On Living a Solitary Life: the Case of Elsie Eiler

Elsie Eiler and the Monowi town sign 

Photo: Reuters (2011)

I.  No Man is an Island

For Lawrence, who passionately believed in generating new forms of relationship and the establishment of an immanent utopia that he termed the democracy of touch, the idea of an individual living a solitary life was anathema and invariably ended badly (see the case of the man who loved islands, for example).  

As Aaron tells Lilly: you've got to be alone at times - and know how to be alone - but to just go on being alone is not only pointless, but impossible; sooner or later you begin to look around for other people with whom to form living connections.* Even Birkin, for all his talk of starry singularity and a posthuman world, knows that he ultimately needs to be part of a wider society. **

And Mellors, too, accepts that he can't stay alone forever in his forest hut; that he has to be broken open again and accept the pain as well as the pleasure that comes with a new set of social and sexual entanglements: 'There's no keeping clear', he tells Connie, 'And if you do keep clear, you might almost as well die'.***        

Yet the rather touching story of Elsie Eiler seems to demonstrate that, actually, isolation can be a splendid thing ...


II. The Case of Elsie Eiler

84-year-old Elsie Eiler is the sole resident of America's smallest town: Monowi, Nebraska, est. 1902. Everyone else, including her two children, has either moved away or, like her husband, Rudy, passed away (a fate that befell many other small communities in the Great Plains as the big cities exerted their pull).

But Elsie, a life-long resident of Monowi, can see no good reason to leave: it's her home, she likes it, and she intends to stay. And - contrary to what Lawrence might think - she's doing just fine and is perfectly happy.  

She still opens up the little tavern that she and her husband bought in 1971 - around the same time that the local grocery store and the post office closed - and passing truckers and travelling salesmen will frequently stop by for coffee and a chat. So, admittedly, whilst leading a solitary life, she's not entirely devoid of all human contact, like some kind of hermit.    

Elsie is also very conscious of her civic duties as Monowi's only resident. In her capacity as town mayor, for example, she is required to collect taxes and produce a municipal road plan every year in order to secure state funding for the town's four street lamps.

Elsie also maintains the 5000-volume library founded in memory of her husband, so she has plenty to read - and who's to say our relationship with dead authors isn't as vital as that with living beings? As a homotextual, I know I'd sooner live alone with a few good books, than in the company of most people ...

See:

* D. H. Lawrence, Aaron's Rod, ed. Mara Kalnins, (Cambridge University Press, 1988).

** D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love, ed. David Farmer, Lindeth Vasey, and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 1987).

*** D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover, ed. Michael Squires, (Cambridge University Press, 1983). 

'Population of one: the smallest town in the US', a 3 minute BBC film about Elsie Eiler and her life in Monowi: click here.


Thanks to Simon Solomon who kindly suggested this post and sent me a link to the above film.

On The Man Who Loved Islands

No man is an island entire of itself ...

In a much admired - and much discussed - short story, first published in the Dial in July 1927, Lawrence writes of a man who dreams of living on an island - "not necessarily to be alone on it, but to make it a world of his own" - and who, by the time he reaches the age of thirty-five, had actually managed to acquire such (on a 99-year lease).

The First Island

Initially, the man loved his new life as an islander. But then mysterious feelings came upon him; feelings that he wasn't used to and which made him uneasy. For once you isolate yourself on a little island, writes Lawrence, then your "naked dark soul finds herself out in the timeless world" and the spirits of the dead return to haunt you. Of course, it's easy to dismiss such thoughts and feelings as nonsense in the daytime. But at night, when the world is transformed by darkness ... well, then it's not so easy.

In an attempt to counter these feelings, the man spent huge sums trying to transform the island into a gay little community over which he could be the Master. However, despite all his best efforts to create a utopia in his own image, an invisible hand would always strike "malevolently out of the silence", causing sickness, bad weather, and misfortune - even one of the cows falls off a cliff (and that, as Sgt. Wells and his men will tell you, is never a good omen).

