What Happened Next?

For some of the lifelong and devoted readers of the twelve Arthur Ransome novels that make up the Swallows and Amazons series, there has often been much speculation on what happens to the major characters and the paths their lives take after we leave them in what is considered to be their final appearance by all of them in the book Great Northern?.

Though this last novel in the series was written and published two years after the end of the Second World War it is set, as are all the others, in the mid to late 1930s. This aspect of Ransome’s work serves to highlight one of his skills as a writer, the real world in respect of what is happening nationally and internationally, as opposed to real life, only encroaches on the books, in terms of plot and character, when it is essential and so consequently the threatened war as it would have been in the novel’s timescale is not mentioned or even hinted at. One of the things that makes Great Northern? different from the other novels is the contrast it provides with the previous two books in the series We Didn’t Mean To Go To Sea and Secret Water. From examination of some aspects of this contrast we able to glean more detail on the development and maturing of the main characters, and this can assist us with our speculation about their respective futures.

With the immense amount of knowledge that the Internet now makes available to us, such speculation about the characters lives is now widespread - forums, blogs, fan fiction sites and the publishing of analytical scholarly papers all offer their views on the matter. For some Ransome devotees this activity has been going on prior to the emergence of the Internet, for example in an issue of Mixed Moss (the magazine of The Arthur Ransome Society) from 1994 there is an article considering the relationship between John and Nancy and it how it may develop beyond their lives as it is described in the books.

This process of hypothesizing about fictional characters has been criticised by some literary critics, but is robustly defended by Margaret and Michael Rustin in their study of children’s fiction (Narratives of Love and Loss, 1987), they comment ‘…authors have imagined situations and persons as if they were real.’ (p. 14, ibid, authors’ emphasis.) Their conclusion for taking such an approach is ‘…that our procedure is only an extension of ordinary readers’ response to works of fiction.’ (p. 14, ibid.) and conclude ‘We may in fact know more and not less about a fictional character than about most real people of our acquaintance.’ (p. 15, ibid.)

One of my main motivations for considering this aspect of Ransome’s books has its origins in similar speculation over such matters, this activity highlights another of his skills as a writer whereby he created characters whose lives, in the way they are described, give you cause to think about them in some depth after you have finished reading the novels.

It is clear in the books that amongst the main characters some particularly strong friendships emerge: John and Nancy, Susan and Peggy, Titty and Dorothea being the most obvious. These friendships are not of course limited to or at the exclusion of others, but they are the main relationships that emerge, that is until the novels Secret Water and Great Northern?. In the former we see Nancy, along with the others, meeting and making a particular connection with Daisy of the Eels, whilst in the latter the intensity and depth of the friendship between Titty and Dick is revealed in the book’s closing pages. As Peter Hunt observes in his discussion of the eleventh book in the series The Picts and the Martyrs by the end of the book ‘…all the characters have grown up to the point at which a deeper formulation of relationships would be inevitable.’ (p. 82, Approaching Arthur Ransome, 1992.)

Of those two books that were published before Great Northern? one of them in its plot and the characters involved stands out from the others in the series, We Didn’t Mean To Go To Sea only involves the Swallows and, with the exception their mother and Bridget, nobody else from any of the other books. The novel shows all the Swallows changing or maturing in their own way. These changes in them all arise from them being placed, in a sense, in to a ‘real’ dangerous scenario that has to be dealt with without the involvement of any adults. The four children are forced to confront events and situations where their decisions and reactions will have a serious effect on themselves and their siblings, particularly for John and Susan. It is these aspects of the book that makes it one of the most popular, and even the best, of the series for many readers.

A lot of the speculation about all the major child characters arises in Online ‘fan fiction’ sites and amongst the plethora of Ransome based work posted there seems to be two particular ideas that regularly occur, and those notions are all commented upon in other Websites as well. The first of those that John and Nancy will eventually in adulthood marry is the most prevalent. The second is that at least one of the female characters will emerge to declare themselves in maturity as a lesbian, and the most common suggestion for this notion is that it will be Nancy (there is an irony here that in the 19^th and 20^th century this name became a derogatory slang description of male homosexuals, though it has a much more simple origin as an affectionate ‘shortening’ of the name Ann.)

