As this now
out-of-print novel was lacking a blurb or cover illustration, I was expecting
from the title for it to be something about an incorrigible Regency rake, or
similar. I was definitely not expecting this to be a story about a family of
five home-schooled girls just after World War II.
It opened
with an alarmingly chirpy attempt at quirky humour, and for the first few
chapters I thought it was going to be simply a warm, fluffy book about an
eccentric family. Something didn’t feel
quite right, however – something dark lurked beneath the main character, Morgan’s,
desperately bright laughter and her excessive affection and protectiveness towards
her mother. Throughout the novel Mrs Harvey is treated as being delicate and in
need of care – even a minor argument has her in bed for days, and she is
completely housebound.
As the novel
progresses we see just how insular and shut out of real life the girls are
(especially contrasted with their older sister, Pandora, who has married and
lives in London), and how much they yearn for even the slightest forbidden social contact
with others.
In spite of
the deliberately light-hearted tone (or perhaps because of it), I found Guard Your Daughters deeply unsettling.
Looking at other reviews out there, it seems that it’s intended as a warm,
emotional tale with a certain touching poignancy, but I really am unable to see
past the tragedy of an entire family living stunted lives, and the most
disturbing part, for me, is that the they seem entirely unaware of it, and
perfectly contented. It made me think of Emma Donoghue’s novel Room, in which we see the story through
the eyes of a young child who has never left the shed in which his mother has
been imprisoned for the past few years.
So yes, I
found it really quite bizarre and disturbing. It’s either an extremely clever
and subtle exploration of mental illness affecting a family, or it’s an
incredibly badly judged cosy comedy. I still can’t decide which.
Next up: The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
