Last Term At Malory Towers represents a dramatic, and in many ways unsettling, break with the arc of the series to date. It’s almost as though Blyton had grown frustrated with her self-imposed chronology, cramming in ideas and themes that have barely figured up in the books until now. The result is startlingly anarchic, tearing down the edifice that Blyton has constructed over the previous five books and giving the lie to claims that her work depends on formulaic appeals to base prejudices.

The catalyst for the apocalyptic events of Last Term is the startling announcement from Mary-Lou that she is pregnant - it’s always the quiet ones, isn’t it? - which prokes a schism among the girls, who cannot understand how this has happened – after all, Mary-Lou is not married! One faction—led by Darrell and Sally – holds staunchly that it must have been an immaculate conception; the other, following Alicia and Betty, is equally adamant that something more diabolical is afoot.

“It’s perfectly obvious that this is an abomination! How else could it have happened?” asked Alicia sharply. And it was true that none of the girls could think how timid Mary-Lou could possibly be with child. “Well, I think you’re all being beastly to poor little Mary-Lou,” said Darrell.

The girls quickly divide into rival sects, their opposing perspectives inevitably setting them on a collision course. Darrell’s group seclude Mary-Lou in the sanatorium, the better to prepare her for the birth; Alicia’s followers, meanwhile, accept Betty’s offer and set about creating a stronghold in the West Tower. Both sides try to persuade the other Towers to fall in line; the South Tower girls quickly pledge allegiance to their neighbours in the West, while the East Tower remains independent.

That standoffishness proves their downfall. Darrell and Alica call a summit in the music room, but any hopes of peace are dashed as a heated war of words breaks out. It does not take long for Darrell to snatch Alicia’s pen and smash it underfoot—a clear declaration of hostilities. (To confirm her intentions, she also pushes a first year over a stool). Oh Darrell, that temper will be your downfall! Alicia calls upon the Towers to take sides; when the girls of the East refuse to comply, they meet with a terrible fate, as Alicia’s followers set their Tower on fire; too late, its occupants call on Darrell to help them, but she refuses.

“They could do with learning a lesson!” Darrell thought, as the smell of roasting pork drifted across the quad. “Fancy being so stuck-up as to refuse to take a side!” She decided there and then that no girl from the East Tower would be named to any school team for the rest of the term.

It is at about this point that the teachers, ever watchful, first note that something is going on. Miss Potts is the first upon the scene – and the first to go to her death. Alicia’s upstart cousin June sees opportunity in rising lawlessness and leaps upon the startled Potts; she is followed by a legion of other frustrated girls. Blyton tactfully draws a veil on the ensuing scene.

From there on, the collapse of Malory Towers is all but inevitable as a war breaks out. All sides - including the Southsiders, having broken their pact with Alicia’s Western Front - are hell-bent on recovering Mary-Lou and her unborn child. Pitched battles break out at the entrances to the North Tower, with defenders snatching up make-shift weapons to buy time for Mary-Lou. Lacrosse sticks run with blood; the dorms fill with the dead and dying. Since Matron has been poisoned - after literally getting a taste of her own medicine - there is little medical support for the wounded, and the defenders are outnumbered. There can only be one outcome—or so it seems.

The situation was desperate, Darrell had to admit. Most of the first-formers were gone, and many of the second form. Soon she would have to start sending the older girls to their deaths. And the wound in her side hurt terribly, but not as terribly as the memory of those who had already gone: Daphne, redeemed at last; Connie and Ruth, reunited in death; and of course, Felicity. She had truly served Malory Towers will.

But in a surprise twist, salvation (or damnation?) arrives in the most unlikely of forms: Gwendoline—silly, sentimental Gwendoline; proud, vain Gwendoline; Gwendoline who has spent the two terms since In The Fifth assiduously cultivating the black arts. And Gwendoline is not alone: by her side is the mewling, crazed Maureen, while the unexpected third member of the coven is the American, Zerelda, who has not forgotten her time at Malory Towers during her career as a B-Movie queen (having shot to fame in “Girls’ School Hellcats!”). Gwendoline, so long a hapless figure of fun, finally has the power to control the other girls’ destiny. It takes her no more than a few words and gestures to silence the screaming masses, scorching the earth around the North Tower.