Though Ransome allows his characters to mature to a degree, given the relatively short timescale of the series of novels, he is often accused, critically, of ignoring matters of the sexuality of, or romance between, the older characters as they enter what we would now refer to as their teenage years. In Ransome’s defence it has to be said that he does not actually ignore these subjects, he was writing at a time when to allow such matters to be included in books aimed at children would be viewed suspiciously or even with total abhorrence. Of course, this does not mean such behaviour did not exist between children of such ages as the older characters who, by the end of the series, would have been fifteen or sixteen years old.

There has been in relatively recent years much discussion amongst Ransome devotees and experts over the status of Great Northern? in his canon. It is recognised and accepted by all Ransome readers that Peter Duck and Missee Lee are metafictions – stories ‘invented’ by the characters in the other books. This activity is referred to directly in Swallowdale in the case of Peter Duck, coming about when the Swallows and Amazons got together with Captain Flint on a wherry on the Norfolk Broads in the previous winter (the origin of Missee Lee is not revealed in any of the other books.) Some argue that Great Northern? too is a metafiction, primarily as it relies heavily for its plot on an idea, outlined in great detail, that was given to Ransome by his friend Myles North (whom the novel is dedicated to), and that the timescale of the book does not fit in with the usual pattern of the events taking place during school holidays as in the other more straightforward novels of the series.

Despite these differences and the possibility that Great Northern? is a metafiction, the parts of the book that reveal and detail aspects of the main characters and their friendships serves to highlight the development and maturing of all of them by Ransome in contrast to the books that precede it. Significantly, even though the fragment of another novel, which was edited for publication by his biographer Hugh Brogan and entitled by him The Coots in the North, exists it does seem as if Great Northern? was, albeit originally unintended, a farewell to us readers by the Swallows, Amazons and Ds.

Ransome, of course, was in some ways restricted in what he could write of the maturing of his characters by the period in which he was writing. He was, as he made clear during his lifetime both publicly and privately, not a children’s writer and that he did not write for children and expounded on this in some depth in a letter to Helen Ferris in March 1938 (p. 209, The Best of Childhood, 2004.) He was, of course, well aware that his audience was children and the books would have been bought, in the main, by parents and relations who in so doing would have expected them to conform to the widely accepted moral and social standings of the day. If we compare his novels to those for children by Malcolm Saville, in general terms, the latter was able to allow his characters to develop in to older teenagers and young adults as he continued writing volumes of the Lone Pine series in to the 1970s. These years followed and continued a lengthy period in the UK when there was a radical change in culture and society from that of the period that Ransome was writing in.

In his defence, Ransome clearly does not ignore the maturing of his characters in other less contentious matters, that of Roger being an obvious one and also the change of Bridget from a baby in Swallows and Amazons to being old enough to leave her mother and take part in Secret Water, though not considered ready to be fully involved in the preceding book We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea.

It has always been my contention, as an adult reader of Ransome, that his books are a ‘snapshot’ of England, in particular, at that time in which they were set. He wrote of what he saw around him then intertwined aspects of his childhood, and how he would have liked his childhood to have been. Subsequently the novels reflect middle class life as observed by a member of that class, thus countering some who criticise him for his books being so. He is also criticised for in a similar way having a tendency to reinforce gender stereotypes, but again this is a reflection of the time he lived and is far less guilty of this charge than other writers of the period. In addition he is occasionally criticised for the language he uses, some of which is now quite rightly perceived to be unacceptable for various reasons. This argument is an important one, but needs to be considered at another time, perhaps a discussion considering various aspects Ransome’s language and literary style. Such comments relating to Ransome’s view of class and gender often seem to stem from those who have actually not read the books in any depth, and also rely on Ransome’s public image relating to the books that in many ways he deliberately kept quite limited to ensure his privacy during his lifetime.

