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Wilkins' Tooth and The Ogre Downstairs
206 Plays13 days ago
'He could only think of one solution: "Should have been me to hit you, I suppose. I will if you like."'
Revenge, violence, and several attempted murders [yakety sax].
(tw: it's a DWJ but this one has more than the usual amount of discussion of child abuse)
Transcript available here. Next week we will be discussing Dogsbody! Also, there were some technical issues resulting in somewhat messy audio for both this one and the next one, we beg your patience on these early episodes.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Diana Wynne Jones' 1970s Works
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to the second of our eight days of Diana Wynne Jones in the 70s. This is our cheat recording where we do two books in one for reasons that we're going to talk about. I'm Rebecca Framel. And I'm Emily Tesh. ah Thank you very much for joining us again. yeah If you didn't listen to the first episode, go and listen to that one.
Is Wilkins' Tooth Two Books in One?
00:00:19
Speaker
It was cool.
00:00:20
Speaker
Yeah, oh sorry episode two. Yeah, this is the cheat episode. This is two books in one. But I don't think it's that much of a cheat, because I would say really, it's kind of one and a half books. Yeah, maybe one the first. And we actually so we had to sort of talk ourselves into doing Wilkins tooth at all. I think originally, our thought was that we were going to start with eight days of Luke. Because as we said, last episode, it's brilliant. And it's paradigmatic. And you should go listen to that episode. um and And she does say he wrote it first.
00:00:48
Speaker
yeah But I don't think she did.
Comparing Eight Days of Luke and Wilkins' Tooth
00:00:50
Speaker
I swear to her that she wrote Wilkins Tooth first. So this is in Diana Wynne Jones' book Reflections. Wait, hang on. Let me pause, rewind. So this is a podcast about the works Diana Wynne Jones, our favourite author. Yes.
00:01:05
Speaker
and know us both And we are doing roughly one book per episode for eight episodes ah but this is the episode we're breaking the rules because Wilkins Tooth is not much of a book. There, I said it.
00:01:19
Speaker
It's, compared to any other author of the 70s, it's fun. It's charming. It just doesn't have as much there-there as literally any other Diana-win-Jones. Right, it's fine. I would read it to my kid. ah It's a perfectly fine book. But the thing is that like with Diana-win-Jones, you go she wrote a book that was just fine. It's just it's just fine.
00:01:40
Speaker
Yeah. um But it is the first book she ever wrote, the first children's book she ever wrote rather. And it's clear that she's still working out what she wants to do and hasn't quite hit it. but There are one or two moments, but yeah, she's got some patterns in here, some like turns of phrase that we're gonna see again. And later, Diana, when Jones, you can sort of see her picking up bits and pieces that she's going to use again, or sort of refine or flip around in later books.
00:02:06
Speaker
which makes it really interesting to read and talk about, I think, even though as a book, it's fairly simple and fairly
The Plot of Wilkins' Tooth: Revenge and Witches
00:02:12
Speaker
straightforward. Right, the essential conceit of Wilkins Tooth is our heroes, ah Frank and Jess. And that's interesting, actually, Jess is I think the Only female hero? Female protagonist that she does in the 70s? Well, unless you count Ginny in Ogre Downstairs, who does have a section of her own where she's the point of view character, but we'll get to that. Oh, and actually the spellcoat's 1979, but that's quite a long way off at this point. Yes. But Frank and Jess are our protagonists, and it's not the kind of very tightly focused point of view character that you get in quite a lot of Diana Wynne Jones. It's not, for example, Eight Days of Luke.
00:02:51
Speaker
which is all about David. um There's quite a lot of slippage around. Is this book about Frank or about Jess? They're kind of a unit. Yes. And they have no money because ah they're in trouble with their dad. He stopped their pocket money. And this is annoying to them. So they start up a little business ah ah where they promise to get revenge. Yes. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Yeah. Oh, back limited.
00:03:16
Speaker
ah It's limited, they say, because there are some things they won't do. But they immediately take on some bad ideas, and a bad idea, from the very person that they're trying to avoid, which is the local bully buster, who wants them to go get a tooth for a tooth ah from their their neighbor, um who knocked out one of his toots the other day, the titular Wilkins.
00:03:35
Speaker
Right, so they go to find um Vernon Wilkins, ah who's their neighbour, who's the boy with the paper round. And it turns out that Buster was attacking him at the time that he punched Buster and knocked out Buster's tooth. And there's a whole lot of like trails of consequences in this book, where it's very much I for an eye makes the whole world blind. ah it Things just keep going wrong.
00:03:58
Speaker
So they're offering to get vengeance for more and more people and it keeps going more wrong because they end up tangled with the local vengeance specialist which is of course the witch Biddy Ironmonger. not ironmonger or imonger I kept making that mistake. I kept assuming it was iron monger. But the joke is, obviously she's an iron monger. She sells iron. So they find themselves impinging on the business of the local witch who is very annoyed with them, and they find themselves in more and more trouble because of that.
00:04:29
Speaker
And the question ultimately is, can this increasingly large gang of children tangled up in the vengeance business, and there's like 16 of them by the end. It's not like this is what I mean about the kind of diffuse protagonist, like, in a way, childhood itself is the protagonist of this book, you get more and more and more of them, and all of them are a unit in the end.
00:04:54
Speaker
the collective protagonist working against Biddy the Witch. Right. And the question is, can they get out of her her wicked coils and survive all her various curses and evil magics and get their own back? And will they learn the very important lesson? Because this is a book with a very important lesson, which is that you probably have 70s and you have to have very important lessons in children's books.
Lessons on Revenge and Justice in Wilkins' Tooth
00:05:16
Speaker
Right. And she's trying Diana windows is trying to write her first children's book. And so it's got to have a very important lesson in it. Unlike we're allowed to look back now, unlike eight days of Luke, where I would say the very important lesson is that ah it's possible to have relationships that bring you a great transcendent joy and also transcendent sorrow and pain, ah which is perhaps I think I think you could argue that eight days of Luke is trying to give you some valuable advice about emotional abuse.
00:05:43
Speaker
That's true, the gratitude, the important advice that that Odin gives to Luke. ah but We're not talking about eight days of Luke, we're just stop talking about Luke, which we love. Do about Walkins' Tooth, which is just fine. Right. Which has a very important moral that probably you shouldn't do bad things to people, even if it's in the name of vengeance. And you probably especially shouldn't take money to do bad things to people, because that will probably bring problems on your head eventually. And you know what? That is true. Do not become a paid vengeance consultant. That's a bad idea.
00:06:12
Speaker
um But I guess the the book is interested in justice and in yes, like which actually it has in common with eight days we're allowed to look back. um This idea of right and wrong and of the injustice that children are dealing with all the time, the the it's not fair, or that's not fair, or now you owe me 10 P but I owe him five P.
00:06:33
Speaker
um so they they're like the amounts of money they're talking about are small sums this is the early 70s so i think it is pre-decimalization so they're not that small sums but they are fairly small and they the children are like ah keeping meticulous track of this ledger of debts and who owes who and who owes who what and um the tooth the titular tooth is just one more part of like the the ledger of debts that they have to keep track of at all times. this is It's not fair. And it is very fun and clever how she weaves all of them together, the sort of chain that she builds, picking up more and more neighborhood children as they go.
00:07:10
Speaker
um And there is some stuff about the gang of neighborhood children that sort of prefigures things that she's going to be quite interested in later on. Class is a big question with this neighborhood these neighborhood kids. um There's the kid who lives in the Big House. There's the Wilkins family who are servants in the Big House. There's Frank and Jess who are sort of you know upper Well, you can probably talk to that more than me having a better yeah british system here. Yeah, there's Frank and Jess are probably up a middle and my main tell for that is they call their mother mummy. But there is the bit where they meet the Bustonells gang and these this is the gang of kids who who live in town.