Lawrence delights in describing - in an almost Gnostic manner - the wickedness and cruelty that emanate from the world in its materiality: "Out of the very air came a stony, heavy malevolence. The island itself seemed malicious. It would go on being hurtful and evil for weeks at a time." Not surprisingly, therefore, everyone comes to hate everyone else upon the island and the man continued to be disturbed by the "strange violent feelings [...] and lustful desires" that it provoked within his breast.

At the end of the second year, some of the islanders decide to leave. But still the bills kept arriving: "Thousands and thousands of pounds [...] the island swallowed into nothingness." Things clearly couldn't continue as they were; the man was facing bankruptcy, no matter what attempts he made to reduce expenses. The island seemed to actually pick the money out of his pocket, "as if it were an octopus with invisible arms stealing [...] in every direction".

In the middle of the fifth year, he finally sells the island.


The Second Island

Despite making a considerable loss on the sale, the man who loved islands still loved islands and had no intention of returning to the mainland. Instead, he moves to an even smaller hump of rock in the middle of the sea, with a much reduced retinue. And on this second island there were thankfully no ghosts of long lost inhabitants: "The sea, and the spume and the wind and the weather, had washed them all out ..."

Thus the second island was completely inhuman in its elemental otherness and was no longer a world - merely a queer sort of refuge. Was he any happier? In a sense. But it was that strange kind of happiness that exists beyond desire:   

"His soul at last was still in him, his spirit was like a dim-lit cave under water, where strange sea-foliage expands upon the watery atmosphere, and scarcely sways, and a mute fish shadowily slips in and slips away again. All still and soft and uncrying, yet alive as rooted sea-weed is alive."

As the man who loved islands becomes increasingly inhuman, he ceases to care even about his own writing and it seemed to him that "only the soft evanescence of gossamy things" was permanent; that cobwebs mattered more than stone cathedrals, or books - or even love.

Nevertheless, he can't resist fucking Flora, his housekeeper's daughter, and thereby falling back into what Lawrence terms the automatism of sex. Naturally, he's eaten up with post-coital regret, for it leaves him "shattered and full of self-contempt". Worse, the very island now seemed tainted: "He had lost his place in the rare, desireless levels of Time to which he had at last arrived", and had fallen right back into wilfulness - and the paternity trap; because Flora is pregnant with his child.

Horrified at the thought of clocks and nappies and home, sweet home, the man does what a lot of men have done in his position; he scarpers - to another island bought at auction for very little money:

"It was just a few acres of rock [...] There was not even a building, not even a tree on it. Only northern sea-turf, a pool of rain-water, a bit of sedge, rock, and sea-birds. Nothing else. Under the weeping wet western sky."         

Quickly realising just how desolate the third island was and what effect it was likely to have on him, the man reluctantly decides to return to Flora and make an honest woman of her. Lawrence, however, isn't the sort of writer who affords his readers the opportunity to enjoy a conventional happy ending.

Thus, the new husband and father-to-be soon experiences the death of all desire for his wife. And the island became as hateful as a vulgar London suburb; a sort of prison. Even the birth of the child, a daughter, doesn't lift his spirits. Just looking at the baby made him feel depressed, "almost more than he could bear". He tried not to show his unhappiness. But all the while he was planning his return to the third isle ...


The Third Island

The man who loved islands had himself a little stone hut built, roofed with corrugated iron. Inside, he had a bed, a table, three chairs, a cupboard, and a few books along with supplies of fuel and food. There were also half-a-dozen sheep for company; "and he had a cat to rub against his legs". But soon, even the presence of the cat begins to irritate him and he starts to hate the sheep, forever breaking the silence with their ridiculous bleating:

"He wanted only to hear the whispering sound of the sea, and the sharp cries of the gulls, cries that came out of another world to him. And best of all, the great silence."   

It rained. In fact, it rained a lot. But, fortunately, he also liked the sound of the rain.

