Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
I thought there was a disconnect between the Colonel as time machine and Mrs. Bentley whose memories were discredited. My explanation is that the Colonel was remembering great events while Mrs. Bentley only held onto personal history and I have some sympathy for that, and for Mrs. Bentley's husband's advice to her to let the past go. However, and I say this with some trepidation given the battle in the Three Musketeers thread, I think that was due in part to the gender divide and that's a little more unsettling. It was natural that the boys would thrill to the memory of battles, but girls' lives are of value too, but perhaps not so much for the 12-year old Doug. Girls mostly figured tangentially at most in these stories.
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I agree about the divide. However, I didn't think that Mrs. Bently was treated differently because she was a woman. I think the disparity is in the fact that it was little girls who were the source of her misery. The little girls were patently awful. They didn't believe in old age and were only interested in being given things. I found this an interesting contrast with the boy's innocently portrayed desire for new shoes at the beginning of the book.