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Relationships: Dick and Mollie http://www.the-cbb.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=5700 |
Author: | Róisín [ Fri Feb 13, 2009 10:52 am ] |
Post subject: | Relationships: Dick and Mollie |
Let's talk about the relationship that was possibly had between Dick Bettany and Mollie Avery. Dick grew up in India until the age of 12, then returned there about ten (?) years later to work in the Forestry Commission. He quickly became engaged to Mollie, who was his boss's daughter. Mollie was just eighteeen when she got married. Although living in India, she was Irish. They very soon started to have children, but left these children with the Russells in Austria, because they considered the Indian climate to be unsuitable for raising children. Do you think they had a happy relationship? Did Mollie get married too young? Did she meet the first man she had a friendship with outside of her family? Should they have relocated if they planned on having a large family? Was Dick a good husband? Please join in below |
Author: | ChubbyMonkey [ Fri Feb 13, 2009 11:06 am ] |
Post subject: | Re: Relationships: Dick and Mollie |
Would it be cynical of me to suggest he married her for his career prospects? I alwasy feel sorry for the children - particularly for the younger children who don't get to meet their siblings for years. I also can't help wondering what Dick would have done if Madge hadn't been married. I don't think that it shows particularly responsible parenting, particularly given the number of children they have - and the climate can't be that bad because Dick and Madge were fine I don't think that we see enough of their relationship to judge whether they were happy or not, but I think it would be very difficult for them to have to keep leaving their children behind when they went back, and then not seeing them for such lengths of time. Personally, I wouldn't say that Mollie married too young - a number of characters from that era do marry quite young - Marie von Eschneau, Joey herself is quite young - but whether she married the right man is another question. |
Author: | Alison H [ Fri Feb 13, 2009 11:31 am ] |
Post subject: | Re: Relationships: Dick and Mollie |
For all we know, Mollie may have had lots of boyfriends before she met Dick . I think it's probably same to assume that she didn't, though, knowing EBD. I do feel very sorry for the children, but it was just the way things were at the time. Some British families in India did keep their children with them, but usually only until the children were old enough to go to boarding school, and then they'd've needed somewhere to stay in the holidays anyway. Having said which, Juliet went to school in India, and presumably both Madge and Dick did too. It'd be interesting to know whether Mollie and her sister had grown up in India or whether they'd been sent away to school/ to live with relatives in the British Isles. It's hard to know what to think about them because we don't really see much of Dick and Mollie together - although there are some nice family scenes in Bride - and we don't know a lot about Mollie's background/life before her marriage. Dick presumably wasn't all that good a catch as he didn't have much of a "private income" , so Mollie must have been really keen on him to have married him ... . |
Author: | Emma A [ Fri Feb 13, 2009 12:07 pm ] |
Post subject: | Re: Relationships: Dick and Mollie |
There are some scenes in one of the early books (can't remember which, possibly Jo Returns or New) where Dick and Mollie, who have been away from India on long leave, leave both Bride and Jacky with the Russells - originally planned to be only Bride - and Mollie is very upset at the thought of leaving them both. Dick is very considerate of her feelings, and seems to be very fond of her. I think if Madge had still been unmarried, and the Russell home not available to the Bettanys, they might have kept all the children with them in India, at least until they were old enough to go to boarding school. Juliet mentions that she was at school in "the Hills", which was thought to be a much healthier atmosphere for British children, since it wasn't as hot and humid. Indeed, Simla, in the foothills of the Himalayas, was the summer capital of the British Raj. Is it stated where in India Dick and Mollie were living? I agree with Alison that Dick wouldn't have been seen as much of a catch (at least not compared to an Army officer or one of the "Heaven-Born" - in the Foreign and Political Department*), so Mollie must have been keen on him! * Hugo Creed in M M Kaye's Death in Kashmir says of the F&P that they "only had to keep on breathing to end up with a title and a four-figure pension" (or words to that effect!). |
