The CBB :: View topic - Siblings: Mollie and Jack Maynard

I always get round the difficulty in religion by assuming either (a) that their mother was Protestant and their father Catholic; until quite recently (not sure exactly when), if that happened, the girls were brought up in their mother's denomination and the boys with their father's, or (b) that Jack in fact converted to Catholicism while at school or very shortly thereafter. After all, the use of a rosary is not confined to Catholics.

I
And do we ever see Mollie and Jack together except in Reunion? I'm not too sure we do.

As for Mollie having twinsat least I think she does, and then Joey, does it not usually skip generations?

In Princess, he is described simply as Miss Maynard’s brother. In the short story Joey’s Convict, he is her younger brother but they are later described as twins. In Reunion, Mollie tells the other guests that “since I’m a twin myself, I was bound to have one set”.

JB wrote:

They could be twins and he could still be her younger brother. We know that EBD was very fond of birth order stereotypes!

Miss Maynard, whose eldest brother was assistant at the Sonnalpe

They have an elder brother Robert (Bob). Two other brothers and a sister died in childhood (Stephen, Charles and Dorothy).

I'm another that never really got a strong sense of Jack and Mollie as siblings, although it probably doesn't help that all my Tirol books are paperbacks and heavily abridged!

I'm pretty sure none of the girls had a Dorothy anywhere in their name, although you could argue that the Mary part of the triplets' names were for Mollie.

Maybe the Maynards (i.e. Jack's parents and siblings, not his progeny!) were a highly disfunctional family, with a horrible father, who forced his wife to hide her catholicism for his own social-climbing ends (their status as minor gentry/land-owners for example, may have resulted form this). However, Jack's mum secretly kept up her Catholicism, and instilled this in her children. Mollie, rather lacking imagination, didn't really bother

This is really OT, but I always got Mollie Maynard and Mollie Bettany absolutely muddled when I first read the books. Did EBD get a passion for the name Mollie at that time, or what ? She introduces two characters of the same name within about five minutes of each other, and the whole Maynard/Bettany back/forwards story caused me complete confusion !

I'm afraid that isn't true. The Catholic Church always insisted that the non Catholic parent promised to bring up all the children as Catholics. It is possible that some parents decided for themselves that the girls should be brought up in their mother's denomination and the boys with their father's but it was never Catholic Church policy that this should happen

Perhaps she's caught him trying his advances on Dick?

There's something weird about the way nearly all the mistresses who leave in the early years end up at the other side of the world. ...
Maybe they all knew some horrible secret about the school and'd been threatened with a terrible fate if they didn't take themselves a very long way away.

ChubbyMonkey wrote:

Perhaps she's caught him trying his advances on Dick?

Please please PLEASE tell me I'm not the only person who choked on their tea and biscuits (disguised as wine and crisps) when they read this?Sorry, but my mind is always in the gutter even when people mean things completely innocently.

ChubbyMonkey wrote:

Perhaps she's caught him trying his advances on Dick?

Please please PLEASE tell me I'm not the only person who choked on their tea and biscuits (disguised as wine and crisps) when they read this?

Sorry, but my mind is always in the gutter even when people mean things completely innocently.

:oops: I shall keep my thoughts to myself in future. Sorry. :oops:

But then Joey would have been doing it for the right reasons, she would have been saving someone else.

yes, I'd always assumed it was given away for death duty reasons as much as Joey and co finding the New Forest 'too relaxing'. It is interesting that Jack doesn't seem to feel any sense of loss of, or real connection to, his heritage; it's like he sloughed it off when he moved to the San on the Sonnalpe - to the extent of effectively buying up a pseudo-ancestral pile on the Tiernsee later on.

I guess that perhaps Jack had consciously distanced himself from his family home (at least to the extent of not wanting desperately to hang on to it after Bob's death), probably after Rolf's birth - after all, it was unlikely he'd inherit with a brother who was heir to the property, and his brother having a son. And by the time Bob died, perhaps Jack was more attached, emotionally, to his work at the San than to a house where he had not spent much time in the past fifteen years or so.