As the days shortened "and the world grew eerie", the man began to find all human contact impossible. When local fishermen brought him his mail and supplies, he found it painful to talk to them: "The air of familiarity around them was very repugnant to him." And he didn't much care either for the clumsy way they dressed. In fact, it's hard to tell which he hates more: the sheep, the men, or the repulsive god who made them: "To his nostrils, the fisherman and the sheep alike smelled foul; an uncleanness on the fresh earth."

As winter arrives, the man who loved islands sheds himself of his last vestiges of humanity and passes into the material world of things and elemental chaos, effectively becoming-island in a manner unimaginable to John Donne - as, indeed, it seems to be to many commentators on this story, who fail to grasp that a becoming often involves a fatal affirmation of difference, not only in its positivity, but in its demonic and self-destructive otherness.

Opening oneself up to alien forces is never easy and often deeply unpleasant; it's not a question of the man identifying with the island; nor is he merely engaging in an imaginative exercise. It's a real process at the molecular level of forces. As Deleuze and Guattari write, Lawrence is one of those rare few authors - a master of the dark arts - able to tie his writings to unheard of becomings that are often profoundly troubling and do not end well.

That's why, I suppose, many readers of this tale fail to recognise its importance and think it's simply an attempt to demonstrate that no man is - or can be - an island and that we need human company in order to secure our own humanity - as if that were the great desideratum or exclusive concern of man. Those who read the story in such human, all too human terms don't understand how our haecceity consists entirely of impersonal elements, unformed particles, and non-subjectified effects (or what Lawrence terms vibrations).

Anyway, let us return to the man who loved islands ...

"He felt ill, as if he were dissolving, as if dissolution had already set in inside him. Everything was twilight, outside, and in his mind and soul. [...]
      Only he still derived his single satisfaction from being alone, absolutely alone, with the space soaking into him. The grey sea alone, and the footing of his sea-washed island. No other contact. Nothing human to bring its horror into contact with him. Only space, damp, twilit, sea-washed space!"

Lawrence continues, in a series of passages that surely number among his finest and which are philosophically of great interest for what they tell us about time and language in relation to human being:

"He was most glad when there was a storm, or when the sea was high. Then nothing could get at him. Nothing could come through to him from the outer world. True, the terrific violence of the wind made him suffer badly. At the same time, it swept the world utterly out of existence for him. [...]
      He kept no track of time, and no longer thought of opening a book. The print, the printed letters, so like the depravity of speech, looked obscene. He tore the brass label from his paraffin stove. He obliterated any bit of lettering in his cabin. [...]

      He prowled about his island in the rain [...] not knowing what he was looking at, nor what he went out to see. Time had ceased to pass."

Sometimes, the man staggers and falls down from fatigue, or illness, or both. But he doesn't really care, as he had long "ceased to register his own feelings". Only the "dull, deathly cold" still made him fearful for his wellbeing and unlike Gerald Crich, he refuses to lie down and die beneath the heavy whiteness of the snow which had "accumulated against him".  

But, of course, ultimately, you can't defeat the mechanical power of the elements and one has to surrender completely if one is to push becoming towards what Deleuze and Guattari call its cosmic formula or immanent end point: a becoming-imperceptible. The man climbed to the top of a hill and looked blankly over the whiteness of his now unrecognisable island: 

"As he looked, the sky mysteriously darkened and chilled. From far off came the mutter of the unsatisfied thunder, and he knew it was the signal of the snow rolling over the sea. He turned, and felt its breath on him."

And that's the last Lawrence tells us of him. We are left to assume that the man who loved islands has accepted his mortal destiny; i.e, that all being is ultimately a being towards death and that death is that inanimate realm of bliss into which every straight line curves (or what Nietzsche terms the actual).  

'The Man Who Loved Islands' matters because it teaches the Heideggerean truth that Dasein can come to grasp its own nature only when it confronts the void and affirms the possibility of its no-longer-being-there - not because it reaffirms the importance of human community and/or family life.      

