As I have noted before, for an Enid Blyton blogger I don’t actually read as many Enid Blyton books as you might expect. In turn that means that I haven’t review as many as I could. Last week as I was looking for inspiration for things to add to my 126 Years of Blyton post I became more aware of the various gaps in the reviews. And I have decided to start remedying that with immediate effect!

I actually read The Secret Island recently way back in 2014(!) when I compared the text to a newer edition. That’s not a fun way to read, though, reading every sentence twice and constantly putting the books down to make note of (and mutter complaints about) the changes. I also didn’t review it at the time, though I had compared it to Hollow Tree House in 2013. That means that the list of Secret Series reviews comprises a brief post when it was Poppy’s book of the month, and a more in-depth review of Moon Castle by Chris. (I’m not counting the reviews of the TV series of course.)

The most hated of all Blyton’s characters?

Everyone’s going to have characters they like and dislike, and not everyone will agree on them. Generally the baddies are written to be disliked – though you can also still like them in a love to hate sort of way. For example Goon is awful and infuriating but I still love to read about him. Aunt Harriet and Uncle Henry are probably two of the worst characters Blyton wrote about. They hardy feature in the book – they are only around in the first three chapters and have relatively little page-time at that – and yet they are so, so awful that I absolutely despise them.

When we meet Peggy, Mike and Nora for the first time Nora is crying as she has been slapped six times by her aunt, for not washing the curtains well enough. This alone isn’t that shocking for 1938 as children were regularly smacked by parents (and teachers) for misbehaviour. From that alone you could perhaps imagine that life is mostly OK for them, except for the odd bit of punishment. By page two, however, we have had a very succinct description of the children’s lives. Their father built an aeroplane and then he and their mother never returned from a flight to Australia.

There’s a touch of exposition in these early pages as Mike tells Jack about their parents’ disappearance, with a level detail unlikely to be required by a boy who has known them since it happened. But it gets the information out there quickly so that we can move on with more important details, and child readers won’t mind this.

So from the lost parents we can move on to the effect this has had. As Nora says,

I know Aunt Harriet and Uncle Henry think they will never come back again, or they would never treat us as they do.

What she means by that is the three children have been taken out of school and now have to work in the fields and house. Again, this is not particularly shocking for 1938. Schooling was compulsory between 5 and 14, but despite the authorities’ attempts to deal with truancy many children fell through the gaps and were kept home to cook, clean, care for younger siblings, or go out to work. It’s perhaps less easy to believe that three well-to-do children were removed from school and never sent back, but if they had been in school in one area, then the authorities might well assume that they were attending a new school near their aunt and uncle. Things weren’t as joined-up then as they are today – and things still get missed today.

Anyway, having to help at home instead of getting an education is not great. But then, to look on the aunt and uncle’s side for a moment, they haven’t had a very fair deal, either. They’ve agreed to look after the children for a few months and have then found themselves as permanent carers, with the additional costs that that entails. So, perhaps the only way they can manage is with having them help out.  If the aunt and uncle were kind and cheerful, perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad. But they are not. They take three children whose parents are missing, and, as soon as it looks like the parents are dead, they turn those grieving children into servants.

Mike works dawn to dusk in the fields, Nora does all the washing, and Peggy does all the cooking. It sounds as if Uncle Henry still works, but Aunt Harriet has given all the household duties to the girls.  And then there’s the slappings, scoldings and shakings. The children seem very hard-working and conscientious, yet are punished severely for small mistakes and things that are out of their control – like Peggy here,

Yesterday I burnt a cake because the oven got too hot, and Aunt Harriet sent me to bed for the rest of the day without anything to eat at all.

And Mike, for his attempt at kindness in bringing her some bread and cheese, was caught and shaken

so hard that I couldn’t stand up afterwards. I had to go without my supper, and my breakfast this morning was only a small piece of bread.

In addition to these – which are presented as not out of the ordinary for the children – they are certainly underfed. The meals mentioned are mostly bread and cheese, which they sneakily supplement with things from the garden. As with all good Blytonian children they are scrupulously fair, and only take what they feel is owed to them as they are not given enough food for all their hard work. They are also lacking in clothes for the coming winter and are certain that they won’t be bought anything new.

So, over a few pages (though mentions of the cruelty are also made in later pages and chapters) we’ve got pretty strong reasons to hate Aunt Harriet and Uncle Henry. Aunt Harriet the most, I suppose, as she seems to sit back and do nothing whilst the girls slave, and are then slapped for the slightest mistake.

They have lost their parents and not only are they then not given any care or love, but in fact the opposite. They are shouted at and made to feel stupid and worthless, as well as being slapped and shaken. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m a parent now but I definitely feel a lot of rage about how Aunt Harriet and Uncle Henry act.

It probably isn’t a good idea to think too much about the workings of it all, but I have to wonder at the aunt and uncle’s motivations. Did they take in the children with the promise of payment, as they certainly wouldn’t have done it out of the goodness of their hearts? Did the parents have a good relationship with the aunt and uncle? Were the aunt and uncle decent people until their outrage at being left with three children (and they lost the money coming in) turned them cruel? Are they hoping that once Mr and Mrs Arnold are declared dead they can profit from the estate? Did they consider handing the children off to a children’s home but decided they’d rather keep them as unpaid servants?

I can’t imagine that Mr and Mrs Arnold would have left the children with anyone they thought could behave in such a way, so either they were good actors beforehand on they changed significantly along the way.

So many questions!

They are, though, essential to the story. Despite only appearing sporadically in the first thirty or so pages, they are the catalyst for the remainder of the novel. If it weren’t for their cruelty the children would not have run away and there would have been no story. If they hadn’t been so awful the children wouldn’t have been so desperate not to be found when the searchers are out looking for them. So Blyton had to write them as awful as they are, in order to make the story work.