MOLESWORTH AND THE CLASS STRUGGLE
At this point I have lost anyone under the age of forty five, anyone outside the UK and anyone for whom the humour of the British public school, (read ‘private’ school for those reading this outside the UK), passed them by; the popular fascination of such institutions has long itself been a subject of interest. George Orwell famously explored the world of Boys Weeklies, the world of Greyfriars and Billy Bunter, in so doing incurring the wrath of no lesser person than Frank Richards who actually penned the Greyfriars stories. More recently the emerging phenomenon of Hogwarts has gripped children across the world, Christopher Hitchens observing children in the US arguing over which House they would be placed in. I can certainly testify to the glamour*of the public school for this working class boy, the first genre books I became addicted to were the Billy Bunter books** and the more anaemic Jennings stories.
Then I came across Molesworth.
The Molesworth books represent that phenomenon of books ostensibly written for children but with a sufficiently powerful sub plot to appeal to adults, possibly their true audience. It is a much more sophisticated world than that of Greyfriars, a world though trapped in a time capsule, the world of the 1950’s British Prep school, yet with a curious universal resonance.
Molesworth is the true subversive wit, albeit one who has yet to master the art of spelling, who sees through the shallow front presented by adults.
‘"Now listen scum,” he yell, “The last mum has departed in tears. You are in my clutches agane and there is no escape. And its going to be this way this term. More work, increased production, trades unions supresed and the first boy I hear who says poo gosh at a skool sossage will get 6. And strikes won’t help you. If you go out the shop stewards will be flogged. Remember this,” he leer, “you never had it so good.”
And, leaving aside Latin and French, any foreign language was felt to be far beyond the capacity of those in B stream at Meole Brace Secondary Modern, it was a description of school life, or should I say skool life, considerably closer to home than the world occupied by Harry Wharton, Bob Cherry, Johnny Bull, Hurree Jamset Ram Singh, Frank Nugent and Billy Bunter, the fat owl of the Remove.#
Corporeal punishment was still prevalent in those days and the threat of the cane, or more commonly ‘the slipper’ was never very far away and I was subjected to this form of punishment, raising my bottom to have pain deliberately inflicted upon it, a practice that seemed to produce a certain frisson for some teachers and possibly for the same reason seriously distorted the future sex lives of some civil servants, bankers and judges; the threat of such punishment featuring heavily in Molesworth.
What Molesworth understands is that the description of school life is a description of the dialectic of struggle, pupil against teacher, pupil against bully, pupil against parent, a life of small victories and major defeats
Growing up is a process of coming to terms with the fact that you never really get out of the playground, though, like Molesworth you can afford yourself daydreams of ultimate victory over the fellow weeds, sneaks, oiks, bullies, cads and of course the head boy, a certain D Cameron who most certainly once won the Mrs Joyful prize for raffia work. The ultimate daydream being depicted by Lindsay Anderson in the film ‘If’, when we can all imagine the joy of climbing onto the roof and cheerfully lobbying mortars and machine gunning the ‘adults’ down in the courtyard below.
But back to reality,
‘Well I mite hav expected it. The game’s up they got me just when I thort it was safe. So here I am back at SKOOL agane for a joly term chiz chiz.’
*The charm of such institutions however often passed by those who actually experienced life in the bog standard British Prep school. “One of the reasons I oppose Fascism,” W H Auden explained, “is that as a child I lived in a fascist state.” Not, as Alan Bennett observed, a remark likely to endear itself to anyone who had actually to live in a fascist state.
*Now out of print and collectors items.
# Presumably now one would need to reflect upon the fact that the boy clearly has emotional problems leading him to suffer from obesity.
HAPPY NEW YEAR