Author: | Tor [ Fri Feb 13, 2009 1:28 pm ] |
Post subject: | Re: Relationships: Dick and Mollie |
what is interesting to me is*Dick* marrying so young by EBD's standards! The age gap between him and Mollie is teeny compared to the usual CS relationship. I like that! And maybe a bit of me is now thinking that being able to send your babies to an overseas sibling may have been just the thing for Dick and Mollie, whatever the effect on the children may have been. It probably allowed them to enjoy their youthful marriage and grow up a bit together. So whilst they *both* married young, they certainly put off a lot of the responsibilities of adulthood by fobbing off the child-rearing on Madge. |
Author: | Emma A [ Fri Feb 13, 2009 1:48 pm ] |
Post subject: | Re: Relationships: Dick and Mollie |
Tor wrote: ...It probably allowed them to enjoy their youthful marriage and grow up a bit together. So whilst they *both* married young, they certainly put off a lot of the responsibilities of adulthood by fobbing off the child-rearing on Madge. Given they managed to produce six children in a very short space of time (Mollie is already pregnant with Maeve and Maurice when they return to India after leaving behind Bride and Jackie (who is ten months old) with Madge in Jo Returns), I'd say that they might have had rather a passionate marriage |
Author: | Cat C [ Fri Feb 13, 2009 2:26 pm ] |
Post subject: | Re: Relationships: Dick and Mollie |
Emma A wrote: Given they managed to produce six children in a very short space of time (Mollie is already pregnant with Maeve and Maurice when they return to India after leaving behind Bride and Jackie (who is ten months old) with Madge in Jo Returns), I'd say that they might have had rather a passionate marriage Well, either that or Mollie was very fertile / (un)lucky... I know of someone who suffered PND after her first baby, and then had sex once, without a condom, 9 months later and conceived. Plus the six weeks after a baby is born is a very fertile time, so if she was up to doing anything being 'busy' again very quickly might be the result. (I must say this putting me in mind somewhat of Adam and Barbara Appleby). |
Author: | Tor [ Fri Feb 13, 2009 3:36 pm ] |
Post subject: | Re: Relationships: Dick and Mollie |
Quote: I'd say that they might have had rather a passionate marriage Yes, whatever EBD may lack in on-page romance, she certainly makes up for it with the implied off-page passion! |
Author: | MJKB [ Fri Feb 13, 2009 3:54 pm ] |
Post subject: | Re: Relationships: Dick and Mollie |
Gosh, this is an education! Doesn't breast feeding act as a contraceptive though? Anyway, she shouldn't have been up to 'that sort of thing' so soon after giving birth. My contribution to this debate is strictly to do with Mollie, so bear with me. I've always been amused by Mollie's Oirish brogue, knowing, as I do, that Anglo Irish families like the Avery's? would have spoken with a very different accent, indistinguishable to the Irish ear from upper middle class English. |
Author: | JayB [ Fri Feb 13, 2009 3:57 pm ] |
Post subject: | Re: Relationships: Dick and Mollie |
In Shocks, Oberland and Bride - (?- the books in which Mollie Bettany's operation and convalescence feature, anyway) I think it's clear that Dick cares deeply for Mollie. And Mollie always seems very happy with him and her children. Dick was 25 when he and Mollie got engaged, not sure how long after that they were married. In School At, the book before the engagement, Jo says Dick says he won't marry because he thinks the conditions where he works aren't suitable for a woman. It seems to come as a surprise to Madge, too. So presumably he'd had no thought of it up to that spring, when they last saw him. Maybe Mollie came out that summer, having just left school, and Dick was bowled over! On the question of relocation - Indian forestry was what Dick knew about and had experience of, possibly had qualifications in. If he and Mollie had come home, he'd have been just one more pleasant, moderately bright, reasonably well-educated young man among thousands chasing a few jobs in the Depression. And he wasn't a go-getter who'd have been good at pushing himself forward. Mollie had at least one sister, and possibly aunts, uncles and grandparents. If Madge hadn't been able to take the Bettany children, they might have been able to do so. In fact, even if Madge hadn't been married, since she had established a precedent by taking the Robin, she could hardly have refused to have Peggy and Rix and Bride at the school, once they were of school age. |
Author: | Róisín [ Fri Feb 13, 2009 4:20 pm ] |
Post subject: | Re: Relationships: Dick and Mollie |