There have also been attempts, though very obliquely, to question Ransome’s motives in writing such books, with an underlying implication that there is something ‘odd’ about a middle-aged man writing about children. But this misinterpretation comes across in a rather heavy-handed way, much as in the same way it has been attempted to portray him as a traitor while working in Russia as a journalist during the revolution of the early twentieth century (double agent he may have been but ‘traitor’ is still a very problematic conclusion.) More relevant to this discussion here is that Roland Chambers in his book on Ransome as a spy claims that Ransome was a '...ferocious opponent of ... the modern obsession with ... sex...' (p. 335, The Last Englishman, 2010) though his source for this observation is not cited. Yet, in the same book his description of Ransome's relationship with and subsequent marriage to Evgenia is that it was 'passionate' (p. 8, ibid), though it is not entirely clear in what sense Chambers uses the word.

One of Ransome’s earliest successful published works (ignoring his ghost writing of books on sport, physical education and nature) was about his time living in Bohemian London as a young man in the nineteen-hundreds (Bohemia in London, 1907.) Through this we know that he would have come in to contact with and been part of a sub-culture which embraced the concept of ‘free love’ and where the expression of sexuality was nothing to be secretive about, similarly the role of women, the second wave of feminism, was for them to be the equal of men and live their lives accordingly. It can be concluded that he may have incorporated as much as possible of these matters as he could in his writing though not specifically for, or aimed at, children. Of all his characters there is one that reflects these matters more than for any of the others, and it is also the one that we have no confirmed or reliable record of a real person that it can be concluded that they are based upon, and that is Nancy.

Ransome's inspiration for nearly all of his major characters were drawn from people he knew in his life, and the sources for most of these can be worked out from his autobiography, there are discussions of the possibilities in the official Hugh Brogan biography and from the various memoirs of those that met him and knew him. Despite this, Taqui Altounyan made the point ‘It is no more possible to sort out which of the characters were based on real people, than it is to pin down the various places in the books to actual points on the atlas.’ (‘Sevens – I think that is what this talk is about’ given to South West Region of TARS in 1994.)

Many of those that have studied the books in depth reach the conclusion that the characters Dick and Dorothea are based upon aspects of Ransome himself rather than any individuals that he knew, whereas the Swallows we know are all based upon the Altouyan children. But Nancy and Peggy have no such obvious origins.

There have been some claimants over the years as to being the inspiration for Nancy (and Peggy) by people, some seemingly based on the simple facts that they were young teenage girls who could sail and wore red knitted caps in the Lake District. Some in addition claim to have had some minimal interaction with Ransome. But, as yet, no serious, verifiable contenders have emerged. Like the lake and all the other geographical elements in the books set in the Lakes, Nancy seems to be an amalgam of the characteristics of a number of real women worked in to one person through Ransome’s imagination.

In terms of twentieth century children’s fiction Nancy is one of the most interesting characters created. For many such children’s ‘adventure’ books the tradition arose of any ‘strong’ female characters usually being presented with the characteristics of what has become known as ‘tom-boys’. This is on the basis that to be capable, decisive and a leader are male traits and so had to be represented as such even though they are attributed to girls. The one thing that makes Nancy stand out in the books, and in some ways apart from all the other girls, is that she is a very strong female character. Such female characters in other works are often dismissed as mere 'tomboys' and are in stark contrast to how Ransome portrays Nancy including her being physically strong. As Peter Hunt says of Nancy ‘…it is never suggested that she is emulating boys per se…’ (p. 71, ibid, author’s emphasis.)  In more traditional children's fiction it seems females, if domesticated and caring in the manner, for example, of Susan, were and perhaps still are more acceptable to parents and educators as they do not threaten the status quo as it is perceived to be by the majority.

There are some obvious examples in this style of writing whereby ‘strong’ girls are given a ‘male’ identity to fit in with their abilities, such as George in Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series and Peter in Malcolm Saville’s Lone Pine series. This aspect of these two female characters is reinforced by both of them having names that are ‘shortened’ to a male form, from Georgina and Petronella respectively. Ransome turns this convention around by giving his character Ruth a nickname of the ‘strong’ female name Nancy. So a traditional biblical derived name is replaced, she is given a relatively modern name with no biblical connections much more suited to her role in the novels.

Interestingly, two of the other main female characters, Titty and Dorothea, also show strengths that are not often seen in children's literature of the period whereas one female, Peggy, is almost stereotypical in her behaviour - her fear of thunderstorms and speaking openly when it would be better to stay silent being the main ones. Then with the character of Susan we are given a female who excels at everything domestic, an ideal sought by many men, even to the extent of her mother relying upon her in the care of her other children.

