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Girls: Tomboys
http://www.the-cbb.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4930
Author:  Róisín [ Mon Aug 25, 2008 6:18 pm ]
Post subject:  Girls: Tomboys
There are a few outright tomboys in the series, Tom and Jack most noticeably, but others appear as well. What do you think of their portrayal versus more traditional/feminine girls. Is tomboyishness seen as a bad thing, or a valid lifestyle?

Please discuss any issue in relation to this topic below :D
Author:  Sunglass [ Mon Aug 25, 2008 8:13 pm ]
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It's a while since I read Tom Tackles - and I came to it a long time after knowing and liking the older Tom as prefect/dolls' house maker and home missionary - but I remember being interested that she was presented as very much a creature from a boys' school story. (And not just, say, presented as boyish in dress and appearance, like George in the Famous Five books.) In lots of ways, she's just yet another basically good new girl, with one slightly wrong idea that needs correcting - and her wrong idea is that girls schools have nothing in common with boys schools (in so far as she's gathered ideas about either via reading and her father) but are full of sentimental, dishonourable wet types, who are no good at sports/Latin/not sneaking.

It seems like another moment when EBD is conscious (as with all the references to cheap schoolgirl weeklies in other books) of writing in a girls' genre that gets a lot of flak - and here she takes on the accusations of sentimentality and crushes and lack of honour and refutes them quite explicitly. (I definitely think EBD is deliberately having fun by making Tom, almost on arrival, develop a mild crush on Daisy, despite her opinions on girlish sentiment!)

But unlike some other 'issue' new girls, she does more with Tom, who emerges as a likeable, straightforward character - and a bit of a relief, in being big and plain and crop-haired, from all that daintiness and wood-violet eyes etc etc. (And manages to be enormously popular and obviously a favourite character without EBD having to make her have an accident and get a new figure and curls.)

I find Jack Lambert a pain - quite apart from the bullying, the obsession with engines and the endless not-very-profound questions for Len...
Author:  Róisín [ Mon Aug 25, 2008 8:43 pm ]
Post subject: 
Despite my posting of this week's themed discussion the wording is Jennifer's, so I'll try and answer it myself now.

I think that the inclusion of 'tomboy' was just one of the ways that EBD tried to vary her girls. In the same way that she has Joey produce children of different hair colours, she has girls of all types arrive at the school. Up to that point (Tom) I don't think she had really used the 'tomboy' so that's why it stands out.

Incidentally, can we say that Joey herself is EBD's first real tomboy. I can't think of many differences between 12 year old Joey and the young Tom or Jack. Joey possesses the haircut, the sentiment, the proficiency at language?
Author:  JayB [ Mon Aug 25, 2008 10:17 pm ]
Post subject: 
Quote:
Incidentally, can we say that Joey herself is EBD's first real tomboy. I can't think of many differences between 12 year old Joey and the young Tom or Jack.


EBD herself says somewhere that there's not much difference between small girls and small boys. Mary Lou had tomboyish tendencies in Three Go - crawling through hedges and tearing her frock - as do the Triumvirate in Goes To It - taking off their frocks without any embarrassment to crawl through Gwensi's hedge.

I think from a storytelling point of view tomboyish girls were more useful to EBD than conventionally feminine ones. A tomboy can go off climbing mountains, and all the other things Jo did, to provide exciting incidents for the readers.
Author:  Alison H [ Mon Aug 25, 2008 10:41 pm ]
Post subject: 
I think that tomboys are a staple of GO books - George in the Famous Five is possibly the most obvious example - going back to early examples such as Jo March in Little Women. It's probably just to differentiate people, as you say - George as opposed to Anne, Jo as opposed to Meg, etc.

None of the tomboys are "just" tomboys. Tom (who did very well to be so nice considering her weird upbringing at the hands of a father who seemed to have serious issues with women) is shown as being a very generous kind-hearted person. Jack, although she's not a nice character, has numerous other personality traits beyond her tomboyishness.

