Ana is reading her way through The Secret Garden right now.

[conuly]

I made the choice to read it to them (still doing that, a bit more slowly than Ana) even though it's a. classist b. a bit full of casual racism and c. full of dialect, because I figure that, as it's a classic of children's literature, they're probably going to be exposed to it sooner or later and I might as well be there to tone it down.

Also, it gave me an excuse to look up Yorkshire dialects on Youtube, and that's always fun.

I'm kinda annoyed by this because if she hadn't been reading The Secret Garden I would've thrust A Tale of Time City into her hands. I've just re-found the book on my shelf.

Gosh, I love that book. If you'll only read one fantastical story about British evacuees during the Second World War, make it this one. Narnia, Schmarnia. I wake up nights drooling over thoughts of Sam's butter pie. If only somebody could recreate that so I could eat it in real life. TVTropes compares it to lava cake, but those are generally chocolate, aren't they? Butter pie is, um, buttery.

...

I admit it, this is a not-so-veiled request for baking help. H E L P ! If anybody has any idea where to start there, I'll be eternally grateful. I'm sure it'd be just the thing for a sick Ana.

Comments

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

ROFL, I read The Secret Garden in 7th Grade, and as a result I wrote all my notes for Science class in Yorkshire dialect, or my best attempt at it from having read the book. My Science teacher was bemused when he found out about this, and I had no reasonable explanation - it just seemed like the thing to do at the time, y'know? I was enamoured of the book and the dialect; I had to write the Science notes; why not make life more interesting by combining the two? They were MY notes, tha ken, an' nowt no business o' his.

Meh, classism, racism: welcome to Victorian Britain, right? I love it that Martha sets Mary straight from the start: "a great girl like thee canna dress thyself?!" - the servants in Yorkshire are not very servile; in fact they seem to be a pretty forthright lot. There's a reason for that, though the book doesn't get into it: as isolated as Yorkshire is, one can't be sacking good help for being 'uppity', because then whom will one hire in their place? Especially since everyone in the local village is related to everyone else, and by long, fiercely-held tradition they're both fanatically loyal and pretty-much equally uppity. Better free speech in the kitchen than watery pudding and overdone beef in the dining room, eh?

The main point of the book is that the two sickly, beastly, spoiled-rotten, unloved and unloveable orphans of unbelievable privilege become healthy, happy, reasonably courteous children through the kindness and aid of the young servants, and through fresh air, exercise, simple wholesome food and caring for the garden. The book is set in an era where what we now call 'classism' was the unquestioned norm, but the story itself calls class assumptions into question. Who'll have more real liberty in her life as a grown woman, Mary or Martha? (Ignoring the fact that that would have been just in time for WWI, which changed everything.)

Your girls are probably too young for it, but did you ever see the movie 'The Others'? There's an interesting Halloweeny contrast with 'The Secret Garden'.

I really think Pippi Longstocking had the final word on the Servant Problem: "SHE NEVER SWEPT UNDER THE BEDS!"