Not only is Nancy physically and emotionally strong, she almost dominates the plot of every book, even when she is quarantined in her sick bed in Winter Holiday. She also plays a background part in the books she does not directly appear, particularly in the Broads books when being referred to by those that know her to those that don't!

Those that speculate on a female character from the books being a lesbian in adult life use these aspects of how Nancy is portrayed to support their view. The main suggestion we have of Nancy's possible sexuality actually appears in the ninth of the twelve books, Secret Water, and it really is no more than a veiled hint, you have to make a close reading of Nancy and her behaviour in this and the other books with this reference in mind to begin to get a sense of her in this matter.  It also has to be remembered that by the time of Secret Water Nancy would be fourteen to fifteen years old, and thus she was fast approaching adulthood, if not reached, especially in female biological terms.

Of course, the origin of the Amazon’s name has to give us cause for consideration in this discussion, whereas the Swallows take their name from the boat they are allowed to use in the first novel there is no equivalent described in the books for Nancy and Peggy. Amazons - the female warriors from Greek mythology who shunned men in their society and only had annual or biannual sexual relations to continue the race, where male children were slaughtered to achieve this end. Was this tribal name chosen for Nancy and Peggy by Ransome deliberately, or did he just continue the connection with the idea of using the name of the great South American river? Interestingly, Taqui Altounyan mentions that in 1924 ‘We also had a native Armenian nurse called Perouse, an Amazon of a woman.’ (ibid, emphasis mine.)

There is another important aspect to consider in this discussion; the character of Nancy comes across to us in some passages of the books that she is a feminist. Not that the term is ever used, but it is clear that Nancy is just as capable as any of the males in whatever task is before them. Some devoted readers of the books may dismiss this labelling because the notion of 'feminism' is often perceived to be a product of the nineteen-sixties. Yet it has to be remembered that Mary Wollstonecraft published The Vindication of the Rights of Women at the end of the eighteenth century (1792) and the term 'feminism' is first recorded in print in the 1890s. It is in the more modern view of feminism (that of the 1930s and 1940s and later) that Nancy inhabits, rather than that of the 1960s or the view that Ransome probably observed during his young days in London. Nancy was not a woman fighting for the right to vote or to be able to play her part in the political life of the nation, she already regarded herself as a captain and so in charge of others, she wanted to show she was as capable as many men and more so than a great number! All through the books she has encounters with adults whereby with her plain speaking she either gets her way or puts them in their place, not letting them think they can deal with her easily as she is 'just a girl' and is rightly offended on the occasions when this happens.

It has to be acknowledged that some have observed Nancy sometimes comes across in the books as almost being devoid of emotions or any deep feelings. The major rebuttal to this idea is when she expresses her feelings most poignantly in Swallowdale over her dealings with the GA in relation to her mother, and her memories of what she has been told of her late father when they are all at the summit of Kanchenjunga.

So how does all this peripheral information draw some of us to the conclusion that when Nancy matures that she will be a lesbian?

To consider this argument and discuss it firstly there has to be acceptance that human beings gender and sexuality are in the main genetically part of us, and our upbringing and life experiences can both encourage or suppress them. Many of those, for example, who have been incorrectly gender assigned at birth or always ‘felt’ they were of the opposite gender (such as the travel writer Jan Morris, once James Morris) knew from an early age (in Morris’ case when he was three years old) what they should be. Similarly in matters of sexuality, many know before they are of a maturity to be sexually active where their proclivities lay. At the time of writing (Autumn 2016) in the UK and the USA there are moves to accommodate those with such doubts of their gender at a much earlier age, this is a far more complex argument beyond the scope of this discussion. My aim is to speculate on the possible sexuality of an older teenager and not an attempt to make them something they are not, but to consider what they may be within the confines of the information given to us in the texts, and how it effects our interpretation of the novels.

As noted, an easy response to such a difference in a young woman by some writers is to use the device, now something of a cliché, of a 'tomboy'. In more recent times the same notion is often achieved by describing such a character as a loner, an orphan, having divorced parents or some other negatively perceived social stigma.