This has made me think of Antonia Forest's Run Away Home when Peter Marlow realises that Giles will inherit Trennels and it will be his family living there, not Peter's.

We only get the CS side of Lydia and Joey's relationship. Lydia's friends probably had equally bad things to say about Joey, and it was probably a case of six of one and half a dozen of the other.

But I don't think we ever see Jack's reaction either day, do we? I didn't think he was at Many Bushes when they got the news. Or am I remembering wrong? I don't have Rescue to hand, but my memory is that Joey, rather casually, says one day at Many Bushes that she has had a letter (clearly at some point earlier) to say that Bob has been killed, and goes on to talk about Pretty Maids and the future, without making any reference to Jack's loss (or Mollie's, for that matter).

Also EBD doesn't do her usual trick of saying it was all for the best as Bob had nothing to live for as he had lost his son and his wife was a cow! (or words to that effect!)

It seems to be very much set up with Joey not having to expend emotional energy and understanding on Jack and his feelings/problems etc - all the 'looking after' comes from him, the SLOC, towards Joey, who then puts all her emotional energy into understanding her elder children/wards/strangers/problem CS girls.

At least with Joey dosed and asleep, he gets a break

Quote:

At least with Joey dosed and asleep, he gets a break

Yeah, I'd be driven to dosing too, if I were Jack!

Author:	JB [ Wed Jan 27, 2010 2:41 pm ]
Post subject:	Siblings: Mollie and Jack Maynard
Mollie Maynard joins the Chalet School as maths mistress during its first term, when we’re told that she’s a “high school girl”. She and her family become good friends with the Bettanys, and Joey and the Robin spend several holidays at Pretty Maids, the Maynard home in the New Forest. By Princess, her brother Jack has joined Jem Russell at the San where he’s described as “young Maynard”. In Princess, he is described simply as Miss Maynard’s brother. In the short story Joey’s Convict, he is her younger brother but they are later described as twins. In Reunion, Mollie tells the other guests that “since I’m a twin myself, I was bound to have one set”. They have an elder brother Robert (Bob). Two other brothers and a sister died in childhood (Stephen, Charles and Dorothy). After Bob’s death during the war, Jack inherits Pretty Maids but hands it over to the National Trust before he and Joey move to Switzerland. In Joey’s Convict, we’re introduced to Mollie’s fiancé as Ralph Arden and in Camp as Alistair Macdonald but by Reunion, he’s become Ken Mackenzie. Mollie leaves at half term in Eustacia to go home to marry and in Camp, Jack tells Joey that her husband has a job in New Zealand and the couple will be leaving England immediately, without having time to visit Austria again. After that, she disappears from view although we’re told in Island that she is living in New Zealand and has seven children, beating Joey at this point During her time at the school, Mollie is a Protestant yet Jack is later described as a “cradle Catholic”. When he’s away fighting in the war in Highland Twins, Jo has given him a new rosary to take away with him and he leaves behind his old one which we’re told he used every day since he was a boy at school. We next see Mollie as a surprise guest in A Chalet School Reunion. Described as “a big, fair woman, buxom and sonsy”, she is making a 6 month visit to Europe and her husband will join her once the shearing is finished. She visits a clinic in Germany to lose the weight she’d put as a result of problems with “glands” and reappears, having lost weight, at Grizel’s wedding. That’s the last we see of her. What do you think of the relationship between Mollie and Jack? Do we see enough of them together? Are they well drawn characters? Do you like them? How do they compare to other mixed gender sibling relationships eg Madge and Dick? Were you pleased t see Mollie again in Reunion? Is she recognisably the same character? Please discuss these and any other Maynard related questions. Thanks to Sunglass for the idea for this discussion.

