Miran­da part two

by Claris­sa

‘Do you enjoy Shake­speare, Miran­da?’ asked Miss Sven­son of the tall school girl who stood before her. The girl didn’t reply, but flicked back a strand of fair hair, betray­ing a slight ner­vous­ness. ‘Well, do you?’ con­tin­ued the head, fix­ing the girl with her light blue eyes. ‘Yes, Miss,’ came the mut­ed response.

Miss Sven­son stood up and walked towards her study win­dows. The win­dows revealed a scene of some dev­as­ta­tion: branch­es felled by wind and rose bush­es beat­en down by rain; she would have to tell Mr Jef­freys, the head gar­den­er, to take an urgent look at this, Miss Sven­son thought to herself.

‘Is The Tem­pest a par­tic­u­lar favourite?’ Miss Sven­son asked at last. ‘Well, I was named after one of the lead char­ac­ters,’ flashed back the girl.

‘Don’t be so inso­lent,’ boomed Miss Sven­son turn­ing around, ‘you know exact­ly what I am talk­ing about!’ The girl flushed just slight­ly, and looked down at the floor.

‘I’ve had Dr Rudd on the phone, who has been telling me all about your the­atri­cal prowess,’ con­tin­ued Miss Sven­son. No reply from the girl.

‘Yes,’ went on Miss Sven­son, ‘most impres­sive.’ Still noth­ing from the girl.

‘You are not going to deny it was you with that boy from Till­wood, or that you were unaware such unchap­er­oned encoun­ters were entire­ly against the rules?’ Still no response from the girl: this was typ­i­cal, thought Miss Svenson.

‘Look me in the eye,’ she com­mand­ed; the girl com­plied. ‘Are you going to deny it?’ A moment’s hes­i­ta­tion, then ‘No, Miss.’ Miss Sven­son breathed an inward sigh of relief: Miran­da Spears real­ly was the most obsti­nate pupil.

‘Are you going to cane me?’ asked the girl sud­den­ly, rais­ing her gaze from the floor.

‘Don’t be so inso­lent,’ thun­dered Miss Sven­son, ‘it is for me to tell you such things, not for you to ask!’ The girl looked down again.

‘But no, I am not going to cane you; or strap you; or slip­per you; or put you over my knee and spank you.’ Still no response, though Miss Sven­son detect­ed a def­i­nite red­den­ing of the girl’s complexion.

‘What I am going to do is ring up Dr Rudd and tell him about our lit­tle con­ver­sa­tion. And, on this occa­sion, as I find you so exceed­ing­ly dif­fi­cult, I am going to ask him to decide what to do with you.’

Now the girl looked def­i­nite­ly perplexed.

‘But..?’

‘No Miran­da,’ assert­ed Miss Sven­son, ‘that’s enough ques­tion­ing for now. I am sure you will Dr Rudd will have all the answers you need.’

Miran­da part one 

by Claris­sa

It real­ly was the most filthy day thought Miss Sven­son as she lift­ed her eyes from the gov­er­nors’ report and lis­tened to the rain lash­ing at the mul­lion win­dows and the wind scur­ry­ing around the rooftops: the most filthy day, and prac­ti­cal­ly dark out­side, even though it was only 11 o’clock in the morn­ing.  She turned back to the report, only to be inter­rupt­ed by the ring of the tele­phone. ‘Yes?’ she enquired some­what testi­ly. It was her sec­re­tary, Edith: ‘Sor­ry to trou­ble you Miss Sven­son, but I have Dr Rudd on the phone.’

Don­ald Rudd, head of Mill­ward, the boys’ school prac­ti­cal­ly adjoin­ing Cams­ford House.  If Camsford’s grounds yearned for the sea, Tillwood’s pulled in the oppo­site direc­tion, its out­er reach­es skirt­ing the coun­ty town of Shrewton.