Whose side will she pick? On the one side, there is Darrell: the model Malory Towers girl, everything that Gwendoline is not. On the other, Alicia, whose sharp tongue ensured that hours, days and weeks of torment. Both sides lobby for her favour; but Gwendoline spurns them all. And in the end, she finally proves that she did learn something at Malory Towers after all. “A plague on all your houses,” she screeches, before setting Malory Towers ablaze. That, inevitably, wakes The Grayling, who rises, shrieking, from the pyre, her eyes glowing and her talons outstretched. The final battle has begun.

To say more would be a disservice to Blyton’s carefully constructed finale. The narrative is relatively sparse, but rich in symbolism and filled with potent imagery. Who can forget Mam’zelle Rougier, her face blackened with soot, blade clamped between her yellowed teeth, promising to “streep ze fat” from the squealing Mam’zelle Dupont? Or the scene in which Bill and Clarissa ride their horses, manes ablaze, to snatch Mary-Lou from June? Mavis, singing her final solo amid the ruins of the North Tower? Or Darrell and Sally, united at last as the flames lick ever closer? Last Term; last call: a fitting conclusion to the series.

Oh, all right then.

Sixth and last in a series of reviews. Previously: In The Fifth At Malory Towers.
Contains spoilers.

And so we find ourselves at the end of the Malory Towers series. Has it been worthwhile? I’ve spent probably a day of my life on these books now - perhaps more - and while I’ve stayed the course, I’d have bailed after Third Form if I’d known then what I know now. That said, I’ve had a morbid curiosity about how the series ends, so I’d probably have read at least this book, anyway.

Have the reviews been worthwhile? Well, I take some consolation from the fact that George Orwell thought the male version of this genre worth examining, and it if was worth his time, it’s certainly worth mine. And trying to marshal one’s thoughts on a work of art - even a banal one - is always an interesting exercise. As I’ve suggested before, it’s been challenging trying to separate genre convention from authorial idiosyncracy: it’s interesting to see how my assessment of the books contrasts with Laura Canning’s; she’s clearly much more knowledgeable about the girls’ school story genre and forgiving (accepting?) of its conventions.

To the book. Last Term is, in many ways, the ultimate reason for this whole sorry exercise: sating my decades-old curiosity about what did happen, in the end, to Darrell and company. In some ways, the answer to that question is spectacularly banal. There are no great surprises and only one real upset. In fact, the original cast have grown so institutionalised and staid as to be not worth writing about; instead, Blyton passes the baton to the younger girls introduced over the past few books.

But while the narrative conclusion is so much blah, Last Term does provide a definitive reiteration of the themes lain out the earlier books. Unfortunately, as has now been spelt out at considerable length, I find most of these at least mildly repellent. Things don’t start out too badly, with the It Girls showing unexpected maturity in dealing with their “problem” schoolmates. They even consider looking for the good in their fellow pupils before writing them off! (A bit late, given that they’re all about to leave, but still.)

Could Amanda be right? Had their dislike and disapproval of the cheeky, don’t-care June prevented them from seeing that she had the promise of a first-class games-player?”

Well, duh. Even more amazingly, the inmates acknowledge that experience and ability could be of just possible be of more use than time served in Malory Towers. Sally goes in two pages from:

“You’re a new girl, Amanda. But you seem to forget it. You can’t talk to us like that, and you must realise that Moira knows more than you do about our girls.”

to acknowledging that perhaps Amanda, an Olympic-class sportswoman, does, in fact, have a better chance at recognizing and nurturing atheletic talent. Unfortunately, it doesn’t last. The old guard still gain the upper hand by “tricking” her into mentoring June.

The ensuing Amanda-June storyline is one of the more satisfying in the Malory Towers series; both are strong characters, and their relationship is fractious and ultimately doomed – until Amanda over-reaches herself and has to be rescued by June. This is yet another repetition of the now wearyingly familiar Mild Peril and Redemption scenario of earlier books. Sure enough, June and Amanda are reconciled.

