Tuesday
Several weeks ago I came across an insider’s account of the college admissions scandal from an English-teacher-turned-college counselor. In sharing her view of prep school parents, Caitlin Flanagan cited Jane Eye and Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca.
Although Flanagan doesn’t report on any illegal behavior from the ambitious parents she encountered, she daily saw the mindset that would lead people to bribe college admissions directors, coaches, and others. Here’s a sampling of what she saw:
The new job meant that I had signed myself up to be locked in a small office, appointment after appointment, with hugely powerful parents and their mortified children as I delivered news so grimly received that I began to think of myself less as an administrator than as an oncologist. Along the way they said such crass things, such rude things, such greedy things, and such borderline-racist things that I began to hate them. They, in turn, began to hate me. A college counselor at an elite prep school is supposed to be a combination of cheerleader, concierge, and talent agent, radically on the side of each case and applying steady pressure on the dream college to make it happen. At the very least, the counselor is not supposed to be an adversary.
I just about got an ulcer sitting in that office listening to rich people complaining bitterly about an “unfair” or a “rigged” system. Sometimes they would say things so outlandish that I would just stare at them, trying to beam into their mind the question, Can you hear yourself? That so many of them were (literal) limousine liberals lent the meetings an element of radical chic. They were down for the revolution, but there was no way their kid was going to settle for Lehigh.
Flanagan turns to literature to capture her situation:
In the classroom I was Jane Eyre, strong and tranquil in the truth of my gifts; in the college-counseling office, I was the nameless heroine of Rebecca, running up and down the servant stairs at the Hôtel d’Azur as Mrs. Van Hopper barked at me.
And further on, after examining the various crimes committed by William Rick Singer and the parents who employed him:
All this malfeasance has led to the creation of a 200-page affidavit, and a bevy of other court documents, that can best be described as a kind of posthumous Tom Wolfe novella, one with a wide cast of very rich people behaving in such despicable ways that it makes The Bonfire of the Vanities look like The Pilgrim’s Progress. If you have not read the affidavit, and if you’re in the mood for a novel of manners of the kind not attempted since the passing of the master, I recommend that you and your book club put it on the list for immediate consumption.
Let’s examine the Jane Eyre-Rebecca comparison for a moment. Jane Eyre isn’t always strong and tranquil, as indicated by her panicked flight from Thornfield, which almost kills her. But okay, she becomes a strong and confident teacher. Then, perhaps like Flanagan becoming a guidance counselor, she leaves her students to spend the rest of her life catering to a cranky rich guy.
To focus on Eyre’s teaching for a moment, here’s her first-year experience with a classroom:
I continued the labors of the village-school as actively and faithfully as I could. It was truly hard work at first. Some time elapsed before, with all my efforts, I could comprehend my scholars and their nature. Wholly untaught, with faculties quite torpid, they seemed to me hopelessly dull; and, at first sight, all dull alike: but I soon found I was mistaken. There was a difference amongst them as amongst the educated; and when I got to know them, and they me, this difference rapidly developed itself. Their amazement at me, my language, my rules, and ways, once subsided, I found some of these heavy-looking, gaping rustics wake up into sharp-witted girls enough. Many showed themselves obliging, and amiable too; and I discovered amongst them not a few examples of natural politeness, and innate self-respect, as well as of excellent capacity, that won both my goodwill and my admiration. These soon took a pleasure in doing their work well, in keeping their persons neat, in learning their tasks regularly, in acquiring quiet and orderly manners. The rapidity of their progress, in some instances, was even surprising; and an honest and happy pride I took in it: besides, I began personally to like some of the best girls; and they liked me. I had amongst my scholars several farmers’ daughters: young women grown, almost. These could already read, write, and sew; and to them I taught the elements of grammar, geography, history, and the finer kinds of needlework.
At least Jane will gain the respect of the rich guy, however. Such was not the case with Flanagan:
Some of the parents—especially, in those days, the fathers—were such powerful professionals, and I (as you recall) was so poor, obscure, plain, and little that it was as if they were cracking open a cream puff with a panzer. This was before crying in the office was a thing, so I had to just sit there and take it. Then the admissions letters arrived from the colleges. If the kid got in, it was because he was a genius; if he didn’t, it was because I screwed up. When a venture capitalist and his ageless wife storm into your boss’s office to get you fired because you failed to get their daughter (conscientious, but no atom splitter) into the prestigious school they wanted, you can really start to question whether it’s worth the 36K.
So yes, we are in Rebecca territory here. Check out how the unnamed protagonist, who is a lady’s companion to Mrs. Van Hopper and has her self-confidence systematically undermined by her employer. Their conversation occurs right after the unnamed heroine announces that she will be marrying Max de Winter:
“Well, I can’t stop you. He’s much older than you, you know.”
“He’s only forty-two,” I said. “I know what I’m doing.”
Mrs. Van Hopper looked at me again with the same unpleasant smile. “I hope you do. You won’t find it easy to look after Manderley. You haven’t any experience and you’re too shy. Max de Winter is very attractive, of course. But I think you’re making a big mistake.”
I did not say anything. I was young and shy, I knew that. But I was going to be Mrs de Winter. I was going to live at Manderley. And I was going to make Maxim happy.
Mrs. Van Hopper put out her cigarette. She walked slowly towards me.
“Of course,” she said, “you know why he is marrying you, don’t you? He’s not in love with you. The truth is he’s lonely by himself at Manderley. He can’t live in that empty house without Rebecca. He’s marrying you because he can’t go on living there alone.”
Yes, I see why Flanagan invoked Rebecca. My question is why she chose to leave teaching in the first place.
But of course, if she hadn’t agreed to become a counselor, some other underpaid individual would have been similarly bullied. Increasingly in our unequal society, educational professionals are regarded no more highly than lady’s companions.