00:07:53
Speaker
ah who appear to go to school with them. But when- Yeah, all the kids go to school with each other. yeah they They all know each other. and They all go to school together. Their younger siblings are in the same class. ah But that gang, when they meet Frank and Jess early on, someone one mocks them. Frank and Jesse squeak someone and like, oh yeah, that is working class mocking middle class silly posh accent.
00:08:17
Speaker
But Frank and Jesse aren't that posh because we also encounter and this I have to say is a early book get an editor Diana, Frankie and Jenny. Yes. Who are different characters to Frank and Jess. Yep, I think she even calls it out. Yeah, there's a whole bit where Frank is like Frankie, can we call you Francis instead because like this is really confusing. but Frankie and Jenny are um ah weirdly like gothic fiction trope where they are the displaced heiresses of the big house who now live in sorrow and one of them has a disability and they're living in like the rotten remnants of the old mill with their mad artist aunt. And they're
00:09:00
Speaker
the upper class fallen on that hard times. Yes, then you have Martin, who is the boy who lives in the big house now. And that's the new variation. He has a pony. Everybody has a pony. Except for Wilkins, except for Wilkins, who is and this is actually plot critical. Vernon Wilkins. Yes, has a younger brother Silas Wilkins, there is some confusion about whose tooth exactly gets given to the witch.
00:09:26
Speaker
But Vernon and Martin are friends and become friends, even though one of them is like the son of the house and the other one is the servant who needs the money. Wilkins is also, I think, possibly the only non-white character in like early 70s Diana Wynne Jones.
00:09:41
Speaker
Certainly in early 70s. I think she's going to have a couple more later and we will talk about that But I believe that he is he's explicitly ah ah West Indian and he is certainly the only West Indian character I think the only black character from our world at least who shows up in the entire course. yeah I think so I think so and she does All right. I mean Vernon Wilkins himself as a Diana wind Jones kid. He's you know, he's a certainly in a pretty Diana Jones view. The cast of thousands. We'll talk about the cast of thousands at some point. Yes. But in like, Jones does have like repeated stock characters who come back. The cricket boy is a big one. Yeah, rather vague man. The sexy PhD student. The horrible, evil, older woman who is my mother.
00:10:31
Speaker
because and and who is that in England? Very clearly an explicit way. But I think Vernon Wilkins belongs in the category of like tough teenage boys, along with a Douglas from the yoga downstairs. Yes. Tough but upright, tough but fair. Tough but fair.
00:10:48
Speaker
like We respect Vernon. yeah But the as far as, oh I was going to say something about the stock characters. Oh, right. You but you mentioned the vague, the vague older man who we'll see again. So many times. But i'm so in this book, he's a bit, and get well, so this book, again, the first book she wrote, we talked a bit in Eight Days of Luke about how unexpected it is that Astrid comes into the narrative. It becomes sort of a player. And in this book, it is entirely expected the way the adults are completely out
Adults in Children's Fantasy
00:11:16
Speaker
of the narrative. I mean, expected for a book of the time, not expected for her. I think as well, it's it I mean, she's she's almost shining a light on how weirdly the adults are actually behaving, in ignoring the entire like fantasy vengeance plot happening right under their noses. ah There's a sequence where the children are sort of hunting through the big house looking for the heirloom
00:11:37
Speaker
which they have to get in order to break the curse. There's a really elaborate chain plot going on. Right. um And they're being chased by Bustanelles gang who have ended up sold into slavery to the witch because an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, they they this is part of the trades that have been made. And you know, these these kids are running, screaming, calling for help. And you have the guests go that row of heads turned as they all streamed past, like gracious, what languish. The whole row settled its rugs on its knees and washed with interest. Jess could have shaken them all. None of them so much as asked if they needed help. And then I say said a guest that won't do.
00:12:14
Speaker
Help, said Jess. I beg your pardon, said the guests. I'll bother you then, said Jess. Right. the The adults are completely explicitly weirdly in a realm of their own, which is also a theme that she's going to hit later um when she sort of returns to this this idea of that there's something supernatural about the way that adults in these books can't be counted on.
00:12:38
Speaker
when you want to be able to count on them. like There's nothing, you know, in other books, and certainly when we talk about Ogre later in this episode, we will talk about adults who can't be counted on because they can't be trusted because of who they are. But there's nothing in any of these kids' families, except maybe the extremely gothic sisters and their extremely gothic run-down mill, to indicate that their parents are particularly bad parents or abusive parents or anything like that. They're just not involved in this narrative. They're just not interested. And I don't know about you, but when I reading Wilkins tooth for the first time, I saw a vague adult man come down and wander into a situation. I'm like, Oh, I know a Diana win Jones vague adult man. That man is going to be on the ball. going to be all this somehow so are not easy He's just vague.
00:13:23
Speaker
he yeah well And it i mean it does turn out that he is in fact the core of the whole vengeance plot is that Biddy is angry that this man married someone else and not her.
00:13:35
Speaker
Yep, which comes a bit out of nowhere. And you're like, I kind of feel like there's a different book you wanted to write here. Yeah, to be writing the children in an elaborate vengeance game. You you kept finding yourself with more children involved. instead um It makes me think of there is in reflections in one of the early essays, the children in the woods, which is one of the few essays which is not ah explicitly for you know, this or that publication. It's a genuine meditation on her own work.
00:14:04
Speaker
And it makes her think of how she talks about children playing in the wood, and she can see them out the window when they're in a ah fantastic world of their own. And they're playing Let's Pretend. And in in this essay, Jonas talks about how fantasy is play and it's social. um And it is closely ah interrelated with the concerns of childhood of um experimenting around ideas of justice and fair play.
00:14:29
Speaker
But mostly what I was thinking actually, if you look out the window of a house facing onto a English countrywood now, you're not going to see children running about by themselves. Oh, absolutely not. That's really not a thing in the same way. this In fact, this is one of the ways this book feels dated in a way that's quite unusual for Diana Wynne Jones. These children are running wild and I don't think they'd be allowed outside on their own this much anymore.
00:14:58
Speaker
No, definitely not. And that is something, you know, when she talks about the fantasy tradition that she's pulling on, and the children's book tradition that she's pulling on, and she talks about the world of separation between children and adults. And that's something that's true in children's literature. You know, it's one of the the sort of touchstone stories that Diana Wynne Jones tells about herself is getting one Arthur Ransom book a year to share amongst her and her sisters.
00:15:22
Speaker
So the thing about Arthur Ransom is that it's one of those classic children go off on their own, they're having an adventure, occasionally they get a telegram from their father. Um, it's the she quotes the telegram, it's the don't be duffer's telegram. Oh, yes. That's the advice. Better better drown than duffer's if not duffer's won't drown, which when I first read it, I found very confusing because of course, telegrams don't have punctuation because I was like, better drown than duffer's if not. Duffer's won't drown? What?
00:15:50
Speaker
Yeah. and Right. I was seven, if that helps. yeah
00:15:57
Speaker
So that's that's the world. That's what she grew up on. That's the children's literature that she grew up on. And in the 70s, that's still a kind of children's book that you can write, but getting increasingly less so. And increasingly, I think you sort sort of feel how implausible it is to her it feels to her, that the adults are not more involved in what's happening and how difficult it is to keep this sort of secret world of witches and revenge and bargains.
00:16:20
Speaker
from the adults in their lives. And we'll we'll get to that in Ogre, I think, which is intensely about that. Absolutely.
Themes of Isolation in Wilkins' Tooth
00:16:28
Speaker
I think and there's a bit at the end where um the witch Biddy eventually traps all 15 children in her witch's hut, in sort of a magical universe, if you like, where they will never be found. And they say, you can't do this, our parents will come and get us. And then she says, no, your parents can't find you here. And it's horrifying.
