The CBB :: View topic - Lalla Winterton

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#1: Lalla Winterton Author: leahbelle, Location: Kilmarnock

Posted: Thu Dec 28, 2006 2:09 pm
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What year would Lalla have left school in? I've been trying to work it out, but haven't got access to my books at the mo and am struggling. If anyone could help, I'll share the enormous box of After Eights I am ploughing my way through Very Happy

#2: Author: Lesley, Location: Allhallows, Kent

Posted: Thu Dec 28, 2006 2:19 pm
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She was 14 at beginning of Peggy - working on from there would make her 17 going on 18 in year of Mary Lou/Genius/Problem.

(Assume it's for Jessica? Laughing

)

#3: Author: JayB, Location: SE England

Posted: Thu Dec 28, 2006 2:21 pm
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From Coming of Age:

Quote:

The prefects were exempt from any exams this term, and were supposed to get on with their own special reading or essays in the library or the prefects’ room. Two of them were leaving at the end of term. Lala Winterton was to go to London University and work for her degree before plunging into journalism.

#4: Author: leahbelle, Location: Kilmarnock

Posted: Thu Dec 28, 2006 4:00 pm
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Lovely! Thanks, JayB and Lesley. *offers after eights as promised*

It's not actually for Jessica - I have an idea for a new drabble but I need to do a lot of working out first!

#5: Author: jennifer, Location: Taiwan

Posted: Fri Dec 29, 2006 4:02 am
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I think it later says that she's past 18, as she had an extra year at school to make up for her haphazard early training, and that she wanted to go to St Mildred's like Polly did but her father vetoed it, saying it was time that she got on with her career.

As an aside, I never really warmed up to her father - he comes across as very autocratic but in a really random way. He unilaterally decides that his family would be better off in the country and buys a house there and immediately takes off overseas for ten years, leaving his wife with all the arrangements and moving and finding schools and so on. He tells her to find boarding schools, but doesn't seem to bother at all with what's happening for the next ten years, or the fact that the all the kids are getting is some indifferent tutoring.

He returns home ten years later, discovers that his kids are impudent, disobedient and untidy, and sets on a campaign to reform both the girls behaviour and his wife's parenting (she has to report to him at the end of each day, to prevent her from covering things up). He then, again unilaterally, decides that they'd be better off in a new location and rents a house, making his family move. The girls are affectionate towards their mother and vice versa, even if the discipline is erratic, but there's no indication that there is any affection between the girls and their father, or anything between total neglect and autocratic discipline.

#6: Author: Squirrel, Location: St-Andrews or Dunfermline

Posted: Fri Dec 29, 2006 9:34 am
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Hmmmm - how much affection would you have for someone who is absent for 10 years as you are growing up (Lalla must have been something like 4 when she last saw her father, no wonder her mother didn't want her to go off to boarding school at that age!), then when he gets back, he turns the whole family upside down, makes you leave the home you loved, settles you down in another home, condemns your behaviour totally, and makes the mother who has brought you up single handed report to him about your behaviour each evening.

As a 14YO in general, wouldn't you resent this kind of treatment, never mind from an absent father who has probably not shown you much affection that you can remember...

I'm afraid that a lack of affection on either side is completely understandable as far as I can read the situation - and that would go even more for Polly - regardless of how they treated their mother, they do love her.

#7: Author: JayB, Location: SE England

Posted: Fri Dec 29, 2006 11:30 am
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Squirrel wrote:

Hmmmm - how much affection would you have for someone who is absent for 10 years as you are growing up (Lalla must have been something like 4 when she last saw her father.)

Mary Lou was only a little younger when she last saw her father, and Joey tells her it's quite natural that she doesn't feel able to grieve for him.

Mr Winterton is quite high on my list of Worst Parents. He stays away ten years from choice. The war might account for some of his time away but not all of it, and there's no suggestion he can't make a living anywhere else. Unlike the Bettanys he seems to have made no attempt to maintain a loving relationship with his children during that time. He leaves all the responsibility of raising his children, including his son by his first marriage, in wartime, to his wife, then complains because he doesn't like the results. His way of dealing with what is really no more than normal teenage behaviour is to bully everyone, including his wife, who seems completely cowed by him.

