February Book Club Discussion - Frost in May by Antonia White
This month's book is Frost in May by Antonia White. Its the story of a young girls years in a convent boarding school, and very much based on the author's experience.
I'll be posting some questions on the 20th. In the meantime this is a school story. Is that a genre you like or not and if you do what are your favourites in the genre.
Although there is nothing very explicit in this book some of the themes might cause distress to anyone who has been in a similar situation as this review highlights.
I'll be posting some questions on the 20th. In the meantime this is a school story. Is that a genre you like or not and if you do what are your favourites in the genre.
Although there is nothing very explicit in this book some of the themes might cause distress to anyone who has been in a similar situation as this review highlights.
Comments
As an adult, I read the Term books by Antonia Forest, and really enjoyed them - I think Frost in May is more like that series than the other ones I've mentioned.
The introduction to the copy I have by E.F.Benson claims that school stories for boys are superior to those for girls. Would you agree? The only 'boys' ones I've read are the Jennings and Derbyshire series.
My copy of the book also contains The Lost Traveller which is an almost sequel to A Frost in May, but the characters names are changed and events are not as close to Antonia White's real life according to White. There are two more sequels I haven't read that I can buy as ebooks so I think I will end up reading the whole series. Nanda/Clara go through some difficult times at school and home, but I think the books create a fairly realistic picture of growing up.
I am away for a few days from tomorrow and will be taking it with me so I hope to have finished it by the end of the weekend.
One boys series I did like starts with No Boats on Bannermere, and is by Geoffrey Trease. In that, unusually for the time, the school is a grammar school rather than a boarding school, and there are some good girl characters who go to the all girls' school in the same Lake District town.
I think it is a load of tosh about boy's stories being superior. There are good and bad examples of both.
Although it's a story set in a boarding school, it's very different to the usual ones. Most make the whole experience sound fabulous. The Convent of the Five Wounds is the exact opposite.
During lockdown, school stories featured heavily in my comfort reading pile. Blyton, Antonia Forest and Anne Digby were my go too's. Not looked at another one since.
Total institutions.
I also really enjoyed Kate Saunder's Beswitched, in which a girl being sent to a modern boarding school against her wishes due to a family emergency suddenly finds herself back in 1935 at a totally different school. The mores of the time such as not telling teachers about bullying are interestingly explored.
The Convent of the Sacred Heart Roehampton took a couple of hits during the Blitz so that was the wnd of that school.
I have the impression that the local superior in Antonia White’s day was Rev Mother Mabel Digby ( a convert) who sounded like one tough cookie as was her successor Rev Mother Janet Erskine Stuart ( another convert). It sounded like an absolute bloody gulag not all that different to the daughter school I was deposited in Sydney 60 years ago. Mind you the absolute villain of the piece was Cecil Botting ( Antonia’s awful Dad)
I'll be posting some questions on Thursday.
It wasn’t as posh as Woldingham but the girls from the County families were very much favoured and the very few charity pupils were scorned and often picked on.
And yes, the good order and discipline and the beauty of a half understood liturgy gave a security and clear shape to our lives.
Nanda’s father was a beast, but I suppose even the best of parents didn’t realise the damage that being separated from home did to young minds and souls. It was a deeply damaging experience and even the solace of friends couldn’t mitigate the constant unease.
Of course after VII everything changed. The nuns with minds of their own were liberated to think as they pleased and girls were not constantly, as we were, exhorted to ask themselves if they had a vocation. Very few did.
The nuns and sisters we see now are a world away from those of over sixty years ago.
Here are some questions. As per usual feel free to answer as many or as few as you like and to pose your own.
1. E. F Benson in the introduction to the edition I have differentiates between the school story for children and the school novel for adults. He thinks Frost in May is an example of the latter, but could be read by an intelligent 12 year old. Would you recommend it to such a reader?
2. This is very much written from Nanda's point of view. How far do you think she is a reliable narrator?
3. What did you make of Nanda's relationship with her father?
4. Any comments on the glimpses we get into the lives of the nuns? Do you think a book set in a faith school now would be different or are there still similarities?
