What Badger didn't!

I've read "What Katy Did At School" about 20 times. She and Clover go to boarding school and start the Society for the Suppression of Unladylike Conduct, to disapprove of flirting. Somewhere the story gets all mixed up with Ralmadil and The Secret Language (only Els is going to know what I'm talking about...) And Katy gets accused of FLIRTING with the headmaster's handsome young son and has to live it down through virtuous conduct for the rest of the term. Only the vaguest memories of Katy being ill for a year with brain fever or something defined the first book...

WELL now I have the rather vile first book before me. There are pantalettes and there's unsuitable friendships with foreigners and an old black woman on the corner and poor girls and dying consumptives whose brutal husbands turn out to be counterfeiters. There are frolics in the loft and the secret bower in the woods where all the older children must make the younger ones behave, by bribing them not to cry with extra plummy cookies. There is mischief done in mid-chapter and regretted by the start of the next never to be done again! Keep that bonnet string sewn on neatly ... or else! AND THERE IS THIS

So Cousin Helen comes to visit and she is an Invalid and instead of being cross or prissy or always Good she is jolly and pretty and gives presents and plays games. In her dark past she broke her engagement after the Accident that left her crippled. She brings happy light and beauty and frills to her dainty boudoir. All the children love her so! And they're sad when she leaves. Then Katy has a bad day and is naughty, cross, sulky, and disobedient, and goes to swing from the swing they are forbidden to swing from without any explanation and there is a dreadful accident and then spine damage and brain fever. She is depressed in her dark sickroom. Cousin Helen visits! Katy fretfully declares it's no fair, she wanted to go to school and learn things so she could grow up study and help people and become famous! AND THEN THE GOOD BIT

Why, Cousin Helen, what can I do lying here in bed?
"Yes, please," replied Katy, wonderingly.

"I should say this: 'Now, Katy Carr, you wanted to go to school, and learn to be wise and useful, and here's a chance for you. God is going to let you go to His school – where He teaches all sorts of beautiful things to people. Perhaps He will only keep you for one term, or perhaps it may be for three or four; but whichever it is, you must make the very most of the chance, because He gives it to you Himself.'"

"But what is the school?" asked Katy. "I don't know what you mean."

"It is called the School of Pain," replied Cousin Helen, with her sweetest smile. "And the place where the lessons are to be learned is this room of yours. The rules of the school are pretty hard, but the good scholars, who keep them best, find out after a while how right and kind they are. And the lessons aren't easy, either, but the more you study the more interesting they become."

"What are the lessons?" asked Katy, getting interested, and beginning to feel as if Cousin Helen were telling her a story.

"Well, there's the lesson of Patience. That's one of the hardest studies. You can't learn much of it at a time, but every bit you get by heart, makes the next bit easier. And there's the lesson of Cheerfulness. And the lesson of Making the Best of Things."

"If I only could!" sighed Katy. "Are there any other studies in the School, Cousin Helen?"

"Yes, there's the lesson of Hopefulness. That class has ever so many teachers. The Sun is one. He sits outside the window all day waiting for a chance to slip in and get at his pupil. He's a first-rate teacher, too. I wouldn't shut him out, if I were you.

"Every morning, the first thing when I woke up, I would say to myself: 'I am going to get well, so Papa thinks. Perhaps it may be to-morrow. So, in case this should be the last day of my sickness, let me spend it beautifully, and make my sick-room so pleasant that everybody will like to remember it.'

"Then, there is one more lesson, Katy – the lesson of Neatness. School-rooms must be kept in order, you know. A sick person ought to be as fresh and dainty as a rose."

Okay what I want to know is, where is this Katy bitch and her whore-ass Cousin Helen, and when are they going to come clean my room and make it all fresh and goddamn fucking dainty?

SO THAT I CAN SLAP THEM BOTH!

Comments

[xyzzy]

I'm sorry, I realise that my brain is now set to auto-associate Achewood with every single fucking thing, but... do you get to the School Of Pain in the Car Of Pain?
http://achewood.com/index.php?date=12222004

[f. sparks]

::cough:: so many interpretations of this passage are possible! The School of Pain sounds like it could be a different sort of institution entirely.

Those two do sound insufferable, though.

[lyssa]

Too much virtue! Head exploding!

Keep that mohawk spiked up neatly...OR ELSE!

[badgerbag]

It is very tempting in that and later passages to porn it up a bit. They go on and on about the sweet lessons of pain.

[Lori S.]

Oh, God, yes.

The School of Pain. I will teach you the Meaning of Patience, yes! That will be Lesson One. I warn you, it is a very hard lesson to learn. We will repeat it until we're sure you have it right. Remember, we are cultivating Patience, one of the greatest virtues. Every time you cry out, we will start again. One way or the other, my dear, you will learn.

[elswhere]

Yes of course I've always loved The Secret Language. And felt vaguely that Katy was one of those things I should read.

Now, maybe not so much. But on the other hand, it is so ripe for mockery...like Elsie Dinsmore; did you ever read that one? Her dad makes her play the piano on Sunday, and she doesn't want to because it is the Sabbath, but she does anyway because she must be obedient (because she is so good) and then she faints! And hits her head! And bleeds! And boy is he sorry!

[badgerbag]

Oh I love Elsie Dinsmore. You realize I used to play "Elsie" with my ex. I won't say which one. But man they used to get hell for having blotted that copybook.

SO I had further reports on the Katy books. They redeem themselves considerably by having Katy not grow up to be vile. Instead she goes to Europe (by having been kind to a lonely little girl and her single mom) And she spends a glorious time in London laying flowers on Jane Austen's grave and looking at the town while thinking "Here is where so and so from Fanny Burney's novel stayed in a hotel.. and here is where they lived in Mansfield Park..." So she runs around London thinking of Mrs. Edgeworth et al. Which made me like her (and the author) a lot more.

I also liked in book 2 (What Katy Did at School) how Miss Jane the crabby old maid teacher gets sick, and Katy takes care of her and straightens her nighttable, and Miss Jane just says thank you and thaws a tiny bit. When she recovers from her long illness she is still a crabby, annoying person. In most books of the genre, Miss Jane would suddenly have gotten a new hairstyle and personality (a la aunt polly in Pollyanna) and gotten married and seemed 30 years younger all of a sudden (with a girlish sparkling laugh and a frilly bedjacket, naturally, much happier and with some hidden personal talent or noble past revealed and sorrow fixed). NO. Miss Jane gets to keep being an uptight, crabby schoolteacher. I like that!

The one about Clover going west was good too. I lucked out to find this hardback edition of all 5 of them together. I think there is even one more about Johnnie, the youngest girl.

[badgerbag]

Oh and Els you should read "Elsie Dinsmore on the Loose" -- a very silly parody.

[cher]

Hmmmm, I was swallowing all that up like candy. Issues ---> me. However, I am mostly spared at present in terms of my chronic pain, so I can afford to be all tra-la-la about its lessons. I guess, when I think about it, I want credit for all that virtue! I want credit for being a cheerful, hopeful, fairly neat, patient motherfucker considering all the agony I have to put with.

On the other hand, I'm not gonna be like this auntie or my buddhist cousin and frown at all those who suffer for not being stoic or virtuous about it.

I so need to read this book.

[cher]

PS-- Teach me some lesson of pain, k? I've got lotsa equipment at the ready!