Cranford

Peter Jenkyns’s School Misadventures

Peter Marmaduke Arley Jenkyns, now at school in Shrewsbury, sent his father highly mental show letters filled with accounts of his studies, classical quotations, and intellectual aspirations, though the animal nature of the boy occasionally surfaced in a hurried plea for a cake with plenty of citron. The rector, invigorated by his son’s Latin, responded in kind, but it soon became clear that “poor Peter” was frequently in scrapes, writing stilted notes of penitence. Among them was a poorly written, blotted note to his mother promising to be a better boy—a note Miss Matty could not read without weeping, and which she carefully preserved in her own room.

第六章

Chapter VI, titled “Poor Peter,” recounts through Miss Matty’s narration the tragic downfall of Peter Jenkyns, the younger brother of Miss Matty and Deborah. Once a Shrewsbury schoolboy with a bright future mapped out by family and friends, Peter becomes infamous for practical jokes that eventually culminate in a devastating public flogging by his father, prompting him to disappear and secretly enlist in the navy during wartime. The chapter traces this arc from hopeful expectations through pranks and humiliation to a sorrowful separation that permanently alters the Jenkyns family.

POOR PETER

The chapter opens by contrasting Peter’s cheerful, well-laid future—Shrewsbury School, Cambridge honours, and a church living from his godfather Sir Peter Arley—with the very different fate that actually befell him. Miss Matty, who narrates the whole story, finds it a relief to share the account. Peter’s trajectory transforms him from a promising young man into a figure of pathos, encapsulated in the chapter’s title “Poor Peter.”