Book description
St Mary's Hospital School - the motto: through obedience comes
learning, through discipline comes obedience. Humiliating enough that it
should be proudly emblazoned on the front of the gymslip, the breat
pocket of the stiffly starched blouse, the little open-fronted
waist-length cape - that fastened so tightly at the throat and that she
wore of occasion over the top - and just about every other item of
clothing to boot. As a statement of intent that fine embroidery spoke
volumes; the crossed crook-handled canes as a heraldic device was of
particularly questionable value, practically openly stating to the world
that here was a young lady subject to the kind of physical chastisement
that most would have assumed had long been consigned to history. But
then again, the uniform itself was a thing of the past, an anachronistic
throwback to long-obsolete values and the mentality of
seen-but-not-heard, quiet-as-a-mouse submissive femininity. Bad enough,
then, that she was way past school age - worse still that the
institution in question was little more than the outcome of a gleam in a
psychologist's eye. Elsewhere, another young womnan, already resigned to
her ugly green and white striped nylon prison uniform dress, was
beginning to appreciate the real meaning behing the nomenclature:
Victorian Workhouse. Both have in common that they are at loggerheads
with their respective guardians, both are volunteers having been
persuaded of the advisability of building a financial buffer before
starting university, but more importantly before undertaking mounting a
legal challenge for their inheritance and rights. The financial return
for a 90 day residential clinical trial had seemed too good to be true -
perhaps it was. For both these young women it had been far easier to
hoin than it was was turning out it would be to leave - there was always
some obstruction, some excuse, some extension to their stay, justifiable
by one clause or another. Both young women were now learning the hard
way that freedom could be as tenous as a spidery signature scrawled on a
crumpled document. St Mary's Hospital School - the motto: through
obedience comes learning, through discipline comes obedience.
Humiliating enough that it should be proudly emblazoned on the front of
the gymslip, the breat pocket of the stiffly starched blouse, the little
open-fronted waist-length cape - that fastened so tightly at the throat
and that she wore of occasion over the top - and just about every other
item of clothing to boot. As a statement of intent that fine embroidery
spoke volumes; the crossed crook-handled canes as a heraldic device was
of particularly questionable value, practically openly stating to the
world that here was a young lady subject to the kind of physical
chastisement that most would have assumed had long been consigned to
history. But then again, the uniform itself was a thing of the past, an
anachronistic throwback to long-obsolete values and the mentality of
seen-but-not-heard, quiet-as-a-mouse submissive femininity. Bad enough,
then, that she was way past school age - worse still that the
institution in question was little more than the outcome of a gleam in a
psychologist's eye. Elsewhere, another young womnan, already resigned to
her ugly green and white striped nylon prison uniform dress, was
beginning to appreciate the real meaning behing the nomenclature:
Victorian Workhouse. Both have in common that they are at loggerheads
with their respective guardians, both are volunteers having been
persuaded of the advisability of building a financial buffer before
starting university, but more importantly before undertaking mounting a
legal challenge for their inheritance and rights. The financial return
for a 90 day residential clinical trial had seemed too good to be true -
perhaps it was. For both these young women it had been far easier to
hoin than it was was turning out it would be to leave - there was always
some obstruction, some excuse, some extension to their stay, justifiable
by one clause or another. Both young women were now learning the hard
way that freedom could be as tenous as a spidery signature scrawled on a
crumpled document.
