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Siblings : Daisy and Primula
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Author:  Lottie [ Wed Jun 10, 2009 4:29 pm ]
Post subject:  Siblings : Daisy and Primula
Daisy and Primula arrive on the scene in New House. We follow Daisy’s career through the school fairly steadily. Primula seems to appear rather more spasmodically. Apart from when they first appear and when Daisy gets married, I don’t think we see them together. What do you think of their relationship? Were they brought closer together because of the death of their brothers in Australia? Or because of the loss of their mother just after the start of the war? Were they too far apart in age (seven years) to be very close? Would they have had a good relationship as adults?
Author:  trig [ Wed Jun 10, 2009 4:48 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings : Daisy and Primula
Part of the closeness of siblings must stem from a constant being together (and quite often just together or with parents) throughout a large part of childhood. I don't think Daisy and Primula experience this much if at all. When they first arrive they are plunged into the enormous nursery at Die Rosen, and then when the CS moves to Guernsey Daisy lives with Robin and the Maynards rather than with Primula. I often have to remind myself they are in fact sisters. It would be more natural for Primula to have sister type relationships with Bride, Sybil and others she shared small child memories with.

I expect as adults they would have got on comparatively well - there would be none of the petty squabbling and jealousies associated with closer-in-age sisters (I can still remember me and my sisters fighting...) but there would be none of the closeness brought about from shared experiences. I don't think it's necessarily an age thing as I'm pretty close to my sister who is 10 years younger than me - still plenty of shared time - but more a lack of ever being together.
Author:  Alison H [ Wed Jun 10, 2009 5:06 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings : Daisy and Primula
We don't see much of them together, except in Joey Goes around the time of Daisy's wedding, but they certainly seem to be very close there. I think it's lovely that both Daisy and Laurie are so concerned that Primula should think of their home as her home - even to the extent of saying that she should come and stay with them before starting at Welsen even though the original idea was for her to stay with the Maynards to give the newly-weds some more time alone :D .

When they're younger, Daisy seems closer to Robin and Primula to David than they are to each other, but a 7 year age gap is a lot for young children.

A bit OT, but I wish we'd seen more of the friendship between David and Primula - we rarely see tmuch of the relationships between the girls and their brothers/male cousins, except maybe Clem and Tony.
Author:  Loryat [ Wed Jun 10, 2009 6:43 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings : Daisy and Primula
I would have liked to have seen more of Primula than we do.

I think Daisy and Primula would be quite close, or at least Daisy would be close to Primula, because they have all that time alone after their brothers die and they leave Australia to come to Austria. Primula might not remember it, but I'm sure Daisy would.
Author:  MJKB [ Wed Jun 10, 2009 8:11 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings : Daisy and Primula
Why were the two sisters split up when the family moved to Guernsey? Was it something to do with Sybil? It seems odd that they would separate the sisters especially in view of their mother's recent death.
Author:  JB [ Wed Jun 10, 2009 8:20 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings : Daisy and Primula
I'm another one who'd have liked to see more of Primula, as she's a very appealing character when she pops up in Joey Goes to the Oberland. Daisy is another character I really like.

I think it's sad that they're passed from Madge to Joey and back again like parcels, without it seems, anyone thinking what's best for them. There must have been times when they felt very much second best and there points in the series when i'm not sure with whom they live or if they're together.

We see very little of them together so it's difficult to say if they were close. There's a touching scene in New House where Daisy is trying to feed Primula her tea but, after that, Primula was in the Die Rosen nursery and Daisy was at school, so I doubt they were close as children. I can never quite work out if Primula goes to Canada with the Russells or stays behind.

Daisy and Lawrie are very considerate towards Primula after they marry and it looks as though they have a strong relationship as adults.
Author:  Lottie [ Wed Jun 10, 2009 8:21 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings : Daisy and Primula
MJKB wrote:
Why were the two sisters split up when the family moved to Guernsey? Was it something to do with Sybil? It seems odd that they would separate the sisters especially in view of their mother's recent death.