In The Arthur Ransome Society magazine Mixed Moss (issue No.2 of Volume 3 1997) Sarah and Peter Hunt, acknowledged experts in the works of Ransome, contributed an article ‘Arthur Ransome and the Question of Gender’ discussing how the roles of the male and female characters fit the traditional stereotypes that usually occur in children's literature. Though they describe the main characters all tending to follow expected stereotypes, they conclude '... the one element of AR's success has been precisely that he balances the genders, the two sides human nature so finely, and in a manner very advanced for his time.' (p. 38.)

Obviously this is all circumstantial, yet is it not the sign of a great writer that they can produce characters and plots that lead you to think of them beyond the confines of the pages of the book? A voracious reader may consume many novels, but how many works give them cause to think beyond their pages? To want to re-read them is something of a triumph for an author (for me those I do re-read are members of a select group given how many books I have read in my lifetime.)

From my own interest it seems many readers have perceptions of ‘what happens outside the books and what happened next' for Ransome's characters. Most common is that John and Roger will join the navy, next John marrying Nancy seems to be regularly proposed as such outcomes are certainly hinted obliquely at in the books. In an article in a another edition of Mixed Moss (issue No. 1 of Volume 2 1994) Dave Sewart contributed a piece entitled ‘Sex on the Quarter Deck’, this examines the relationship between John and Nancy as the series of books progresses, and the possibility that they will be together in adulthood - ‘Time and again we catch them looking at each other, looking into the other’s thoughts…’ (p.35). Other speculations about the characters abound on fan fiction Websites and Internet forums discussing the works. It has to be said that Ransome is not alone in being so discussed but it does seem he is one of only a few from that period of children's literature, but this is more a reflection of both the quality of his writing and his observations of children's lives. His equals, in the sense of identification with by readers, in modern times seems to be the Harry Potter and Twilight series of books.

When still alive Ransome was able to either indulge in, mislead or ignore questions regarding his novels from his readers and others, now there are none to speak for him, his literary executors quite rightly guard his works in the matters of copyright infringement and misuse so leaving us readers to speculate on other matters.

Nancy seems to provoke such speculation partly because of her lack of a 'real' person to connect her with or identify her by. Her character beyond what Ransome gives us is something of a blank canvas; it is significant that the conclusion on the nature of her sexuality is a common one. Sewart concludes his piece with the following thought ‘Did AR omit such relationships, or are they so subtly entwined in the plot that we do not always spot them?’ (p. 37, ibid) which to me sums up neatly the position we find ourselves in regarding Nancy.

There is a feminist argument that this conclusion about her sexuality has come about because many men, and some women, see a strong (in all senses) woman as a threat, and by labelling her a lesbian diminishes her strength, or justifies the perceived threat. In the novels Nancy shows little interest in domestic matters, otherwise expected from all the females, she 'works' certainly but it is regarded as 'real' work (the equivalent of paid labour), not housework (unpaid labour.) This is clearly seen in Pigeon Post where physical labour is involved, Nancy does much of the mining and crushing with the pestle and mortar while Susan cooks meals for them all and cares for the younger ones, even though the two of them are of a similar age. Again, such rejection of unpaid domestic labour by a woman often leads to such conclusions and labelling. (A similar process is often, unfortunately, applied to men who are interested in fashion or interior design.)

The crucial marker to help us speculate on the nature of Nancy's sexuality from the books is her meeting with Daisy (of the Eels) in Secret Water. In the book the Swallows meet Don of the Eels first, and then until the arrival of the Amazons none of them have yet to meet Daisy (other than Bridget) and they do so when 'rescuing' Bridget from her captors (the Eels.) It is clear from the first exchange between Nancy and Daisy they recognise something in each other, a shared characteristic. Though Ransome's writing makes this clear he does not state at all what it is they recognise (there is a scene where the two go off together), and it would seem probable he had no idea himself, they were just like-minded, but as Sewart says ‘When two sixteen year olds wish to be alone together we do not need a blow by blow account to tell us that they are not playing games.’ (p. 37, ibid). In his longer discussion of Secret Water Sewart states 'Nancy arrived and (inevitably) discovered another purpose - plus Daisy, a kindred spirit the like of which she had never had before.' (p. 36, ibid, emphasis mine.)

