Malory Towers
| Fandom | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Malory Towers |
| Abbreviation(s): | MT |
| Creator: | Enid Blyton |
| Date(s): | 1946-1951 |
| Medium: | books |
| Country of Origin: | United Kingdom |
| External Links: | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Malory Towers is a series of girls' boarding school novels by popular children's writer Enid Blyton. It follows the adventures of Darrell Rivers from her first term at Cornish boarding school Malory Towers until her final term as Head Girl of the school, each book covering a single term of a school year. It shares several themes in common with Blyton's series St Clare's.
Canon
The original canon series were 6 books, primarily focused on Darrell and the rest of her form in the North Tower (though the last two books began to focus more on Felicity's form as well). Apart from a core set of characters, students tended to come and go frequently, with some only lasting a single book. There have been various comments over the years about Enid Blyton's tendency to just drop characters between books never to be heard from again.
Blyton talks about how there are ten girls in the North Tower dormitory, including one girl, Violet, who is so quiet and shy that most people forget she is there most of the time and she doesn’t mind that. And, true to form, Violet is never mentioned again after that line. You have to wonder why Blyton bothered to include her in the first place. Surely there was no-one twisting her arm and forcing her to ensure there were ten girls in North Tower. If you didn’t want to use Violet, or talk about her, why even create her?Claire [1]
Darrell Rivers, Alicia Johns, Sally Hope, Gwendoline Mary Lacey, Mary-Lou and Irene (the latter two received no surnames in the original canon) were the only student characters to appear in all six books, but there were other characters present for 2-5 of the books. A number of the teachers were present for all six books as well.
The books tend to follow a pattern of new students arriving in each book who then become the source of some mischief, problems, or events of some kind for that book. The form then have to work their way through whatever issues arise and various lessons (some of which are quite heavy handed and/or dated by today's standards) are learnt or problems are overcome.
Continuations
There have been three continuation series published: one in English, one in German, and one in Dutch. The English continuation follows Darrell's younger sister, Felicity, through her remaining years at Malory Towers and follows a similar structure to the original canon.
The German continuation is a (somewhat) canon compliant work which is more rooted in the attitudes of the time period of the original books (most of the characters get married and have children, the classes are focused on necessary skills for "keeping a home", for example) and follows Darrell Rivers through to becoming Head Mistress of Malory Towers.
The Dutch continuation is a far more tongue-in-cheek parody continuation of two books, set at St Andrews where Darrell falls for an older female student, nearly ruins all her friendships in the process, and has to make amends.
Modern Adaptations
There have been a number of modern adaptations and additions to Malory Towers, including a collection of short stories that introduce four new students to the school, a musical, and a CBBC TV adaptation. The musical and TV series make considerable changes to the original canon story-lines; the musical by streamlining both the cast and story-line, and the TV series by creating new story-lines and characters, and reassigning characters to different roles.
Fandom
While the books have been around since the 1940s, the Malory Towers fandom first emerged in 2002. The fandom is very heavily centred around femslash, with a number of gen, usually friendship-focused stories. Given the almost all-female cast, het and slash are almost unknown.
Fanworks include fanfiction, fanart and roleplaying.
As well as featuring on some smaller Livejournal communities, such as Blyton Slash, and in various Livejournal-based challenged like 40fandoms and 12daysofchristmas, it remains one of the most frequently posted fandoms on the Livejournal community saffic and is also a traditional Yuletide fandom.
The fandom on Archive of Our Own is small (especially considering it has been part of AO3 since it went into public beta in 2009) with just 183 works, though works are still being posted in the 2020s. A significant amount of fanworks were never cross-posted to AO3 or Fanfiction.net (or were purged from the latter).
In regards to the continuations and modern adaptations, while these have been varyingly popular with fans of the original books and have been discussed in spaces such as Twitter and Tumblr, they have not had much impact on fanworks, where the original canon tends to be the main focus. Some fanworks use characters from the Pamela Cox continuations (or use details of existing characters who were given more page-time in those books), but this is rare, and, primarily on TikTok, there are some video edits of scenes from the TV show.