5. Any comments on Nanda's relationships with the other pupils?
6. Do you get a negative or positive impression of Catholicism through reading this book?
2 Yes, she’s a reliable narrator albeit that for the sake of an engaging narrative, there may be some exaggeration. There won’t be anyone alive today who was at Woldingham in the 30s but I know that even in the day schools some of the bizarre rules still happened. A friend told me of the shame of getting a ‘note’ which were called exemptions in the novel. There was no note but the shame was intense. So much of what she described was similar to the 50s although somewhat modified. Hours spent on the catechism instead of any effort to even study scripture let alone any contextual study or church history (other than the Reformation which was beyond one sided). We weren’t allowed stockings, only socks but hair ribbons had to be wound round the iron bedstead and clothes on the chair with the gymslip on the top so that your knickers weren’t visible. And as an aside my husband asked me in the early days of marriage why I slept with my arms crossed over my chest. Old habits die hard.
3 Her father was a manipulative bully. It’s unsurprising that her mother spent time in a ‘hospital’ she’s described as an ineffectual challenger to her husband but women then (which is getting on for a hundred years ago) had very few rights or much autonomy. Particularly sickening was his commendation of Nanda curtsying to them (gone by the 50s) when she met them in the parlour. His absolute refusal to listen to Nanda’s side of her story made his arrogance and self righteousness very obvious.
4 I think the nuns’ lives were exactly as depicted. Times were very different and the reasons for ‘entering’ were also very different from nowadays. If a clever girl entered she could be sure that her higher education would be funded by the order and if she wanted to teach then she could. The married women’s bar wasn’t lifted until 1944 so an academic life was an attractive alternative to marriage and far too many children. Lesbian women too (even if they didn’t recognise their orientation in themselves) would have found a women only environment attractive. - hence the prohibition of ‘particular friendships’. And for the lay sisters, who don’t figure much in the novel, but did all the work on the farm, laundry and in the kitchen - well they were mostly girls from huge families in Ireland who had little else to look forward to other than marriage to a poor farmer and have lots of children with no possibility of escape. Some were bitter tyrants, Mother Frances for example, and the reason is made clear as the story progresses. Mother Radcliffe was the worst kind, using her power and intelligence to spiritually manipulate the girls. I never encountered one like that!
A faith school now is unrecognisable to those before Vatican Two. The great majority are comprehensive day schools where RE is well taught. There are one or two boarding schools left but they are lay run as the Sisters for greater part see their vocation is to teaching or serving the ordinary people in the community. My own children would have been horrified at the legalistic, rigid and formulaic stuff we were taught (and discarded).
5. All teenage girls have intense friendships - there’s a fair few stories about that not to mention TV and other media. It’s a way of navigating relationships and finding support and affirmation from other girls. What is sad about the story is that Nanda was asked to be friends with the dull and hapless Monica instead of the popular girls being gently encouraged to include the less favoured in their friendship group. It was to punish Nanda’s, not to affirm Monica. The titled and wealthy girls were treated rather differently because there would have been repercussions if they hadn’t. I think that’s a scenario replicated in much of public life today, sadly.
6 It’s not the Catholicism of today thank God, so many aspects of it were awful despite the some of the positives. But I think we need to remember that equivalent secular schools had many of the same features. There’s enough memoirs out there of boarding schools to make wise parents think three times about sending their children there even though they are very different these days.
1. E. F Benson in the introduction to the edition I have differentiates between the school story for children and the school novel for adults. He thinks Frost in May is an example of the latter, but could be read by an intelligent 12 year old. Would you recommend it to such a reader?
I wouldn't recommend it to a 12 year old, unless it was very much on the understanding that this is how things used to be. Even then it would be disturbing.
2. This is very much written from Nanda's point of view. How far do you think she is a reliable narrator?
It never occurred to me to doubt her reliability as a narrator.
On a related subject, however, in one English lesson (back when Noah was a lad) we were given some sort of comprehension exercise on a passage from Father and Son by Edmund Gosse and when my work came back the teacher told me about the book and said it was "a profound and beautiful book which I think you would enjoy". I found it, indeed, very well-written and riveting but profoundly disturbing as well, in a way similar to this book - a sensitive child deeply and lastingly influenced by a fanatically religious father. I was reminded of it as I read this book.
I subsequently learned, on whose say-so I don't know (but I don't think it's the subject of a book), that the father was a gentle, loving and mild-mannered man who was horrified by his son's perception of him and his childhood.