Overall, though, I think that tomboys are presented as being preferable to people like Rosalie Way who are so girly as to seem drippy.
Author:  Abi [ Mon Aug 25, 2008 11:46 pm ]
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I'd agree with Alison about tomboys being seen to be preferable to soppy girls. Tom - once she's ironed out her initial problems - is actually a really nice person. She's very kind to Annis in Island, and perceptive of her feelings too. She spends hours making dolls' houses for the School, even after she's left and she has tons of common sense and a sense of humour (not that Tom is one of my favourite characters!).
Author:  Kate [ Tue Aug 26, 2008 12:34 am ]
Post subject: 
Speaking of Jack - she is the one character whom EBD clearly wants us to like but I just didn't. I know Joey and Mary-Lou can be annoying, but they're likeable in a lot of aspects too. I just thoroughly dislike Jack. Does anyone like her or did EBD go wrong somewhere?
Author:  Alison H [ Tue Aug 26, 2008 6:46 am ]
Post subject: 
I agree - Jack was presumably set to be the next "heroine" when Len went to university, but I just do not like the girl at all!
Author:  miss_maeve [ Tue Aug 26, 2008 8:00 am ]
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First impressions last, as somebody said somewhere.
The first book I read that had Jack in, was Jane and what a horror Jack was there! I've never got over the initial dislike of her I had from Jane.
Author:  Sunglass [ Tue Aug 26, 2008 9:38 am ]
Post subject: 
Yes, as Alison H says, the difference between Tom and Joey as tomboys is that Joey wasn't brought up by a man who seems to be a total misogynist. It's the difference between happening to have cropped hair and not much minding what you look like, and, on the other hand, actively being taught to think of girls as weak and dishonourable by a parent, and thus trying not to be like a girl.

It's funny that EBD never seems to condemn Tom's father for being a bit of a nutcase - given all the oddball parents who are regarded as weird, like Eustacia's or Mrs Pertwee, or the Hopes who are all seen as having 'deformed' their offspring by their odd parenting theories - but the Gays only reappear in the books as the givers of scholarships and apparently perfectly nice people. (Also, Mrs Gay, as she appears at the start of Problem, doesn't seem at all the type to stand by and watch while her daughter is brought up to hate her own sex...)
Author:  Mel [ Tue Aug 26, 2008 11:02 am ]
Post subject: 
I agree that Tom and Jack are the real 'tomboys' of the series, but EBD always seemed to approve of girls being 'boyish'. The scrambling about , tearing clothes, whistling, hands in pockets and the 'boyish aversion to tears' are all considered preferable to prim conformity. In the early books, most of the British girls could be said to be tomboyish in contrast to the poor continental girls who who throw up their hands in horror at such antics. Gisela, Bernhilda and Wanda are girly and so are their sisters until the rough and tumble of the CS wakes them up. Also Elisaveta. What is the definition of tomboy? Short hair, boy's name and wanting to be a boy?
Author:  Anjali [ Thu Aug 28, 2008 7:03 am ]
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Daisy is also described as a tomboy somewhere, if I remember correctly whereas Robin was more gentle and 'girly'.....maybe because of her delicacy or because she wasn't English? Peggy seems to be the first central character who isn't kind of tomboyish.....but reading Oberland for the first time yesterday, she is compared to Edna!
Author:  Ray [ Thu Aug 28, 2008 8:52 am ]
Post subject: 
Kate wrote:
Speaking of Jack - she is the one character whom EBD clearly wants us to like but I just didn't. I know Joey and Mary-Lou can be annoying, but they're likeable in a lot of aspects too. I just thoroughly dislike Jack. Does anyone like her or did EBD go wrong somewhere?


*waves hand* Is this another admission I need asbestos undies for, I wonder?

Anyway; yes, I actually *DO* like Jack. I think it helps that I didn't read Jane until long, long, *LONG* after being introduced to Jack (for a wonder, the first book I read featuring her was actually Leader!), at which point I could actually take how her character develops and see some sense in it. (NB Doesn't mean I like what Jack actually does, but I can at least see how she gets there.)

Whereas I'm actually not that keen on Tom. Jack matches to people that I knew growing up. Tom really could only be a character in a book.

Hm. Yep, may need the asbestos undies again!

Anyway. On the actual topic, I think that tomboyishness and being seen as a bit of a tomboy, at least at a young age, is seen as being a good thing - even a natural thing! - because it tends to mean that the girls are willing to run about and play and join in with everything. That said, I think there is a sense of it not being quite such a good thing in people once they get over the age of 14/15. Tom says herself in Bride (when someone suggests her for Head Girl) that she would be a really bad example as a Head Girl, while most of the other tomboys lose the tomboy traits as they get older.

