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# 3.1 Marianne Dreams and Tom’s Midnight Garden

Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr and Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce were both first published in 1958. You may have read one or both books as a child, or you may have watched a film, theatre or television adaptation. Figures 4 and 5 show some of the book covers and film and television stills produced since the novels were published. Reflect for a moment on what themes you think each book deals with, based on these images.

Figure 4 Book covers and film stills from Marianne Dreams
Figure 5 Book covers and film stills from Tom’s Midnight Garden

The different images from Marianne Dreams and Tom’s Midnight Garden illustrate the wide range of media through which the main characters of Marianne (from Marianne Dreams) and Tom and Hatty (from Tom’s Midnight Garden) have been presented.

Some of the images from Marianne Dreams have a house prominently displayed, and two of the covers include Marianne holding a pencil or drawing, all of which are important features of the story. These images may have struck you as having a fantastical quality, possibly even sinister, especially the image of the lighthouse at an angle and the television still which shows harsh-looking metal fencing and a dark, muddy landscape.

The images from Tom’s Midnight Garden may also have struck you as having a fantastical quality, such as the image of Tom being shown outlined against the moon. As with Marianne Dreams, we learn that a house will feature in the story, but as you might expect from the title, the garden is more prominent. You may have felt that these images seem less unsettling and sinister than the ones in Figure 4, and you are probably curious as to why a young boy is shown in his pyjamas in the garden.

In the next few activities, you’ll be directed to read extracts from the start of both novels, and think about how the reader is persuaded to believe in the fantastical elements, as well as some of the literary techniques used. The activities are based around short excerpts (which will be provided), but if you have a copy of the books you may prefer to read Chapters 1 to 6 of Tom’s Midnight Garden and Chapters 1-2 of Marianne Dreams in full and then return to this course to complete the activities.

## Activity 4 First impressions of Marianne Dreams

Allow about 15 minutes

Read this extract from the opening to Marianne Dreams, and note down your first impressions of the story so far. How do you feel about the main character or protagonist, Marianne? What do you imagine the story will be about?

#### Catherine Storr:

Marianne had imagined the lesson in a hundred different ways before it ever happened …

Sometimes, forgetting her age and size, she rode a Shetland pony who, at first sight, loved and obeyed her, and was so unhappy when she left the stables that she had to be allowed to take it home and keep it. Sometimes, on her first visit to the stables, she met a nervous Arab mare who appeared vicious and unsafe to her owners. Marianne had only to speak to her quietly, and lay a gentle hand on her black satin neck, and she became docile and tractable at once. The stable hands were amazed. ‘We have never seen anything like this before,’ they said. And so on, and so on, and so on.

Marianne knew that this was half nonsense and that people didn’t become experienced horsewomen in an hour …

Perhaps no riding lesson could have come up to quite so much expectation … But it was exciting to be on the back of a real horse at last; and the riding master, though he didn’t say he couldn’t believe she was a beginner, did say that she seemed to take to it naturally, which was as much as anyone in their senses could hope for.

It wasn’t till the lesson was over, and she was home again, that Marianne realized how tired she was: not agreeably, after-exercise tired, but extraordinarily, aching tired all over; an unpleasant sensation … It was when the smell of chicken and peas came floating up the kitchen stairs that she first realised that she wouldn’t be able to eat any of it.

Not to be able to eat your lunch in the ordinary way is bad enough. It is worse if you have had your first riding lesson and know that you ought to be hungry. But not to be able to eat your birthday lunch is worst of all. A birthday lunch which you have chosen yourself is the peak of the day. You aren’t, or shouldn’t be, too tired to enjoy it, and there is still more to come. Marianne knew this. So when she saw the chicken, golden and crackling, and the roast potatoes and the peas and the bread sauce and the gravy, and found that as far as she was concerned they were all going to be wasted, she burst into tears.

Chapter 1, pp. 7-9
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### Discussion

There are many possible responses to this text. You may have felt sorry for Marianne, or you may have thought that her tears were an overreaction. It’s interesting that the text begins with Marianne fantasising about how her first riding lesson will go, but there is relatively little focus on the lesson itself. Perhaps this puts our focus on the unrealistic world of Marianne’s imagination, preparing ourselves for the fantastic events to come.

You might also think about how we know so much about Marianne’s imagination. Readers learn what Marianne is thinking and feeling because the narrator – the voice telling us the story – is all-knowing or omniscient.

In terms of where you think the story will go from this rather everyday starting point, this may depend on how much you know about the novel already. Perhaps you have already read the blurb, or thought about the front cover, or seen one of the adaptations. From this opening, you might think that Marianne’s reaction to being overwhelmed and tired are a character trait that will be explored in the book, but you might also suspect that she is unwell, and that this illness will be related to the dreams of the title.

While the protagonist is the main character in the story, any information we learn about the protagonist will come from the narrator, the voice telling us the story. An important step in analysing fiction is therefore considering not just who the protagonist is, but also who is telling us about them, and how they are doing this.

## Activity 5 Narrative voice

Allow about 5 minutes

For events to be told, the novel needs a narrator. A narrator may, for example, tell the story in the first person as an autobiographical participant in the events. Alternatively, the narrator may be external to the events, be omniscient (know everything that has and will happen in the story, including characters’ inner thoughts and feelings), and narrate in the third person.

Here is an extract from Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor. What kind of narrator can you identify here?

> I glanced across at Little Man, his face lit in eager excitement. I knew that he could not see the soiled covers or the marred pages from where he sat.

(Taylor, 1976, p. 24)
First-person autobiographical narrator
Third-person omniscient narrator

Now here is an extract from Tom’s Midnight Garden. What kind of narrator did Philippa Pearce use here? Here is a short extract from the opening of the book:

> He knew he was being rude, but he made no excuses for himself; he did not much like Uncle Alan, and he did not want to like him at all.

(Pearce, 1958, p. 3)
First-person autobiographical narrator
Third-person omniscient narrator

The narrator’s knowledge of and positioning towards the events in a narrative is important to consider in any analysis of fiction, because how they tell us the story can have a significant impact on our interpretation. Narrators might appear to be objectively reporting on events, or they might give us very subjective opinions, affecting our understanding of the narrative as a whole. One very significant way that narrators might take more or less control of the narrative is how they report any dialogue between the characters.

## Activity 6 Dialogue

Allow about 10 minutes

Fiction usually employs passages of direct speech and dialogue. Dialogue dramatises events and characters, showing through scenes that are enacted in the reader’s imagination, rather than telling through narration.

Here is another extract from Chapter 2 (pp. 9-10) of Tom’s Midnight Garden, in which Tom argues with his aunt and uncle about his bedtime. Highlight all the dialogue that you can find.

Note: To insert or erase highlighting, click on the word(s). Click and drag the mouse pointer over the text to highlight full sentences or paragraphs. To erase all highlighting and start again, use the reset button. When you’re done, click on ‘Reveal answer’ underneath to see a completed version.

You will have noticed that while some of the dialogue is accompanied by explanatory narrative (telling us who is speaking and how), these are rare, which gives a sense that the conversation is fast-moving.

There is a long chunk of text where Tom’s uncle speaks without interruption either from Tom or the narrator. He is allowed to dominate both Tom and the narrative. This increases the sense of Tom’s lack of power and the authority of his uncle.

◄Contents►Next: 3.2 Direct and indirect speech

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