Having discussed how important it is for the reader to feel ‘at home’ in a fictional landscape, I would like now to consider the opposite. In other words, the effect upon the story in which the landscape is isolated. In much the same way in which I postulated that Greyfriars is an enclosed institution,[2] I would suggest that landscapes, too, are enclosed. However, this is tempered by links — historical, ethical, and mythological — to its origins.

As an example of a landscape that encompasses all the elements needed to create an isolated, fictional, world, the story that gives this article its title is a good example.

The people of Yonada[3] live a seemingly idyllic life ‘on’ their world, unaware that they inhabit, not the surface, but the interior of an asteroid converted into a spaceship to save a civilization long dead.

The plot device of enclosing the scope of the action is common in most genres of literature. Probably the commonest enclosed landscape is an island. Treasure Island,[4] Coral Island,[5] and Swiss Family Robinson,[6] are three well-known instances. As Gill Paton Walsh said, “By using an island you set yourself a [geographical] limit over which you cannot pass”.[7] This results in a clearly defines ‘stage’ for the characters, landscape, and action. This makes writing simpler and, hence, comprehension by the reader easier. The corollary to this geographical enclosure is that, while there is (possibly) an inferred world beyond, the protagonists cannot leave the central stage on which they have been placed by their creator. Such a created landscape, upon which strange happenings occur, lends itself to adornment with exotic flora and fauna and esoteric races of inhabitants. From these enhancements of a fictional landscape, the author can promulgate the internal ideologies in any chosen direction.

This comparative narrowness of a fictional world leads to a landscape that is more easily imagined by the reader. Thus, the internal ideology of the story can be more easily expressed by the author and, therefore, more readily grasped by the reader. The ‘size’ of the landscape has to be based on a perception of scale. This, in turn, is based on both author’s and reader’s knowledge of their personal worlds. In early times, the scope of the landscape was omphalic;[8] the ‘world’ did not exist beyond the reader’s (or listener’s in the days of oral narration) horizon. As humankind spread, knowledge of the world, and thus its scale, grew. With this increase in perception of the world, the scope of narrational geography grew. Once the market for children’s literature expanded in the nineteenth century, the requirement was for authors to create more distant locales in which tales were set. Hence, the Robinsonade genre of literature with its distant, exotic places, pirates, and treasure, all set within the twin confines of sailing vessel and island. Today, space fiction has taken on the mantle and the mystique of distance with the result that horizons are now infinite. (Perhaps it is fair to say the scope of Treasure Island was infinite to its generation.)

Yonada, floating in this infinity, is a confined landscape. It can be viewed as ‘an island in space’ with all the derived mysticism that isolation and distance imply. As a world it is complete, albeit a world within, whose inhabitants are not allowed to contemplate the existence of any place beyond their home world. While this ideology is imposed on the people of this fictional world, the egocentric nature of the idea (that their world is the centre of the universe) is typical of most creation myths. Later stories, inevitably, do borrow from these primordial tribal memories and oral traditions.

The planet of Yonada has similarities to the idealized worlds of Middle Earth and Narnia created by J. R. R. Tolkien[9] and C. S. Lewis[10] respectively. The former is a world whose omphalos, from the reader’s perspective, is the Shire. This, an idyllic place, free from original sin, until the coming of Saruman, is drawn from the author’s internal vision of what Rural England should have been. This, almost mythological construct is derived from the author’s childhood memories of what he thought it was like. Middle Earth is part of a cosmos. It is composed of several smaller areas, each with its own myths, traditions, customs, and languages. All of these were created by Tolkien who wanted to ‘invent’ new languages and their people. Their creation myths are related in The Silmarillion.[11]

Narnia, on the other hand, while superficially having the same ideological basis, is an unashamed reworking of the Christian faith, from the arrival of Aslan the Lion (Jesus Christ) to The Last Battle.[12] The latter retells Christ’s Nativity and Resurrection from the Cross into Life Everlasting, and ends with a vision of the Apocalypse of St. John the Divine. Again, this is an omphalic world. However, unlike Middle Earth, or Yonada, there is not only the navel of the Lamp-post, there is also an invisible umbilical chord linking Narnia itself with any Narnian artefact found within our world. (The best known of these being the eponymous Wardrobe of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.)[13] However, these connections do not imply nearness. Narnia, isolated from other worlds both in narrative and in ideology, is enclosed by this distance. This geographical isolation, which is assumed by the reader, is further underlined by the author in the first book (chronologically), The Magician’s Nephew,[14] in which the road to Narnia is via the Wood Between the Worlds.[15]

Yonada, on the other hand, does not appear omphalic. It is, rather, egocentric. The historical links to the origins of the Yonadan people are lost in the mists of time. However, the umbilical links are present in the form of a Jungian proto-memory that is utilised to bind the inhabitants to the mores and customs that prevail.

Like the Garden of Eden, Middle Earth, and Narnia, Yonada has its serpent. In all these myths Man’s desire for knowledge leads to a form of expulsion. In the Biblical context, this search is condemned. In Middle Earth (although Tolkien was only interested in the conflict between good and evil), this thirst leads the Hobbits on their quest, as a result of which, the serpent, in the guise of Saruman, entered the Shire. In Narnia, the White Witch[16] enters Narnia in direct response to the threat imposed by the arrival of sons and daughters of Adam. Like the Garden of Eden, Man is beguiled by the offer of forbidden fruit.