00:16:48
Speaker
yeah um that that the it's possible to cut children off so completely from the adult world. And there's it's clearly a moment of evil, which I do think is interesting in sort of the context of this kind of children's world, children's book. ah No, yeah in Swallows and Amazons do you get the feeling that it's evil to go to Wildcat Island. Right. And before that, there's, you know, it's the reason that they start accumulating these extra children is they, so one of, you know, Buster, who is the bully, sells his gang into servitude to the witch in order to get his revenge on the Wilkinses, which means that but because of the wrong tooth, they accidentally curse Silas Wilkins instead of Vernon Wilkins, and the whole chain gets chaotic.
00:17:30
Speaker
But then one of the boys in the gang has he has several younger brothers. Most of the the brothers have been included into the gang sold into servitude, but the youngest brother who didn't do it comes up to Frank and Jess and says, you have to help me because my mom's going frantic because my brothers aren't turning up because they keep getting called away to go do witches this time.
00:17:52
Speaker
which is even what that is what the book is called in the US actually is which is business rather than Wilkins tooth. I don't know why they made that change. It's a bit weird. Yeah, I don't know why. but I mean, I mean, the witches business is the business of vengeance and is the business they start. But Wilkins tooth is A better title, I think. Yes. And more directly what the book is about, you know, tooth for tooth for a tooth, et cetera. But because their parents are starting to notice and the brother, the little brother is so stressed by what's going on, he comes and he hires Frank and Jess to fix the situation for the bullies, which is how they end up sort of integrating with the bullies. Yeah, because it's on the lions. Yeah. Yeah.
00:18:31
Speaker
That's by the end of the book, it is an alliance across like the class lines and across um sort of all the differences between the children because what they all have in common is they are children, and no one will listen to them. So they have to sort things out themselves.
00:18:45
Speaker
Um, and they go immediately to, I mean, this is something that's, I think a little bit of a continuity among eight days of Luke and Wilkins tooth and ogre downstairs is the climax comes about because of a story that one of them has heard before. They recognize the myth that they're in, or they start to recognize the myth that they're in and they're like, Oh,
00:19:04
Speaker
I bet this will work for me too. I bet we can pull in you know an old an old story on this witch and convince her to turn herself into a mouse so that the cat will eat her. This poor cat, by the way, there's this this cat that the witch has doing her bidding who is clearly miserable, who ends up getting getting his own eye for an eye when he eats the witch. But it's it's because they have that story in the back of their mind and are able to pull it out.
00:19:29
Speaker
that they're able to get away. Yeah, this idea of if you like the sort of this the underlayer of of myth that children have access to is then a set of tools, a practical toolbox for how to solve every situation you are in, including ah when you are imprisoned by a witch.
00:19:45
Speaker
Yes. It's Puss in Boots is is what they say, ah yeah which is it's the end of the Grimm's fairy tale Puss in Boots where Puss goes to the wizard and says, well, can you turn yourself into an elephant? Wow. Can you turn yourself into a mouse? Oh, wow. And then he eats the mouse.
00:20:00
Speaker
Right. And, but it is like a fairly, as you pointed out, it's a pretty horrifying situation that they are in before they're able to figure themselves out or they're trapped in nothingness. They're all frozen. Only I think Frank and Jess have this protection that they've been given against the evil eye by is in the classic gothic tradition that's given to them by a woman who's in in the sanatorium in the big house.
00:20:24
Speaker
who turns out to be the mother of the little gothic children who's forgotten who she is. Right, there's a whole lot going on there. There's just never really gone into it. It's a it is a very gothic story. It's just and Frankie just don't really notice it's happening. Like they notice as much as it's sort of relevant to their plot, but they don't really care that there's a brand epic romance. And these tragic kids accepted as much as they're like, well,
00:20:48
Speaker
it's it's too bad about the tragic kids. Right. I think there's a whole thing with of the way magic works in Wilkins tooth is it's very invisible and very deniable right up till the last minute, which is another point of commonality, actually, with eight days of Luke, this idea that the magic can almost be passed off as manipulations and coincidences and charm. And then at the last minute, like oh, and she can literally physically turn herself into an elephant or a mouse. And then that mouse can be eaten. And then by applying the the magical rules of the situation, we can ah overturn the magic and break free and set all the wrongs to rights and everything is going to resolve itself very quickly in the way that Diana Wynne Jones books almost always do. Yeah, pretty much. It is interesting how fast she goes through a climax, isn't it? Yeah, sounds really noticeable later on, like the more complicated the book is, the harder the climax goes and you go,
00:21:41
Speaker
What? Yeah. I remember flying hemlock to me several times. Oh my god, we fire and hemlock. I suspect that when we when we get to fire and hemlock, this is going to be twice as long as usual because there's just so much in fire and hemlock. Whereas I feel like we're kind of running out of things in Wilkins tooth. The only thing I really wanted to pick up was ah gender. Yeah, like I kind of mentioned already the fact that Jess is like her one female protagonist.
00:22:06
Speaker
for a really long time and there's this one little moment that jumped out at me when Jess is with the two younger girls Frankie and Jenny and a woman comes up and says aren't they sweet you must feel like a little mother to them. Not quite really, Jess said.
00:22:20
Speaker
Well, Frankie and Jenny sat side by side in the sofa like two fierce mice and glared. I do love Frankie and Jenny. They're such awkward. They do. They need different names, but they are very charming, gothic, weird kids. Yes. But I think that, you know, to to go back to sort of how how horrific the supernatural situation is, I think it's really, and to segue into Ogre. Yes. There's something that she says about these two books in Reflections.
00:22:45
Speaker
where she's talking about the basic premise of the ogre downstairs, which is a blended family. um You know, there's there's two-step kids on one side and three-step kids on the other side. ah They're all horribly afraid of and and hate their the new stepfather. even Even his kids sort of gradually come around to being anti the stepfather. um And each side of the family gets a, the two middle kids or the younger kid on one side and the middle kid on the other get a chemistry set to play with.
00:23:13
Speaker
that start setting off various ah magical chain reactions. And what Diana says about this is, thoughts figure is magic, and magic is a metaphor for thoughts. The basic idea is a kind of pun. What possible alchemy can make a set of people only yolk together by every marriage, start liking one another. Take alchemy to be magic chemistry, and there it is. The book is meant to function like a dream. You participate in a violent action full of hate and fear, but you're naturally horrified when ah Johnny pours blood about and tries to land the ogre one with the vacuum cleaner, which will get there.
00:23:42
Speaker
And then she says, I was handling a situation basically more appalling than the one in Wilkins' Tooth, one that needs serious things said, and the magic metaphors prove wonderfully useful here. And I think it is so interesting that she describes the situation in The Ogre Downstairs as more appalling than the situation in Wilkins' Tooth when you end up with 16 children trapped in a magical nothingness forever where they can never get out paralyzed in their own bodies.
Wilkins' Tooth vs. Ogre Downstairs: Fantasy vs. Reality
00:24:07
Speaker
But Wilkins' Tooth is a book that's sort of fundamentally unreal.
00:24:11
Speaker
yes i take one place it's it's It's a sort of it's a fairy tale of a book. It's a chain of action and reaction. But there's, you know, the reason that it feels light is because there's not really anything that's going on in these kids lives that is being or about these kids that sort of being refracted through this story, particularly.
00:24:29
Speaker
There's no teeth in it, you don't don't care about Frank or Jess very much. I mean there are teeth, there are quite literally teeth. made there's no pike yeah he doesn't it doesn't It doesn't hit you the way, ah ah it that doesn't do what I think of as like the Diana Wynne Jones thing of like really dragging you through a character's suffering, if you like. right But the ogre downstairs, despite the fact that at no point are these kids in any equivalent peril in Wilkins Tooth, really does hit you in a variety of ways when you start going through it.