Lesbophobia and Other Bigotry in the Wider Fandom
Outside of fandom spaces such as Archive of Our Own and Tumblr, the original Malory Towers books (and some other Enid Blyton books in general) have remained popular with a broad audience. There are a number of Enid Blyton focused websites, blogs, and forums, and discussions of the books remain reasonably common in social media spaces. While the fandom spaces of AO3 and Tumblr for Malory Towers tend to be queer-friendly with many sapphic focused interpretations and fan works, the same is not as true of other fan spaces.
Discussions of sapphic interpretations or fanworks with sapphic pairings have been disparaged in some of the more traditional Enid Blyton forum spaces and on social media, while gen-focused or works with duaric (F/M) pairings are not subject to the same ridicule. Homophobic comments about sapphic interpretations being inappropriate for children as they were sexualised content (the same opinion seemed not to be held about fanworks with F/M pairings), the lesbian community "forcing" modern views into the series, and references to sapphic pairings being "vulgar" tended to crop up whenever these topics were raised [2] [3].
When the Malory Towers musical was announced, during the first run non-binary actor Vinnie Heaven (who would later star in The Nevers) was cast in the role of Bill Robinson. This prompted a number of transphobic and homophobic comments on Twitter and articles about the adaptation[4]. Similarly, complaints of a bigoted nature were also made following the cast announcement for the TV series, which had inclusive casting [5].
Pairings
The books canonically repeated that the girls "paired off" into particularly close friendships, and many of these pairs form the basis of pairings in the fandom.
The dominant fandom pairings are Bill (Wilhelmina) Robinson/Clarissa Carter, Sally Hope/Darrell Rivers (sometimes unrequited) and Betty Hill/Alicia Johns, although many pairings among the girls have been written, as well as some stories focusing on relationships among the adult teachers. Teacher/student fic is virtually unknown and is generally frowned on by the fandom.
The Bill/Clarissa pairing is notable as being such a dominant pairing that it frequently features as a minor sub-pairing even in other pairing fic, discovery of the relationship often used to make other characters confront their own lesbian tendencies and feelings toward other girls, to the extent that this is a distinct trope of the fandom.
Notable Fanworks
| Examples Wanted: Editors are encouraged to add more examples or a wider variety of examples. |
Fanfic
- Special by Kanna Ophelia - Bill and Clarissa have always been special friends. At the verge of adulthood, school friends getting sentimental over each other is no longer so innocent. (Bill/Clarissa)
- The Punisher (WIP) by xsabrix - A long-fic set in-canon about someone carrying out various malicious acts against members of the form based on perceived traits in line with the seven deadly sins. (Multiple Pairings)
- The North Tower Girls by Tallulah Grammar Songstress - An AU-with-superpowers retelling of canon. Currently at Book 5. (Gen)
- Der Morgen danach by Fanfic_CJ - A work based on the German continuations, featuring Sally and a character from the continuations. (Sally/OFC)
- Complex (Incomplete) by monocycle - A post-canon long-fic following Darrell, Sally, Alicia, and Betty to St. Andrews, where a lot of things, including various feelings for each other, get a lot more confusing. (Darrell/Alicia, Darrell/Sally)
- A Letter, Marked Private by Sangerin - A fanwork from the perspective of Miss Grayling, based on the events created in the Livejournal Malory Towers RPG. (Gen)
Fanart
Fanvid
- try everything (sometimes we come last but we did our best) by isabrella - Fanvid based on the first season of the BBC adaptation, focused on Darrell Rivers.
Roleplay
External Links
- Malory Towers tag at Archive of Our Own
- Enid Blyton section at Fanfiction.net (Individual series were not given their own section)
- Malory Towers tag at Saffic
References
- ^ Revisited First Form at Malory Towers, Nerds Like Me. October 7, 2019. (Accessed November 8, 2023)
- ^ Miss Peters at Malory Towers-was there a 'lesbian' sub-plot? - Thread at The Enid Blyton Society, which included multiple posts with homophobic comments.
- ^ Bill and Clarissa - Thread at The Enid Blyton Society, with some homophobic comments in.
- ^ Changing Enid Blyton's tomboy to be non-binary is a backward step for girls today - The Telegraph
- ^ Malory Towers TV series - Discussion of the TV series at The Enid Blyton Society (content warning: some responses contain racist, disablist, and other bigoted comments)