3. What did you make of Nanda's relationship with her father?
He was a dominating bully, both to her and to her mother, and it made me by turns very angry and very sad.
4. Any comments on the glimpses we get into the lives of the nuns? Do you think a book set in a faith school now would be different or are there still similarities?
I hope it would be different.
5. Any comments on Nanda's relationships with the other pupils?
I agree with @Edith that all teenage girls have intense friendships and, particularly in an all-girls school I suspect, these can be of an adoring nature, especially of older girls and teachers. I went to an all-girls school and it was common parlance to talk about who we were "crushed on." I later became very good friends with my crush (two years older) and in her year there were three girls who identified as lesbians and went to a member of staff in great distress about it. With what I consider very forward thinking at the time (we're talking nearly 50 years ago) the member of staff said, "Why is that so terrible?" and it was the girls who were insisting that it was.
My school was originally founded for the daughters of missionaries who were out on the mission field and had a very strong Christian ethos. Every year had a proportion of boarders as well as day girls and my year was notorious for having a deep division between the two, led by one particular boarder who was the bully of the whole year. I learned much later that she really was the daughter of missionaries who didn't even get to see her parents every school holiday and was, of course, terribly unhappy. The division lasted into adulthood - the boarders were never at school reunions, but had their own gathering separately.
I go cold when I think about what might have happened to our family if Mr Nen and I had remained the ardently conservative evangelical Christians we were when we married, and had then felt we had a call to the mission field.
6. Do you get a negative or positive impression of Catholicism through reading this book?
Just from this book - a negative one, sadly.
As I said before, I thought I had read and enjoyed this book years ago but it turned out I hadn't and it wasn't at all the book I thought I'd be reading. I found it very uncomfortable and disturbing on all sorts of levels.
1. E. F Benson in the introduction to the edition I have differentiates between the school story for children and the school novel for adults. He thinks Frost in May is an example of the latter, but could be read by an intelligent 12 year old. Would you recommend it to such a reader?
I think if I twelve year old wanted to read it I wouldn't stop them. I always think at that age bits you don't understand go straight over your heads. There are bits in it that are very much like many of the school stories I've read. In one of Antonia Forest's Books there is a very unpopular pupil who it is hinted isn't quite the same class as the rest of the girls at the school. She dies and though everyone knows they should be sorry they aren't much. It's a while since I've read that so I might have got the details a bit wrong. I also wonder if Forest (another Catholic convert) was influenced by this book when choosing her pen name for her children's stories.
2. This is very much written from Nanda's point of view. How far do you think she is a reliable narrator?
I think Nanda is reliable as a narrator but she is a limited one. We only see things from her point of view, so no scenes in the nuns' part of the school for instance. Her attitude to her mother is very much influenced by her father, and I certainly thought she had misunderstood a lot about her mother. I think her view point, the way things are episodic and there are things we don't know but have to surmise are parts of what make this a powerful book.
3. What did you make of Nanda's relationship with her father?
I was very much struck this time at how unhealthy the relationship was. The father seemed to be wanting Nanda to be a surrogate wife and there were sexual overtones to his treatment of her. In real life White's mother was in and out of nursing homes as she kept on loosing babies, probably due to rhesus disease. I also thought the father made such a scene at the end as he wanted to take Nanda out of the school anyway and this was a very good excuse.
4. Any comments on the glimpses we get into the lives of the nuns? Do you think a book set in a faith school now would be different or are there still similarities?
I've been to Woldingham school, which though it has moved, is the same school as this one 120 odd years later. It is still a wealthy independent school, but though still a faith school has a secular staff. I was only there to look at the library so I don't know how much the order has an influence of the teaching any more. It seemed pretty much like any other private school I found the glimpses of the nun's lives, specially why wealthy young women might chose enter very interesting, and think @Edith 's comments on why are pretty spot on.
5. Any comments on Nanda's relationships with the other pupils?
Nanda was very much attracted to the rather worldly and rebellious without quite realising that she wouldn't be given the same leeway as they had as she didn't come from an old European Catholic family with cardinals in the family. 'Pashes' are very much part of school books and Nanda's relationship with Leonie and her friends seemed very much part of that.
