had a parasitic relationship. Mary-Lou sucked energy from Verity, making her progressively weaker, as ML became stronger.
Now that I like...

***

There was no one that Verity-Anne could tell. Who would believe her? Her fears would be dismissed as mere peasant superstition. Yet Verity knew that it was true. Neither of them had used to be like this. In Wales they had been happy equals, Mary-Lou a little boisterous, but as reliant on Verity Anne to remind her of the things she needed to do as Verity Anne occasionally let herself be on Mary-Lou’s bumptious way of then getting those things done. And then they had come to Switzerland, to Central Europe where Verity knew that for all the cuckoo clocks and shining banks they were close to Austria, to Styria, to Transylvania, and things had changed. Mary-Lou had changed, and because of that she was changing Verity. Every morning in her cubicle when Mary-Lou came to ‘help’ it happened - Verity Anne clutched the white collar more closely around her neck – would it ever stop? Would she ever be able to escape? She knew she would not, so deeply was she held under the dreadful spell of the vampire.

 

#12:  Author: aitchemelle, Location: West Sussex PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 3:17 pm

You know Ninevah that it would be a CRIME not to post that in St Clare's and continue the story! Dont you?!

 

#13:  Author: Joey, Location: Cambridge PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 4:06 pm

Nineveh, you would!

You really do have to post that in St. Clare's. It's compulsory.

 

#14:  Author: Pado, Location: Connecticut, USA PostPosted: Sun Aug 21, 2005 4:44 pm

Just found this in "Wins the Trick" where the girls are discussing the death of Verity's father and the need for Mary Lou to take over. Margot recalls the German carol singing incident and points out that if Verity "could do that then, she might wake up and do things now."

Others disagree and remind us of how moony she is. Then Rosamund says "I think it's more that she lets things drift along and doesn't bother to see where she might tackle things herself. Perhaps if Mary-Lou left her to find her own feet she'd do it."

So, put that on your needles and knit it. Wink

 

#15:  Author: KB, Location: Melbourne, Australia PostPosted: Sun Aug 21, 2005 9:20 pm

*tries to imagine OOAO leaving Verity-Ann alone for a minute*

*doubles over in hysterical laughter*

 

#16:  Author: Katherine, Location: London, UK PostPosted: Mon Aug 22, 2005 4:57 pm

I was reading Mary-Lou yesterday and came across the following.

EBD talks about how Gran has taught OOAO obedience and manners and then goes onto to say she "extended her training to Commander Carey's only child"

Perhaps it was Gran who sucked the life out of the child. Mary-Lou really needed sitting on so perhaps Gran sat on Verity as hard as she sat on OOAO and thus removed any trace of initiative from her soul!

 

#17:  Author: Susan, Location: Carlisle PostPosted: Tue Aug 23, 2005 9:30 am

I quite like Verity Anne in Three Go - she is a product of her up bringing by out of date elderly people. One wonders if in the social climate of today she would have been taken into care?

I think Verity would have been more realistic if she had been moony from the beginning as I think her early training would not have involved doing much for herself and she would probably have found making her bed etc difficult to cope with especially given the amount of time for such tasks.

All in all another character that showed early promise spoiled by not seeing much of her in later books.

 

#18:  Author: LizB, Location: Oxon, England PostPosted: Tue Aug 23, 2005 12:16 pm

How quickly things change.

Bride leads wrote:
She [Mary Lou] and Verity Anne were dearest of friends, but that did not mean that she was going to play Verity Anne's Nanny.

Two paragraphs later, Mary Lou's stripping the bed for Verity Anne while she's in the bathroom! Rolling Eyes

Liz

 

#19:  Author: Changnoi, Location: New Mexico, USA PostPosted: Tue Aug 23, 2005 1:11 pm

Katherine wrote:
I was reading Mary-Lou yesterday and came across the following.

EBD talks about how Gran has taught OOAO obedience and manners and then goes onto to say she "extended her training to Commander Carey's only child"

Perhaps it was Gran who sucked the life out of the child. Mary-Lou really needed sitting on so perhaps Gran sat on Verity as hard as she sat on OOAO and thus removed any trace of initiative from her soul!


I had been having a small theory that Gran was a real termigant (sp?). I believe that she, through Munchausen by proxy, was consistently responsible for Mrs. Trelawney's continual colds and eventual death. Since Mrs. Trelawney was already so weakened by the time Verity came along, Gran had to find a new victim, someone else who would depend on her, obey her, and make her feel needed.

And such are the things I think about in the shower.

If my psychiatrist asks for a copy of this post, please don't give it to her Smile ...

Waiting for the men in white coats,

Chang

 

#20:  Author: Nineveh,  PostPosted: Tue Aug 23, 2005 1:19 pm

Quote:
Pado quoted...Rosamund says "I think it's more that she lets things drift along and doesn't bother to see where she might tackle things herself. Perhaps if Mary-Lou left her to find her own feet she'd do it."
Hmm, might Rosamund be on to something here? Perhaps it is actually all a cunning ruse by Verity Ann. The real rule-breaker she gets away with is Mary-Lou doing her cubicle in the morning because Verity Ann is slow and moony. What if she simply likes to get up more slowly in the morning? This mad scramble into ones stocking whilst still damp from the bath is not to Verity’s taste. She dawdles a bit – just enough to provoke anxiety at first and make the rest of the dormitory worry about their all being late – and gets a bit of help. Then she dawdles a bit more. Slowly Mary-Lou is conditioned into doing all Verity’s cubicle work whilst Miss Carey gets dressed in a leisurely fashion. Much more civilized.

Nineveh (who is neverthess going to do Mary-Lou as a vampire at greater length when she's done a bit more 'research')

 

#21:  Author: Katherine, Location: London, UK PostPosted: Wed Aug 24, 2005 1:38 pm

But the rest all accept that Verity can't look after herself. In Mary-Lou, Marly Lou has only just come back to School and met up with the rest of the Gang due to Gran's death. And what does she ask but how's Verity and is told that Josette's helping her. The poor girl has no chance! But since when did the CS believe in letting you be a spineless jelllyfish?

 

#22:  Author: Chair, Location: Rochester, Kent, England PostPosted: Wed Aug 24, 2005 2:27 pm

I liked Verity in the books and I never really thought about how she changed so much in the books until I joined this board. I'm not criticising the board though. I'm learning how to be more critical of characters in books.

I preferred her after Three Go but I still wish she could have been made into a stronger character. She never seems to voice an opinion of her own.

What exactly is a silvery voice?

 

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