Author:	Mrs Redboots [ Wed Jan 27, 2010 8:58 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Siblings: Mollie and Jack Maynard
I always get round the difficulty in religion by assuming either (a) that their mother was Protestant and their father Catholic; until quite recently (not sure exactly when), if that happened, the girls were brought up in their mother's denomination and the boys with their father's, or (b) that Jack in fact converted to Catholicism while at school or very shortly thereafter. After all, the use of a rosary is not confined to Catholics. I do think it's a pity that Mollie Maynard was all but written out - EBD did like sending her major characters off to the further reaches of the Empire after they married, so that she didn't have to faff with them, I suppose. But Joey and Jack's children might have liked knowing their Maynard cousins as well as their Russell and Bettany ones. And do we ever see Mollie and Jack together except in Reunion? I'm not too sure we do.

Author:	sealpuppy [ Wed Jan 27, 2010 9:05 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Siblings: Mollie and Jack Maynard
I don't think I've ever had much sense of them being siblings anyway, apart from the very early mentions. It seems as if EBD just throws in an occasional mention of Mollie, to keep the pot boiling, but loses interest in her. As I've read most of the CS books as an adult rather than as a child, I think it irritated me, rather than anything else, that Jack suddenly had to be a 'cradle Catholic' to suit EBD's own personal circumstances. Joey had been so clearly Anglican it needed a pretty big shift in her life to have her become Catholic, yet how could EBD have gone on with her most loved character not joining her? In a series for schoolgirls, Joey could hardly undergo a personal epiphany and convert, so marrying her to an RC is the next best thing. Trouble is, Jack too, is clearly an Anglican, so EBD has to rewrite history. I think that, for me, Molly could just have been any mistress at the school; the fact that she's Jack's sister, doesn't seem to have made an impression on me.

Author:	emma t [ Wed Jan 27, 2010 9:19 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Siblings: Mollie and Jack Maynard
Jack and Mollie Maynard are key characters to some degree at the start anyway for Mollie, though she dissappears, only to appear from time-to-time through the seriel. I don't think we see enough of them together; infact hardly ever, though that could just be me! I enjoyed the scenes in 'Guides' where Joey meets them both together at Pretty Maids for the first time - it's something that EBD might have written herself and gave a good insight to their home life. Joey's excitment in Reunion at seeing Mollie again is something to say how close Joey is to Mollie - do they write often? I am not sure if Joey is excited on her own, or for Jack's sake; to be able to see his twin again. As for Mollie having twinsat least I think she does, and then Joey, does it not usually skip generations?

Author:	ChubbyMonkey [ Wed Jan 27, 2010 9:23 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Siblings: Mollie and Jack Maynard
I don't think that we see enough of Jack and Mollie together, I would have liked to have seen more, but at the same time I imagine them being quite sweet together. (see various drabbles where I needed to fill in time for more on that one!) Given Jack's attitude to Joey, I think that he would be quite protective of Mollie, but at the same time she'd probably stop him by teasing him about it until he gave in. Just my opinion! I can't see that the EBDism was all that annoying, but then I never picked up on a single EBDism (except the ones that my mum had helpfully corrected in biro in some of our books!) until I joined the CBB - yes, you all ruined it for me! I can see why she did it, though. As someone who changes her mind, discovers a better plot and revises work frequently, there are very often times that I think "I really wish I hadn't posted that already!"

The CBB http://www.the-cbb.co.uk/

Siblings: Mollie and Jack Maynard http://www.the-cbb.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=7254

Author:	Thursday Next [ Wed Jan 27, 2010 11:03 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Siblings: Mollie and Jack Maynard
Mrs Redboots wrote: I always get round the difficulty in religion by assuming either (a) that their mother was Protestant and their father Catholic; until quite recently (not sure exactly when), if that happened, the girls were brought up in their mother's denomination and the boys with their father's, or (b) that Jack in fact converted to Catholicism while at school or very shortly thereafter. After all, the use of a rosary is not confined to Catholics. I And do we ever see Mollie and Jack together except in Reunion? I'm not too sure we do. I'm afraid that isn't true. The Catholic Church always insisted that the non Catholic parent promised to bring up all the children as Catholics. It is possible that some parents decided for themselves that the girls should be brought up in their mother's denomination and the boys with their father's but it was never Catholic Church policy that this should happen. Also, in the early books Jack was definitely Church of England - this is made plain in Rivals when he attends the Church of England services. No, I think this was EBD changing her plans later on and rewriting history. I never felt that Jack and Molly were well drawn as twins although individually each of them was well drawn when apart.

