Vox Meditantis

Wednesday, 25th November 1936

They’ve granted me the library again today. How gracious. How terribly civilised. Apparently, a woman with dangerous sympathies may still be trusted amongst the Brontës and the sermons, provided she doesn’t pilfer the stamps or set fire to the encyclopaedias. One supposes they imagine books are less inflammatory than pamphlets – forgetting, of course, that Milton and Shelley once did rather more damage than any mimeographed manifesto. But then perception has always trumped reality in this establishment, hasn’t it? We are a school for wayward women, they insist. Not a detention centre. Certainly not a prison. The bars on the windows are decorative, naturally. The wall around the grounds merely keeps out undesirable elements. How thoughtful.

The headmistress – forgive me, the superintendent – delivered another of her improving lectures this morning. She has such faith in the transformative power of routine and needlework. Three times weekly, we embroider our moral rehabilitation into handkerchiefs. Twice weekly, we scrub floors to cleanse our political consciences. I’ve always wondered whether she truly believes we’re being reformed, or whether she simply finds it easier to file reports that describe us as pupils rather than detainees. Easier, certainly, to explain to the Board of Governors. Easier to stomach at tea-time.

But you asked for my pet peeves, didn’t you? How perfectly modern. Very well. First: the relentless pretence. They call us students whilst denying us liberty, dress our incarceration in the language of education, and expect us to be grateful for the privilege of captivity with indoor plumbing. Second: the newspapers they permit us to read – carefully selected, naturally – which describe events in Spain, in Germany, with such studied neutrality that one would think Franco and his aeroplanes were simply engaged in a robust debate. And third, perhaps most galling: the assumption that because we’re female, we must have been led astray by some man’s ideology, that we couldn’t possibly have arrived at sedition through our own intellect. Apparently, a woman’s convictions are always borrowed, like library books. We’ve no original thoughts, only dangerous influences.

They’ve hung new photographs in the corridor – our King and his American paramour, looking terribly serious. One wonders what they’d make of this place. Whether they’d notice the gap between the prospectus and the reality. Whether they’d care.

But I mustn’t be ungrateful. The library’s warm, at least. The wall keeps out the wind. And perception, as I’ve learned, matters far more than truth.

Bob Lynn | © 2025 Vox Meditantis. All rights reserved.