He still seems to be acting in an autocratic fashion when he refuses Lala her year at St Mildred's.

I can't imagine Polly and Lala ever developing any real affection for their father. They've been away at boarding school most of the time since he came home - how well will they know him, or he them?

#8: Author: jennifer, Location: Taiwan

Posted: Fri Dec 29, 2006 12:34 pm
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I wonder about Giles too:

Quote:

Later, he went into the Navy, and from that time, most of his
leaves were spent with friends. He was fond enough of his stepmother,
who had been very good to him: but as Polly and Lala grew older, under
the irregular discipline of their mother and governess, they became
more and more untidy, impudent, and careless, so that he preferred to
have as little to do with them as possible.

How's that for a boy in his early twenties. I think he'd make a good match for Peggy though.

#9: Author: JayB, Location: SE England

Posted: Fri Dec 29, 2006 12:50 pm
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Yes, he sounds a proper little prig, doesn't he, quite lacking in any family feeling. But I suppose that's a natural consequence of having lost his own mother when very young and being effectively abandoned by his father, when he, unlike Polly and Lala, was old enough to notice. I hope he's able to show affection to his own wife and children and doesn't turn out to be a carbon copy of his father. Maybe marrying into the jolly and affectionate Bettany family will help.

#10: Author: Jennie, Location: Cambridgeshire

Posted: Fri Dec 29, 2006 9:26 pm
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Mr. Winterton's behaviour was verging on the abusive. Lots of people took their whole families abroad, why didn't he?

If he didn't like the way his daughters had grown up, he ought to have made sure that he was there to supervise them and their education. He also ought to have thought about things such as education before he sent them off to live in a remote area.

Mind you, that was typical EBD. Girls at school can go on long, exhausting walks, but can't get a bus every day into school. Jacynth Hardy couldn't go to Guides because the Church hall was a mile away, yet she would probably have had company on the walk home for most, if not all of the way.

#11: Author: JayB, Location: SE England

Posted: Fri Dec 29, 2006 9:51 pm
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Jennie wrote:

Mr. Winterton's behaviour was verging on the abusive. Lots of people took their whole families abroad, why didn't he?

I can understand why he didn't take them with him. He was in the Far East. I imagine he originally went out to cover the Sino-Japanese war and stayed on to cover WWII. It wouldn't have been the best time to have a young family in the region. People such as the Lamberts and the Gordons were sending their children away, after all. What I object to is first, that he stayed away for ten years, and second, his behaviour when he came home.

#12: Author: KB, Location: Melbourne, Australia

Posted: Sat Dec 30, 2006 12:05 am
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JayB wrote:

But hold on. If, as you suggest (and I think it's a very reasonable suggestion) he covered the Sino-Japanese war, and then World War II, that is just about a decade in itself. Peggy is set in either 1947 or 1948, so with all of the post-war politics and social upheaval that was going on at the time, it's not unreasonable for him to be away that long. He thinks they are settled in a comfortable home and expects them to go to school, where they will receive training in morals and ethics as well as education. It is Mrs Winterton's own fault that the children, whom she seems completely unable to cope with, remain at home.

It was not at all part of society of the time that the fathers would be there to do more than give the occasional spanking to a really disobedient child. Rearing of a child was left to the mother and a nanny/governess/teacher. I wonder why Mrs Winterton, who is so clearly inept, didn't hire one of these useful people with the money her husband was away earning. He is doing his best to give them the best life he can. (Other journalistic fathers are also away for long periods, e.g. Mr Stevens.)

He comes home to what he expects will be a nice quiet, peaceful household with well-behaved children and finds two daughters who bully and abuse their mother in much the same way as the former Miss Walters had experienced at school. They are rude, untidy and have no sense of self-control or dignity. Their behaviour, in fact, is very similar to the way Jack Lambert treats Jane Carew, but Lalla and Polly are victims and should be given oodles of sympathy, while Jack is a horrible girl who deserves every bad thing going. Where is the difference?