Author:	JB [ Wed Jan 27, 2010 11:09 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Siblings: Mollie and Jack Maynard
emma t wrote: As for Mollie having twinsat least I think she does, and then Joey, does it not usually skip generations? Mollie has one set of twins, girls IIRC. I wasn't very clear in my explanation above.

Author:	Alison H [ Thu Jan 28, 2010 1:40 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Siblings: Mollie and Jack Maynard
Jack was certainly C of E in Rivals, and I've always assumed that EBD, after her own conversion, wanted her heroine to marry a Catholic and decided that it'd be easier to change Jack's religion than to introduce a new character as Joey's future husband. It's much more interesting to think that either there was some agreement in the Maynard family whereby girls were raised in one religion and boys in another, or that one of them converted in their teens, though . I don't get much sense of them as siblings, and even when Mollie returns in Reunion we don't really see them together. It's a shame, really. It does quite often happen in real life that someone ends up being overwhelmed by their partner's relations and never seeing their own relations, and that definitely seems to happen to Jack, especially early on in his marriage! By the time Mollie moved to New Zealand - and a lot of the early mistresses move a long way away when they marry - EBD seemed to've decided to pair Jack up with Joey, and she could've kept Mollie around. Then again, at that point she wouldn't've known that the school was going to have to leave Austria shortly afterwards, and there would've been no obvious reason for Mollie's husband to've got a job in/near Briesau. The only time I can think of that we see them together is when Jack comes to tell Joey that David's been born. He's very stressed out, and the impression given is that Madge is in a bad way and he needs to get Joey up to the Sonnalpe ASAP in case her condition worsens; and Mollie picks up on the fact that something's not right. It's only a brief scene, though. ETA - I was wondering why EBD decided to bring in Mollie's brother in the first place, but being associated with the school (brother or SLOC of an Old Girl, sibling of a mistress) seems to be a requirement for getting a job at the San in the early days .

Author:	Miss Di [ Thu Jan 28, 2010 1:54 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Siblings: Mollie and Jack Maynard
JB wrote: In Princess, he is described simply as Miss Maynard’s brother. In the short story Joey’s Convict, he is her younger brother but they are later described as twins. In Reunion, Mollie tells the other guests that “since I’m a twin myself, I was bound to have one set”. They could be twins and he could still be her younger brother. We know that EBD was very fond of birth order stereotypes!

Author:	Sunglass [ Thu Jan 28, 2010 9:23 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Siblings: Mollie and Jack Maynard
Miss Di wrote: JB wrote: In Princess, he is described simply as Miss Maynard’s brother. In the short story Joey’s Convict, he is her younger brother but they are later described as twins. In Reunion, Mollie tells the other guests that “since I’m a twin myself, I was bound to have one set”. They could be twins and he could still be her younger brother. We know that EBD was very fond of birth order stereotypes! But to stir things still further, in Head Girl the birth order is different again! Quote: Miss Maynard, whose eldest brother was assistant at the Sonnalpe (Doesn't that also contradict what we are told elsewhere, that Bob is older than Jack, and inherits Pretty Maids, before his death means Jack later inherits it? And Bob must have been quite a lot older, as his son Rolf, if he'd lived, would apparently have been almost 19 at the start of Goes to It, when the triplets are only six months...? The Maynard chronology confuses me!) I'm another one who feels that Miss Maynard's importance as a mistress sort of fades in and out, and so do some of her details (I mean, as well as whether she's Jack's elder sister, younger sister, or twin, and what their respective religions are!) And even though the CS is so small and familial in the early years, I never quite know why a mistress would invite Joey and Robin home with her for Christmas to Pretty Maids. It kind of makes sense if you read backwards from the future (if you get me) from the perspective of Joey marrying Jack, but in Head Girl, with Joey only 15, surely that's not yet on the cards (??) and you wonder why a mistress would want to bring two of her charges half-way across Europe with her for Christmas...? Or am I forgetting some indication from previous books that there's a particular friendship already with Joey and/ Madge? Or was EBD already thinking of connecting Mollie and Joey by Joey's marriage? I never feel I really get a handle on Mollie's character - in Head Girl, we're told she doesn't have much imagination (which EBD doesn't usually mean as a compliment), and is in favour of demoting Grizel from being head girl. Usually I just think of her as generic 'strict but sporting' CS mistress. The only other thing I really remember about her is from Reunion, where, despite being thrilled to see her after all these years in NZ, the only thing anyone seems interested in is how fat she's become, and after Cornelia is so rude about it the first moment she arrives, Mollie than goes around the room retaliating by commenting on everyone else's weight - that Bernhilda is putting on weight, Frieda is very thin, and that Sophie Hamel's fat makes her 'unmistakeable'! I always wish we had her perspective on the Bob, Lydia and Rolf situation, and Lydia's apparent hatred of Joey etc. The fact that Joey regards Mollie as a good friend, despite being half a world away, as well as Bob being her brother in law, makes it even odder that she is so unmoved and casual about his death in Rescue...?

