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Siblings- Peggy, Bride & Maeve
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Author:  Fiona Mc [ Wed May 12, 2010 2:56 am ]
Post subject:  Siblings- Peggy, Bride & Maeve

These three girls are Dick and Mollie Bettany’s daughters. Peggy as the eldest is described as having silvery fair curly hair with blue eyes; and is very dainty. She is a motherly person and tended to mother her siblings and Russell cousins. She was also very much under Rix’s thumb and described as being old for her age. She does well academically in school and has usually been Form Prefect in most of her forms, but isn’t ambitious as her goal on leaving school is to stay at home.

Bride is the middle sister and described as being the plainest in the whole family connection. She has smooth brown hair and wears glasses. Is very bright for her age and is usually in a form above her age group. She does well and is ambitious, stating she wants to be a librarian at Windsor Castle or the Bodlien Library in Tom. Bride is sunny tempered and rarely takes offence at anything. She is also extremely clannish.

Maeve is the youngest sister and has chestnut red curly hair and is usually into mischief. Is described as heedless and impulsive, and very kindhearted (She invites a girl to stay over the summer when she was unable to go home). A self confessed dud at lessons, who can’t do exams, Maeve becomes a lady courier after leaving school.

All three become Head Girl for their final year at school. There are some difficulties in their relationships. Peggy and Bride grow up in the Russell family until Peggy is 15 and Bride is 14. Their parents don’t return from India until Three Go, after leaving them with the Russell’s in Joey Returns. Maeve and Maurice were born after Joey Returns and so don’t meet their older siblings until Three Go. Peggy and Bride are extremely close, whereas Maeve isn’t and never seems in the books to become close to her older sisters. Both Peggy and Bride want to go to St Millie’s together for a year after school and do tend to discuss things together. Although, we are initially told Maeve (and Maurice) settle in as the youngest in the family, there are problems when Mollie becomes unwell and Peggy takes charge and Maeve resents her older sister taking charge. Bride is fully aware of their Mother’s ill health and the problems between Maeve and Peggy so does interfere when Maeve’s dorm decide to do Jiu Jitsu so Peggy doesn’t have to deal with it. These problems seem to resolve off stage and by Bride Leads, things appear to have settled down.

So what do people think of the three girls and the dynamics in their relationships with each other? The following are some discussion starters, but please feel free to discuss anything else you want to in regards to the Bettany sisters.

Peggy and Bride have missed out on a childhood with their parents, and appear to settle easily into life with their parents after having grown up with the Russell’s. Peggy however, despite being academically bright, wants to go home after school. We also read her thoughts when Mollie is potentially dying and Peggy says she’s had so little of her mother; she’s even prepared to give up Switzerland to be with her while she is recuperating from her operation. Both Peggy and Bride make these plans without consulting either parent. Is this a reaction from such a long separation, that firstly Peggy wants to spend so much time with her mother and secondly Peggy and Bride make important decisions about their schooling without talking with their parents? How well would they actually settle back into living with their parents? Would only seeing them in holidays, make a difference in their relationship as opposed to going to school from home? How would this affect, how they behave around the mother? Peggy in Peggy appears to be the perfect daughter when compared with the Winterton’s- how much is due to unconsciously trying to be the perfect daughter so her mother doesn’t leave as she did when Peggy was a toddler and how much is this Peggy’s own character? How easy do you think it would be for Peggy and Bride to learn to go to their Mother and not want Auntie Madge, who they are used to, know and have lived with for such a long time.

Maeve meets her older sisters when she’s 11. Although she has four older siblings, she is used to living with her twin and parents. At first she appears to adore her older sisters (throws Peggy an adoring look on the train in Peggy) does end up thinking that older sisters are the nastiest things going around (Wrong). How hard would it have been for Maeve to settle into being the youngest? Is it plausible for Maeve to initially admire/idolise her oldest sister, but to then end up resenting them when they become the bossy older sisters? How well do you think Maeve is able to differentiate between Peggy as Head Girl at school and Peggy as oldest sister at home? Did Mollie’s ill health compound the situation? Peggy and Bride obviously know what’s going on, whereas Maeve is left in the dark. How well did Maeve handle that, was she even aware of her sisters knowing things she wasn’t told?