#13: Author: jennifer, Location: Taiwan

Posted: Sat Dec 30, 2006 7:23 am
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I think with Polly and Lala it was the erratic nature of their previous parenting - their mother sounds like a pleasant woman but very poor disciplinarian, alternating long periods where the kids are allowed to run wild with nothing but a bit of indifferent tutoring that they can skip out on without repercussion, and then periodically going through phases of overly vigorous, restrictive discipline, which then abruptly end. So they either have no discipline, or too much, badly applied. Then their father comes back and disciplines them and their mother for not turning out the way he expected.

I don't get the feeling that their behavior towards their mother was deliberate bullying - more like affection combined with a lack of respect for her authority, because she didn't generally have any. She comes across as pretty scatterbrained - she nearly walks off a pier because she isn't paying attention, and then she sends them off to school without their tickets. She also doesn't try to compensate for her lack of authority, by sending the girls to school, or getting and backing up a competent governess that could keep them in line, or even getting her husband to hire a competent governess, or insisting that they move closer to a decent school.

Many of the other parents are absent for work reasons for long periods of time (the Bettanys, Carola, Katherine and Gay, for example) but you get a feeling that those girls have an emotional connetion with the absent parents that seems to be lacking with Mr Winterton. Carola's father comes back when Carola runs into trouble, the Bettanys get regular letters and the parents read and pay attention to school reports.

The closest case is probably Prunella, where her parents come back to find her impudent and slangy, after being left with an elderly, indulgent grandmother for eight years. Even there, though, I get the feeling that her parents are at their wits end, but are genuinely worried about her and care for her.

#14: Author: Lesley, Location: Allhallows, Kent

Posted: Sat Dec 30, 2006 7:57 am
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I don't think you can compare Polly and Lalla Winterton with Jack Lambert - the Wintertons have little respect for their mother it is true but a great deal of love and affection - indeed their behaviour comes across as no more than, as JayB says, typical teenage behaviour - especially when said teenagers have been given irregular discipline.

Jack Lambert, on the other hand, has had a 'proper' upbringing - at least as far as EBD is concerned. She therefore has no excuse for a bout of quite deliberate and prolonged bullying upon a girl who has done nothing to her. She plans, with malice aforethought, to make Jane's life so miserable that Jane will want to leave the CS and forces the rest of her Gang to participate. She also resorts to physical violence when all else fails. She comes across, in that book in particular, as a throughly nasty person - and one that never really receives proper consequences for her actions, with Len and even Miss Ferrars taking some of the blame for why Jack acted as she did.

#15: Author: JayB, Location: SE England

Posted: Sat Dec 30, 2006 12:50 pm
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In Mrs Winterton's defence, she brought up her family as a single parent through the war. She had to cope with rationing, shortages, possibly air-raids (Plymouth and Exeter were heavily bombed), fear of possible invasion, fear for Giles if he was in the Navy by then, fear that she might never see her husband again.

It would have been difficult to get a competent governess, since all the competent women were doing more essential work. With the blackout and transport difficulties, it might have been difficult for Polly and Lala to travel any distance to day school. And if the nearest schools were in South Devon, they might have been evacuated for the duration and therefore not available anyway. I forget whether The Quadrant was on the North or South Devon coast.

Children did run wild at times during the war - my mother did, at one point - not necessarily from any fault of the parents, but simply because there was a lack of education and of adult supervision due to wartime life.

#16: Author: leahbelle, Location: Kilmarnock

Posted: Sat Dec 30, 2006 4:00 pm
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This discussion is giving me lots of lovely background for my possible new drabble!

#17: Author: Róisín, Location: Ireland

Posted: Mon Jan 01, 2007 6:12 pm
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Hm this is a really interesting thread, because I hadn't thought about the problem from any perspective but my own til now, and it is quite different to most of ye. My sympathies are with Mr. Winterton, who came home to find a mismanaged household and two indifferent and rude children. I can understand Giles wanting to spend time away from his sisters - I have a very young relation myself who is irresponsible, disrespectful and rude most of the time, no matter how you yourself behave with him, and I prefer spending time away from him rather than with him! It's like hitting your head on a brick wall!

