Fourth in a series of reviews. Previously: Third Year At Malory Towers. Next: In The Fifth At Malory Towers. Contains spoilers.

This is getting tiresome.

“Well, it’s all true,” said Gwendoline, forgetting her own record of deceit and unkindness, and not even realizing how she had distorted the facts, so that though most of them were capable of simple and kindly explanations, she had presented them as pictures of real badness.

Pot. Kettle. Black. I mean, come on Enid, play the game, eh? Or is this by way of a sly textual hint to the alert reader? Upper Fourth once again sees Blyton preaching a quixotic sermon on the virtues becoming to a schoolgirl — and once again, it’s difficult for me to accept the book’s age alone as sufficient justification for the perspective and opinions thus communicated. At some points — notably a critical scene in which Darrell confronts a snitch — the entire moral framework becomes so far removed from my own as to be virtually incomprehensible, much less sympathetic.

The tone is set early: the book sees Felicity, Darrell’s little sister, arrive at Malory Towers, as well as June, cousin (and proxy sister) to Alicia. June turns out to be remarkably self-possessed for a first-year, taking Felicity in hand and quickly becoming familiar with the workings of the school. This, we are told in no uncertain terms, is A Bad Thing. Quite why is never really explained. It just is, alright? This obviously reflects contemporary attitudes in British public schools, but it’s exasperating that Blyton puts so little effort into justifying these attitudes, or providing object lessons as to their relevance.

Instead, she just gets Darrell, fuming with sisterly jealousy, to spew them as received wisdom, presenting readers with barely any context from which to draw conclusions. June, in particular, is such a tool that she simply disappears once she’s served her purpose; there’s no closure to her story arc at all. One much-quoted “rule” of good fiction writing is “show, don’t tell” — but Blyton is very much a storyteller. Perhaps it’s the headmistress in her; and perhaps it’s what the intended audience for the Malory Towers books enjoy. Kids like structure and certainty, allegedly, and so maybe that’s one reason Blyton’s such a successful childrens’ author.

On the other hand, maybe the messages don’t come over as “intended” anyway. It’s difficult, as an adult, to remember the extent to which children can form their own opinions and avoid becoming a sanctimonious censor. I remember admiring smart-mouthed Alicia when I read First Term as a kid; a friend thought Zerelda, the vain American of Third Year, was the bees’ knees. Perhaps my reaction is more of a knee-jerk response based in my own prejudices than a fair reflection of Upper Fourth’s simplistic morality.

But I feel more secure in stating that Upper Fourth is probably the dullest of the books so far. There isn’t any of the “mild peril” (as the film classifiers like to put it) that informed First Term and Second Form; nor is there the thrilling exoticism (Americans! horses! lesbians!) of Third Year. Without these devices, Blyton is left recycling now rather tired and obvious themes and twists. Gwendoline is a snobby bitch (and she actually is, in this episode); unappealing weakling Clarissa turns out to be a boisterous horsewoman with flowing auburn locks and sparkling green eyes; a HILARIOUS prank is played on the half-witted Mam’zelle Dupont; and assorted girls learn valuable life lessons great and small.

The plot, such as it is, progresses through a suffocating miasma of bitchery, snobbery, sniping and scheming. When one of the girls eventually succumbs to ASBOid ranting, the effect is gratifyingly cathartic, but it wasn’t too long before I was crying out for a good old-fashioned cat-fight. All, I got, however, was Darrell pushing someone over in a music room. Again. They should really put CCTV in. Anyway, that’s about it for high drama. Even the illustrator’s struggled: the cover shows a girl playing tennis, which barely figures in the book. In fact, not a lot does figure in it; for most of the time, the girls are working towards exams, diverted only by a midnight feast and a couple of dull and sketchily described excursions.

The exams are one of the few hints that the girls are growing up, and may in the forseeable future have to depart the safe walls of Malory Towers for the wild world outside. Some of them are by now fifteen, but puberty is still mostly conspicuous by its absence, though there is the slenderest of hints that it might arrive by the time the girls reach twenty-one … so that’d be, like, Eleventh Year At Malory Towers? (To be followed by God, Let Me Out Of Malory Towers, All The Good Ones Are Taken At Malory Towers and Oh Well, There’s Always Gwendoline).

Other than the exams, and an unconvincing riff to the effect that With Great Power Comes With Great Responsibility, Upper Fourth’s major theme is sisterhood. Not being blessed with any siblings, I can only really guess at whether Blyton succeeds in capturing any of the flavour of such relationships. As well as Darrell/Felicity and Alicia/June, we also get Connie and Ruth, a pair of twins who seem to be set on heading into Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? territory. Connie’d be played by Bette Crawford, domineering and resentful of her more gifted but somewhat Aspergers-afflicted twin. Ruth, for her part, passive-aggressively expresses her rage by surreptitiously destroying Connie’s belongings and replacing them with her own.

Of course, she is eventually found out – amazingly, the girls have finally learnt something about mob justice and manage not to leap to the wrong conclusion. So the stage is all set for the twins to vent their frustrations in a close-quarters cage fight (no bladed weapons without prior consent, anything else goes) … but Darrell, crazed by her lust for power, intervenes to explain that the real problem isn’t that they have an utterly dysfunctional relationship, but their unnatural zygotomy.

“It’s all very peculiar and extraordinary, but somehow quite understandable. It’s because you’re twins, I expect. Connie should have been your elder sister, then it wouldn’t have mattered! You could have loved each other like ordinary sisters do, and you’d have been in different forms, and things would have been all right. Cheer up, Ruth. It’s all been frightening and horrible to you, but honestly I can see quite well how it all happened.”

In other words: it’s okay to be browbeaten by your sibling and to revenge yourself through pathologically destructive behaviour as long as you’re not the same age. Handily, it turns out that Connie and Ruth are, in fact, to be separated next term, as the invisible hand of Malory Towers does its work. So that’s alright then. Rah for Malory Towers!