I don't imagine anybody really thought about the separation very much - after all they were both being cared for by the extended family. I expect it was thought that Daisy would be better with the Robin, who was much nearer to her in age, rather than being stuck with the nursery folk. Primula would have had several companions of her own age in Madge's nursery. I don't remember any tantrums from Sybil about Primula, perhaps she'd got the worst of them out of her system by complaining about the Bettanys.
Author:  Mel [ Wed Jun 10, 2009 9:06 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings : Daisy and Primula
I think EBD kept forgetting about Primula. Is she mentioned as a prefect? In age she should have been in Bride's group if she goes to Welsen after Joey Goes, which suggests that she did go to Canada but didn't return to the school with the triplets and Josette. The closeness in that book comes as a bit of a surprise. I assumed they were close, because CS sisters are.
Author:  Nightwing [ Wed Jun 10, 2009 9:43 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings : Daisy and Primula
Mel wrote:
I think EBD kept forgetting about Primula. Is she mentioned as a prefect? In age she should have been in Bride's group if she goes to Welsen after Joey Goes, which suggests that she did go to Canada but didn't return to the school with the triplets and Josette. The closeness in that book comes as a bit of a surprise. I assumed they were close, because CS sisters are.


I definitely got the impression that EBD kept forgetting about - EBD spent a lot of time developing Daisy's character, but we seldom see Primula unless it's in relation to Daisy.

I also don't feel like the sisters are incredibly close, but that doesn't mean they don't care about each other. Daisy, especially as an adult, clearly wants Primula to feel like she 'belongs' - perhaps because the two of them spent so much time as kids being passed between Jo and Madge?
Author:  Alison H [ Wed Jun 10, 2009 11:24 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings : Daisy and Primula
I think EBD forgot about Primula. IIRC, Primula stayed behind when the Russells went to Canada, and then went out there with the Maynards and Sybil, but it was only mentioned later on - no-one mentioned Primula at all when the Russells' trip to Canada first came up.

She was the same age as Bride so should have been part of the Bride/Nancy/Tom etc gang, but she ended up in a form below them most of the time.

I think that Daisy moved in with Joey in Guernsey so that she and Robin could cycle to and from school together, rather than both of them going on their own, which made a lot of sense especially if they were having to ride through the blackout, but it seems a shame that Daisy and Primula were separated.

I wonder if Primula felt overshadowed. She was a fairly average girl who didn't stand out in any way, whereas Daisy was Super Girl - she must have been one of the brightest pupils the CS ever had, to've got into med school at a time when few women did and to win all those awards, and she was good at sports, and she was pretty, and she was popular both with her own age group and other age groups, and she was nice enough not to seem even remotely annoying for it all!
Author:  CBW [ Thu Jun 11, 2009 7:05 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings : Daisy and Primula
I think this was set at a time when people didn't necessarily see the need to keep family groups together.

I wonder a little if Daisy's desire to have Primula think of her home with her new husband as 'home' is a little as reaction to the idea that neither of them has had a 'home' since Australia given the way they were parcelled out and moved around to suit other people's best needs.
Author:  Sunglass [ Thu Jun 11, 2009 10:59 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings : Daisy and Primula
I'd never really thought about Daisy and Primula being separated within the extended clan, probably because I tend to forget Primula's existence (as EBD seems to have at times!) But her very emotional response to Daisy's wedding and departure on honeymoon tends to make me think back to the original separation.

There's no hint in the earlier books that EBD thought twice about separating the sisters as an issue, or that anyone thought that it might be upsetting enough to them to outweigh whatever practical advantages there were to Daisy living with Joey. As people have said, in a world where parents routinely leave their small children with relatives while they live on different continents for years, the idea of the 'family' is pretty expanded. But I was a bit shocked by the way in which Nan Blakeney was 'transferred' without her knowledge from the care of Rosamund Willoughby to Janie Lucy in Janie Steps In - they didn't tell her she was going for more than a short visit, because they were afraid it would upset her and she would beg not to go, which seems more than a bit insensitive - one wonders how the Daisy/Primula situation would have been handled first day. I suppose I also think the Russell nursery from Die Rosen onward may have been quite difficult for a quiet child like Primula, without her sister around in the background somewhere, with bossy Rix and insufferable Sybil continually saying 'David and me belong!'

