Miss A and Miss M
I thought this was a fascinating story, beautifully written. It is a very English story. Set in the twenties between the wars, Taylor takes a coming of age story and by using a narrator with forty years of knowledge and experience from after the events, creates a story with deep undertones. We are given a story about the approach of change, of progress and of the fragmentation of the remembered landscape of the past. It is about the way in which women in an age where male company was scarce developed friendships and found companionship with other women. It echoes time past and time future.
A woman, now in her fifties, looks back at the events of her childhood and sees herself as an adolescent, fatherless city child, spending her summers in the country staying, with her mother, at a guest house. What does she see? A world of women: Miss Louie and Miss Beatrice, two elderly ladies, they could be sisters but we are not told that they are. They are known by their Christian names in contrast to Miss Alliot and Miss Martin. There is Mrs Price and her daughter Muriel. Mrs Mayes, who gives Shakespeare recitals, and various elderly spinsters. We are told little of their past histories and only Mrs Price’s husband is mentioned. Of all the women it is Mrs Price who is slightly out of sync, her topics of conversation and her copies of the Illustrated London News hint at another way of living. In this existence the girl has the freedom to roam, to grow and to discover. Although she spends more time in the town it is in this country landscape that she puts down roots.
Taylor contrasts the school term, traffic and leaflessness with the cherry orchard and croquet-lawn and walks through the leafy valley. This is balanced by the contrast between Miss Alliot and her inclination for ‘orange and yellow and grass-green’ and Miss Martin who ‘liked misty blues and greys’. It is Miss Alliot for whom she develops a school girl crush, who she wants to impress during the summer, but it is Miss Martin who replies to her letters during term time, Miss Alliot who sees her as ‘the child’. It is Miss Martin who she befriends when Miss Alliot abandons her at Christmas.
The story reverberates with echoes, there are the real echoes shouted across the valley; her declaration of love for Miss Alliot mockingly returned is echoed by her visit with Jamie at the end of the story, when they shout one another’s names, which are clearly returned. There are more subtle echoes too. Could Miss Alliot and Miss Martin become Miss Louie and Miss Beatrice? Mrs Mayes recites the Balcony Scene from Romeo and Juliet where she plays both male and female parts, this is echoed by Miss Alliot’s discovery of Rosella Byng-Williams, the girl who is playing Sidney Carton (himself a ‘double’) in the school play, which in turn is to be echoed by women taking the role of men in industry and in the fields during the second World War. The narrator runs off to Breezy lodge and echoes the sayings of Mrs Price, and in turn echoes Miss Alliot’s sayings in her diary. What is Taylor saying here? That what goes around comes around, that things don’t change?
The events of the story unfold over a number of years, we are not told how many years but the reference to the five year diary at the end is a possible indication. We are given glimpses only of the girl’s relationship with the two women, who are both central to the story but also removed from everyday life at the guest house. They have lunch and supper at the guest house but stay at the cottage at the bottom of the garden. The girl is not invited to visit after supper, she is not part of their relationship but an appendage, in the same way that she is not yet a part of the adult world. We may consider her acceptance of Miss Alliot’s cruelty as callous by today’s standards, but as she says: ‘I considered myself sharp for my age: now I see that I was sharp only for the age I lived in’. At the time she welcomed the attention from her idol and did not truly understand the hurt being inflicted, later in the story she becomes more aware of Miss Martins feelings. When she visits Breezy Lodge during the half term holiday she waits for the door to open wondering if Miss Alliot is going to be there: ‘I feared my own disappointment as if it were something I must protect myself and – incidentally Miss Martin – from.’ It is during that visit that her innocence begins to fall away, her very presence in the cottage means that she has been admitted to the part of their life that she has previously been excluded from. When Miss Alliot watches her undress for bed she feel ashamed of her underclothes with there Cash’s name tapes – a symbol of school days – and then she turns her back on Miss Alliot’s gaze. I think this is the first time she is even vaguely aware of the physical relationship between the women, and it is Miss Martin who steps between them giving protection.
The last summer holiday arrives, Miss Alliot is preparing to marry – a marriage of convenience? Miss Martin is already beginning to fade as the two women empty the cottage. For the girl her age of innocence is falling away, she meets and spends time with Jamie who is also staying at the guest house with both father and mother (the nuclear family), his presence disrupts and she becomes aware of an alternative to the female world that she has lived in until now. ‘Time was racing ahead’ for her, she is ready to enter the adult world.
Is Miss Martin’s suicide a few months later symbolic of the end of an era, and the starting gun for war and fragmentation? I am left wondering whether Miss Alliot found happiness in her marriage and how the intervening years have treated the narrator and what has lead to this reminiscence. Memory is selective, can we really remember how we felt at a young age or does experience colour those memories?