Tor wrote: Quote: I'd say that they might have had rather a passionate marriage Yes, whatever EBD may lack in on-page romance, she certainly makes up for it with the implied off-page passion! Yes, absolutely. This is what was going through my head as I phrased the discussion starter, but I refrained from saying it! rofl |
Author: | Sunglass [ Fri Feb 13, 2009 7:59 pm ] |
Post subject: | Re: Relationships: Dick and Mollie |
Thinking about Mollie pulls up an interesting, if uncomfortable, point. While Ireland was still a British colony, there was a huge Irish component to the Raj which was busy colonising India - engineers, administrators, military etc - and the Irish Raj seems to have been just as enthusiastically imperialist as the British part. Though one wonders, if Mollie actually grew up in India, where her stage-Irish accent came from..? Dick is a bit of a cipher, but I always rather like Mollie, what little you see of her - she's one of the few mothers of the generation which is older than Joey who is allowed to be fun, unlike later Madge or Doris Trelawney. Though part of that is down to the 'mercurial Irish temperament' which seems to mean she changes mood every two minutes, judging by Jo Returns, where one minute, she's understandably desperately upset she's leaving her ten-month-old baby for three years, and next minute she's gabbling on perfectly happily about Joey's Christmas present. I always find that scene - where they tell Joey they're leaving Jacky at Die Rosen - troubling. Joey is surprised, because they'd planned to keep him in India for another three years, as he was too young to be affected by the climate yet (not sure what the logic of this was?), but because Jem says Quote: "... he’s doing so well here ’twould be a pity to risk upsetting him by taking him back there again. And then—well, there’s to be another little brother or sister for him at the end of next April, and Jackie would be just at the age when he was one person’s work. So, as Madge, bless her, said she’d be a mother to him, the same as she is to the rest, we decided it would be best to laeve him where he is,’ said Mollie, looking at Jo with wonderful dark eyes, swimming with tears. I always find myself wondering precisely why it's Jem's decision, and what he knows about the Indian climate anyway, and then thinking, how awkward, presumably Mollie and Dick don't want to fall out with the man who's acting as their children's interim father. Ouch. One does also count up on one's fingers, as previous commenters did, and shake one's head about pregnancy-spacing. Although I'm not sure the excuse about Jacky being too much of a handful with another new baby really holds water - in India they would have had dozens of ayahs and servants... (Also, why keep having babies you have to leave in a distant country for years at a time?) I also find it puzzling that, as Dick and Mollie have decided to leave for India early (because they need to go overland as Mollie is a poor sailor), and leave their baby, Dick says they've just come from two days in Innsbruck seeing people they know, but didn't bring Jacky with them because he's too little to be at 'a succession of Kaffeeklatschen'. Who on earth do they know in Innsbruck who is important enough for them to leave behind a baby they now have to say goodbye to until he's almost four? I know, maybe they're trying to practice detachment for actually leaving, but I still find it upsetting. |
Author: | Dreaming Marianne [ Fri Feb 13, 2009 9:23 pm ] |
Post subject: | Re: Relationships: Dick and Mollie |
MJKB wrote: Gosh, this is an education! Doesn't breast feeding act as a contraceptive though? I really wouldn't bank on it. That's why a friend of mine has less than ten months betwen her youngest two MJKB wrote: Anyway, she shouldn't have been up to 'that sort of thing' so soon after giving birth. Quite. |
Author: | Alison H [ Fri Feb 13, 2009 11:46 pm ] |
Post subject: | Re: Relationships: Dick and Mollie |
Just wanted to add a belated thought - although we don't see that much of Dick and Mollie, from what we do see I like their relationship better than that of the Russells and certainly better than that of the Maynards because I can't imagine Dick every doing the "masterful head of the household" thing and dosing his wife or being overly strict with the children. I was going to say that maybe it's because he's not a doctor , but I can't imagine Laurie Rosomon, Phil Graves or Eugen Courvoisier, or even Gottfried Mensch or Bruno von Ahlen, "dosing" their wives either (although Reg Entwistle is another story!!). I just think that The Quadrant - as described in Bride - sounds like a much more comfortable place to be than the Maynard home or the Russell home. (Although, just to go totally OT, it annoys me a bit that Dick just conveniently inherits a big house from his godfather, rather than having to sort himself out financially when he and Mollie leave India!) |