00:25:06
Speaker
The ogre downstairs. I mean, I initially, when we were first talking about this project, I was, I said, let's skip ogre because like Tooth, I do think it is a light and lesser Diana Wynne Jones. She has, she hasn't hit her stride yet. A lot of it is very direct magic metaphors, puns. A lot of it is a 1970s problem book. And the problem is that your parents have remarried. How will you resolve this? And I don't think the resolution works. We'll get there. No. But there's a lot of there there when you start digging. I was and I think it's so solid. It's so good. And it's so much about
00:25:49
Speaker
I mean, this is the first of many, many books, I think, where you start to see Diana Wynne Jones writing about siblinghood and unhappy families in ways that resonate. Yeah.
00:26:01
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I found it very interesting. She does talk about this a lot in reflection, she ah was constantly putting people from real life, people she really knew into her book. So she said, it's completely fine, because no one ever notices. And then you get to the final essay reflection, which is by Jones, it's by her son. He noticed mum. Anyway, in the yoga downstairs, Jones says that both the effectively the main character Caspar, who is the oldest son of of one half of this blended family. So Sally has three children, Caspar, Johnny and Gwynny. And the ogre, I think his name is Jack, but it's hardly ever mentioned. The ogre has two sons, Douglas and Malcolm.
00:26:45
Speaker
They're Scottish. We'll come back to them being Scottish. But Casper is based on Diana Windgeau's own oldest son. And so is Douglas. So these two boys are, if you like, two portraits of the same real person.
00:27:00
Speaker
ah pardon who start out as opposite poles, and then by the end, most of the book is in Casper's point of view. Yeah. And Casper increasingly starts thinking, oh, me and Douglas are quite a lot alike, aren't we? But this is the thing that like, it's the book is about finding those points of commonality of similarity, because Casper and Douglas are alike, but also Douglas and the ogre are alike. ah and Malcolm are alike. And And Johnny and Malcolm are alike. right But not Gwynny. Gwynny doesn't get one of those echoes. His idea that like all these male characters are in sort of reflective conversations with each other. No, Gwynny is like their mother. There are various points throughout the book where, you know, especially once you shift to Gwynny's POV section, and she's tell yeah maternal. but but One of the first things she thinks is she's, you know, Malcolm is being ill for reasons that we'll get to. And it says that she starts feeling very maternal about Malcolm.
00:27:57
Speaker
And then when the mother leaves, what she does three quarters of the way through the book, Gwynny initially starts being like, I'm going to make the ogre think that I'm taking Sally's place. I'm sort of making his bed. I'm sort of baking. I'm sort of doing.
00:28:11
Speaker
the woman in the family things. And initially it's because she's trying to poison him. Yes, but yeah because it is great that she's trying to poison him. But also you're absolutely right. um There is this incredibly gendered book. This is a book I was very much about. Well, it's about masculinity again, which again, looking back to yeah Eight Days of Blue is another book about masculinity. i We're allowed to look back. yeah that lives like and these books exciting and They were written in the same year. They seem to have been written in like the same like eight month span of insane creative outpouring. And they are talking to each other. ah But the ogre downstairs is if you like situated much more in the real world, much less in the mythic mythic only sort of and nips in with the little like magical magical puns.
00:29:00
Speaker
yeah joke via via the via the alchemy sets. Well, and the other thing that the mythic does, and both in this book and in Wilkins tooth, you know, it's about sort of bonding together these kids that are initially at odds, like a chemistry bond, there's the pun, but there's, there's something that I thought was really interesting also in one of the last two essays, one of her sons, I think it's the second one,
00:29:19
Speaker
mentions that she loved Georgette Heyer, which is something that she never mentions in any of her essays. And the thing that, I was thinking about this in Ochre downstairs, because the thing that the wacky situations in Georgette Heyer do is the same thing that the chemistry set does, which is put these people in cahoots with each other. They're people that are initially at odds, and then they are in a situation where they suddenly have to band together to stop the Hans Aquinas. And it's funny. And and that's but it's funny.
00:29:44
Speaker
ah Because the organ onset, I do find horrifying. It has some really horrifying undertones, but a lot of it is really, really
The Role of Magic in Family Bonding
00:29:50
Speaker
funny to read. yes um the The whole sequence of Gweny trying to poison her stepfather. She's so heroic about it as well. So this is quite late in the book. This is after their mother has had a horrible argument with the ogre.
00:30:04
Speaker
but then let's build it up. The children have got themselves into various kinds of trouble using the magic ah chemistry sets, which the ogre it did give to them, not realizing they were magic. um The ogre and Sally have thrown a party and the magic has tried to so break into the party in the form of giant toffee bars, which have come to life and started breeding.
00:30:27
Speaker
And the children are desperately trying to prevent. If you like these sort of, um I think the metaphor here is is that the the toffee bars, the the toys coming to life is the children themselves. We're not just like things sitting in the background of the house.
00:30:42
Speaker
We are personalities exploding all out everywhere. You can't keep us out of your adult lives. right and that's um so I was thinking about this. It's the the reflection of parentification, right? Because so much of this book is about parentification. its the ogre sort of has The ogre has no interest in parenting these kids. so You keep trying to send them away to boarding school. You send them away. He's he's appalled because he used to send Douglas and Malcolm away and now they're all at home and he just doesn't know what to do with them.
00:31:07
Speaker
but the douglas And he was when like, Douglas, like given the choices, ah he he'd still rather be at home than a boarding school and he hates his father too. Exactly. And then Douglas and Casper end up increasingly taking on these parental roles towards the younger ones. And you see it in the way the younger ones start reacting to them when it it starts out, we can't let the ogre know and eventually they go off and start doing more things. It's like, well, we can't let Douglas and Casper now. And then you then they all end up with these, and there's Jenny in the maternal role which we've already talked about, and then they all end up with this responsibility for these awful little creatures who keep making trouble. They don't know what to feed them any more than the ogre knows what to feed these kids. It's the same thing over and over, and um but what ultimately comes of this like awful party, which it goes horribly wrong, and eventually they try to like destroy the toffee bars by melting them in the bath, and but it causes
00:31:57
Speaker
And this felt very real to me, like the kids are messing around with the bathroom upstairs, the bath has leaked and spilled over, and now there is water dripping from the ceiling and the water is tinged brown for unclear reasons. So you're like, you can just see the horror on the guest's faces of this party. And the guests are all drunk, I think it's quite clear that the guests are all drunk, but one of them just sits in the stairs and starts laughing and won't leave, and then has to push him out of the way. Right.
00:32:24
Speaker
um but The outer of all this, right, is that the ogre demands to know who's responsible, and Johnny, very bravely, because he is scared of the ogre, says it's him. yes And then Malcolm, who is sort of Johnny's opposite number on the other side of the blended family, says and it's his fault as well, it was both of us. And the ogre beats them both. yes Hard enough that Johnny cries his eyes out, and that Malcolm can't get out of bed the next day. yes And we then discover from the other children from Douglas that the ogre and Sally stay up shouting at each other until three o'clock in the morning. And then Sally leaves and she's not there the next day. And it becomes clear that Sally is looking for an escape route, she is going to get her children away from this man who hits them.
00:33:15
Speaker
yes not and just her children, all the children. She's going to shake all five of them. Right. And so Gwynny decides that what needs to happen is the ogre needs to be put down. Right. it She sees it as a moral duty. She doesn't want to do it. She's not happy about it. ah But what else is she supposed to do? He's a monster. And at this point, she's also like a bit unclear about what's happened to Sally because she's just woken up and Sally disappeared. And the ogre lies the children about it. And it's yeah, this is I think actually presented as his greatest evil, not you know,
00:33:46
Speaker
beating two small boys after death, the worst thing he does is he lies to the children. And it doesn't occur to him that there's anything wrong with doing so. And that this comes back to Jones's interest, I think, in the injustice of childhood, that it's deeply unfair to lie to children about where their mother has gone. Yes. I think realize it's unfair. Ginny has to point out to him, you know, they have this argument after so she tries to poison him.