Notes

D. H. Lawrence, 'The Man Who Loved Islands', The Woman Who Rode away and Other Stories, ed. Dieter Mehl and Christa Jansohn, (Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 151- 173. All lines quoted are from this edition. For those who don't have the book to hand but would like to read the tale, it can be found, in full, online by clicking here.

The photo is of the Anglo-Scottish writer Compton Mackenzie, aspects of whose life Lawrence used in his tale of the man who loved islands. Mackenzie, who had been up until that point on friendly terms with Lawrence, wasn't amused at being made into a preposterous Lawrentian figure and at one point attempted to get an injunction against what he described as a lunatic story. This, of course, didn't go down very well with Lawrence, who in a letter to his publisher Martin Secker wrote:

"I'm disgusted at Compton Mackenzie taking upon himself to feel injured. What idiotic self-importance! If it's like him, he ought to feel flattered, for its very much nicer than he is - and if it's not like him, then what's the odds? [...] But as a matter of fact, though the circumstances are some of them his, the man is no more he than I am. It's all an imbecile sort of vanity."

See: D. H. Lawrence, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. VI, ed. James T. Boulton and Margaret Boulton, with Gerald M. Lacy, (Cambridge University Press, 1991), Letter 4196, (3 Nov 1927), pp. 205-06.

Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi, (The Athlone Press, 1996). 

John Donne, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624), see Meditation XXVII for the famous phrase 'No man is an island'. 

Readers interested in a sister post to this one on leading a solitary life (with reference to the case of Elsie Eiler), should click here.  

And for an alternative reading of 'The Man Who Loved Islands', see Stefania Michelucci, 'D. H. Lawrence's (Un)happy Islands', Études Lawrenciennes, 46 (2015): click here for the online text. 

Inhuman Rights

Michel Foucault - by Paul Loboda (2015)

Someone writes and asks:

"How can you posit a notion of rights when you subscribe to an anti-humanist philosophy?" 

It's a perfectly valid and legitimate question. And it's one which can best be addressed with reference to the work of Michel Foucault. For Foucault is, on the one hand, famous for his aggressive anti-humanism (influenced by Nietzsche), whilst, on the other hand, a great defender of the rights of various marginalised groups (prisoners, refugees, homosexuals, et al).     

Without falling back on the ideal of a universal human subject who possesses innate and inalienable rights in their capacity as such, Foucault argues that all people are governed within a network of power relations and that they do, at least, have this in common.

In other words, we are all citizens and this fact alone might provide a basis for solidarity. We have the right - and the duty - as citizens to question those who govern us and to call out flagrant abuses of power, the failure to act, or the failure to exercise due care when acting and thereby causing unnecessary suffering or hardship.

What's more, argues Foucault, individual citizens have the right to come together and collectively confront governments and take direct action themselves. We don't have to - and shouldn't expect to or want to - leave only governments free to act. Private citizens, says Foucault, have the right to intervene in the political order (thus his support for groups such as Amnesty International).

Rather than fantasise about human rights and the Great Family of Man, the key is to focus on civil rights and liberties, considered in their historical reality. As one commentator notes, Foucault articulates a conception of rights "that is open, contingent and revisable - and that does not rely for its moral or normative legitimacy on the idea of a universal human essence beyond power or politics".

In other words, Foucault's work opens up the playful possibility of "a tactical and strategic usage of rights that draws on the available resources of the law and liberal institutions in order to creatively and radically contest them".

Notes

Michel Foucault, 'The rights and duties of international citizenship', trans. by Colin Gordon (2015). Click here to read online at opendemocracy.net 

The above text was a statement read by Foucault at a press conference on 19 June, 1981, organised in association with Médecins du monde and Terre des hommes. It first appeared in print (with the rather unfortunate title) as 'Face aux gouvernements, les droits de l’homme', in Liberation, 967, (30 June/1 July 1984), p. 22. Click here to read in the original French. 

