So. Where to start? Missee Lee is almost unreadable to modern eyes. In the first few pages we have "Rum lot, the Chinese,"and "Don't any of you speak English?" The Chinese "smell awfully funny," (though Titty says,"just foreignness"), and of course they speak "gibberish." Then once we encounter Miss Lee herself, powerful and dynamic and fascinating character though she is, a female pirate who loves Latin and longs to return to Cambridge, she is ruined by speaking like this: "velly stlong man... alithmetic, tligonometly... It is ploper to lead some Loman Histoly..." Aargh!
But on top of all this, Missee Lee is just... not very good, at least at the beginning. The incidents that kick off the plot, the fire on the boat, Swallow and Amazon drifting apart in the night (is there some sailor's reason why they wouldn't have tied the two boats together?), Captain Flint locked up by the pirates -- I know it's supposed to be a story they've all made up together, but none of it rings true. Miss Lee herself is wonderful, and in the end very poignant, but her dialogue is so painful to read. Roger being the star of the Latin class is fun, but seems unlikely from what we know of Roger, and why aren't any of the girls learning Latin? Also, given that our protagonists are four girls and two boys, why does the cover show only the two boys?
I must say I was glad to get this one out of the way. It was even worse than I remembered.
It's a pity the book is so wrong on so many levels because Miss Lee is a wonderful character - the sort of strong female leader that authors are actively trying to write in childrens' books now, so Ransome was way ahead of his time in that sense. If only the attitudes and language weren't so very much of his time! As to Roger, the star Latin scholar - I like to think that maybe that was an in-joke amongst the Swallows as they 'made up' the story. Perhaps Roger always came home from school with his Latin report saying something like 'Roger is easily distracted in lessons and must try not to be impertinent to his Masters' and then the term before the winter holiday in which they 'wrote' Missee Lee, he managed a 'Roger has shown considerable improvement this term, but must continue to try hard if he is to achieve his best ....'
ReplyDeleteHa ha, love the idea of an in-joke about Roger! It does seem super unlikely that Roger might have a gift for classical studies (though who knows).
ReplyDeleteYes, I appreciated Miss Lee as a character much more this time round -- that she can be a competent, charismatic leader in her own right, not just because she's her father's daughter. Ransome was ahead of his time in many ways, but alas, very much of his time in others :(