The narrator is a curiously weak individual. She allows herself to be driven by her friend Harriet to commit acts of increasing anger and violence, yet on her own she acts passively and as one would expect a thirteen-year-old girl to behave. Her curiosity about sex and the power of her sexuality is not unusual, nor are her shallow infatuation and fantasizing about the much older Peter Biggs. Even a diary such as the two girls keep is unremarkable for girls in early adolescence. Beryl Bainbridge captures a thirteen-year-old’s personality well in her use of the first-person narrative and presents an accurate picture of the girls’ parents and of the Biggses as seen through adolescent eyes. In some ways, the narrator is the dullest character in the story, acting primarily as the medium through which Harriet’s plans are carried out.
Harriet’s, on the other hand, is truly a frightening personality. The anger she feels toward adults, and toward men in particular, is apparent in her behavior toward her father and Biggs, not to mention the Italian soldiers or the young man with whom she had some sort of physical relationship earlier that same summer. Her relationship with her father is stormy, reflecting the tempestuous nature of her parents’ marriage. Thus, her behavior toward the men in the novel could be explained as her attempt to control or dominate men, all of whom represent her moody, explosive father. Her use of her sexual attractiveness to tease...
(The entire section is 518 words.)