Author:	Alison H [ Thu Jan 28, 2010 9:56 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Siblings: Mollie and Jack Maynard
The idea was that Jem had to go to a conference in Vienna and Jem had to go with her, but it would've made for sense for Joey and Robin to've stayed with e.g. the Mensches or the Maranis, who never seemed to mind having random house guests. I suppose it was just a way of getting them to be making a long train journey without Madge and giving Grizel a chance to run off. & EBD seemed to've forgotten all about Joey and Madge's aunts, the obvious people for Joey to stay with, by this time!

Author:	Llywela [ Thu Jan 28, 2010 10:23 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Siblings: Mollie and Jack Maynard
I'm another that never really got a strong sense of Jack and Mollie as siblings, although it probably doesn't help that all my Tirol books are paperbacks and heavily abridged! Other than the one little incident already mentioned, when Jack comes to fetch Joey after David's birth, we never really see them interact, do we? The relationship is all tell and no show, which is a pity. Also a pity that Mollie disappeared off to the other side of the world upon marriage - as again already mentioned, it might have been nice to see the Maynard cousins growing up alongside Jack and Joey's kids. But EBD could barely cope with the burgeoning characters she already had, never mind including still more - no wonder she kept disappearing them! JB wrote: They have an elder brother Robert (Bob). Two other brothers and a sister died in childhood (Stephen, Charles and Dorothy). I can't help wondering why Jack named two of his sons after his brothers, but left the other brother (and his sisters) out in the cold. Or did one of the boys have Robert as a middle name? I'm pretty sure none of the girls had a Dorothy anywhere in their name, although you could argue that the Mary part of the triplets' names were for Mollie.

Author:	JB [ Thu Jan 28, 2010 11:34 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Siblings: Mollie and Jack Maynard
Llywela wrote: I'm another that never really got a strong sense of Jack and Mollie as siblings, although it probably doesn't help that all my Tirol books are paperbacks and heavily abridged! I agree that we don’t get much of a feeling of them as siblings and we rarely seem them together (I don't anything particular is omitted from the paperbacks). After reading up on the Maynards for this, I think that EBD must have intended Joey and Jack to get together from the start. The Maynard family feature in the short stories and that’s where a lot of the detail about the family comes from eg the brothers and sisters who died. I think Madge and Mollie probably were good friends as the only two young mistresses for a while. Joey and Robin’s visit at the start of Head Girl doesn’t come out of the blue. They stay there in the Easter holidays after Jo of, while Madge is doing her Guider training. I feel that EBD would have liked to write more about the Maynards. She obviously has a lot of “back story” in her head that never makes it into the books eg Bob and Lydia. IMO there are similarities between the way we see them in the early CS books and the way some of families appear in the La Rochelle books, in that we’re told far more about them than you’d expect from “supporting” characters. When the early CS mistresses married, EBD did like to send them away. In Island some of the staff are reminiscing and talk about Miss Maynard, Miss Stewart and Miss Leslie, who are respectively in New Zealand, Australia and India (I think). Even mistresses who don’t travel the world when they marry disappear from view whereas later in the series, they mainly marry doctors and stay on the edges of the series. Are there any teachers who leave during the Swiss years for any other reason than marrying a doctor? Llywela wrote: I'm pretty sure none of the girls had a Dorothy anywhere in their name, although you could argue that the Mary part of the triplets' names were for Mollie. Mollie named one of her daughters after Dorothy.