Recent research by geneticists has indicated that friendships, though seemingly random, can be choices made on genetic similarities. In analysis of people and their close friend's DNA it shows they tend to be as closely related as if fourth cousins (Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler, Yale University, 2014.) So such choices of friends and future partners seems to have an element of recognition of the self in others.

Further on in Secret Water Nancy and Daisy have 'secret' discussions (a further interpretation of the book's title), though we know this meeting is with regard to planning the 'human sacrifice' celebration between the Swallows, Amazons and Eels later in the plot, that it is made clear that these two have such an immediate rapport is significant. When Ransome splits the narrative in his books in this way, as he often does, we are usually given alternate chapters to follow both sides, but of the talks between Nancy and Daisy we are told nothing. But we are told ‘…’There was a lot to talk about.’ Both of them were smiling. It seemed to John almost as if they had been glad of the delay.’ (p. 249, Secret Water, Puffin 1969.)

Prior to Nancy and Daisy going off without any of the others all of them are invited to Daisy's parent's yacht for afternoon tea, Daisy prepares them all for this, but this is clearly aimed at Nancy in particular. Nancy understands immediately and surprises the others during the visit by her behaviour in particular chatting to Daisy’s parents about gardening. (p. 235, ibid.) The reason for this care during the visit is recounted in the book as so that none of them should give any clue to Daisy’s parents of her 'other' self (in the plot this is referred to her as being one of the Eels, but of course can be interpreted to include other matters such as her sexuality.) That John and Susan, and the others, go along with this deception is not in itself surprising, but it seems Nancy understands immediately the importance of this separation of life in to what is shown and what is not shown to parents and she comments that Daisy even ‘looks’ different (p. 234, ibid.) This deception of Daisy’s parents is not because what they do is in any way ‘wrong’ but it is something they want to keep outside the parent's sphere of influence. It is also behaviour they have no wish to share with them, but in return they are happy to behave in a way that will please the adults (Don has previously talked of doing the same with his own mother (p. 100, ibid)), though Ransome hints during the episode with Daisy’s parents that they are not entirely convinced by their daughter’s efforts!

Though writing in the late 1930s and in to the 1940s about the 1930s Ransome may not have directly dealt with the sexuality of his characters, but he does not shy away from contentious issues. In Coot Club the Hullabaloos are a social group that behaves in ways that many at the time, and now, would find unacceptable. To contrast with this there is the behaviour of some of the locals - George Owdon in Coot Club and The Big Six being a petty criminal and a general nuisance to everyone, the fathers of the Death and Glories, working class boat-builders, in The Big Six end up fighting on the staithe! These are not descriptions of a perfect middle-class world of perfect older children (the term teenager was not coined until the 1950s) as Ransome is often accused of doing (Chambers in his introduction rather over emphasises the point and only manages to weaken his argument, (p. 5-6, ibid)) but it is a world where wrongs can be and are nearly always righted.

The idea of a woman desiring her own sex is not new or unusual even at the time Ransome was writing, those who do not approve cannot deny its existence. In literature at the time Radclyffe Hall and Virginia Woolf were the most well known examples, they too gave their characters masculine names; Stephen and Orlando respectively (and of course some male writers ventured in to such areas, D H Lawrence being one of the most obvious.)

In objective terms to speculate on the possible adult lives of fictional children is in some ways an almost pointless activity, and even in some senses dangerous, but the difference with the characters created by Arthur Ransome is that we are given such an insight in to their inner lives that such speculation is inevitable. Additionally, there is so much we are not directly told about them but enough to encourage us to find out more. From my first ever reading I can well remember that they all felt ‘real’, these were children who, if my life was different in some way, I could have met, got to know and so shared in their adventures. Yet for the Swallows, Amazons, Ds and the others they were not just ‘adventures’, these were just the things that happened in their lives. Yes, parents and school lurk in the background almost as something that actually interferes, but as Nancy memorably says to Dick and Dorothea on their first meeting in Winter Holiday

“…but what are you? In real life, I mean.” (p. 39, Winter Holiday, Puffin, 1968.)