Author: | MJKB [ Sat Feb 14, 2009 11:14 pm ] |
Post subject: | Re: Relationships: Dick and Mollie |
But it's the CS universe, things like that are bound to happen. Dick could just as easily have wandered off the page of a Woodhouse novel. He'd make a splendid member of the Drone's club, such a nice but dim young gentleman. He's even got several bossy old aunts to go with the territory. |
Author: | Kathy_S [ Sat Feb 14, 2009 11:34 pm ] |
Post subject: | Re: Relationships: Dick and Mollie |
Once they're back in England, Mollie & Dick's household seems to me to have one of the most pleasant atmospheres in the series, even through the stress of Mollie's illness and convalescence. Too bad we don't see more of India, and just what Dick did in "the forestry," though how EBD could have worked it in I have no clue. I know it's unrealistic given that it's India with the whole colonial situation there, but I tend to compare it to my grandparents' situation, moving from pillar to post in the state forestry/fish & game service. My grandmother ended up putting her foot down when full blown boarding school for their six became the only option, though by that time the depression had eased. |
Author: | Karoline [ Sun Feb 15, 2009 10:00 am ] |
Post subject: | Re: Relationships: Dick and Mollie |
Alison H wrote: (Although, just to go totally OT, it annoys me a bit that Dick just conveniently inherits a big house from his godfather, rather than having to sort himself out financially when he and Mollie leave India!) Especially as Dick would have almost certainly lost his job when India gained independence. |
Author: | RroseSelavy [ Sun Feb 15, 2009 1:50 pm ] |
Post subject: | Re: Relationships: Dick and Mollie |
I think the glimpses we see of the Bettanys' family life are much more warm and natural than with the Maynards or Russells (especially the relationships between parents and children). From a 21st century point of view it's hard to accept that Dick & Mollie kept having children then sending them abroad, but in a time when a) there was no reliable method of contraception and b) this was socially acceptable, I don't see it as 'bad parenting' in that cultural/historical context. |
Author: | Jennie [ Sun Feb 15, 2009 4:35 pm ] |
Post subject: | Re: Relationships: Dick and Mollie |
Actually, Marie Stopes had introduced the Dutch Cap by the time the books were written, so contraception was available by then, but if your characters are fictional, why not give them your own wish-fulfillment, so they have large families. ETA: two girls in school the year ahead of me, not twins, just born ten months apart. It can happen. |
Author: | Lesley [ Sun Feb 15, 2009 6:36 pm ] |
Post subject: | Re: Relationships: Dick and Mollie |
A friend of mine at school had a sister in the year above who was eleven months older - I was actually closer to her sister's age than hers! |
Author: | MJKB [ Sun Feb 15, 2009 8:41 pm ] |
Post subject: | Re: Relationships: Dick and Mollie |
Jennie wrote: Actually, Marie Stopes had introduced the Dutch Cap by the time the books were written, so contraception was available by then, but if your characters are fictional, why not give them your own wish-fulfillment, so they have large families. They'd probably see that device as a huge joke, a bit of a giggle. I love both of them because they never become deadly dull and serious like some of the other married characters, and as someone else has remarked, the glimpse we get of their household is so much more casual and formal than the Maynard's and Russell's. But where did they get prissy Peggy from? |
Author: | Nightwing [ Sun Feb 15, 2009 8:51 pm ] |
Post subject: | Re: Relationships: Dick and Mollie |
MJKB wrote: But where did they get prissy Peggy from? That's the nature versus nurture debate, isn't it? Is Peggy prissy because of growing up in Madge's nursery... or did she have an especially prissy grandmother we never met? |
Author: | ChubbyMonkey [ Sun Feb 15, 2009 8:54 pm ] |
Post subject: | Re: Relationships: Dick and Mollie |
Nightwing wrote: MJKB wrote: But where did they get prissy Peggy from? That's the nature versus nurture debate, isn't it? Is Peggy prissy because of growing up in Madge's nursery... or did she have an especially prissy grandmother we never met? Actually, my thoughts were that it was a very similar story to Len - because Mollie (or Joey) is so light-hearted, eldest daughter's feel the need to try and be responsible for younger children. I should imagine that this was particularly heightened in Peggy's case by being aware that their actual mother was in another country, so it would be her job to look after the others. This also makes a neat contrast to Sybil who, because she has a sensible, responsible mother, is often quite selfish and thinks only of herself in her earlier years. And, to a certain extent, Margot, who because of Len's mothering, partly, seems to be able to have tantrums - note the scene in Rescue where Len tries to stop the adults finding out about Margot's fit of temper. |