Author:	Tor [ Thu Jan 28, 2010 11:55 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Siblings: Mollie and Jack Maynard
Rather than admitting the truth (that EBD was somewhat lackadaisical in her note keeping for the series, and didn't feel under any obligation to keep the books internally consistent), hows this for an out there theory: Maybe the Maynards (i.e. Jack's parents and siblings, not his progeny!) were a highly disfunctional family, with a horrible father, who forced his wife to hide her catholicism for his own social-climbing ends (their status as minor gentry/land-owners for example, may have resulted form this). However, Jack's mum secretly kept up her Catholicism, and instilled this in her children. Mollie, rather lacking imagination, didn't really bother but Jack (volatile like his dad, but struggling against it because of how much he hated the way his father behaved) took it to heart. However, he didn't feel comfortable with 'outing' himself until he had grown -up somewhat, and found himself in the employ of an ecumenically minded man (Jem). In fact, maybe his secret catholicism drew him to the Tirol in the first place...? Mollie, however, stuck with CofE. This would also, potentially, explain some of Jack less attriactive triats, which - in fairness to him - he generally overcomes. Also why he is so pro a happy, open family and possibly his drive to be a good doctor over-and-above his connection to his family estate. Crazy, moi?

Author:	JB [ Thu Jan 28, 2010 12:02 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Siblings: Mollie and Jack Maynard
Tor wrote: Maybe the Maynards (i.e. Jack's parents and siblings, not his progeny!) were a highly disfunctional family, with a horrible father, who forced his wife to hide her catholicism for his own social-climbing ends (their status as minor gentry/land-owners for example, may have resulted form this). However, Jack's mum secretly kept up her Catholicism, and instilled this in her children. Mollie, rather lacking imagination, didn't really bother On the contrary, Mollie hated the whole situation and was desperate to escape. This is why she moved to Austria to teach at the CS and then became engaged to three different men and finally decided on one who would take her to the other side of the world. Evil Lydia also kept the aged Mrs Maynard (Jack's mother) imprisioned in the attic. Hence the confusion about when she died. She's alive in Exile, dead by the start of Goes to It and then leaves a legacy to Stephen. In a queue at a call centre, moi?

Author:	Tor [ Thu Jan 28, 2010 12:08 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Siblings: Mollie and Jack Maynard
You are right JB. and it is actually the scars of her upbringing that she is hiding when she comes across as 'unimaginative'. And she brings the Bettanys home to Pretty Maids for holidays because she knows her father is always on his best behaviour in company. edited: grrr... grocer's apostrophe

Author:	Sunglass [ Thu Jan 28, 2010 1:06 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Siblings: Mollie and Jack Maynard
I am completely convinced by JB and Tor's theories. Can we tie in Rolf's death to them, somehow? And Lydia's hatred of Joey, and Joey's odd casualness about Bob's death?

Author:	ChubbyMonkey [ Thu Jan 28, 2010 1:34 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Siblings: Mollie and Jack Maynard
Please stop floating these things around - it will only (has already) result in a deep desire to write a drabble, and I really, really don't have the time at the moment! ...No. shakes head. I won't think about it! It was just an EBDism. Nothing more.

Author:	Tor [ Thu Jan 28, 2010 1:36 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Siblings: Mollie and Jack Maynard
Don't deny the truth, Ariel... it will out!

Author:	Alison H [ Thu Jan 28, 2010 1:53 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Siblings: Mollie and Jack Maynard
There's something weird about the way nearly all the mistresses who leave in the early years end up at the other side of the world. Mollie goes to New Zealand, Con Stewart goes to Singapore and then Australia, May Carthew ends up in South Africa and I think Kit Leslie went to India ... Maybe they all knew some horrible secret about the school and'd been threatened with a terrible fate if they didn't take themselves a very long way away.

Author:	fraujackson [ Thu Jan 28, 2010 2:39 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Siblings: Mollie and Jack Maynard
This is really OT, but I always got Mollie Maynard and Mollie Bettany absolutely muddled when I first read the books. Did EBD get a passion for the name Mollie at that time, or what ? She introduces two characters of the same name within about five minutes of each other, and the whole Maynard/Bettany back/forwards story caused me complete confusion !

Author:	Sarah_G-G [ Thu Jan 28, 2010 3:01 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Siblings: Mollie and Jack Maynard
fraujackson wrote: This is really OT, but I always got Mollie Maynard and Mollie Bettany absolutely muddled when I first read the books. Did EBD get a passion for the name Mollie at that time, or what ? She introduces two characters of the same name within about five minutes of each other, and the whole Maynard/Bettany back/forwards story caused me complete confusion ! Me too, and I'm so glad I'm not the only one! I was fine up until the point when they were both Joey's sister-in-laws living over the other side of the world. At that point they both sort of merged into Mollie Bettany for me... I think maybe it's partly because I think of Mollie Maynard as "Miss Maynard" rather than as Mollie in the earlier books, so to me as a child Mollie was Mollie Bettany and Miss Maynard was Jack's sister, if that makes sense! I had problems with things like that as a child (which is weird considering I have the most popular name going for English girls of my age). I gave up entirely on "One Hundred Years of Solitude" when I was about 12 in part because they all seemed to be called José and I couldn't tell them apart. In my defense, looking back, I'm not sure that book is really aimed at 12 year old girls.

Author:	Mrs Redboots [ Thu Jan 28, 2010 4:48 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Siblings: Mollie and Jack Maynard
Thursday Next wrote: I'm afraid that isn't true. The Catholic Church always insisted that the non Catholic parent promised to bring up all the children as Catholics. It is possible that some parents decided for themselves that the girls should be brought up in their mother's denomination and the boys with their father's but it was never Catholic Church policy that this should happen The policy was only spelt out in the Ne Temere decree of 1908; I believe before then it was quite usual for the children to be split along gender lines when it came to following the parents' religions. After Ne Temere, they had to promise to bring the children up as Catholics. What was Jack's date of birth?

Author:	cestina [ Thu Jan 28, 2010 5:05 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Siblings: Mollie and Jack Maynard
Hmm - with that high level of disfunctionality (is this a word?) in the Maynard family, can we be certain that Rolf's death was really an accident?

Author:	Alison H [ Thu Jan 28, 2010 5:13 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Siblings: Mollie and Jack Maynard
Jack's DOB can be whatever we'd like it to be . Mollie is (I think) 23 at the start of Head Girl. That was just after New Year, so she probably wouldn't've had her birthday yet. How old was Joey then ... 15? That makes Jack, if he's Mollie's twin, about 8 years older than Joey. If Joey was 22 in 1939, then Jack would've been born c. 1909. However, if we take School At as being 1926, when it was written, then Joey was born in 1913, which would make Jack's date of birth more like 1905. & Jack isn't always Mollie's twin. & 23 seems very young for someone to be a qualified doctor. & Joey's age in Exile varies by a year depending on which edition you're reading. It's interesting that this issue was never raised in relation to Len and Reg. Maybe EBD intended to give Reg a convenient change of religion as well. I've read about cases (in England) where families which had traditionally been Catholic raised their daughters as Catholics but their sons as Anglicans, in the days when an Anglican oath was required for holding public office or admission to university and therefore it would have been very difficult for a non-Anglican to get the sort of job someone from Jack's social background would have been looking for, but a) that's the wrong way round for the Maynards and b) the Test Acts had been repealed long before Jack was born. I wonder if EBD realised the debate she'd cause when she decided to forget that Jack was originally a Protestant .

Author:	sealpuppy [ Thu Jan 28, 2010 6:11 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Siblings: Mollie and Jack Maynard
OT (by quite a long way!) Actually, all these theories about the Lydia/Joey feud are wrong! Lydia was a very shy, sensitive girl who thought she recognised the same qualities in Bob who, however, wasn't aiming them at her, but at her brother Tarquin. When Tarquin spurned Bob's shy advances, Bob opted for the next best thing and married Lydia, who had a boyish figure and an Eton crop hairstyle. Unaware of this subterfuge, the gentle Lydia was appalled when she met the rest of the Maynard family: Mrs Maynard locked in the attic and only let out on reins when the vicar came to tea (and even then they had to keep the gin away from her). Mr Maynard, ravishing milkmaids every day of the week, even on Pancake Day.Jack, mild-mannered but with the soul of a Torquemada, bent on converting the Protestant Bettanys by marrying into the clan and breeding from them. Mollie, already a large, beefy, hockey-player at the age of twelve, with an interest in hunting, shooting and fishing - all bare-handed. Sadly, Rolf turned out to be the same breed as the rest of the Maynards, and his death occurred when he refused to obey his mother's plaintive plea to stop climbing the ruined, bat-infested tower in the grounds of Pretty Maids. She hated Joey because Joey was a perfect candidate for marrying into the Maynard clan, demonstrating as she did, her penchant for bare-knuckle wrestling and cock-fighting.

Author:	JB [ Thu Jan 28, 2010 6:29 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Siblings: Mollie and Jack Maynard
A very fitting explanation, Sealpuppy. That leaves us with why Joey was so unaffected by Bob's death ...

Author:	ChubbyMonkey [ Thu Jan 28, 2010 6:46 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Siblings: Mollie and Jack Maynard
Perhaps she's caught him trying his advances on Dick?

Author:	Lulie [ Thu Jan 28, 2010 8:09 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Siblings: Mollie and Jack Maynard
ChubbyMonkey wrote: Perhaps she's caught him trying his advances on Dick? Please please PLEASE tell me I'm not the only person who choked on their tea and biscuits (disguised as wine and crisps) when they read this? Sorry, but my mind is always in the gutter even when people mean things completely innocently.

Author:	Lesley [ Thu Jan 28, 2010 8:24 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Siblings: Mollie and Jack Maynard
No Lulie - I can quite easily join you in the gutter!

Author:	Miss Di [ Fri Jan 29, 2010 12:41 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Siblings: Mollie and Jack Maynard
Alison H wrote: There's something weird about the way nearly all the mistresses who leave in the early years end up at the other side of the world. ... Maybe they all knew some horrible secret about the school and'd been threatened with a terrible fate if they didn't take themselves a very long way away. Au contraire, it was in their contracts that once they retired or resigned that they stay as far away from the cameras as possible. Either that or sick of being recognised and followed by the tabloid papparazzi they became recluses trapped in their lavish homes.

Author:	sealpuppy [ Fri Jan 29, 2010 10:41 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Siblings: Mollie and Jack Maynard
Lulie wrote: ChubbyMonkey wrote: Perhaps she's caught him trying his advances on Dick? Please please PLEASE tell me I'm not the only person who choked on their tea and biscuits (disguised as wine and crisps) when they read this?Sorry, but my mind is always in the gutter even when people mean things completely innocently. I've been sitting on my hands, desperately willing myself not to post about it!

Author:	Liz K [ Fri Jan 29, 2010 10:56 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Siblings: Mollie and Jack Maynard
Lulie wrote: ChubbyMonkey wrote: Perhaps she's caught him trying his advances on Dick? Please please PLEASE tell me I'm not the only person who choked on their tea and biscuits (disguised as wine and crisps) when they read this? Sorry, but my mind is always in the gutter even when people mean things completely innocently. You are not alone, I just about stopped breathing when I read this.

Author:	ChubbyMonkey [ Fri Jan 29, 2010 1:10 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Siblings: Mollie and Jack Maynard
I shall keep my thoughts to myself in future. Sorry.