The sting is the price that Amanda pays for her hubris: she is crippled, possibly permanently, and we’re given to understand that her Olympic dreams have been snuffed out. This is the story of Mavis, from Third Form, redux: talent is not to be trusted, and invites punishment.

No one said, or even thought, that it served Amanda right for her conceit, and for her continual boasting of her prowess. Not even the lower-formers said it, though none of them had liked Amanda. Her misfortune roused their pity.

But despite this, it feels very much as though the reader is being invited to rejoice in (or perhaps learn from) Amanda’s humbling. Why else the authorial decision to include such a fate? This invitation to schadenfreude is still more evident in Gwendoline’s plot arc. In Last Term, as in Upper Fourth, Gwendoline is genuinely thoughtless and self-centred – the promised character development of In The Fifth having seemingly evaporated along the way. Still, her comeuppance seems disproportionate: condemned (as she, and the others see it) to a life of drudgery. I can’t help but think the punishment doesn’t fit the crime.

But the most obvious, and telling, thematic loop is the story of Jo. Class has been a relatively understated issue in the Malory Towers series – with the exception of Ellen, in Second Form, the reader has been left to simply assume that most of the girls are from relatively privileged backgrounds, and that Malory Towers exists to produce the kind of women who could be relied upon to lie back and think of England.

We’re given a bit of a hint of this with the introduction of Suzanne, a truly redundant addition to the cast whose only purpose appears to be tedious French-accent jokes and a reminder that foreigners don’t have what it takes to run an Empire. But the rules of engagement are made more explicit with the introduction of Jo, the daughter of a nouveau-riche vulgarian. It’s made pretty obvious that this can only end in tears. Jo has only money to show off; she hasn’t had a proper upbringing and lacks the moral fibre to fit in at Malory Towers:

Miss Grayling sighed with relief. “I’m sorry,” she said to the other parents. “It was an experiment, taking Jo—but I’m afraid it’s not an experiment that’s going to work out well. We’ve had other experiments before, as you know – taking girls that don’t really fit in, hoping they will, later.”

Blyton repeatedly pins the blame for Jo’s failure to adapt, as other “experiments” have in the past, on her parents’ irresponsibility. Her father, in particular, appears to have no idea about the importance of proper conduct. On the one hand, this seems reasonable; and it touches a chord with modern concerns. We’ve been shown something similar with Gwendoline and her doting mother. But on the other, one is left wondering why this particular scenario. Why are Jo’s parents irresponsible?

Mother says I’ve let the family name down [writes Jo]. All I can say is, it’s a good thing it’s only ‘Jones’.

Jo certainly does makes a bit of a mess – but others, notably Daphne, have been forgiven greater sins. There are mitigating circumstances, and you could make a case for leniency. But that doesn’t happen, and Jo’s misdemeanours instead draw the ultimate sanction: expulsion. There’s no place for her kind at Malory Towers.

So what did happened to Malory Towers’ more favoured daughters?

Well, Darrell, of course, grew up to be, er, Enid Blyton’s second husband. There’s some amusing speculation about what happened to the rest of the characters here. There was also a series of peculiar (or perhaps that should be “queer”) “sequels” written under Blyton’s name in Germany, in which Darrell (or rather, “Dolly”) has returned to Malory Towers as a teacher. That certainly seems the most appropriate scenario; perhaps she eventually deposed The Grayling to become head. And wrote some childrens’ books on the side.

But of course, the real question is: What happened to Malory Towers? Rather like Hill House, it’s one of the most important characters in the series. Well, it’s clear that Blyton is setting up Malory Towers: The Next Generation. There’s Felicity, who is for most purposes Darrell Junior; there’s June, who’s as gifted-but-wilful as her elder cousin Alicia; and analogues can be found for the rest.

And no doubt their children will attend Malory Towers, as their mothers did before them – trapped in an unending cycle of kindly, but determined conservativism and prejudice. That conjures up the image of Malory Towers self-perpetuating, endlessly full of identical girls going through the identical rites of passage, walking like repeated ghosts through its echoing corridors until the end of time.

Malory Towers was here before any of us; and it will be here when we are all gone.

Or will it?