I thought this was a fascinating story, beautifully written. It is a very English story. Set in the twenties between the wars, Taylor takes a coming of age story and by using a narrator with forty years of knowledge and experience from after the events, creates a story with deep undertones. We are given a story about the approach of change, of progress and of the fragmentation of the remembered landscape of the past. It is about the way in which women in an age where male company was scarce developed friendships and found companionship with other women. It echoes time past and time future.
A woman, now in her fifties, looks back at the events of her childhood and sees herself as an adolescent, fatherless city child, spending her summers in the country staying, with her mother, at a guest house. What does she see? A world of women: Miss Louie and Miss Beatrice, two elderly ladies, they could be sisters but we are not told that they are. They are known by their Christian names in contrast to Miss Alliot and Miss Martin. There is Mrs Price and her daughter Muriel. Mrs Mayes, who gives Shakespeare recitals, and various elderly spinsters. We are told little of their past histories and only Mrs Price’s husband is mentioned. Of all the women it is Mrs Price who is slightly out of sync, her topics of conversation and her copies of the Illustrated London News hint at another way of living. In this existence the girl has the freedom to roam, to grow and to discover. Although she spends more time in the town it is in this country landscape that she puts down roots.
Taylor contrasts the school term, traffic and leaflessness with the cherry orchard and croquet-lawn and walks through the leafy valley. This is balanced by the contrast between Miss Alliot and her inclination for ‘orange and yellow and grass-green’ and Miss Martin who ‘liked misty blues and greys’. It is Miss Alliot for whom she develops a school girl crush, who she wants to impress during the summer, but it is Miss Martin who replies to her letters during term time, Miss Alliot who sees her as ‘the child’. It is Miss Martin who she befriends when Miss Alliot abandons her at Christmas.
The story reverberates with echoes, there are the real echoes shouted across the valley; her declaration of love for Miss Alliot mockingly returned is echoed by her visit with Jamie at the end of the story, when they shout one another’s names, which are clearly returned. There are more subtle echoes too. Could Miss Alliot and Miss Martin become Miss Louie and Miss Beatrice? Mrs Mayes recites the Balcony Scene from Romeo and Juliet where she plays both male and female parts, this is echoed by Miss Alliot’s discovery of Rosella Byng-Williams, the girl who is playing Sidney Carton (himself a ‘double’) in the school play, which in turn is to be echoed by women taking the role of men in industry and in the fields during the second World War. The narrator runs off to Breezy lodge and echoes the sayings of Mrs Price, and in turn echoes Miss Alliot’s sayings in her diary. What is Taylor saying here? That what goes around comes around, that things don’t change?
The events of the story unfold over a number of years, we are not told how many years but the reference to the five year diary at the end is a possible indication. We are given glimpses only of the girl’s relationship with the two women, who are both central to the story but also removed from everyday life at the guest house. They have lunch and supper at the guest house but stay at the cottage at the bottom of the garden. The girl is not invited to visit after supper, she is not part of their relationship but an appendage, in the same way that she is not yet a part of the adult world. We may consider her acceptance of Miss Alliot’s cruelty as callous by today’s standards, but as she says: ‘I considered myself sharp for my age: now I see that I was sharp only for the age I lived in’. At the time she welcomed the attention from her idol and did not truly understand the hurt being inflicted, later in the story she becomes more aware of Miss Martins feelings. When she visits Breezy Lodge during the half term holiday she waits for the door to open wondering if Miss Alliot is going to be there: ‘I feared my own disappointment as if it were something I must protect myself and – incidentally Miss Martin – from.’ It is during that visit that her innocence begins to fall away, her very presence in the cottage means that she has been admitted to the part of their life that she has previously been excluded from. When Miss Alliot watches her undress for bed she feel ashamed of her underclothes with there Cash’s name tapes – a symbol of school days – and then she turns her back on Miss Alliot’s gaze. I think this is the first time she is even vaguely aware of the physical relationship between the women, and it is Miss Martin who steps between them giving protection.
The last summer holiday arrives, Miss Alliot is preparing to marry – a marriage of convenience? Miss Martin is already beginning to fade as the two women empty the cottage. For the girl her age of innocence is falling away, she meets and spends time with Jamie who is also staying at the guest house with both father and mother (the nuclear family), his presence disrupts and she becomes aware of an alternative to the female world that she has lived in until now. ‘Time was racing ahead’ for her, she is ready to enter the adult world.
Is Miss Martin’s suicide a few months later symbolic of the end of an era, and the starting gun for war and fragmentation? I am left wondering whether Miss Alliot found happiness in her marriage and how the intervening years have treated the narrator and what has lead to this reminiscence. Memory is selective, can we really remember how we felt at a young age or does experience colour those memories?
posted by Cath at 7:57 am
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