There are some excuses for Mrs. Winterton, but not many. She was rich and had a staff to help her in the house. There was rationing, but I can't imagine that the Wintertons went without much. She should have sent them to school earlier. I can believe that she wanted to keep them close to her when her husband was gone, and with a war on, but that is a little jellyfishish IMHO! Laughing

#18: Author: Squirrel, Location: St-Andrews or Dunfermline

Posted: Mon Jan 01, 2007 7:24 pm
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The book puts that down to her having a terrible experience with bullying at boarding school, one which appears to have effected her make up ever since. Apparently she went to the head in the end and threatened to run away from the school - and the girls then hated her because she 'told tales'.

Of course, she ought to have known that not *all* boarding schools are *that* bad, and she does seem to be a rather 'jellyfish' type of creature - pulling the 'reins' in tight when she realises how bad her daughters are, just to let them go again a few days later, worried that she might be being too harsh. She doesn't seem to know the idea of 'happy medium' - and neither does the governess.

It seems to be a situation where everyone has some responsibility for the way the girls turn out. And yes, I can see Mr Wintertons point of view - he hated rude slovenly children, and NED's are unpleasent for anyone to deal with. Yet both the girls seem to respond to Peggy's treatment of them - partly to do with her age of course. So it seems that one of the biggest things is their need of companionship - of those to look up to.

On the whole, with the types of characters they have - Polly strong domineering type, Lala the kind who will follow where her sister leads - and the type of wishy washy heedless mother that Mrs Winterton is - the afformentioned train ticket and almost falling in the water incedents surely *can't* be one off's - I guess it's pretty well inevitable they turned out the way they did.

#19: Author: Caroline, Location: Manchester

Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 11:52 am
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One other thought - have you noticed how unusual (for EBD) the separation of the Winterton parents is? In almost all examples of kids being left at / sent home whilst Dad works / remains working abroad, Mum goes with Dad - Dick and Mollie, Prunella's parents, the Gordons, Carola Johnstone's parents, the Lamberts.

But here, Mrs Winterton stays at home with the girls whilst Mr W goes overseas. This is really unusual for EBD - she normally shows women choosing to put their husbands ahead of their children (which was a very typical upper middle / upper class attitude of the time, I believe - strange as it seems to us) like Mrs Johnstone does.

Firstly, I wonder why EBD has this scenario be so different to her norm, and secondly, do you think this makes Polly and Lala better off or worse off than the girls raised by random cousin / aunt / sister / gran? And what does it say about the state of the Winterton's marriage?

#20: Author: Alison H, Location: Manchester

Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 12:18 pm
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The Trelawneys are in a similar situation - Professor T leaves his wife, elderly mother and young child whilst he goes chasing butterflies up the Amazon!

#21: Author: JayB, Location: SE England

Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 12:22 pm
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Quote:

do you think this makes Polly and Lala better off or worse off than the girls raised by random cousin / aunt / sister / gran?

I think it depends on the relative doing the raising. Kat Gordon and Aunt Luce were very fond of each other, and Katharine turned out very well under her care. Carola Johnstone's Cousin Whatever was unsympathetic but did her best, but Annis Lovell's aunt/cousin/whatever - well, need I say more? On the other hand, some girls who were raised by a parent or parents would have been better off without - Grizel, Juliet, Ted.

Quote:

And what does it say about the state of the Winterton's marriage?

I think it was an unsuitable marriage from the start. He was probably older than she was - it was his second marriage - and her lack of assertiveness probably increased his domineering tendencies, while he became impatient at her ineffectiveness, and became more domineering, and so you get into a vicious spiral.

If Mrs W had been a stronger woman, she might have felt as much resentment as Polly and Lala did at her husband, having left her to cope all through the war, suddenly coming home and bossing everyone around. But maybe she'd had enough of being in charge and was happy to sit back and let her husband take over. 'I've had to do this on my own for ten years. Let's see how you like it, for a change.'

#22: Author: Caroline, Location: Manchester

Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 12:44 pm
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Alison H wrote:

The Trelawneys are in a similar situation - Professor T leaves his wife, elderly mother and young child whilst he goes chasing butterflies up the Amazon!

Hmm - good point. I'd forgot OOAO. I suppose the difference here is that Prof T was an explorer and Mrs T would not have been allowed to go with him. So there was no choice involved.

Where there is a choice, the wives do mainly seem to favour their husbands over their children.

(Waits for someone to think of another example of the opposite scenario which I have forgotten!)

Very Happy

Another thought occurs. A lot of these separations of parents and children are extended far beyond the original planned length because of the war (e.g. the Bettanys). Was EBD, by featuring so many children struggling to get to know a parent / parents who had been absent for many years, actually reflecting a real experience for many of her wartime readers from all classes, who might not have had a father away covering the war as a journalist, say, but may well have had a father away fighting the war for several years, who comes back traumatised in some way, with perhaps an idealised view of his children / wife which is rather different from the reality after their own experiences on the home front?

I can imagine, as a child in that situation, reading about the experiences of Prunella or Carola or the Wintertons might (a) be quite comforting in the way reading about someone going through something you are going through often is, and (b) wouldn't read nearly as strangely as it does to us, who can't imagine being apart from a parent for those kind of reasons or for that length of time.

#23: Author: Squirrel, Location: St-Andrews or Dunfermline

Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 2:51 pm
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Children who had been evacuated might have been similar in that way as well, if you choose to believe that this was one motivation behind some of EBD's plots. Some of them of course it couldn't have been that - the needs of the story, or the attempt to help girls get used to being 'in a boarding school' if that was difficult for them might also be behind it. However, you don't tend to get anywhere when you start speculating. It's not possible to ask her - always provided she was able to answer such a question - she may just have gone with her ideas without thinking overly much as to why - so we can't get all that much further than it's possible.

#24: Author: jennifer, Location: Taiwan

Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2007 5:53 pm
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I do find EBDs view of the relative value of husband vs child relationships to be interesting. Several of the girls are being raised by random relatives in less that optimal conditions - Carola and her aunt, or Prunella and her grandmother, but the mother has to be with the father, because he's delicate, or scatterbrained, or otherwise unable to cope, and so his wife can't leave him, even when her child is having difficulties.

There are also several places where characters explicitly state that their spouse means more to them than their children - when Jack is missing, someone comments that Joey loves her children, but Jack is everything to her. In Janie of La Rochelle, Julian's grandmother says that it was hard losing her child, but losing her husband was much, much worse, and something she never got over. Jack does it implicitly, in the way he teaches his children to value their mother's well being and comfort over their own.

#25: Author: Hannah-Lou, Location: Glasgow

Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2007 4:12 pm
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I don't think Polly and Lalla were bad (though this is all from memory as I haven't read the book for a while). They were a bit lazy and slovenly, but it was the summer holidays when we meet them. I think most of their disobedience to their mother was just that they couldn't be bothered to do the things she wanted, and she never made them. I don't think it was deliberate defiance. They don't seem rude, and obviously know how to behave when they have guests. They take care of their mother and love her, although Polly is at an age where she doesn't know how to express it. Polly is, to me, one of the most realistic characters in the whole series, at least in the scenes at the beginning of the book. I remember exactly how it felt to be playing games that I felt that other people considered childish, but not wanting to stop playing just because I was supposed to be more grown up now. And I know how it feels to have a messy room you're perfectly happy to live in yourself but are ashamed to show to others.

I suppose it was unfortunate that Mr Winterton was away for so long, and probably couldn't do anything about the school situation, even if he knew about it. Imagine coming home after 10 years away and finding a situation that you've never imagined because you've taken it for granted that everything is going fine at home. I wonder if he knew about his wife's phobia of boarding schools when he left her in charge of the girls' educations in a house far from any convenient school. If it was usual for people in his walk of life to send their children to boarding school, he may not have considered it as something he had to worry or even think about. Hmm, I started writing this feeling cross about Mr Winterton, but it's all coming out sympathetic! Embarassed

I do think he was a bit hard on everyone when he came back, but I'm warming to him more and more as I write this.