And certainly, Primula's clinginess and sadness after Daisy's wedding suggest to me some kind of separation anxiety. Though my main memory of that wedding is of Joey unforgivably hogging the limelight at every possible moment - I realise she's attempting, in Margot's absence, to be mother of the bride, and she behaves very well to Daisy and Primula one-on-one, but in public attention-hogging terms at the actual wedding, I would have said she could have toned it down in a bit favour of the bride and groom.
Author:  JayB [ Thu Jun 11, 2009 12:05 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings : Daisy and Primula
Daisy going to live with Jo in Exile wasn't the first time she and Primula had been separated, was it? In Tyrol, Primula was at Die Rosen, and Daisy was at school, and only at home in the holidays. Primula wouldn't have any memory of a time when she and Daisy were together on a day to day basis, before those few months in Guernsey before the school reopened.

Primula seems to be a rather passive character, and we know very little about her. She doesn't seem to have any plans for her life after leaving school. With no money of her own and no apparent plans to earn any she'd always have been dependent on Jem or Laurie if she hadn't married. She's not even given any interests such as writing or art or music that she could pursue while living with Madge or Daisy. It's a rather sad prospect, especially considering this is c.1950.
Author:  Fiona Mc [ Fri Jun 12, 2009 8:26 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings : Daisy and Primula
I think the Daisy and Primula relationshipe is actually quite nice. Other than Peggy and Bride and the triplets, we don't really get a sense of closeness amongst sisters in any of the Bettany/Maynard/Russell clan. Sybil is jealous of Josette initially and doesn't appreciate having to bail out Ailie from trouble at school when she can't afford her library fines etc. Felicity can't even ask Con a simple question about what had happened to Len and the paint without her head being bitten off.

Whereas Daisy is always looking out for Primula during the War years and after. Yes they may have been seperated while on Guernsey but that was more so she and Robin could ride to school together and Joey was expecting the triplets and obviously the powers to be thought Primula may have been lonely on her own. By the time Joey moves to England, Primula lives with Joey and Daisy always seems to include her sister in things, for it's mentioned a lot in Highland Twins.

I think for Daisy, as close as she is to Robin and Joey, Primula is her only close family and she has watched 3 brothers die so holding onto Primula would be even more important. For Primula, it's Daisy she gets attention from with the older adults not any of the others. I think it's also interesting that Daisy does give her daughter Primula's middle name of Mary and her daughter is always known by that. I certainly don't see the age gap as a problem but it does mean the dynamics in the relationship would change a lot more over the years from Daisy needing to give more earlier on to them becoming more equal
Author:  Sunglass [ Fri Jun 12, 2009 10:27 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings : Daisy and Primula
JayB wrote:
Daisy going to live with Jo in Exile wasn't the first time she and Primula had been separated, was it? In Tyrol, Primula was at Die Rosen, and Daisy was at school, and only at home in the holidays.


I suppose I meant something along the lines of 'weren't technically living in the same house', but you're right, this is coloured by my 2009 knowledge of friends making decisions about shared custody and thinking about things like whether their child can have a bedroom and belongings at both the separated mother and father's houses, so they don't feel permanently 'in transit'. But EBD's characters, what with boarding school and people looking after other people's children for years at a time, and the war, have to have a much more fluid sense of 'home', and I suppose at that period, especially during the upheavals of war,there would have been less of a felt necessity to privilege keeping sisters together over the practicalities of one living with a different bit of the extended family for school purposes.

I think I just feel for Daisy, as her life has been one of the most difficult of any of the CS characters by Exile - her father was a monster and she lost him and her brothers, endured poverty and her mother's decline, and then, after everything takes a turn for the better and they reach the Tyrol and are adopted into the extended Russell clan, the war comes and she loses the CS and Die Rosen, and her mother. It's astonishing she grows up to be so happy, sucessful and well-adjusted. I know EBD would put this down to Madge and then Joey's mothering, but I think there's only so much you could do to minimise what she's had to deal with by her teens.
Author:  JB [ Fri Jun 12, 2009 12:04 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings : Daisy and Primula
Sunglass wrote:

Quote:
It's astonishing she grows up to be so happy, sucessful and well-adjusted. I know EBD would put this down to Madge and then Joey's mothering, but I think there's only so much you could do to minimise what she's had to deal with by her teens.