There is one major difference between Yonada and other fictional landscapes. Yonada is not mapped for the ‘reader’. Since it is a television film, the landscape is visual. It requires no imagination, nor interpretation by the viewer, to re-create the author’s world. Neither is there the need to describe such a landscape, except through the visual ‘narration’ of the camera – which is then interpreted by the reader.

How does Greyfriars compare with the model I have postulated for an enclosed fictional world?

True, the Famous Five (and Billy Bunter) visit exotic, far-flung, places. However, most ‘episodes’ of such adventures take place within narrow confines. For example, aboard the various yachts on which they sail; or within equally confined houses like Bunter Court, Mauleverer Towers, or Wharton Lodge. The same is true of other ‘scenes’. For example, on the Amazon, the horizons are often limited by the flanking, often encroaching, jungle.[17] However, the scope of this article must, by definition, exclude such landscapes.

When we look at the ‘World of Greyfriars’ itself, we first notice the enclosing walls. More accurately, their position and imposing nature is thrust upon us by the author. Set in these are one pair of enclosing, and excluding, gates (complete with Gosling acting as an excellent Cerberus!). This act of enclosing serves to keeping the ‘inmates’ within the monastic close, while the exclusion acts to keep the unwanted world at bay. Within these confines (and this is le mot just) the school has its entire being. This one architectural feature tells us, immediately, that Greyfriars is isolated, confined, and, with the presence of the gates and porter, elitist.

The campus is bounded, like the maps of the ancient Babylonians, by a river (the Sark). The enclosing circle of this River of Life is completed by Friardale Lane and Oak Lane. In other words, Greyfriars is a world within a world. These worlds are not meant to touch one another. While there has to be communication between these different worlds, the external world must be kept apart lest its influence corrupt the inner, private, world within.

Beyond these boundaries, lie woods and fields acting as a buffer between Greyfriars and the outside world of Friardale and Courtfield. Yet further afield, are the almost mythical (albeit, real) places like Canterbury and London.

This exclusion is further highlighted by the sense of isolation gained from the boys’ means of getting to Greyfriars. In the early days of the Magnet, any journey of more than a few miles entailed long planning to allow for overnight halts. The implication of the time required for travel to Greyfriars serves to heighten the seclusion of such an enclosed world. Isolation further emphasized by the foreign boys at the school – and the even greater distance involved in their private Odysseys.

Dornford Yates wrote many books about the Edwardian and post World War l eras. An incident in The Berry Scene[18] highlights the differences in distance between Edwardian and Neo-Elizabethan England. The year is 1910 or 1912 and the Pleydell’s have just acquired a car. “Poke Abbas … because it lay sixty miles off … we had never seen till that day, except from the train”.[19] Today, we commonly drive one or two hundred miles a day — and conduct our business as well. Therefore, when you consider the Pleydell’s major expedition, and when it took place, it was, truly, a journey of discovery.

When we read the opening chapters of Magnet Number 1 today, it does not seem much merely to trip over the County border into Sussex, and thence into Kent. It is true, we have to assume, that Wharton had faced the arduous journey from India to England – a journey made all the harder by the recent death of his parents. (Did Hamilton get this opening from A Little Princess, with the implication that they had died of the plague?)[20]

 Harry Wharton’s first journey to Greyfriars was, indeed, a journey of exploration into new far-off places. He was facing the loss of his innocence, the rupture of his life from independent, selfish, self-centred self-indulgence. (“I find you sadly…”)[21] From now on, he would have to conform to the rules of an enclosed, regulated, institution, and all that this implied.[22] What we are not told is the duration of the journey. We know he had to change trains. There is no sense of time to the journey. Perhaps this is clever writing. By giving the reader no sense of duration, does the journey becomes longer in the imagination? This serves to heighten the isolation of Greyfriars, and of the new boy about to enter its confines.

What is certain is that, riding in the train with Wharton, we are made to feel as desolate and isolated as any normal teenager must feel when leaving home (with no escort) for the first time. Add to this the sense of aggrievement felt at the loss of self-determination, the ideological expulsion from Eden, and the stated imposition of discipline (much required!), and it becomes easy to see, and feel, some of Wharton’s frustrations. All these emotions are well, albeit briefly – and, therefore, powerfully — described.

The first hint of Wharton’s isolation is his fight with Nugent and his refusal to accept the proffered tips about the school. His determination to detest the place before he came to know it was the precursor to wilful misunderstandings and much trouble. It is difficult enough to start a new life in any new institution, but, to refuse to try to comply with the basic rules that any such institution has to have, is to guarantee isolation and misery. Both of which, until he ‘came to heel’, Wharton was to suffer — entirely, it must be said, of his own making.

There is no space in this article to examine the ideology of the elitist, isolated, total institution, although I have touched on the subject in Bang ‘Em Up Young.[23]

Suffice it to say, the opening chapters of the Magnet illustrate the isolation, of not only Greyfriars itself, but also a character who will not comply. These two intertwining themes were to be used many times over the next forty years by Frank Richards to teach and entertain his many readers.

End Notes: