Slide 3:

How Malory Towers, as a boarding school setting drew me in the beginning. Being a
part of an all-girls convent set in the day-school scenario, as most of us were, the
prospect of pranking your teachers, playing badminton when and where you wanted to,
having sleepovers, and such, drew me in.
In hindsight, this was probably one of the main reasons why I became a part of BITS
which is on the other side of the country, instead of joining Jadavpur University, much
to the chagrin of my grandparents.

Slide 4:
Blyton is hardly a common source of feminist inspiration. But with Malory Towers’s
emphasis on women’s potential, it arguably chimes with current conversations around
gender. Indeed, the stage production of Malory Towers is billed as “the original ‘Girl
Power’ story”.

Slide reading

It is, at times, a problematic kind of feminism, which rejects traditional femininity and
domesticity almost completely. But for her time, Blyton was subverting prescribed
gender roles. Instead of talking and reading quietly—then considered ideal activities for
young women—the girls spent their time “pounding about the lacrosse field”. At the end
of the series, Darrell, Sally and Alicia were going to college at St Andrews. The others
picked suitable careers. There was no talk of husbands.

It’s such an empowering picture of girlhood for young people today. Nobody is asking
them to conform to anything.

That’s something to celebrate, perhaps with lashings of something stronger than ginger
beer.

Slide 5:
The purpose was not to look into faces of rage and bitterness but of hope and truth.

The books are set in a stable, unchanging, enclosed, safe little world – which we all
hanker for at some time or another, and I suspect more than ever now that everything
seems to be going to hell in a handcart.

Slide 6:
 1. Darrell - Darrell Rivers is the main character in the Malory Towers series. She is
a character with a terrible temper, which she struggles throughout the books to
control. She is sunny-natured, fiery, and determined to be kind, although she is
sometimes rude to the people she doesn't like. Somewhere or another, I always
thought of myself as Darrell and really looked up to her!
2. Gwendoline Mary Lacey, nicknamed Dear Gwendoline Mary, is one of the main
antagonists of the series. She came to Malory Towers at the same time as
Darrell. Gwen is vain and shallow, attaching herself to any new girl she thinks is
glamorous, rich, or gifted. I personally hated people like Gwen and sometimes
still do.
3. Alicia Johns. She is mainly the joker of the form, although she is also well
known for her sharp tongue and quick wits. She is incredibly intelligent and
excels at everything. She scorns stupidity, illness, and most weaknesses, having
not been often ill herself. Very strangely, Alicia was the kind of person I wanted to
be back then, having true wit and a very sharp tongue. Darrell in particular was
quite envious of Alicia as she didn’t have to work hard to excel at anything.
Something that’s shared by most of my close friends, unfortunately.

Slide 7:

The girls helped each other out. If somebody got bad news from home—or it was
discovered that a new girl was acting out because of difficult personal reasons—they
went out of their way to make things easier for her, often collaborating with the
teachers. All pocket money had to be handed to the school matron, who would ration
out an appropriate amount every week. All treats were shared. Even punishment was
collective: bad behaviour could result in a complete social boycott, until the offender
repented.

Apart from this, personally, the lack of romantic entanglements was like a breath of
fresh air. Girls don’t need boys to create drama, they’re very much capable of drama all
by themselves.

Slide 8:

Since the 1930s, when she became a bestselling writer, Blyton has been consistently
popular and problematic. Executives at the BBC considered her a “tenacious
second-rater”, banning her and her works from its programmes and dramatisations for
almost 30 years.
Malory Towers isn’t perfect. The girls are ridiculously exclusionary—their sensibilities
very specifically English middle-class, and to not be “sensible” was to be an outcast.
Gwendoline was relentlessly bullied for her “silly” display of emotions, others from
different backgrounds were considered “experiments” and were let go if they were
unable to fit in.

The matter of Blyton’s class snobbery, racism and sexism is rampant across her novels.
But beyond the unmistakably white lineup, there are anachronistic elements of Malory
Towers that patently need modernising if they’re to be adapted for new forms – the
fat-shaming for one.

Slide 9:

When I was young, I compulsively read and reread the books in Enid Blyton’s St Clare’s
and Malory Towers series. Most afternoons after school, I would curl up in bed with the
books spread around me. While reading about Blyton’s schoolgirls eating “tongue
sandwiches with lettuce” and wizard “jammy buns”, I would nibble on clumsily folded
slices of bread.

Even, and especially, at a young age, I felt like I would never be accepted in Blyton’s
imaginary world of English boarding schools. It filled me with a kind of self-loathing.

My feelings for the girls were passionately ambivalent. When Hilary Wentworth, the
head girl of St Clare’s, moved to India where her parents lived, I was filled with an
anxious dread, feeling instinctively othered. Daughters of colonizers, I knew, would
never have been friends with me. I made up stories in which I, like Carlotta who had
grown up in a circus and was “dark like a gypsy”, was part English.

In this pretending-to-be-white avatar, I conspired with the girls at Blyton’s schools to

boycott the ones who had been spiteful. I forgave others. I learned that acts of goodness
could cancel out misdemeanors. So we forgot Daphne’s stealing because she also saved
Mary-Lou from falling off a cliff.

What this demonstrates, is how impressionable and vulnerable we are in the face of a
story, particularly as children.

Slide 10:
But children around the world continue to love Blyton and her stories about magical
things in fantastic lands, children solving mysteries, and escapades at boarding schools.
She wrote some 600-odd books which have sold more than 600 million copies.

Malory Towers is especially close to my heart because my class teacher in my fifth grade,
Ms Philomena D’Cruz recommended it to me. She was integral in the shaping of my
entire personality and one of the people responsible for me being the way I am. Every
time I re read Malory Towers, I remember her and that is why the series is so close to
my heart.