And Daisy and Primula were sent away to England when their mother was dying, which I'm sure Daisy must have resented. I wonder where they stayed - pretty much everyone they knew was in Guernsey.

Although in Goes To It, EBD contradicts herself when she has Joey say that Daisy is an English girl who has never seen England.
Author:  JayB [ Fri Jun 12, 2009 1:39 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings : Daisy and Primula
Quote:
...her father was a monster....


We had an interesting discussion about Stephen Venables some time ago, must see if I can remember where it was.

Personally, I don't see him as a monster, but as a superficially charming (because there must have been something for Margot to fall in love with) but weak man who couldn't cope with the failure of his business ventures or the loss of his sons (for which he perhaps blamed himself) and retreated into a bottle. Maybe he was a violent and angry drunk?

But Daisy of course was old enough to be aware of the problems between her parents, especially as the Venables children must have been much more with their parents than, say, the children at Die Rosen were with Madge and Jem.
Author:  Loryat [ Fri Jun 12, 2009 2:54 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings : Daisy and Primula
I definitely think we can't judge EBD's treatment of Daisy and Primula by today's standards. (And I would also argue that EBD does forget Primula a lot, and also that she forgets where she's put her last). In an adult book by Noel Streatfield called Saplings, set during WWII, four siblings are routinely shared out between the extended family, with little thought being given to how this will affect the children (except by Streatfield). One girl is even sent to a highly unsuitable aunt because the aunt who's organising everything is determined that she's going to do her 'fair share'. While the whole book is about how this sort of treatment messes up the kids, none of the characters think it's all that shocking. Compared to this, Madge and Joey's extended families look like havens.

Doesn't Primula live with Joey in the holidays, but board during term time because she's too delicate to cycle, at one point? And when are Daisy and Primula sent away from their dying mother?
Author:  Alison H [ Fri Jun 12, 2009 3:34 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings : Daisy and Primula
In Exile, we're told that Daisy and Primula were sent to the English mainland until "it was all over" because Margot didn't want them to be upset by seeing her on her deathbed ... although in War Joey then says something about Daisy never having seen England before.

I find it very odd - Primula was about 6 at the time, and Daisy around 12, so they weren't babies, and it was completely at odds with everything that Hilda and the Balbinis said in New about the importance of being able to say goodbye - but it was evidently what Margot thought was best.
Author:  Margaret [ Fri Jun 12, 2009 4:10 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings : Daisy and Primula
[quote="Loryat"]I definitely think we can't judge EBD's treatment of Daisy and Primula by today's standards. (And I would also argue that EBD does forget Primula a lot, and also that she forgets where she's put her last). In an adult book by Noel Streatfield called Saplings, set during WWII, four siblings are routinely shared out between the extended family, with little thought being given to how this will affect the children (except by Streatfield). One girl is even sent to a highly unsuitable aunt because the aunt who's organising everything is determined that she's going to do her 'fair share'. While the whole book is about how this sort of treatment messes up the kids, none of the characters think it's all that shocking. Compared to this, Madge and Joey's extended families look like havens.[quote]

I had a cousin who lived with us, and only went home occasionally (WW2 era), and recently she referred to my mother as 'a second mum'. She certainly doesn't seem to have suffered. I wonder if, it being fairly normal practice during the war years and before it didn't have as detrimemtal an effect on children? We were, though a happy family, which may have helped.
Author:  trig [ Fri Jun 12, 2009 5:12 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings : Daisy and Primula
Margaret wrote
Quote:
I had a cousin who lived with us, and only went home occasionally (WW2 era), and recently she referred to my mother as 'a second mum'. She certainly doesn't seem to have suffered. I wonder if, it being fairly normal practice during the war years and before it didn't have as detrimemtal an effect on children? We were, though a happy family, which may have helped.


