When I read The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 and 3/4 by Sue Townsend, I was the same age as Adrian Mole.
Not in Real Life, obviously, as you know, I keep going on about the fact that I don’t exist except as a character in a novel. Adrian Mole and I could meet up if we wanted to, in the Other World, where fictitious characters live. If we did meet up, this is what I would say,
“Hi Adrian, did you know that when I read your diary about your parents splitting up, that was the first time I’d ever encountered divorce in a novel. And by the way, Pandora, I adore ya! is my favourite poem.”
He might reply, “I don’t care, please go away.”
The divorce of the Mole parents, Pauline and George, felt very real to me even though my own parents were still together at the time. I thought how terrible it would be to have divorced parents. Adrian seemed to handle it very well, observing and commentating like a bemused spectator without taking it too personally.
A few years later I did indeed find out how the divorce of your parents hurls your life upside down. It is forever more, it isn’t just something to get over or come to terms with, like death. It is ever present and I think it needs to be carefully managed for everyone’s sake.
In the old days, divorce didn’t really happen. You had to wait for the other person to die, which sometimes, like Mr Casaubon and Dorothea in Middlemarch one party obligingly did.
There is lots of advice available as to how to deal with divorce, but what happens if people don’t take it? What if they just carry on steam-rollering along as if they are the injured party and no-one else matters? What happens to the children?
Even though we have laws and protections in place, there are still those parents whose sheer bloody-mindedness takes over. Once the children turn 18, there’s no protection then anyway.
This week I’m going to be looking at Divorce/Splitting up in novels and what happens in the aftermath: from Tess and Angel Clare to Scarlet and Rhett Butler and Pauline and George Mole.
If you can think of any others, keep them to yourself because frankly my dear I don’t give a give a damn.
No, I do, I do! Please don’t leave me! Please give me your examples, and have a great week.
Below is my drawing of two figures trying to sugar-coat their separation, but their sweet plans will come unstuck
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