‘Put him through,’ con­tin­ued Miss Sven­son. ‘Hel­lo Elsa,’ came a loud voice, ‘it’s Don­ald.’ Miss Sven­son winced slight­ly at Rudd’s infor­mal­i­ty, but fol­lowed suit: ‘Hel­lo Don­ald, how may I help you?’ ‘Well,’ con­tin­ued the head­mas­ter, ‘I do have a slight prob­lem I am hop­ing you can assist me with. Yes­ter­day after­noon, before prep, one of my pre­fects caught one of my fifth form boys with one of your girls – just talk­ing you under­stand.’ ‘Car­ry on,’ con­tin­ued Miss Sven­son. ‘I saw the lad first thing this morn­ing, hav­ing giv­en him a night to con­tem­plate the prospect of our meet­ing. This nor­mal­ly opens them up but this time, despite six of the best for being out-of-bounds, and anoth­er six for meet­ing up with this girl, the boy refused to dis­close her name.’ ‘I see,’ said Miss Sven­son. ‘I have giv­en him a week’s deten­tion for his trou­ble, but I don’t real­ly want to pun­ish him fur­ther; you see, he is cap­tain of the rug­by XI.’ Anoth­er slight wince from Miss Sven­son, then ‘Did your pre­fect have a descrip­tion of the girl?’ ’Most cer­tain­ly,’ con­tin­ued the head­mas­ter with gus­to, ‘excep­tion­al­ly tall with long fair hair.’ ‘Any­thing else?’ ‘As a mat­ter of fact there was some­thing else: when the pre­fect asked the girl what she was think­ing of, she replied “O won­der! How many good­ly crea­tures are there here. O brave new world. That has such peo­ple in’t!” which, if I’m not mis­tak­en, is a slight­ly trun­cat­ed line from Shakespeare’s’ ‘The Tem­pest,’ inter­rupt­ed Miss Sven­son abrupt­ly. ‘Yes, that’s right, The Tem­pest. Now you see my prob­lem: I do need to find out this girl’s name and, I imag­ine, so do you: any ideas?’ Miss Sven­son wrin­kled her nose slight­ly and lis­tened again to the lash of the rain. ‘I believe I do: I’ll get back to you, if that’s OK?’ ‘I would be most grate­ful,’ con­tin­ued Rudd, ‘you will let me know the out­come?’ ‘I will,’ assert­ed Miss Sven­son; ‘Good morn­ing, Don­ald.’ ‘Good morn­ing, Elsa.’

Miss Sven­son returned the receiv­er to its cra­dle, rest­ing her hand there a moment. She picked it up again: ‘Edith, could you ask a pre­fect to fetch me one of the Upper Fifth?’ ‘Of course, Miss Sven­son,’ came the slight­ly crack­ly reply, ‘who?’ ‘Miran­da,’ con­tin­ued Miss Sven­son; ‘ask them to fetch me Miran­da Spears.’

Uni­form

By Claris­sa

From time to time, head­mistress Miss Sven­son had to deal with mis­be­hav­ing girls dur­ing the school day, but, most­ly, girls were sent to her after the end of lessons, lin­ing up, nose to the wall, out­side her office. This was by no means a dai­ly occur­rence, but it cer­tain­ly hap­pened often enough to keep her spank­ing arm in good fettle.

Today, she only had one girl wait­ing out­side her office: a fourth for­mer, and first-time offend­er. At pre­cise­ly 4 o’clock, the girl knocked on her door. ‘Come in,’ com­mand­ed Miss Sven­son, the door swing­ing back to reveal a slight girl with fair hair tied up in a pony tail. ‘Come here,’ said Miss Sven­son, point­ing to a spot direct­ly in front of the desk. The girl moved for­ward as Miss Sven­son glanced again at the note from Miss Simms detail­ing a num­ber of uni­form violations.

Miss Sven­son looked up at the fourth for­mer and stud­ied her a moment. ‘Well,’ she said at last, ‘I am glad to see that you have tak­en the trou­ble to look smart for me, Jemi­ma.’ The girl said noth­ing. ‘Still,’ Miss Sven­son con­tin­ued, ‘it doesn’t excuse the dis­grace­ful list of uni­form vio­la­tions I have before me, does it?’ ‘No, Miss,’ came the awk­ward reply. Miss Sven­son shook her head then stood up. ‘Go and fetch me that chair,’ she said, indi­cat­ing a straight-backed wood­en chair, ‘and put it in the mid­dle of the room.’ The girl didn’t move. ‘Go on,’ assert­ed Miss Sven­son, com­ing out now from behind her desk. Chair in place, Miss Sven­son sat down and smoothed her skirt. ‘Come here,’ she said to the girl, ‘and bend over my knee.’ The girl looked strick­en with pan­ic but did as instruct­ed. ‘I am going to spank you for five min­utes with my hand; do you under­stand, Jemi­ma?’ ‘Yes,’ came the reply, and with that Miss Sven­son flung down her hand onto the seat of the girl’s skirt. ‘Do we wear our ties knot­ted and tidy or loose and unruly?’ she demand­ed. ‘Knot­ted and tidy,’ came the reply. Anoth­er spank from Miss Sven­son; ‘Do we wear our shirts hang­ing out from our jumpers or neat­ly tucked in?’ ‘Tucked in,’ came the reply as Miss Sven­son start­ed to deliv­er a vol­ley of spanks, the girl slight­ly wrig­gling in response.