00:34:12
Speaker
I've got to read out the description of the poison cake. She she she regrets it when she thinks he's eaten it. And she wakes him up, and she tells him, oh, that cake was poisoned. And I put the chemicals in it. He said, well, the chemicals are supposed to be non-toxic, so that's probably fine. And then she says, well, I put six of mommy's sleeping clothes squashed up in it.
00:34:29
Speaker
and detergent and the bottle from the cupboard that says poison and some fire lighter and ammonia. And then I rolled it on the floor to get germs and spat on it for more germs. And instead of sugar on the outside, I put the burning kind of soda and I think it ended up awfully poisonous.
00:34:48
Speaker
And then at that point, he takes it seriously. And at that point, I think that the idea that this, ah we don't know how old any of these kids are, my guess is that Gweny is like eight or nine. So to me, Gweny is about eight, Johnny is in the bigger school, so he's 11, Casper's maybe 13 and Douglas 14.
00:35:05
Speaker
ah Douglas has gone through his growth gri because he looks like an adult, which is significant throughout the book. There's a great description of like this. The door on the other side of the landing was torn open and Douglas like a giant aroused entered the fray. Douglas was almost as tall as the ogre and old enough for his voice to have broken. So that the roar with which he charged down on Casper was shattering. Leave him alone. He's younger than you. He tore Casper and Malcolm apart. The banisters reverberated. Casper protested. Malcolm accused. Johnny and Gwynny yelled at Douglas below.
00:35:34
Speaker
the rules of the ogre became a continuous bull-like bellowing. So it's all these chains of like, who's older than who? Who's responsible for who? Who's allowed to hit whom? That's, you know, right. There's the violence in this book, right? This is a book about violence. This is a book about male relationships that are modulated through violence. And this is the only way to make sense of those relationships.
00:35:59
Speaker
Yeah. but The whole section where um Douglas hits Johnny. Yes. He turns to Casper. Do you see that? Right. It's Casper's Johnny's older brother. Right. So but so they they're trying to work out. Does Douglas have the right to hit Johnny? And and I love it. You might say something, Casper. He hit me. Did you see him? Yes, I saw him, said Casper. It was hard to know what to do about it. Douglas was technically the eldest and no one denied the eldest his right to thump younger ones who cheeked him. And Johnny had cheeked Douglas.
00:36:29
Speaker
And Douglas had not hit him hard. And Casper had no wish to stir Douglas up in case he remembered about the night the ogre caught him, which is a previous episode in the story where Douglas promised he was going to beat up Casper later. ah But of course, Casper was really Johnny's elder brother, not Douglas. He could only think of one solution. Should have been me to hit you, I suppose. i wouldn't that is one of those passages that has lived like rent free you in my mind since I read this book because it's just it says so much about the way these kids see the world and the way these kids see their relationship with each other and their place in the universe right it's but it's just insane logic and it does it kind of makes me want to like go and get hold of my brothers and be like is this how your relationship worked as teenagers like right is is this what it is to be a man
00:37:17
Speaker
I hope not. It seems terrifying. Within the world of the ogre downstairs, it's very clear that the relationships and masculinity are relationships and violence. of Who has the right to commit violence against another person? The ogre clearly feels he has the right to hit any any male child in his house. There's never any sense that he would hit women. No, absolutely not.
00:37:40
Speaker
ah But any male child can be beaten by the ogre and he does. Douglas has the right to hit the younger ones at school. And there is this a brilliant episode where Casper and Malcolm find themselves magically body swapped. And Casper is forced to literally live out a day in Malcolm's shoes and discovers that Malcolm is having literally the worst time of anybody. Oh my god, we have to talk about if we're talking about masculinity, we have to talk about Malcolm because And this is something that I completely missed when I read this book as a kid.
Family Dynamics and Masculinity in Ogre Downstairs
00:38:10
Speaker
But Malcolm is having problems because he is not fitting into the traditional molds of masculinity. And you see this in the way that Douglas treats Malcolm differently. Like, Douglas douglas and the ogre are differentiated because the ogre has never taken time to get to know Malcolm.
00:38:23
Speaker
And Douglas knows Malcolm better than anybody. And so the even though Douglas and the ogre are so often paralleled, and Douglas will casually hit Casper or Johnny, he says, I never hit Malcolm because he gets sick when I do it. Last time he got hit, I stayed up half the night with him. So he you know he sort of draws this line around you know who can take it and who can't. He's very protective of Malcolm.
00:38:46
Speaker
Right, but it's also very clear that Malcolm can't take it. And that the other children at this new school that he's been sent to after ah spending quite a lot of time at a boarding school where he's acquired a very posh accent and the other kids, including Casper, are constantly making fun of the way Malcolm talks. Yes.
00:39:03
Speaker
Oh, he does buy Jove, does he? Said Kasper. Malcolm's posh accent always set his teeth on edge. hm And that's, you know, the the episode of the power dynamics between Kasper and Malcolm in particular are so fascinating because the fact that Malcolm has the posh accent and went to boarding school clearly makes Kasper and the fact that Malcolm keeps his room tidy and is smart and is, you know,
00:39:27
Speaker
much better notes on the chemistry experiments when he's experimenting with magic with magic and and none of the others think of that he's a little nerd but that's not how which I you know affectionate um but that's not how Casper sees it Casper sees it as Malcolm thinking himself as better than him and they're close enough in age that there's sort of this this weird leveraging where Casper Casper feels the need to sort of put Malcolm down because he thinks Malcolm is setting himself up above him Casper is one year older than Malcolm, which Douglas sees that you know every time Casper uses physical force to intimidate Malcolm, which is frequently. Douglas quite rightly comes charging in and is like, he's smaller than you. He's younger than you. You're one year older.
00:40:07
Speaker
but right But also Malcolm really needs that defending because Malcolm can't handle the violence. Yes. so um And even at school, it's Casper who has to step up and punch Malcolm's bully for him while he is disguised as Malcolm because even at school, these these relationships between ah boys are all about who's punching who has the right to violence who can take it.
00:40:28
Speaker
Yes. And he only notices when, you know, again, it's the literalization of the metaphor. He has to put himself in Malcolm's place. And he suddenly notices that what he thought was Malcolm's superiority is desperate loneliness. And the fact that Malcolm, you know, there's there's this great line and this parallel between Malcolm and the ogre.
00:40:45
Speaker
ah you know, they're looking at each other and Malcolm and Casper's body is like, I can't tell what you're thinking. And Casper and Malcolm's body is like, I know everything you're thinking. I guess my face is very expressive. and Malcolm's face doesn't show anything at all. Right. And that is later like pointed out as the similarity between Malcolm and the ogre that they've misunderstood ah the ogre because they can't tell what he's thinking. Right. We'll come back to that because I don't think it quite gels.
00:41:13
Speaker
Can we talk now about the fact that Malcolm is named Malcolm? and Yeah, go on. but So again, thinking about the stories that ah that Diana Wojodz puts in these books, I think you were the one who pointed out that they were Scottish, ah which is Scottish.
00:41:28
Speaker
flew me back. There's a whole sequence of like, Casper being baffled that the ogre likes porridge, right? A very like, cliched way to describe a Scottish man enjoying his breakfast. Yes, 100%. And you know, Douglas and Malcolm joke about their Scottish interest, ancestry, and then late in the book, their Casper invents a Scottish aunt and they're about to go driving off. She lives in a thing of me, a Glen. Right. But I was like, wait, they are Scottish.
00:41:58
Speaker
Is this book Macbeth? And yes, it explicitly is Macbeth very, very early on when they're starting to mix up the chemistry set. there're They're all sitting around. It's Gwynny, Johnny, and Casper sitting around the chemistry set making horrible smells in a cauldron. And Gwynny says, we look like a witch's convent. Casper looks like a devil looming through the smoke.
00:42:21
Speaker
So it's Macbeth right from the beginning. And then later on, so what happens later on towards the end of the book? And then again, I think this is where gender comes into it. It's the fact that Winnie is the first person to try and murder the yoker. First, but not the last, to be clear, there are multiple multiple attempts in this evil stepfather.
