Monday 17 May 2021

The "Lucy Syndrome"

In the popular cartoon series "Peanuts", Lucy is a crabby little girl, who is particularly harsh on her two younger brothers, Linus & Rerun.

This type of assertive, overbearing older sister is quite common in literature, the most famous being Pip's older sister (in Dickens' "Great Expectations" with whom he has to live after losing his parents & is famously "brought up by hand." by her .(An euphemism for administration of corporal punishment.)

In one of James Herriot's stories of rural Yorkshire, we meet a spinster daughter, who is virtually ruling the roost over her parents & stalwart younger brothers.

In Rumer Godden's popular novel "Little Plum", a wealthy man & his little daughter


are ruled by the much older spinster sister of the man, (who had also brought him up), because his wife is hospitalised for a long time. It took the discharge of the wife from the hospital for the man (& his daughter) to throw off the yoke of the older sister (& aunt)!

To end on a personal note, this writer was acquainted with a family, which had a daughter & two younger twin brothers. During a visit to their house, it was surprising to see the first action of the daughter on returning from the school, was to rap both her brothers on the head! The three children would also visit us to play Carrom, as we had a board. It was gradually realised that the game was just an excuse for the daughter to punish her brothers!

Fortunately, these were just childhood pranks, which she outgrew as all the children grew up.

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