After about two min­utes, Miss Sven­son stopped the spank­ing and lift­ed back the girl’s skirt. Silence, then a thun­der­ous ‘What colour are school knick­ers, pink with pur­ple stripes?’ ‘No, Miss,’ came the mut­ed reply, the girl’s body vis­i­bly sink­ing into Miss Svenson’s lap. ‘Stand up,’ said Miss Sven­son; the girl com­plied. ‘Go and fetch me the slip­per from the cor­ner cup­board.’ The fourth for­mer was close to tears now, but did as instruct­ed. To her hor­ror, on open­ing the cup­board door, she dis­cov­ered two canes – and noth­ing like a slip­per. She turned to Miss Sven­son. ‘It’s the black gym shoe,’ Miss Sven­son assert­ed with some annoy­ance, ‘a reg­u­la­tion item which, you are about to find out to your cost, is a most par­tic­u­lar part of school uniform.’

A time for reflection

By Claris­sa

It was a task she had got used to over the years: the end-of-term review of the Pun­ish­ment Book. In fact, it was the last task she com­plet­ed before writ­ing the girls’ reports.

Miss Sven­son leant down and retrieved a leather-bound book from a bot­tom draw­er of her desk. “Here we go again” she thought to her­self as she thumbed through the entries. Here was the cat­a­logue of pun­ish­ments, and mis­de­meanours. Here were the slip­per­ings, the strap­pings, the junior and senior can­ings; here the hand spank­ings and, on occa­sion, the dress­ings downs. Here were the records of inso­lence, smok­ing and going out-of-bounds. Here were details of names, and forms.

Look­ing through the book, she was pleased to note that, for the most part, pupils had not reof­fend­ed. Of course, there were always excep­tions: Miran­da Spears sprang imme­di­ate­ly to mind.

Miss Sven­son closed the book and picked up a file that was sit­ting on her blot­ter: here were the lines and essays she had set as pun­ish­ment dur­ing term. She leafed care­ful­ly through until she came to a thin sheaf of blue paper, pinned with a paper clip. She slipped off the clip and start­ed to read:

‘The Mean­ing of Humil­i­a­tion’ by Miran­da Spears, Upper V

 Humil­i­a­tion is about pow­er, and con­trol. Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, humil­i­a­tion is inflict­ed by those in a posi­tion of author­i­ty upon those in a less­er posi­tion: so the teacher to the school girl, the police­man to the scal­ly­wag, the mas­ter to the ser­vant. Of course, this is not always the case. The school girl can humil­i­ate the teacher, even per­haps if this was not her inten­tion: if the teacher feels humil­i­at­ed, then she is, and the action of the school girl is wrong. 

But is inflict­ing humil­i­a­tion always wrong, or is moral rel­a­tivism at work? The teacher, for exam­ple, will argue that humil­i­at­ing the school girl is for her own good, and will pro­vide some sort of ‘les­son’. That insist­ing a girl bends over, expos­ing her some­times bared bot­tom, and sub­mit­ting to a dose of the strap or the cane with­out recourse to com­plaint will nec­es­sar­i­ly improve her behav­iour. Or will it just inspire resentment?

Miss Sven­son pinned the papers hur­ried­ly back togeth­er and rein­sert­ed them in the file. The spurt of anger she had felt when she had first read the essay came back to her: how dare the girl call into ques­tion her meth­ods – it was more than inso­lent. She had thought about bring­ing her in for a firm talk­ing to, at the very least. But then she had thought bet­ter of it: the essay was well writ­ten and rea­soned, and had been sub­mit­ted on time. Miss Sven­son shook her head, then looked down at her hands; the hands that had inflict­ed so many spank­ings on naughty girls’ bot­toms. She then retrieved a small com­pact mir­ror from the desk and looked for a moment at her face: no, she had no doubt, her meth­ods and moti­va­tions were sound; still, she sup­posed, it didn’t hurt to check once in a while.