And finally do you think Peggy and Bride may resent Maeve having had so much time with their parents. Maeve obviously thrived in India and did not have any problems growing up there. Do you think they ever resented, were annoyed with their parents for making that choice? Would either of them ever wish they could live with the Russell’s again? They obviously both adore Auntie Madge. Bride is ecstatic when she sees Madge again in Shocks and we never read much of Bride’s relationship with her Mother, do you think she subconsciously wanted her Auntie Madge over her mother at times especially after the initial reunion and reality sets in?
Please discuss this and anything else you can think of.

BTW EBD did have a complete contradiction of when Mollie and Dick returned to England. In Three Go, it is said that they would return the following summer and yet, in Tom, which is set earlier in the series we see a reunion of the Bettany girls and their parents. I have decided to focus more on the initial return which EBD mentioned in Three Go as she wrote that first and did not write Tom until just before Barbara 8-10 books later. Please feel free to use their earlier return if you want to.

Author:  Alison H [ Wed May 12, 2010 11:24 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings- Peggy, Bride & Maeve

I really like the nursery scenes in Exile and the scenes of the Bettany family together in Bride, and I'm sorry that we don't get to see more of what was potentially a very interesting family situation. They're three very different people but they aren't "labelled" in the way that the triplets are. I know that Peggy is often seen as being annoyingly prim/proper/perfect (excuse all the P words!), but I think that that was partly because she was the eldest girl and partly because I can imagine there being a "boys will be boys" set-up whereby it was OK for Rix and David and John to go off and climb trees or whatever but not for the girls.

Peggy and Bride were close in age and quite a few years older than Maeve, and they were effectively two separate families when they met up. Also, I can imagine Peggy and Bride being pushed closer together by Sybil's hostility when they were young. Bride and John probably had no memories of spending time with their parents before the War, and the eldest four had had very different experiences to the younger two. Unfortunately, we don't really see enough of them together, or with their brothers, to be able to judge how it affected them. They seem like a very happy family in Peggy and in Bride, but there must have been tensions behind the scenes.

Maeve is in the age group in which pretty much everyone intends/needs to get a job when leaving school, whereas Peggy and Bride fall just before that and it's interesting that they have such different ideas. I think the idea was that Bride was the brighter one and that that's why she was planning a degree and a career whereas Peggy wasn't. However, a few years later and I think Peggy would have been expected to get a job too. A few years earlier and maybe Bride wouldn't have been ... it's not very clear how much Dick conveniently inherited and how well off they were.

Author:  Pado [ Thu May 13, 2010 12:50 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings- Peggy, Bride & Maeve

I've always assumed that Mollie did as much as could be done to stay in touch long-distance (I'm thinking facebook type relationship via letter?) with her children, but have to admit that I just don't understand it, really. Intellectually, I get the concept of leaving the children with the relatives, but emotionally, I just don't grasp it.

It also means that Madge had to walk a fine line between mothering Mollie's children and making sure they saw Mollie as their "real" mother. Not sure how she might have done that one.

EBD definitely downplays any adjustments that both parties have to make following the reunion, and poor Maeve gets the brunt of the difficulties (which is easy to imagine in the circs).

Author:  Cosimo's Jackal [ Thu May 13, 2010 8:18 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings- Peggy, Bride & Maeve

As EBD intended the Bettanys to be another of her relatively 'perfect' families, like the Russells and Maynards, she just doesn't really go into the potential problems and dramas set up by the fact that it was for a long time a hugely geographically-divided family - that really, it was two, quite distinct, families living on opposite sides of the world. I know this wasn't at all unusual for the period - so to view voluntarily leaving your children to grow up without you as a form of abuse is clearly contextually wrong for the circumstances.

But the one time EBD suggests there are problems with resentment within the reunited family, she strongly implies it's rebellious Maeve's individual problem, and not that the family as a whole is experiencing adjustment problems. (Rather as she makes it clear that Margot's 'devil' is her individual problem, and that her problems with anger management don't stem from faulty parenting or family dynamics.)

Maeve is younger and tomboyish and rebellious, so EBD clearly feels it's OK to show her resenting her older sisters, because it's not so different to the average naughty Middle resenting the prefects (in fact, part of the time, Maeve is just another naughty Middle annoyed with a prefect who happens to be her sister!)

But it would clearly be a different and much more serious matter if older, responsible, 'natural HG material' Bride and Peggy felt angry that they had essentially been abandoned by their parents for their entire childhoods. Or if they showed for a moment that they actually considered Madge and Jem their 'real' parent-figures, which would seem quite possible. But there's never a whiff of it. Peggy in particular almost behaves as if she needs to make up for lost time in daughterliness with the elaborate way she dances attendance on her mother in the scene where they first meet the Wintertons.

Author:  claire [ Thu May 13, 2010 9:23 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings- Peggy, Bride & Maeve

I wonder if, in Peggy and Bride's minds, the war made things easier on them - they could tell themselves they were only left for so long because of the war. That they were more or less evacuated to stay with their aunt and uncle which was pretty normal during the war years.

Maeve I see her reaction as quite normal, she likes the idea of having older sisters (probably based on books or tales of sisterly relationships) then runs into the reality - that in fact older sisters can restrict you as well which is something she's not run into before and all of a sudden she has to share her parents more than before

Author:  2nd Gen Fan [ Thu May 13, 2010 11:35 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings- Peggy, Bride & Maeve

Claire said
Quote:
I wonder if, in Peggy and Bride's minds, the war made things easier on them - they could tell themselves they were only left for so long because of the war. That they were more or less evacuated to stay with their aunt and uncle which was pretty normal during the war years.

In addition to this of course, being sent 'home' really was a reality for many children at this time - it certainly happened to my great-aunt. (my grandfather was considered unlikely to survive, so his parents kept him with them until they returned to the UK). Although the separation was not for such an extreme amount of time, it didn't seem to be a problem for long term family relationships.

I think that both Peggy and Maeve's reactions are very realistic in the circumstances, but EBD could have gone much further here than she did.

Author:  MJKB [ Thu May 13, 2010 11:44 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings- Peggy, Bride & Maeve

I often wondered why Maeve and Maurice remained with their parents. Surely the climatic conditions and general hostile environment which were the reasons given why Peggy et al were sent to stay with Madge and Jem would have been as hard on 'second twins' as it would have on the rest of the family.

Author:  Alison H [ Thu May 13, 2010 12:04 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings- Peggy, Bride & Maeve

I think it was just the timing - Dick only got a long furlough every few years, and didn't have one between their birth and the outbreak of the war, and Maeve and Maurice would have been too young to have been sent to to either Austria or Guernsey without their parents, and then travel was difficult for quite a while after the war ended.

Author:  Cosimo's Jackal [ Thu May 13, 2010 12:43 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings- Peggy, Bride & Maeve

Alison H wrote:
I think it was just the timing - Dick only got a long furlough every few years, and didn't have one between their birth and the outbreak of the war, and Maeve and Maurice would have been too young to have been sent to to either Austria or Guernsey without their parents, and then travel was difficult for quite a while after the war ended.


I think that's the right explanation, only you can imagine, in a real-life situation - or in the hands of a writer who wasn't so determined to idealise! - Dick and Mollie feeling retrospectively terrible about leaving their other children in Europe because of the Indian climate, but then watching Maeve and Maurice clearly grow up in India completely healthy! It would be hard not to blame yourself for 'unnecessarily' having let your children grow up without you, even if you caouldn't have made that call.

We only see a hint of Mollie's pain at leaving her children behind in Jo Returns, but when you think about it, how old were Peggy, Rix and the baby when they were left at Die Rosen? I mean, certainly they were well taken care of, but imagine (wth our modern grasp of attachment and separation trauma in babies and small children) the effect on the children...?

Author:  Llywela [ Thu May 13, 2010 1:01 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings- Peggy, Bride & Maeve

All four were under five, weren't they - Jackie, iirc, was a babe in arms, only a few months old. In reality, the separation of the family, with the children that age, would have had an enormous impact on them.

Imagine how different the series would have been if EBD had actually delved into the psychological impact on the characters some of her storylines should have had - the lengthy separation of the Bettany family being just one. And not just the impact of the separation on the Bettanys themselves, but on the Russell clan too - David and Sybil growing up with their cousins, Madge being mother to the children from such a young age - you can go on and on.

Author:  Mel [ Thu May 13, 2010 4:02 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings- Peggy, Bride & Maeve

But I wonder if Peggy and Co would find it a relief to be at the Quadrant with Dick and Mollie rather than with the Russells and all the other cousins. Dick and Mollie seem much more relaxed than Jem and Madge as they seem a real family. Madge does leave her imprint on Peggy though - I always see her as a blonde Madge character!

Author:  ChubbyMonkey [ Thu May 13, 2010 4:15 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings- Peggy, Bride & Maeve

Llywela wrote:
Imagine how different the series would have been if EBD had actually delved into the psychological impact on the characters some of her storylines should have had - the lengthy separation of the Bettany family being just one. And not just the impact of the separation on the Bettanys themselves, but on the Russell clan too - David and Sybil growing up with their cousins, Madge being mother to the children from such a young age - you can go on and on.


Put like that, I'm rather glad that she never did! I like my CS for comfort reads - it would be neither comforting nor really focused on the school like that! I think it's one of those times that I think it would be interesting for EBD to have written it, but on the whole I'm rather glad she didn't!

Author:  claire [ Thu May 13, 2010 6:10 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings- Peggy, Bride & Maeve

Jackie's 10 months when they leave him in Jo returns (just looked it up) and part of the reason he gets left is because Mollie is pregnant with the twins

Going by the time line in Joey;s trunk this must be October 1935
So Peggy & Rix 3 and a half and Bride 2 and a half.

The plan before realising she was pregnant was to keep Jackie (and they knew they wouldn't get more leave for 3 years) so presumably it would be about 4 when they feel the climate is unsuitable. Which would mean the twins would have come 'home' late 1939 early 1940 had it not been for the war

Author:  Alison H [ Thu May 13, 2010 7:04 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings- Peggy, Bride & Maeve

I might have imagined this, but am I right in thinking that it was actually Jem who suggested that the Bettany children be left with him and Madge? If so, in some ways it was very officious of him and in some ways it was incredibly kind of him. I wonder if the idea hadn't occurred to Dick and Mollie - both of whom presumably lived in India as children without suffering any health problems, although Mollie had a sister who died young - or if they thought it'd be too much to ask.

Other than Mollie's sister (Bride, presumably not the same person as her sister Bridgie who appeared later on!), do we ever hear of any CS children suffering health problems whilst living in India? Margot and Stephen sadly lost three children in Queensland, which I think we're intended to attribute partly to the climate, but I can't think of any cases in India about which we're actually told.

Just trying to remember where it says that it was Jem's idea ... or have I imagined it ...?

Author:  Llywela [ Thu May 13, 2010 8:05 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings- Peggy, Bride & Maeve

I think it's Jem who suggests that Jackie be left behind; iirc it had already been arranged that the older three would stay with Madge and Jem, and I'm not sure if we're told whose idea that was, but then Jem suggests that they keep little Jackie, too - if he was only 10 months, it's easy to understand why he wasn't originally part of the plan, since Mollie might still have been feeding him herself, but then Jem makes his suggestion and Jackie is added to the troop being left at Die Rosen for what they must have anticipated being 3 years. As mentioned somewhere above, I think it is because of Mollie's pregnancy that Jackie is also left.

Thing is...the extreme length of time the Bettany's are away from their children is put down to the war. But given the givens, I'm not sure just when they ever planned to take them back - I mean, if the war hadn't intervened, Dick would have had another long furlough in about 3 years so he and Mollie would have returned to Tirol to see the children then...but what then? The reasons for leaving them behind would still remain. So it would just be a visit and then off again, possibly leaving the 2nd twins behind that time as well. Unless Dick gave up his job, they were pretty much stuck.

I don't think there are any examples in the books of children's health failing in India, but I remember reading a book about diplomatic wives - Daughters of Britannia, it's called - and in that there is a story of one poor young diplomatic wife in what is now Iran whose children all died, one after another, because of the climate. She saved the life of just one child by taking her on a long, arduous journey back home to Britain to leave her with relatives in Scotland while she returned to her husband in Iran...only for the child to later die of measles. I think that must have been a good 100-200 years before EBD's time, but if the part of India Dick and Mollie were in had a similar climate to the part of Iran that young woman was in, they may have heard similar stories of entire families of children being wiped out like that and not wanted to take any chances, even if medicine had improved since those days.

Author:  claire [ Thu May 13, 2010 9:31 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings- Peggy, Bride & Maeve

Wasn't a lot of Joey's fraility meant to be due to the Indian climate when she was a baby

Also Dick's parents died out there from cholera didn't they? If that wasn't an unusual disease for that part of the world it could well sway his opinion on having the kids out there.

There is a big gap between Dick and Madge and Joey - maybe originally there were other siblings who died (and not mentioned to Joey as it was before her birth)

Author:  MJKB [ Fri May 14, 2010 9:13 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Siblings- Peggy, Bride & Maeve

claire wrote:
There is a big gap between Dick and Madge and Joey - maybe originally there were other siblings who died (and not mentioned to Joey as it was before her birth)
Wasn't a lot of Joey's fraility meant to be due to the Indian climate when she was a baby


What an intriguing idea, and it makes sense.

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