6/9 Understanding grown-up people: an everlasting perplexity. The children are limited in what recreations they can do on Sundays, and decide on a sermon-giving contest! But when Peter’s vivid descriptions of Hell, taken from Dante, frighten Sara Ray, Uncle Alec reproves them, saying they are “making a jest of sacred things”.
Why? When the preacher gives a sermon, it is good, but for children to emulate him respectfully is wicked. This makes me think of the 1947 film Life with Father, where we meet another man for whom religion has become a set of outward, socially respectable rituals, that have no impact on a man’s soul, and have become completely detached from the Good News they were meant to convey. In the Catholic world, “playing mass” for boys or playing life as a nun for girls were common games, which astute parents who want the Faith to “take” encourage.
The Story Girl observes that it’s natural children won’t understand adults, but remains puzzled as to why adults don’t understand children, when they were themselves children once.
I tend to think children who are irreverent, mocking, and attention-seeking grow up to be the kinds of adults who, it seems, could never have been young, because they never appreciated what they had, or treasured those around them. Since others were never anything to them but stairs to socially climb on, of course a children’s fight could never have significance, because children are just little people who have to be managed. #LucyMaudMontgomery #LMMontgomery #TheStoryGirl #LifeWithFather #sermons #games #children #adults #growingup #stories #childrensliterature #childrensbooks #literature #books
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7/9 One of the more virtuous pastimes the Story Girl thinks up for her circle of friends is the Ordeal of Bitter Apples, but alas, it ends unhappily, thanks to a the ever-perplexing adults, and a tattle tale.
Besides the nutrition of eating the fruit, which come from a chance seedling in the orchard, whose apples are so sour even cooking them is no use, the game builds self-control and mind over senses. However, when only Peter succeeds, and he prays he may be the only one to succeed (to impress Felicity), Felix takes this as an affront, and they arrange a fair fight. But it is swiftly broken up when Cecily can’t bear to watch and tells an Uncle Alec, leaving the affair of honor unresolved.
The Story Girl points out one of Uncle Roger’s better points: he would have allowed the fight to continue. Cecily rightly takes blame for tattling on a wholesome fight. Her instinct, to stop all roughhousing and prevent any non-verbal contention, is all too familiar writ much larger, in civilizational terms. Long ago, it used to be that the state would only intervene in familial affairs and private feuds if public order was threatened, but for many centuries, the trend has been to make all private conflicts, all affairs of honor, criminal matters. Cecily’s sentiments got the better or her, and just so, men, and women especially, have labored to stifle the violent passions, by giving the state a monopoly on violence, even where its subjects, like well reared children, have a good reason for trying to settle a matter with their fists. #LucyMaudMontgomery #LMMontgomery #TheStoryGirl #storytelling #games #honor #children #adults #growingup #state #Hobbes #childrensliterature #childrensbooks #literature #books
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