*Goes to read book for a reminder of Mr Winterton's nastiness*

#26: Author: Mel, Location: UP NORTH

Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2007 9:49 pm
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I can never understand why he was away for ten solid years. The war was well over and surely he would have had leave?

#27: Author: LizB, Location: Oxon, England

Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2007 8:27 am
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Perhaps he had another wife and family abroad Laughing

#28: Author: leahbelle, Location: Kilmarnock

Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2007 9:42 am
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Liz, that's similar to what I was thinking of as an aside in my drabble! Very Happy

#29: Author: Loryat,

Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 5:51 pm
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Caroline wrote:

One other thought - have you noticed how unusual (for EBD) the separation of the Winterton parents is? In almost all examples of kids being left at / sent home whilst Dad works / remains working abroad, Mum goes with Dad - Dick and Mollie, Prunella's parents, the Gordons, Carola Johnstone's parents, the Lamberts.

If Mr W was going to a warzone he might not want to take his wife with him? Also, perhaps there were no suitable relations to take the kids in, so Mrs W would have been abandoning her lambs to the tender mercies of boardng school (at a very young age). Also, Mrs Gordon was working as a nurse and missionary, so she wasn't just there to accompany her husband. And the Lamberts were actually living in China weren't they? I think they sent the kids home to get them an education and into a safer environment.

I think Mrs W should have had the sense to realise that she had to do something with her daughters. She could have moved to a place with a school if she didn't fancy boarding school. What did she think they were going to do with themselves when they grew up with no skills or qualifications? Mr W comes across as a bit authoritarian, but judging from what he found when he got back, maybe you can't really blame him.

#30: Author: Alison H, Location: Manchester

Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2007 10:36 pm
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Lalla's comment about how they couldn't have gone to the village school near their old house because "you learnt nothing - except broad Yorkshire" there really winds me up - I bet the village school would soon have had them in hand!

Having earlier watched tonight's episode of Emmerdale ( I watch too many soap operas Embarassed

) in which the Dingles were expecting a visit from some sort of "home education authority" to check that they were educating their little girl (whom they've pulled out of the local school) properly, I wondered if anyone knew if there was any sort of regulation/supervision of people being educated at home by parents/governesses/tutors in the 1950s. Sorry for going a bit off topic!

#31: Author: claire, Location: South Wales

Posted: Wed Jan 10, 2007 10:19 am
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I don't think school teachers HAD to be qualified either, so sending them to a school wouldn't necessarily have meant anything. Look at the one EBD ran she didn't have any qualifications

#32: Author: Caroline, Location: Manchester

Posted: Wed Jan 10, 2007 10:36 am
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Loryat wrote:

Caroline wrote:

Oh, I know - I'm not saying it's not realistic in the circumstances that Mrs W would stay at home, just that creating such a scenario is unusual for EBD.

I too could never quite understand why Mr W was away for so very long - did he not *want* to see his wife at any point? Some kind of marriage... What ever dating you chose to use (when EBD wrote Peggy, or based on the triplets age or Carola's or whatever) the war has been over for 4 or 5 years by the time we meet the Wintertons.

Hmmm. Maybe he was actually a spy deep undercover behind enemy lines and couldn't come home - the journalist thing was a front....

#33: Author: JayB, Location: SE England

Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 8:41 am
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Alison H wrote:

Lalla's comment about how they couldn't have gone to the village school near their old house because "you learnt nothing - except broad Yorkshire" there really winds me up - I bet the village school would soon have had them in hand!

Well, the village school wouldn't have taken pupils over fourteen, or prepared them for School Cert. It would have been a one or two or three teacher affair without subject specialists. It wouldn't have offered languages, music or art. So while Lala could have been more tactful, she was essentially right.

#34: Author: Caty, Location: New Zealand

Posted: Thu Jan 18, 2007 10:09 pm
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Back to the original question. in Mary-Lou it says that Lala was 18, almost a year older than her peers, but her parents had decided that she should have another year at school as she had only started 3 years before.

The CBB -> Joey's Trunk

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