6. Do you get a negative or positive impression of Catholicism through reading this book?
I first read this when I was on the cusp of becoming a Catholic, so I think on first read I was entranced by the ritual described in this book. I still have a lot of respect for the way the services etc are described even if modern Catholicism isn't really like that any more (or at least not in my East Midland's parish). This time around I can see all the things that a wrong in the teaching and the whole set up of the school.
1. E. F Benson in the introduction to the edition I have differentiates between the school story for children and the school novel for adults. He thinks Frost in May is an example of the latter, but could be read by an intelligent 12 year old. Would you recommend it to such a reader?
I wouldn't recommend it to a 12 year old, particularly the copy I had as the semi-sequel has more adult themes and an awful tragedy (I am reading a biography of Antonia White now and was relieved to find out the tragedy was fiction). An intelligent 15 year old could read it. The reader's life experiences and knowledge of history and Catholicism would really shape how they understood the book, however. I'm sure I read this book previously and the sequel as well, and knew the nuns were sometimes manipulative and cruel to Nanda, but had forgotten the rest of the events.
2. This is very much written from Nanda's point of view. How far do you think she is a reliable narrator?
I think she is reliable from her point of view. The book is largely based on true events from the author's life, but she leaves quite a lot out. In the biography it discusses her life before her father converted to Catholicism and she spent her free time playing 'boyish' games with a group of boys from the neighbourhood and even had a four year older 'boyfriend' from ages 3 to 13 who is not included in the novel.
3. What did you make of Nanda's relationship with her father?
Her father was very controlling and though he loved Nanda he expected his parenting and the convent school to turn out a perfect daughter. He couldn't accept Nanda as an individual and seemed to see her as an extension of himself. Perhaps she would have had less pressure from him if she had siblings, especially brothers.
I would be interested to hear from anyone with greater knowledge of psychology (I think that is your field of work Doublethink?) whether you think Nanda and her father's relationship involved enmeshment or even emotional incest.
4. Any comments on the glimpses we get into the lives of the nuns? Do you think a book set in a faith school now would be different or are there still similarities?
I have done occasional work in faith schools, including Catholic schools, as a substitute teacher and most are definitely different today. Many students are not from the faith the school teaches and religious studies are fairly secular in some of them. Catholic students are still prepared for First Communion, however, and I suppose have deeper religious teaching. I think there are issues in some schools, run by fundamentalist Catholics, such as those featured in this 'Four Corners' episode https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yZnYv2UMuo&t=461s I hope it is okay to link to it here.
As to boarding schools, some children do well in them, but there seems to still be the problems common to institutions. It has been in the news this week that a Private Grammar School in my state has had allegations of abuse occurring from older students (some as old as 18) against younger students (some as young as 12). Allegedly the older students believed they had the right to punish the younger students for anything they saw as misdemeanours in the boarding house and even strapped them regularly. The mind boggles and it is horrifying that this archaic sort of abuse could be continuing today and that the boys didn't understand they were doing something really wrong. It just seems so terrible in a time when children cannot be physically disciplined by teachers and to happen in an exclusive school like that would surely have psychologists and counsellors in attendance and lessons on treating each other with respect and kindness.
In my personal family experience my father was a missionary kid and attended a co-ed Canadian boarding school for missionary kids in Ethiopia in the 1960s. He attended there from the age of 6 and had to be very independent, but despite being run by conservative evangelicals it seemed far less strict and more modern in outlook than the school in the book. They even celebrated Halloween. My father enjoyed most of his time there, apart from some very unfair punishments that would not be acceptable today. He was upset when the family moved back to Australia - he actually hated his ordinary state high school and felt the boarding school treated teen students much more like adults. He also found it challenging reestablishing his relationship with his parents, who while loving were pretty strict and expected to be obeyed, after only spending some holidays with them for years. His middle brother also had a good experience, but their youngest brother really struggled and made their parents realise the pitfalls of boarding school. Originally my dad was going to be sent to live with relatives in Sydney to finish his schooling, but my youngest uncle's struggles were one reason the whole family returned together.
As an adult my dad has reconnected online with some of his classmates and found that some did experience abuse, especially some of the girls at the hands of one of the male teachers, but he was not aware of this at the time. These sorts of abuse sadly occur in all types of schools, but I imagine boarding students would be more vulnerable.
5. Any comments on Nanda's relationships with the other pupils?
It was positive that the wealthy girls accepted Nanda, even once they knew her background and she seemed to easily make friends, while also being kind to other girls she was not friends with. One of the worst rules in the school was discouraging close friendships when the girls were already away from family to the point of not even being allowed to give gifts to non-relatives.
