A Far Cry from Malory Towers: Griselda Heppel muses on the subversive use of the Boarding School Story
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| The Fall of a Sparrow by Griselda Heppel (2021) |
A friend who loved the eccentric boarding school setting of my recent children’s book, The Fall of a Sparrow, gave me a copy of another novel he’d enjoyed, also set in a boarding school. He was keen to know what I thought of it; I have to say I was riveted, though any similarity between my book and The Ruined Boys by Roy Fuller begins and ends with the setting.The Ruined Boys
by Roy Fuller (1959)
It’s fascinating how the same structure can be used to create imaginary worlds that have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
A far cry from Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers then, and Elinor Brent-Dyer’s Chalet School. Far even from Kipling’s Stalky and Co, or Talbot Baines Reed’s Fifth Form at St Dominic’s - stories written at least 60 years before The Ruined Boys, in which the pupils at their traditional Victorian public schools have a lot more fun than those at Seafold House.
What struck me was The Ruined Boys’s similarity to another subversive use of the boarding school metaphor, perhaps the most famous in the last century: Lindsay Anderson’s film If....
While the violence at the film’s end doesn’t occur in Fuller’s story, it is telling that the film’s hero, Mick Travis, unleashes it, not on the entitled boys who gave him a ferocious beating, but on the smug, hypocritical headmaster, housemaster and school chaplain, the school governors and their elegantly dressed wives - all those responsible for a lazy, corrupt system that allows so much power in the hands of the vicious. Exactly the theme of The Ruined Boys.
To begin with, The Ruined Boys is not a children’s book. Like David Copperfield, it’s told from the point of view of a child whose childhood has come to a cruel end with a change in family circumstances. His parents’ marriage break-up sends young Gerald Bracher to Seafold House, an austere, comfortless public school. Place and date are left vague but some time in the 1920s would be a good guess. As that coincides with my father’s schooling, I can only hope that Fuller’s imagination somewhat exaggerates the dehumanising effects of that era’s public school system. In fact it clearly does, as the urbane, sanctimonious headmaster’s rule over the neglected, poorly fed and housed boys is meant to symbolise a wider political and class system that is rotten to the core. Survival is entirely down to the ever-shifting balance of power, as older boys leave and younger ones move up the hierarchy, with senior boys given free rein to beat up juniors, while weaker, scholarly boys are scorned and bullied by pupils and masters alike. Awed by Mr Pemberton, the charismatic Head, Gerald initially accepts this system; then, gradually, his eyes are opened to the hypocrisy it is built on, and he sees Mr Pemberton for the small man - morally as well as physically - that he is.
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| Malory Towers by Enid Blyton (1946): a far cry from Roy Fuller's The Ruined Boys. By http://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/book-details.php?id=253, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31765146 |
A far cry from Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers then, and Elinor Brent-Dyer’s Chalet School. Far even from Kipling’s Stalky and Co, or Talbot Baines Reed’s Fifth Form at St Dominic’s - stories written at least 60 years before The Ruined Boys, in which the pupils at their traditional Victorian public schools have a lot more fun than those at Seafold House.
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| Stalky & Co by Rudyard Kipling (1899) |
Released in 1968, nine years after the publication of Fuller’s novel, the theme of If.... echoes that of The Ruined Boys so eerily I can’t believe screenwriter David Sherwin wasn’t aware of it.
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| If.... by Lindsay Anderson and David Sherwin (1968) |
While the violence at the film’s end doesn’t occur in Fuller’s story, it is telling that the film’s hero, Mick Travis, unleashes it, not on the entitled boys who gave him a ferocious beating, but on the smug, hypocritical headmaster, housemaster and school chaplain, the school governors and their elegantly dressed wives - all those responsible for a lazy, corrupt system that allows so much power in the hands of the vicious. Exactly the theme of The Ruined Boys.
Boarding schools are nothing like that nowadays. Frankly, they were nothing like that in the 1960s. Neither Fuller nor Anderson was interested in a realistic depiction; for them the boarding model made a brilliant structure for the political points they wanted to make.
Which just shows the strength and versatility of the genre. And while I admire what Fuller, Sherwin and Anderson achieved, I much prefer the magic and fun you can have with a boarding school setting when children are your audience, not adults.
Where would Harry Potter be without Hogwarts? Or Mildred Hubble, without Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches? Or, Eleanor Cooke, for that matter, heroine of my book, The Fall of a Sparrow, without spooky Ashstone House?
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| Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J K Rowling (1997) |
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| The Worst Witch by Jill Murphy (1974) |
That’s what I’ll tell the friend who gave me The Ruined Boys.
Comments
Peter, you should write that book! The pseudo boarding school ethos taken on by grammar schools is an angle rarely looked at - except possibly in Alan Bennett's play, The History Boys? Well-intentioned perhaps but weird. Not surprised it made you and your friends angry.