Ben Golder, Foucault and the Politcs of Rights, (Stanford University Press, 2015). 

See too Golder's post on the SUP blog entitled 'Human Rights Without Humanism', from which I quote above: click here. 

Gerontophilia: Notes on Elder Rights and Ageivism

Maggie Kuhn (1905-1995)

Founder of the Grey Panthers

I recently expressed support for elder rights in a post on gerontophilia and the beauty of old age. Now someone has emailed to ask if I would expand upon this, explaining the reason for my personal interest in this subject ...

Just to be clear: I don't myself have any involvement with any elder rights political movement or activist organisation. I admire her, but I'm no Maggie Kuhn.

However, in my capacity as a full-time carer for a woman in her nineties during the past thirty months, I've gained an insight into some of the issues faced by senior citizens; including vulnerability to abuse and the way in which cultural and social perceptions of age, disability and dementia, can impact negatively on the lives of those deemed to be over the hill at best, or useless eaters at worst.
    
And I've witnessed how even those who genuinely seem to care and should know better - medical health professionals and social workers - still behave in an outrageously patronising manner towards their elderly patients and clients.

It must be terrible to be marginalised due to the presence of a few grey hairs and wrinkles. But to also be infantilised and talked down to as if one were a child - or talked about as if no longer even present - must greatly intensify one's sense of disempowerment and humiliation. 

Diminished physical or mental capacity and an inability to use the latest technology, doesn't make someone an idiot or any less deserving of respect and a little kindness. Nor, on the other hand, does old age necessarily make any wiser, sweeter, or more innocent. The elderly have all the same vices (and virtues) as everyone else and should be accorded all the same rights.        

I'm sympathetic, therefore, to the concept of activist ageing and interested in the thinking that is said to underpin it - ageivism - even though, philosophically, I obviously have problems with any ideology that refers to principles of identity and social justice.

As I said, I'm no Maggie Kuhn: and I'm certainly no Issi Doron either. I just want us all to be able to see something beautiful in old age (even if that something is death).           

Note: readers interested in Israel Doron's ageivism project can visit his website by clicking here.

Gerontophilia: Notes on Beautiful Old Age

Carmen Dell'Orefice

Beautiful young women are freaks of nature; beautful old women are works of art.

Although I wouldn't identify as a gerontophile, I can certainly see the attraction of the older person - or even the much older person (especially if that older person happens to look like Carmen Dell'Orefice).   

D. H. Lawrence writes of men and women who have ripened like apples, "full of the peace that comes of experience / and wrinkled ripe fulfilment". That's the secret of their loveliness, he says.

However, I think we might challenge this vision of what constitutes the beauty of old age. For it's a vision that perpetuates myths of passivity and sexlessness: old people are soothing, says Lawrence, "and dim with the soft / stillness and satisfaction of autumn".

One only seeks out an elderly partner, he suggests, "when one is tired of love".

Lawrence seems to find it inconceivable that people of mature years may possibly want more and offer more than slippers and cocoa; that there are, in fact, many sexually active and sexually desirable individuals in their sixties, seventies and beyond.           

To be honest, it's a little surprising to find Lawrence peddling this line of thought. For not only was he himself married to an older woman with an insatiable libido, but in an article written around the same time as his poem 'Beautiful Old Age', Lawrence insists:

"We all have the fire of sex slumbering or burning inside us. If we live to be ninety, it is still there. [...] In youth it flickers and shines; in age it glows softer and still, but there it is."   

His position on this question - as on so many others - is therefore fluid and ambiguous.

My own position is that anything that counters our culture's marginalisation and infantalisation of senior citizens and not only protects but promotes and advances elder rights is a good thing.     