00:42:39
Speaker
But thats that's Lady Macbeth. She's going in, she's gonna Lady Macbeth it, and then she she gets stays up, she's haunted by nightmares about it. She leaves the poison out for him, and then she's terribly tormented by the thought of it. And she yeah she she tossed in turns on her bed, she has terrible dreams. The first time she woke up, she told herself she did not repent of her crime, not in the least. All she had done was to rid the world of an ogre quickly and quite kindly. The others would say she had done right.
00:43:06
Speaker
And then then she starts to feel deceitful because she's she's tried to make his bed and she's tried to be motherly. um she's She wanted to give him the idea she was looking after him now that Sally was gone. And then she began to think that this had been deceitful of her. She had no business to let the ogre think she liked him enough to make his bed and give him cakes. That's also Lady Macbeth. That's Lady Macbeth making a fuss of duck before she kills him.
00:43:28
Speaker
And then like Lady Macbeth calling Macbeth, she thinks she has to call for Douglas to get rid of the body. But then it turns out there is no body. So there's all of that. And then we get to the second and subsequent murder attempts, we get to Johnny, which is when the book really starts getting haunted because Johnny figures out a way to make himself invisible.
00:43:47
Speaker
But it becomes this spirit of violence just moving across the scene. you And you can see all the other children in like their horror and it is horrifying because Johnny could do anything and it is clear what he wants to do is immensely destructive.
00:44:01
Speaker
The first thing that he does is he tries to fake his own murder. He drips his bed in blood, he leaves a carving knife, and he writes the word ogre with the e falling away into an artistic trail on the wall, and Douglas and Casper come in. And Douglas and Casper by this point have been Sarah's thoroughly, thoroughly parentified. Like Johnny is straight up in the hoots at this point. that they' so Because like, Casper is the one cooking dinner because Sally's left and the ogre can't cook. There's no idea. And Douglas is figuring out the washing machine and the ogre is just kind of standing there because he's the world's most useless adult man.
00:44:35
Speaker
100%. It's shocking to me how little he can take care of himself, let alone
Violence and Power Hierarchies in Family
00:44:41
Speaker
anybody else. What was he doing for those years before he married Sally? douglas and come where it's going when When Douglas actually says, you know, my father's pretty good at driving away his wives. And yeah, it gives the younger children the impression that what the ogre likes to do is murder his wives. Yep. Yeah. is Part of why Gweny gets so upset.
00:45:00
Speaker
yeah on But actually, it's pretty clear that Douglas has a fairly clear-eyed view of his father and how bad his father is out relationships yes at Sally's husband is dead. That's why she is a single mother in the 1970s.
00:45:13
Speaker
The ogre is just divorced because his wife couldn't take any more of him and I can't blame her. Absolutely not. And she's not of the picture. There's no suggestion that she might, you know, that Douglas and Malcolm might go to her. We don't know what has happened to her or where she is. But yeah, so Johnny starts throwing blood around. It's, it all, and he starts, he tries to beam the ogre with a vacuum cleaner. And increasingly- I spent so much in this book wanting somebody to punch the ogre. Someone really ought to have punched the ogre. Like, I don't think, you know, I see what she's trying to get at with, you know, the end, the way she resolves the ending. Again, it's Georgette Heyer, she pulls the ogre in cahoots with them.
00:45:55
Speaker
she pulls the adult finally into the world of magic and he's got to figure out and you know they explain it all to him and he's like oh all right well now i guess we've got to deal with that and you can see what she's going for with that but the ogre has been such a youth not just an abusive parent which you know you can sort of talk about the way moors have changed between what parents what is considered reasonable parenting but It's quite clear that this is bad parenting and ever you know for the 1970s. In every way, this is bad parenting. He doesn't care about the kids. He doesn't think of the kids as people. He thinks of them as problems. but but and The way he imposes his style of parenting, even over Sally, who's very good. So like yes there's a moment early on when Douglas rescues the the three kids on the other side, Caspar, Johnny and Gwynny from
00:46:44
Speaker
um the consequences of their own silliness. ah They went out using some magic flying powder and didn't leave themselves enough to get home. So Douglas is the one who comes out and rescues them and then Douglas is the one who ends up getting caught sneaking in when he's not supposed to be outside that late. And and the o and the ogre hits him and the kids are upstairs listening and wincing and hearing the thumps. And then It's Sally who tries to go to Douglas and make him a cup of cocoa and talk to him kindly and the ogre starts shouting at her because she's undermining his right to violence against any other man in the house.
00:47:22
Speaker
yeah that was what i wanted cover on chimp Yeah, and he should have. And it feels like the way that she's trying to resolve this is by and ah like by putting the ogre on a level with the kids. yeah This is just another kid that they've misunderstood. this is the same It's the bully in Wilkins tooth yes been who's been enacting violence, but now that he's in a dangerous situation, you can pull him into the fold, you can make him part of the gang.
00:47:45
Speaker
And that's all well and good, but it doesn't account for the abdication of responsibility that the ogre has is ah you know has completely given up on for all of these kids. Right. There is, there is to be fair, there is a moment when the ogre tries to take responsibility and is when he realizes that being invisible is sending Johnny insane. yeah This is actually a very urgent and serious problem, more serious than you realize. We've got to fix it right away. And he's the one who drives back to the magic shop where they first found the the magic chemistry sets.
00:48:15
Speaker
and sort of shakes some answers out of the presumably like this wizard is having a great time. Oh, I have a question for you, by the way, speaking of the ogre and the chaos spirit and the ogre's education of responsibility and the you know, the times that he does attempt to parent.
00:48:33
Speaker
What do you make of the pink footballs episode?
00:48:38
Speaker
The pink footballs episode. Okay, so what happens is this is during the body swap when Casper and Malcolm are in each other's bodies. And they're like, we don't know how to get back to being ourselves, we better go and ask the guy who sold us these magic sets. So they skip lunch and run into town from school.
00:48:53
Speaker
Again, this is very 70s because I can tell you through a fact they would not be allowed to do that now. You don't let an 11 year old just run off the school site. right um So they head into town and they are in the magic shop when the ogre spots them.
00:49:08
Speaker
terrible thing to happen. Why aren't you in school? But also what if he figures out we're not ourselves? What if he figures out we'll swap bodies? But he never would because he's never paid any attention to Casper and Malcolm and their lives as people. Whereas Douglas spots it right away. Yeah, absolutely. ah But what the ogre does instead of noticing that there's something weird going on here, she's like, what are you doing this toy shop?
00:49:27
Speaker
I shall buy you some football. Why is there a football each? And the football is pink. So these two boys then go back to school, the school where Malcolm is already being bullied for not fitting into war.
00:49:43
Speaker
a boy should be clutching pink footballs that they've been given by this guy. And it's clear the ogre is um trying to trying to buy them, trying to buy affection, trying to yes, trying to show that he cares in some way or would like to. And it is quite sad. It's sort of like a sad fumbling attempt at at actually parenting. Right. But it's actually it's because it's an echo is because it's exactly the reason why they got the magic chemistry sets in the first place was in fact,
00:50:10
Speaker
And the kids even say, Oh, it's that kind of present. Yes, we recognize the attempt for what it is. um And I do think that actually the ogres, let's let's put this in in context a bit the ogres like purpose in the family is to be the provider of money. This is a man who can afford to send children to boarding school.
00:50:29
Speaker
It's a man who can afford to buy random gifts. And there's a lot of worry about money in the book. They say yes, we're tight for money right now. We need a bigger house. The part of like the joyful resolution at the end is they discover the Philosopher's Stone and they turn useless old shit to gold so they can sell it and buy a bigger house. Yes.
00:50:48
Speaker
But if you think about the position Sally is in as a widowed working single mother of three, 1973, you can see, you can see the appeal of the yoga.