Ray *always willing to defend the near-indefensible*
Author:  Alison H [ Thu Aug 28, 2008 9:51 am ]
Post subject: 
That's a very good point! Whilst I can't stand Jack, I definitely agree that she's a realistic character. Most schools (regrettably) contain people who have a gang of people who follow them like sheep, who bully other pupils and make the rest of their gang treat their victims badly as well, who start feuds with rival "gangs", etc. Hopefully some of them improve when they're older, as Jack does.

I have never, however, much as I like Tom, met a girl whose father brought her up to be a "gentleman" :roll: :lol: .
Author:  Loryat [ Thu Aug 28, 2008 2:29 pm ]
Post subject: 
I think the tomboy characters are generally presented favourably, but clearly an adult tomboy is innappropriate in EBD's eyes, as Tom wouldn't be a suitable HG. (Though it seems likely Jack would have been HG - so did her perception of tomboys change?) While some tomboyishness is a Good Thing, we muxt preserve some aspects of femininity.

I haven't read Tom Tackles, so don't know much about Tom's dad's parenting techniques, but I think EBD probably just fancied that kind of character and thought this was a good way to introduce one...though it would have been easier if Tom had just had a lot of brothers. (Like Bill in the Mallory Towers books).

As for Jack, I quite like her, but the only book I've read that has much of her is Leader. I've read Feud and Jane on transcript, but that just isn't the same.
Author:  Theresa [ Sat Aug 30, 2008 10:25 am ]
Post subject: 
I, too, confess that I like Jack, and the first thing I read her in was Jane!
Author:  Tara [ Sat Aug 30, 2008 4:28 pm ]
Post subject: 
It's historically true, of course that girls/women were seen as frail and feeble creatures, both physically and morally and, in terms of their era, being allowed to be a 'gentleman' and so enter the masculine paradigm is a sort of liberation. Tom is quite ambivalent, I suppose. The CS exists to prove Mr Gay's preconceptions wrong, yet the respect accorded to Tom's straightforwardness and honourableness (is there such a word - you know what I mean!) suggests that they are a bit unusual. Tom is certainly a really nice character, both at and after school.
The other thing about tomboys is that girls had to stop being one when they hit puberty. It was ok to run and romp before then, but puberty was supposed to initiate a phase of 'invalidation' (now there's an interesting word) and girls had to husband their energies and direct them towards reproduction. So 'tomboy' does equal freedom - but in the case of Jack, it does seem to imply freedom to bully and abuse ... to behave, perhaps, in the worst stereotypically male way??? There actually is very little bullying at the school; I can think of Thekla and Joyce ... wonder what, if any, gender implications there are in relation to bullying.
*goes away to have a think*
Author:  Loryat [ Thu Sep 11, 2008 5:33 pm ]
Post subject: 
I think the lack of bullying is more down to EBD and the CS format in general. It's easy in most school stories to introduce a new setting, characters etc and have one unfortunate girl strive against the bullies of the form, or (as in EB) to depict scenes of bullying which are seemingly morally acceptable. But in CS land, where the characters often feature in more than one novel, it's far more tricky, especially as EBD seems to dislike presenting any character as being really nasty.

The worst bullies, for example Mary Woodley, appear and disappear. EBD seems incapable of portraying a bully without then showing how the wonderful CS reforms her. Those who are not redeemed fade out of the series. Even those who are expelled usually repent sooner or later. Not only is EBD unwilling to depict her beloved characters as bullies, her desire to portray the CS staff as omnisceint prevents any behind the scenes bullying.

The only case of bullying as we would probably think of it today (that I can think of) which is not perpetrated by one girl who later disappears, is the bullying of Eustacia (she is treated badly even if she is a very unattractive character) and EBD does not regard this as bullying. Joan Baker attempts to bully Rosamund, but although she is a recurring character she is definitely an outsider, not a true Chaletian. And Jack bullies Jane (and gets her crowd of sheep to do so too) but in this book EBD seems to be trying to get into the bully's head (laudable enough, I think).
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