6. Do you get a negative or positive impression of Catholicism through reading this book?
This book mainly gives a negative impression of Catholicism, though does also show the enjoyment Nanda and the others got from the rituals and holidays associated with the religion. The girls with more caring and reasonable parents seemed to be able to engage in their religion with out the complexes and worries Nanda had.
One thing that I have read about over and over in stories of Catholic boarding schools and children's homes was forcing children to sleep on their backs with their arms crossed over their chests which I always felt to be so inhumane and also has no biblical basis. I'm not sure if it is connected with sexual purity? As a restless sleeper I don't know how anyone would not be sleep deprived being forced to sleep like that.
Purchased my copies of Antonia Forest books from Girls Gone By as I lost the originals in a house move. Frustratingly, they have no plans to make the books available on Kindle.
I'll do the questions shortly. Thank you @Sarasa for doing this.
Not all school stories are for children. This is a story set in a school - but firmly aimed at adults because of the themes and writing style. It's similar to The Loom of Youth by Alec Waugh.
I first read it when I was about 15. Re-reading it years later - older, possibly wiser and with a child of my own, there were bits that I found really hard.
2. This is very much written from Nanda's point of view. How far do you think she is a reliable narrator?
Nanda writes from her own, limited perspective and understanding. From that perspective, she is reliable. If it had been written from the perspective of adult Nanda looking back at her school days, she might have seen some things differently. (Adult me was outraged about the discovery of the novel and the reaction to it - but not surprised that no one would listen).
3. What did you make of Nanda's relationship with her father?
Not even remotely healthy and normal. He struck me as being extremely controlling. He also seemed to see the women in his life as having no other purpose except in relation to him and his needs / wants.
4. Any comments on the glimpses we get into the lives of the nuns? Do you think a book set in a faith school now would be different or are there still similarities?
We don't really see much - which isn't surprising given the age of the narrator.
5. Any comments on Nanda's relationships with the other pupils?
Nanda struck me as being quite a lonely child, looking for acceptance from her peers and a way to settle into the new faith which had been dumped on her. The school environment didn't help - with its focus on class / status, wealth and hidden codes of behaviour that showed who was in or out.
6. Do you get a negative or positive impression of Catholicism through reading this book?
It was an experience of Catholicism rooted in a time and a place. My deepest sympathies to anyone whose lived experience it resembled. Apparently when the book was published in the 1930s, loads of old girls from Roehampton got in touch with White. All convinced that she was there at the same time as them as her pre-WW1 experience echoed their own years later.
It didn't have any resemblance to the experiences my Catholic friends described. Thank goodness.
I'm not sure if it was because he wanted to take her out of the school, more because he was determined to be disappointed whenever Nanda did something that didn't match his (unreasonable) expectations. And, as the fault / blame would be entirely Nanda's, she needed to be punished.
I would only recommend it to the most mature of 12 years olds; one who has some experience with the Pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic Church. Also, they might benefit from some understanding to the limited employment options available to women during that time period.
2. This is very much written from Nanda's point of view. How far do you think she is a reliable narrator?
Her narration re. her personal experience is reliable. Her analysis of others motivations less so.
3. What did you make of Nanda's relationship with her father?
When her father offered to have her leave the convent school she should have taken it and run. Classic case of Stockholm Syndrome.
However, his behaviour when she was expelled was beyond the pale.
I did not see evidence of the father being responsible for the mother’s perpetual health problems. Maybe I missed the signs as a male.
4. Any comments on the glimpses we get into the lives of the nuns? Do you think a book set in a faith school now would be different or are there still similarities?
I would hope one might find better empathy and pedagogy in a modern faith school.
5. Any comments on Nanda's relationships with the other pupils?
I assume close relationships would develop in any tightly regulated single-sex faith based boarding school. Attempts to stamp those relationships out were futile and counter productive to good mental health.
6. Do you get a negative or positive impression of Catholicism through reading this book?
Negative for that time period.
The mother's health problems are more clearly alluded to in the other books and in the various biographies of White. It's not so obvious in the first book.
Bits are true. Thankfully, the the temporary governess plot is fictional. The Archie Hughes-Follett one isn't.