00:51:02
Speaker
right and to be fair to sally and to the ogre before they move into this too small house where everyone's on top of each other all the kids who've been used to having their own room suddenly have to room together everyone's tempers are afraid there's not there's constant noise there's not enough space and ah First of all, like you know they sort of eventually discover that most of the time they think the ogre is being mean. He's really trying to make you know he's being very so he's trying to make very sarcastic jokes. You can see how the ogre's sense of humor would appeal to Sally, an adult, even though he doesn't know how to talk to a child.
00:51:36
Speaker
um But also, you know, you sort of get the sense that the ogre feels that he is failing at his role at being the provider of money, because it was enough to provide for the two boys, but it is not enough to provide for the suddenly much larger family that he has. And it is, you know, you can sort of read between the lines that he feels that it's his failure that's making the entire family miserable. Right, I think you could. Yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right that the ogre does feel like a failure and is trying to do he's trying. But what It's really hard to get past to like forgive the character for in the way that the yeah narrative is asking you to forgive the character, I think, in the moments of cahoots at the end. yes But it is really hard to forgive the character for parenting that badly, that cruelling. It is hard to forgive him for beating his son. um yeah and it I mean, even like if you talk about like changed social expectations, it was more normal in the 70s to beat your kid than it is now.
00:52:32
Speaker
um But even so, like it's clear that Malcolm is not someone you should hit, and that if you know anything about him, Douglas, who knows his younger brother, goes, I never hit him. Yes. Douglas, who is explicitly parallel to the ogre and following in his footsteps, but has the distinction of paying attention to the kids. Right. The ogre is is a monster. is i I don't, I'm not swept up by the final cahoots yoga because it I don't, I can't forgive him. I think he deserved the bad cake.
00:53:04
Speaker
Yeah, and it's, you know, it's so interesting looking at the structure of it, because for the first maybe third of the book, a lot of what, you know, before any physical violence occurs from the ogre, it's a lot of the kids, you know, being nervous of the ogre shouting at them for admittedly things like, you know, melting toffee ready, coffee all over the radiators and so forth. But there's things like making noise, which is what you can do. Yeah, I think like Casper and Douglas are constantly getting it for playing their records.
00:53:32
Speaker
all Right. That's teenagers. They like music. Exactly. And like up until maybe the 30-40% mark, you can see where you can get to the resolution of everyone's going to try and learn to, you know, we're going to have a bigger space. Everyone's going to try and learn to get along better. We've misjudged the ogre a bit. The ogre's misjudged just a bit.
00:53:51
Speaker
But then you get to the middle and all those threats of physical violence are realized and it is exactly as bad as everyone's been afraid of and more. This is not a we underestimated him or we thought that he was going to hit us and he did in fact hit us and it was awful. Yes, it was exactly as awful. I think there's a line, it's a very short line, but Johnny had realized that he had been right to put off being hit by the ogre for as long as possible. It was worse than he had thought.
00:54:19
Speaker
So this is not this is not a situation of bad parent of mediocre parenting being blown out of proportion. This is abusive parenting. yes and i think in some ways what happening here, or the reason that the structure of the book doesn't quite work for me is that it's kind of Diana Wynn Jones running hard into the expectations of this problem book, if you like, that she talks about. The requirement that a problem book should solve the problem, or at least give the child with the problem a feeling of enlightenment and insight into how to live happily with the problem. So you you end up with the problem solved by the end of the book.
00:55:00
Speaker
And the problem is solved primarily by money, yeah which admittedly is also a theme in, you know, eight days of Luke and Wilkins tooth and o go downstairs all have this happy resolution at the end of Oh, suddenly we've got the money that we've lost. Or suddenly we found the money that we've gone has come
Resolution and Unity in the Family
00:55:15
Speaker
back. And as it turns out that's actually what you need to solve quite a lot of problems in life. You know, I buy it.
00:55:21
Speaker
ah And like I do believe you know despite the ogre's terrible parenting that once they're all in a bigger house, it probably will be a bit better. that I think what what won't be better is that like, it's clear that Douglas is learning to be a violent and angry person. Like yeah ah it's clear that all the boys live in a world of violence and anger and Malcolm at least is miserable there.
00:55:43
Speaker
And that wasn't going to have changed at all. ah yeah the The fundamental rule like underlying thing of it is the right of the older ones to hit the younger ones hard rate moved. Like the only thing that's changed, and this is a significant change, the thing that's changed is that the younger kids are now a unit. So when outside threats come in, Kasper will defend Malcolm, Douglas will defend Kasper, et cetera. So they're they you know they've they've become a more I don't know that I would say more functional, but they they can, you know, they will defend each other. They're coming united. Yes, they they become a squad. Yes, exactly. But the the essential idea of warped violence almost like when when Johnny becomes invisible, and it turns out that he's only made of violence. And there's the like the murder attempt where he picks up the vacuum cleaner and tries to hit the ogre over the head with it. And all the other children have to frantically
00:56:37
Speaker
push the ogre out of the way just in time. And that's also, but Beth, is that when you enter, you step into the world of violence and you can't get out of it. It intensifies. That's what happens to Johnny. And it warps you and it warps you and it makes you weirder and weirder and more and more terrible.
00:56:52
Speaker
And I don't think we have managed to step out of it at the end. There is okay, so the final sort of little mini episode of magic is they've realized that all these magic alchemy sets are bad news, they should get rid of them. And they've only got a couple of tubes of magic stuff left. And one of them is a list is labeled dens drag, the little joke, all of this stuff, by the way, there's loads and loads of little Latin jokes, all the stuff in the alchemy sets is labeled completely legibly.
00:57:19
Speaker
If you read Latin, you're like, oh, yeah dens den the teeth of the dragon. This is picking up on the myth that the dragon's teeth, which the king of thieves sowed the dragon's teeth in the earth and it grew into the warriors of thieves. But Douglas sees they've got this tube, they get rid of that. And in the violent and angry way that is the person he is, Douglas grabs it, throws it away. And even the yoga goes, that was a bit uncalled for. Right.
00:57:44
Speaker
Which is really out of pocket for the ogre. The ogre are actually trying to parent at this point. Yes. they're They're in a supermarket car park and they go into the supermarket, they buy some baked beans, whatever. They come out and they see that where the dense track was thrown away, there are mushrooms growing up of the earth.
00:58:04
Speaker
like they're not mushrooms, they're crash helmets of what turns out to be ah Hell's Angels. The same, it's the same as the Valhalla. Right, exactly. It's Diaries of Legend. And you can tell because it's the 1970s, they're all wearing motorcycle leathers. Yeah, right. It's great. But also this this whole sequence is, ah honestly, I think this this is Joan said that she put jokes for adults in her book. I think this is a joke for me, Diana, personally.
00:58:34
Speaker
go Yeah, you read that sequence. We've been trying not to talk too much about these books in advance, so we can do it on air. But you read that sequence and you came to me, you were like, does Diana expect that these kids are gonna read Greek letters? Right, because these guys, because they are from a Greek myth, they speak in the Greek alphabet.
00:58:52
Speaker
um And if you can read the Greek alphabet, which for my sins I can and you find that they are in fact speaking English phonetically written out in the Greek alphabet. So you've got on the page this visual joke of their speaking this Greek gobbledygook and the kids.
00:59:07
Speaker
like they can't understand it. but Actually they must be able to want understand it because they're literally just speaking English. they'd like but but I've got it written in front of me. It's like on the lid again and see what you get. Think you can k hit fellows on the end, do you? It's not phonetic, it's phonetic regional accent. Please kids, try to thump me, fellows. Okay, let's take both of them apart a bit.