I know I wrote above that the early separation might have denied daisy and Primula some shared memories but I think that reading through the posts and from relatives memories that spending long periods of time with the extended family might actually be beneficial to the children and the family as a whole.

My husband spent entire summer holidays with his grandparents when he was small as his parents went fruit picking. He always had an excellent relationship with the older generation and also the cousins, which his sisters, who stayed with his parents (perhaps they thought boys would be no good at fruit picking :D ) never did.

This kind of
Author:  JayB [ Fri Jun 12, 2009 6:54 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings : Daisy and Primula
Margaret
Quote:
I had a cousin who lived with us, and only went home occasionally (WW2 era), and recently she referred to my mother as 'a second mum'. She certainly doesn't seem to have suffered. I wonder if, it being fairly normal practice during the war years and before it didn't have as detrimemtal an effect on children?


And of course many children were evacuated to strangers during the War, and siblings were split up. Nowadays the tendency has been to focus on some of the more negative aspects, but for some children it was a positive experience. And at the time the alternative - mass air raids, the possibility of invasion, and the need to get non-essential civilians away from the invasion coast - meant that overall the benefits of evacuation were seen as far outweighing the negatives.

And in the context of the CS in Exile, when many girls were cut off from their homelands and their families and in some cases didn't even know whether family members were alive or dead, I think Daisy and Primula being separated was a fairly minor thing.
Author:  Caroline [ Tue Jun 16, 2009 12:24 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings : Daisy and Primula
Possibly the other thing to bear in mind is that with a 7 year age gap and an ethos of attending boarding school (which likely the Venables girls would have had to do even if Stephen had been a successful farmer and had lived, their home being out in the Aussie bush somewhere), Daisy and Primula would have been separated for quite a few years anyway.

Daisy could easily have been sent to boarding school from the age of, what, 8? So, Primula would have had her babyhood only seeing her big sister in the hols. By the time Prim was old enough to board, Daisy would have been 15 and practically a senior. They might not have been at the same school if it didn't have its' own KG / prep department. By the time Prim became a middle, Daisy would have left school.

So, in the circumstances, they probably spent quite a lot more time together than they otherwise might have.

Do we know whether the brothers were in between Daisy and Prim in terms of age? Or aren't we told? EBD doesn't really go into the impact their deaths must have had on Daisy, but surely it would have been considerable. And I suspect ensuring that both girls had suitably aged companions, plus parental figures who were able to give them sufficient attention were important considerations in deciding where they were going to live - that, and proximity to the school.
Author:  Mrs Redboots [ Wed Jun 17, 2009 6:27 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings : Daisy and Primula
JayB wrote:
And of course many children were evacuated to strangers during the War, and siblings were split up. Nowadays the tendency has been to focus on some of the more negative aspects, but for some children it was a positive experience.


Indeed - for one friend of mine it was absolutely the best thing that could ever have happened, and she will tell you so! She was brought up in a children's home (and I imagine 1930's children's homes were pretty ghastly), but evacuated to Bedford, and the woman to whose house she went ended up showing her the first love she had ever experienced, and adopting her formally.

Yes, I think the little brothers who died did come between Daisy & Primula in age; 9 years is a big gap, and the girls probably didn't know each other very well, any more than my brother and I knew our very-much-younger sister, and for similar reasons - we were off at boarding-school, while she was at home (come to that, my brother and I didn't/don't know each other very well).
Author:  Miss Di [ Thu Jun 18, 2009 4:17 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings : Daisy and Primula
Caroline wrote:

Daisy could easily have been sent to boarding school from the age of, what, 8? So, Primula would have had her babyhood only seeing her big sister in the hols. By the time Prim was old enough to board, Daisy would have been 15 and practically a senior. They might not have been at the same school if it didn't have its' own KG / prep department. By the time Prim became a middle, Daisy would have left school.


I thought Daisy could quite possibly attended School of the Air but have checked dates and in Qld the Mt Isa School of the Air only opened in 1964. But she may have had primary lessons by correspondence.
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