Literary Sisters

With 3 sisters of my own, the portrayal of sisters in literature is something I've always found interesting. Here are a few of my top literary sisters:

The Marches, Little Women: It's hard not to adore Louisa May Allcott's Little Women, arguably the most loving of all these sets of sisters. At times they seem like a family unit within themseleves, with Meg acting as a mum and Jo as a dad. They all play their parts as sisters well, Meg as the responsible eldest sister, Jo the outgoing, loud yet fiercly protective one, Beth quiet, caring, shy (and sickly) and Amy the spoilt youngest. (This is in no way a metaphor for me and my sisters...)

I still have the same hair and love of peter pan collars...
 

Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield, The Sweet Valley Twins: Elizabeth and Jessica, despite being twins, are complete opposites. Elizabeth bookish, academic and career-minded, whilst Jessica thinks mainly about boys, clothes and being popular. In spite of their differences and some sibling rivalry, deep down they're the best of friends and are always there for each other through various scrapes they seem to get themselves into. Undoubtably the series, which according to Wikipedia spans over 100 books, is pure cheese but it remains a classic for millions of girls of the late 80s and 90s. Myself included.

The Lisbons, The Virgin Suicides: Shown only through the eyes of the boys who loved them, at first sight the Lisbon sisters seem like your average group of siblings. But as one by one they commit suicide it quickly becomes apparent that all is not as it seems. Quite what drives them each to end their lives remains unknown. However, despite what must be a deep rooted unhappiness in each of them, perhaps somewhat due the strict ruling of their parents, the strong ties of sisterhood remain, each keeping the others secrets and perhaps even to some extent all commiting suicide as some sort of unspoken pact.

Cecilia and Briony Tallis, Atonement: As the novel opens, Cecilia and Briony are shown to have a stereotypical relationship where the younger looks up to the older one. However, this doesn't last long and over the course of one evening their relationship changes beyond repair. Through Briony's young imagination and foolish lies she condemns both Cecelia, and esentially also herself, to a life of unhappiness and regret. As the story unravels it becomes clear that no amount of repentence can repair the damage done be the 11 year old Briony. Although she does give Cecelia the happy ending that she so tragically stole from her in 'real-life', it's all too little too late and the Tallis family is torn apart forever.

Running with the Christmas themed photos.

The Bennets, the Brontës and the Buckleys

With exams fast approaching I thought it about time I gave into peer pressure and jumped on the blogging band wagon. After all, I do love a bit of procrastination. I’m not entirely sure what I’ll be writing about as, to be honest, not much happens in my life, but seeing as I’ll probably have a grand total of about 4 readers I think it’ll be ok...

As it’s the Easter holidays I’m back home in sunny Croydon, which means I’ve being seeing quite a bit of my family. We had a family dinner this week – cooked by me, with the review: ‘ooh, there are lots of different flavours... It’s certainly not bland, anyway.’ Thanks, Dad. So, during this dinner my mum pointed out an article that she had read that day saying that families in which there are four daughters are the most trying. And for those of you that don’t know, that is in fact my family. Anyway, my parents and my eldest sister (not entirely sure when she became an authority on this) agreed emphatically with the article, which got me thinking.

When I tell people that I’ve got three sisters I normally get one of two reactions, the first being that of sympathy for my father and the second, more common, the impression that our childhood was one never ending sleepover. To the first reaction, I’d say that I suppose I feel a little sorry for my dad too, and to the second, I can assure you, this was not the case and at times we fought like cats and dogs; there was even, on one occasion, an incident of knife crime! (Not as bad as it sounds, but we did grow up in Croydon after all!) But, despite these things there were so many good times, good times that I often neglect to reflect on. Some of my favourite memories are of us building dens out of furniture, throwing water bombs and doing three-legged races in the garden during summer, excitedly waking each other up on Christmas morning with cries of 'he's been!', midnight Pizza Hut orders and car journeys singing about Cecil the caterpillar. We’re all pretty much grown up now though, ( I say pretty much, when in actual fact  what I mean is a lot grown up: one is married and another engaged) and although from time to time we still bicker, I find it amazing how easily we all come back together and fall back into our roles as sisters.

So, despite what this article said and my parents agreeing with it (really, they’ve only got themselves to blame!), I wouldn’t change things for the world. And, although I spend a lot of my time complaining about them (especially ‘the baby’), my sisters are some of my closest friends, they know just what to say to make me laugh, to make me cry,  to make me see sense and, most importantly, to annoy me...

Right, I’ve rambled on long enough for my first post. Just so you know, future posts won’t be anywhere near as sentimental as this, thankfully! But I’m sure now I’ve finally got a blog I’ll be chatting on about rubbish on a fairly regular basis.