Notes

D. H. Lawrence, 'Beautiful Old Age', The Poems, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), Vol. I, p. 437.

D. H. Lawrence, 'Sex Appeal', Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 143-48. 

I might have chosen to say more about gerontophilia, but, unfortunately, the reserach data is almost non-existent - even Kinsey can't help us here. I'm not sure why this is so, but perhaps it's related to the fact that unlike some other forms of paraphilia - such as paedophilia, for example - gerontophilia has never been regarded as a problematic mental disorder. Indeed, as one commentator points out, gerontophiles find themselves in a category of deviancy that usually lends itself to mockery rather than moral panic. See: Jesse Bering, Perv: The Sexual Deviant In All Of Us, (Scientific American / Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2013).

Those intrigued by this topic might be interested in the romantic comedy-drama Gerontophilia, (dir. Bruce LaBruce, 2013), which tells the story of a young man who takes a job in a nursing home and develops an attraction to an elderly resident in the facility. Click here, to watch the trailer. 

For a related post to this one on elder rights and ageivism, click here.

Why I Write Such Excellent Posts

Friedrich Nietzsche: Little Thinker - 

Übertoy by The Unemployed Philosopher's Guild

I am one thing: this blog is another ...

Before I speak of the posts themselves, let me address the question of their being understood or not understood. I shall do so in a cursory manner; for the time hasn't arrived for this question. My time hasn't come yet either: some of us are born posthumously.

One day, perhaps, scholars will critically assess Torpedo the Ark. But I'd be queerly mistaken if I expected to find a large number of readers for my posts today. The fact that I presently have so few followers and that no one quite knows how to comment actually makes perfect sense.      

Not that I should like to underestimate the pleasure I have derived from the innocence with which some of the posts have been read. Often, those who think they have understood something in my work - not only about the subject being discussed, but about me as the author of the text - have merely adapted something in it so as to best reflect their own image or ideal.

Others, who seem to understand absolutely nothing about the blog or the spirit in which it's written, deny there is anything in it worth considering at all; they dismiss the posts as merely clever exercises in style.

Of course, I do have some exceptionally smart readers. But I must confess that I rejoice more in the thought of those who do not read me and faithfully follow those intellectual stars of social media who are very much of this time. Torpedo the Ark is for the few and it is read at a certain cost. For be warned, other blogs - particularly philosophical blogs - may lose their attraction after reading this one.

In other words, regular reading of Torpedo the Ark refines (some might say spoils) one's taste and restricts one's ability to enjoy other writers. For there are no finer posts than mine; they occasionally attain to the high point of intellectual endeavour: cynicism.

To capture their meaning one must possess the most delicate sense of irony and the lightest of touches. Any kind of moral seriousness or sincerity excludes one from the space in which they unfold; one needs quick wits and nimble fingers.

The beautiful souls - false from top to bottom - do not know in the least what to make of my posts - consequently, they regard the blog as beneath them. But I no more write for beautiful souls than I do for those who are made ugly with resentment.

When I try to imagine the character of a torpedophile I always picture a monster of courage and curiosity - in short, a thought adventurer who is happy to wander outside the gate into that realm of dangerous knowledge of which Zarathustra speaks ...  

Notes

This post is part pastiche, part homage, and part new (mis)translation of the chapter 'Warum ich so gute Bücher schreibe' in Nietzsche's Ecce Homo: Wie man wird, was man ist, (written in 1888 and first published in 1908). 

Click here to access the full text (in German), part of the Digital Critical Edition of Nietzsche's Works and Letters (eKGWB), ed. Paolo D'Iorio and published by Nietzsche Source: click here for further details of this edition.    

English translations of Nietzsche's Ecce Homo have been made by (amongst others) R. J. Hollingdale, (Penguin Books, 1986) and Duncan Large, (Oxford University Press, 2007).  

Notes on the Brodie Set

The Brodie Set: the crème de la crème of 
Marcia Blaine School 

Although reduced in number in Ronald Neame's film adaptation of Muriel Spark's novel, the composite characters who make up the cinematic version of the Brodie Set remain the crème de la crème ...

I. Jenny: the Sexy One

Jenny - played by Diane Grayson - is the natural beauty of the group; a Rose by any other name. She possesses instinct, but no insight and is, according to Miss Brodie, like a heroine in a novel by Mr. D. H. Lawrence, with a profile of deceptive purity and a willingness to cartwheel on command, primitive and free.

Thus it is that Jenny will one day be famous for sex; destined - in Miss Brodie's mind - to become Teddy Lloyd's lover and not merely his model. But Jenny is of no real interest to the randy art master and Miss Brodie's fantasy of her erotic value and Nietzschean potential to rise above the common moral code is woefully mistaken.

Jenny is, in fact, just an ordinary girl; more a pint of semi-skimmed milk than crème de la crème. She wants to be happy, like her parents; people who have sexual intercourse in the marital bed, lights off but nightclothes on, and don't have primes like Miss Brodie.    


II. Monica: the Plain One

Monica - played by Shirley Steedman - was good at maths and quick of temper. And although a rather histrionic child, easily moved to tears by poetry and tales of lost love, Miss Brodie ultimately thought her to possess very little soul. It is also Monica whom she initially suspects of betraying her.

Personally, however, I like Monica very much: she seems to me the sort of girl one might have a lot of fun with; always happy to go places and to do things. 


III. Mary McGregor: that Silly, Stupid Girl

Ah, Mary McGregor - played by Jane Carr - is the most malleable of the four girls, thus her attraction for Miss Brodie. Slow-witted and stuttering, she is bullied by one and all, meekly bearing the blame for everything that goes wrong. Sadly, as Sandy rather cruelly says: She died a fool.


IV. Sandy: the Clever Little Cat 

Sandy - played by Pamela Franklin (with such brilliance that she won a BAFTA for her performance) - is Miss Brodie's confidante. And thus, of course, best able to put a stop to her ... 

Miss Brodie thinks Sandy dependable, but far from her prime: it's a fatal misjudgement. For by the age of seventeen, Sandy has developed into a young woman of great insight and sexual precocity; something that Teddy Lloyd is quick to recognise and exploit, happily taking her as his mistress.

Miss Brodie also thinks Sandy would make a great spy. But Sandy is ultimately an assassin who regards her former mentor as a ridiculous woman. She also comes to understand the Brodie Set as an essentially micro-fascist formation; faithful to their leader and expected to serve, suffer and sacrifice.

Sandy clearly loves Miss Brodie and was closer to her than any of the other girls. But that's why she has to one day go too far and betray her; for we reward our great teachers not with loyalty, but by losing them so that we can at last become ourselves.

Judas was the greatest of disciples. And Sandy was the greatest member of the Brodie Set: the clever little cat that got the cream and learned how to kill without concern.   

Read: Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, (Macmillan, 1961).

Watch: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), dir. Ronald Neame, written by Jay Presson Allen, starring Maggie Smith in her Academy Award winning prime.

To view the original trailer for the above film, click here.

Please Sir!

There are numerous British films set in schools, many of which I strongly dislike - particularly those that are issue-based and offer viewers a grim and sanctimonious lesson on class, race, or teen delinquency. Sentimental bullshit masquerading as social realism always gets my goat. 

Ironically, however, one of my favourite school films - Please Sir! (1971) - is said to have been inspired by just such a movie; James Clavell's To Sir, With Love (1967). Well, technically, it was the ITV sitcom of that title, created by the scriptwriting duo Esmonde and Larbey, that ran for over fifty episodes between 1968 and 1972, which took its inspiration from the latter.

Although it's difficult to see much of a resemblance between John Alderton's Mr. Hedges and Sidney Poitier's Mr. Thackeray, it might be noted that both young teachers manage to win the affection of their often unruly pupils by treating them with fairness and respect. 

Like many successful sitcoms of the period, a big screen version was released to cash in on its popularity. Unlike most of these, however, this film works as a film and isn't merely an extended episode.

Indeed, Please Sir! has much to recommend it, not least of all the presence of Joan Sanderson as the formidable deputy headmistress Miss Ewel and the very lovely Jill Kerman as Penny Wheeler. Richard Davies' performance as the Welsh science teacher, Mr. Price, is also a joy to watch.  
 
And if La La La Lu (I Love You), featured on the film's soundtrack and sung by Cilla Black, isn't the greatest pop song ever written, I prefer it to Lulu's To Sir With Love. Readers can decide on the merits of each track for themselves by clicking on the links provided.

And to watch the UK trailer for Please Sir! (dir. Mark Stuart, 1971), click here.

5C Class Photo - Fenn Street School

Why I Love Carry On Teacher

Print by artandhue.com 
based on the original film poster

Carry On Teacher (dir. Gerald Thomas, 1959) is the third in the long-running Carry On series of film comedies and one of my favourite movies set in the classroom (as it is one of Morrissey's) ...

It features Ted Ray, who does a sterling job in this, his only Carry On role, alongside the usual suspects. Leslie Philips also puts in another ding-dong performance in what, sadly, will be his final Carry On until the much mistaken last entry in the series, Carry On Columbus (1992), once voted the worst British film ever made.    

Fans of classic seventies sitcom Man About the House, will also note the presence of a young Richard O'Sullivan as one of the Maudlin Street pupils (coincidentally, he's even named Robin).

And finally, since we're discussing the cast, special mention should also be made of the very wonderful Rosalind Knight, as the severe (but sexy) Ministry of Education Inspector, Miss Wheeler: that hair! that face! those clothes! 

But, apart from the actors, what is it that I love about this film so much?

It's the fact that, like all of the early Carry On movies written by Norman Hudis, it has a warmheartedness and a gentle good humour that's hard to resist; a quality that was lost over the years and films that followed as sentiment was increasingly sacrificed for sauciness and character gave way to caricature. 

Of course, there's nothing wrong with bawdiness and some of Talbot Rothwell's scripts have elements of genius. But one increasingly finds the sight of Bab's bursting out of her bikini top less amusing than that of Miss Allcock ripping her shorts. 

Notes

To watch the Carry On Teacher trailer on Vimeo, click here. 

For a sister post to this one - Why I Love Carry On Cruising - click here. 

Clan Mackie (Or How We Can All Play Identity Politics If We Want To)

Elizabeth Jane Hall née Mackie 

(my maternal grandmother)

As a rule, I don't like to play identity politics or think in terms of blood and soil; ethnonationalism and a tedious obsession with ancestral roots always seems to have ugly (often fatal) consequences.

However, it may interest some readers to know that I can trace my own history to a Lowland family who were part of the now armigerous clan Mackie; i.e., a clan presently lacking official status or standing under Scots law, failing as it does to have a chief recognised by the Lord Lyon, King of Arms.

The name - familiar to many as the makers of ice cream - is the Anglicised form of the Gaelic MacAoidh, meaning 'Son of Fire'. One might have assumed that the clan coat of arms would therefore have a flame on it, or perhaps a phoenix rising, but it actually has a couple of dead ravens (shot through with an arrow) and a lion.

I don't mind that, but have to admit to finding the clan motto - labora - rather disappointing. It seems to me that sons of fire are sent to set the world ablaze, not to toil.

Equally disappointing is to discover that the clan Mackie doesn't have its own registered tartan, that they (we) are obliged to borrow one of the tartans belonging to the Mackays (of whom the Mackies are but a sept).

Still, it doesn't really matter ... I feel as if I belong more to the punk clan McLaren than to the Mackies, to be honest.

And that's the point: it's our cultural affiliations, our ideas and tastes, that make us who we are and friends and strangers ultimately mean far more to me than kith and kin. For whilst blood is thicker than water, I know which I prefer to see flowing ...     

Notes 

For an earlier post which also addresses this question of blood and water, click here. 

For more info on the clan Mackie, click here.