Author: | Fiona Mc [ Sun Feb 15, 2009 11:49 pm ] |
Post subject: | Re: Relationships: Dick and Mollie |
I really liked Mollie and Dick's relationship, though I would never have agreed to leave my children with family when they were so young! I always thought Peggy turned out the way she did mainly because she obviously tried to make up for her mother not being around and Sybil developed the way she did in part because she resented Rix's bossiness. David didn't cos he enjoyed having another boy around in amongst so many girls. In regards to having her children so close together, I never saw that as to bad mainly cos that's the age gap between some in my family. If Mollie was so fertile, then her goitre must have been developing for so many years cos an underactive thyroid would have affected her fertility and could explain why Maeve and Maurice were the youngest for so many years and why they had Daphne after the goitre was removed. |
Author: | Kathy_S [ Mon Feb 16, 2009 1:21 am ] |
Post subject: | Re: Relationships: Dick and Mollie |
It still shocks me that people would consider children a year apart in any way unusual, since I grew up in a neighborhood in which stair-step children were the norm. It is true that there were already wisecracks about larger families in my youth -- and believe me, the "joke" gets very, very tired if you are a member of such a family. (Note: Dick & Mollie's family wasn't quite large enough to qualify.) However, comments about close birth spacing would have been considered quite as rude as describing someone as an "afterthought," notwithstanding the occasional pair of siblings less than a year apart happy to describe themselves as "Irish twins." It's one of the reasons I can see Jo going on about wanting a "long family." If you chose to do so, you needed a defense mechanism. |
Author: | jennifer [ Mon Feb 16, 2009 2:12 am ] |
Post subject: | Re: Relationships: Dick and Mollie |
The thing that shocks me about children a year apart is the idea of starting pregnancy when your baby is three months old, and then having a year old child + a newborn to look after. I like what we see of Mollie and Dick. They seem a much younger couple than Madge and Dick (they are, I guess), and more balanced than some of the interactions between Jack and Joey, where Jack is very much in the role of authority. I'd guess that Mollie probably met a number of suitable young officers in India, as well as Dick. I also really like the scenes in Bride of the whole family, which strike me as cozier and less frantic than the Maynard household. Mollie had at least one sister, Bridgie, who had a number of children older than the Bettany kids - she comes to stay in Bride. She also has an older brother, Michael, who has three children. They may have sent the kids to Madge and Jem simply because they has the money and a big house with lots of room, and could accommodate the kids without having to split up the family. Sending kids back to England was simply what people did in those days. It was accepted that the climate was bad for English children, and that sending the children back to England to stay with family was the best thing to do. For more upper class children, too, they would have to go back to go to the right sort of school, too. |
Author: | claire [ Mon Feb 16, 2009 3:37 pm ] |
Post subject: | Re: Relationships: Dick and Mollie |
I found a 1 year gap easier than a 2 year - you're still in baby mode |
Author: | Cat C [ Mon Feb 16, 2009 6:59 pm ] |
Post subject: | Re: Relationships: Dick and Mollie |
claire wrote: I found a 1 year gap easier than a 2 year - you're still in baby mode Apparently it depends whether you're better at sprints or hurdles Bizarrely I've always thought of Mollie being Irish and Catholic (which is of course logically all wrong, given she's married to Dick, and the children are all protestant), and that accounting for the many off-spring In any case, sending of children abroad to the Russell household seemed to work out quite well in the end - if the Quadrant scenes are anything to go by. |
Author: | Mel [ Mon Feb 16, 2009 10:23 pm ] |
Post subject: | Re: Relationships: Dick and Mollie |
There is a discussion of servants on another thread and the scenes in Bride seems to show a lack of them in the Bettany house, which is odd, as Mollie would have been used to lots. Peggy seems to make tea (Devon splits) and her mother's breakfast. But the family is happy and united. |
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