A boy made to lie naked across the Headmaster's knees to be caned, so severely the marks were still visible sixty years later.
That's why I value this book.
When I ws a child it was almost impossible to see beyond the British Empire, or very far into it.
And now it's crystal clear what the pain and blood and labour and poverty and ostracism of millions of people, bought.
and he didn't tell his parents, or anyone else, i assume
ReplyDeleteNo. There were so many reasons. To be clear, the man who was still marked by that beating was a student who'd been in a different Form from Spencer. Spencer interviewed him sixty years later, when he was starting the research for the book. However:
ReplyDelete*there was no vocabulary of abuse to use. The less invasive forms of abuse were simply not recognized as sexual assault, or even as assault, by the boys themselves. There were no "children's rights". There was no idea of bodily autonomy as it is now conceived.
I think the lack of language was crucial to the confusion and the buildup of unspoken misery that manifested later as depression and/or the inability to form stable relationships.
His shame about the marks on is buttocks was so deep that the boy in the example, for example, never attempted to marry or have a romantic life.
A couple of other men Spenser spoke to, though without cane-marks, said similar things. They never fully recovered.
*there was no one to tell. Charles's father would not let him leave the school because that kind of school was where families of that class sent their children. It was unthinkable to do otherwise. Children were expected to endure and survive.
As the workg-class character in "Another Country" remarked at the end of the film, "The fathers knew." Yes, they would have. Known/didn't know/suppressed/passed the cruelty on. The culture was that children were seen and not heard, did not disturb parents or family arrangements.
ANDTHEY ALWAYS THINK IT IS THEIR FAULT,BECAUSE THAT' WHAT THE ABUSER TELLS THEM
DeleteYes.
ReplyDeleteThe punishment/abuse was usually for some infraction of school rules, which could include things like failing a Latin test.
Some bizarre & less invasive forms of abuse were dressed up as games, which made the situation even less susceptible to analysis for the kids.