00:59:30
Speaker
let me at them it's always it's just english it's just english it's just cockney it's it's it's funny it's very funny i mean that's the other thing this book is funny but it's what my point was there was that the the den's drag the the hero the warriors of legends have turned up at the end as they so often do in ironwin jones and now we have to fight them and finally the violence of the family has a purpose We've got Olga and Douglas and Johnny and Casper back to back, curling cans of baked beans. Using the mop, which is like the vacuum cleaner again, this yeah beat the dense dragon warriors back into the earth. Specifically, it's Johnny and Douglas back to back and Johnny thinking that he's for the first time, that he's glad to be back to back with Douglas. I think Casper has been sort of gradually coming increasingly round to to Douglas and Malcolm since the body swapping. This is the first time that Johnny is like, I'm glad to be in a unit with this, this large older boy. Yes, the purpose of a large older boy is to hit other people for you. Exactly. That's why you have older brothers. This is what violence is all about. And this is why you need it. Right.
01:00:35
Speaker
and then the ogre comes in from the yogurt is not back to back with them he does the same thing again of like i heard a story once that i think can resolve this and takes a can and hits them around the head so that they think that so it hits one of the motorcycle men on the head so that the motorcycle man will think the other motorcycle man is attacking him they will coming from within I think the ogre specifically says, you know, I hope this old trick still works. Once again, it's it's knowing the classics. having that knowing the myth It's knowing what you're looking at. And then actually, the final image is this a family has resolved themselves into one family unit that is united and at peace.
01:01:12
Speaker
while the den-strapped guys fight themselves to death over there. So the idea of like the the the monstrous insane violence is sort of split off from the family and goes off running along its own way, and running along the weak. Right, knowledge you're right. It's been like completely externalised. Yeah, it's been externalised. That's the word I wanted. It's been externalised. And meanwhile, ah the Ogres family is one family, blended by violence.
01:01:39
Speaker
Blended by violence. I love to have these large angry men in my corner. And now they are in my corner. It's true that if I were being attacked by the warriors of legend, I probably would like some large angry men in my corner. But I'm not sure if you want to have to live with them in my house. I was really struck by this. So they they' they get home. And they, Ginny has one last little bit of chemical. It's it's Peter Phyllis, which is an
01:02:06
Speaker
Petrol philosophy is the philosopher's stone. ahha And she is like, I've been making things shiny with it. And of course, they realize that it's turning things into gold. um And they all find they have, you know, this is again, bonding through humor, the humor that gets you through the the miserable situations. And this is really when the ogre gets into cahoots with them. it's It's when they're making the shopping list, and they're all picking their most absurd things to put on the shopping list. And the ogre's like, sure, we can all pick one absurd thing to put on the shopping list.
01:02:31
Speaker
And now they get home and they find all the ugliest things in the house, all the thing about the house that they hate. And they're going to turn them to gold and sell them away so they can get a better house. And they have a sort of competition for who can find the ugliest thing. And then Sally, who's been absent for all of this, trying to find the kids another place to live, comes home.
01:02:48
Speaker
uh is charmed by the absurdity but it's like i'm so mad that you left me out of it i wish that you'd waited uh sally comes home she said i feel a bit left out um and i could have found an uglier and more majestic item to you know to throw into the competition if you just waited until i was home and brought me in which i think is really interesting that sally doesn't get to be part of the magic narrative she doesn't get to be in cahoots no she doesn't she would love to be in cahoots because she turns up and she's like let me show you how awful this is and it's like describe this very Diana Wynne Jones way of like, it's a very, very, very, very, very ugly wedding present sort of thing. It's called Nippurn, says Sally. It looks like a lot of ice cream cones turned upside down, made up and put on springs.
01:03:35
Speaker
um But right, you can see that Sally would would have loved to be in cutes, but she was too busy, you know, parenting. Right, exactly. Because she was out trying to find a place for these children to live where they would be safe. Yeah. And so she doesn't get to, and because the ochre is useless at parenting. It becomes one of the children. Like once he's had one, he's playing. They're all trying to figure it out together. And that's, and that figuring out together is what lets him enter the unit that Sally is excluded from by virtue of being a responsible parent.
01:04:04
Speaker
Or maybe by being a woman. Or maybe by being a woman. Because Gwynny is it's never quite as in the sort of crunch of those relationships in the way that all the boys are. Right. Well, there's, you know, they treat Gwynny very differently. The ogre treats Gwynny differently. The ogre tries to parent Gwynny, you know, at the beginning, they, the ogre actually comes into the family through Gwynny, she's lost. And he actually in you know his first hit and only bit picks her up, takes care of her, takes her home, buys her mother a drink. Right.
01:04:32
Speaker
ah But even like the boys treat Gwynny differently, um even like the Ogres sons, Douglas and Malcolm, Malcolm and Gwynny have a little friendship developing where Malcolm discovers that that one of the chemistry set things can be used to bring bring toys to life. And instead of like Johnny and Casper, like spilling it everywhere and bringing toffee bars, like he's like, why don't we put your dolls to life? Right? Which again is, you know, that sort of Malcolm is a little bit outside of the traditional masculinity. He's a little bit thoughtful. He remembers that dolls exist.
01:05:00
Speaker
you remember that dolls exist and he he, you know, sort of entered into this make believe world with her. But she's not, you know, she's separate from all this because she's not part of the power dynamics. It's the ochre and Douglas and Casper and Malcolm and Johnny are all fighting for their place in the power hierarchy. Right. but none of them but None of them are going to hit Gweny. None of them are going to hit Gweny and Gweny is both a girl and the youngest. Like if Gweny was 14, instead of eight, this is a very different book. That would be such a different book.
01:05:30
Speaker
Wow, that would be an incredibly different book with a very, very different dynamic. And that's the kind of girl, you know, to look ahead that, you know, that that girl who is in the power dynamic fights as someone that Diana and Jones will get to writing later. yeah But we're not there yet here in the here in the 70s. And I think the last last thing I want to say about Douglas and Casper is if you read Diana wind Jones, writing about her own childhood and about the way that she was parentified with her younger sisters, I think that you can see a lot of not to I know we're gonna we're probably going to do so much accidental psycho analyzing. It's quite hard but not see to see herself.
01:06:09
Speaker
she does it to herself and specifically you know the part where douglas says i stayed up all i went and told uh the ogre that malcolm was sick the ogre doesn't care i stayed up all night with him is a direct echo of a story that diana jones tells about her own childhood about one of her sisters being sick and she goes across to the big house to tell her parents and they tell her not to worry. like they don't They don't pay any attention. So she goes back and stays up all night with her sister. So she's you know she's writing she's rewriting this childhood of being the oldest kid, taking care of the younger kids with absent parents who don't care to get to know them. But she's gender flipped it. as She's put it into this masculine world. Interesting, because actually in Eight Days of Luke, the awful relatives are a family whom Diana Wynn Jones lived with when she was sent to boarding school. She talks about this as well in her essays.
01:06:56
Speaker
yeah that she took this horrible family who presumably wanted gratitude from her, ah who she had no choice about living with. And she put them in the book. but So that she was the David. So again, she she's she's in there, she's put herself in there, but she's gender flipped it. And yes, we've been talking for a really long time, we need to wrap up. But I think something we will come back to is Dinah Wynn Jones treatment of gender, both in her books, protagonists, and possibly in herself.
01:07:25
Speaker
and the way she talks about gender and being a female and being a female hero, the way she talks about if it's even possible to be a female hero, we will get there because it's interesting. Yes, I'm not allowed to look forward. So I'm holding things back. But we're gonna talk much more about it. Any last thoughts you want to get out on Over Downstairs or Wilkins Tooth before we wrap?
01:07:47
Speaker
No, I think I am done. All right. Well, thank you guys for joining us. Anyone who's listening, thank you for joining us again. I think we're probably going to try and set up like a Gmail for this where you can send us questions if you want us to talk about things and we might do it. Yeah. But I mean, we know what we're talking about next because the next book on our list is Dog's Body. I can't wait. Me neither. All right. Until next time. Until next time. Bye.