Doreen by Barbara Noble

Doreen tells the story of a nine-year-old working class girl who is sent to the country in 1941 to escape the London Blitz. Doreen’s mother, Mrs Rawling, cleans offices. One morning, after a particularly heavy bombing, one of the office’s employees finds her in tears. Mrs Rawling shares her concerns about the safety of her daughter, and Miss Helen Osborne offers to write to her brother and sister-in-law, who live in a village in Oxfordshire and have no children, and ask them to take in Doreen. Soon everything is arranged, and Doreen finds herself on a train on her way to the Osborne’s – and also apart from her mother for the very first time in her life. Doreen deals with the misery caused by this separation, but not in the way you’d expect: it isn’t that Doreen is unhappy away from her mother; it’s that very soon she feels completely at home with the Osbornes, and settles into a new way of life.

Doreen is another personal and untold WW2 story, and as you might have noticed by now, I tend to love those. Evacuating children from London to keep them safe from the bombings was, from a practical standpoint, a wise and reasonable decision. But practical decisions often don’t leave any room for emotions to be taken into account. Doreen asks the questions that nobody could really afford to ask at the time: what did it feel like for a child to be sent away from the only home she’d ever known? What did it feel like for the parents, who had to spend months or even years away from their children? And finally, what did it feel like for the foster parents, many of whom couldn’t help but grow to love the children they had taken in?

With gentleness and insight, Barbara Noble addresses all these unacknowledged feelings. There was a war going on, and possibly people felt that their own personal feelings were not legitimate in the face of What Had To Be Done. But it’s only human to love; it's only human to worry we’ll lose those we have grown to love; it's human even to be selfish at times. The Osbornes, particularly Mrs Osborne, grow to love Doreen like the child they never had. Mrs Rawlings cannot help but resent this love, even as she’s grateful that Doreen is being treated with such kindness. She also cannot help but worry that this separation will do the same the bombs could have done – take her daughter away from her forever. And Doreen herself feels divided in her love for her mother and her love for her foster family, as well as in her appreciation of the kind of life the Osbornes, unlike her mother, can afford to give her, which she vaguely feels may be disloyal.

The other issue Doreen deals with is that of class: Doreen is a working-class girl, and the Osbornes are an upper class family. In 1946, when this book was published, the old class divisions were beginning to erode, but centuries of habit don’t disappear overnight, and there was still a strong feeling that the different social classes were not supposed to mingle. Helen Osborne warns her sister-in-law that everything she’s teaching Doreen may be a drawback rather than an advantage when she returns to her mother and her London life; Mrs Osborne herself hesitates between accepting she’ll be causing Doreen unhappiness in the future and depriving her of whatever happiness she can give her now; and Doreen’s mother fears that her daughter will be discontented with the life that awaits her after the war.

But as Mrs Osborne and Mrs Rawlings cautiously admit to each other towards the end of the novel, the class issue, real though it may be, is more of an official explanation; more of a mask behind which they can hide their true feelings. The fact is that these two women both love Doreen, and they cannot help but feel that they’re competing for the child’s affection. This may be selfish, but it’s also only too human.

Doreen is beautiful, perceptive, gentle and terribly sad. Like Noel Streatfeild’s Saplings, it shows us a side of WW2 that isn’t often talked about. Its greatest strength is the complete respect with which Barbara Noble deals with her characters’ feelings, be they children or adults, be these feelings dignified or not; rational or nor; easy to express or unspeakable. In the acknowledgement and validation it gives to emotional experiences that tend to be muted, Doreen is an immensely kind book.

Favourite passages:

“I think all children are alike in a special way, but I don’t know the words to explain what I mean.”
“All green and innocent and dewy?” Geoffrey suggested, to help her out.
“No, not that. I think I mean… well, that they’re all real people to themselves and only half-real to the rest of the world. Except to other children, of course. However much they’re loved, they’re never taken quite seriously. And yet their own lives and their own feelings are all terribly important to them. I’m sorry for children because they’re so helpless. They have to go where they’re pushed. I know that I did, anyhow.”

Doreen began to cry, silently, her face puckered, her heart sore. She understood perfectly well that she was being accused of disloyalty, and no scolding could have hurt her as much as that reproach. Her tears were not only for the moment, they were the same tears she had shed on Christmas Day. She cried because she had learned to love more than one person and it seemed that this was some kind of crime. How could you help loving people when they loved you and were kind? Why were people angry with you for it?

Francie let the challenge lie. There was nothing she could do. She accepted the fact, with all its bitterness. Doreen was Mrs Rawlings’ child, not hers. If Mrs Rawlings’ chose, Doreen must stay in London, for a week, for ever. And it appeared that Doreen herself wanted to stay. It was stupid too mind that—stupid and irrational and grudging. But she did mind. You minded things with your heart even when your head told you that you had no right or justification. That was part of loving someone, the humiliating coin in which you had to pay, the base coin which purchased nothing. For there was no ownership in love, no real ownership, even for Mrs Rawlings. But just now, for the time being, Mrs Rawlings held the tokens of authority.

Other opinions:
Fleur Fish Reads

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