Guard Your Daughters

Guard Your Daughters by Diana Tutton is a 1953 novel about a family of five daughters living in the country – or rather four daughters since one has recently escaped by marrying and it is Morgan, Cressida, Teresa and Thisbe who are still at home with their parents. Their mother stops her daughters going to school or making friends. But because she tends to make scenes or retire to bed, her family do all they can to avoid defying or upsetting her; yet they do so in a continually light-hearted, cheerful fashion.  Thus on one level this is a ‘fun’ book in the Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day/Miss Buncle’s Book vein i.e. a light novel which makes no pretence to be anything other than an easy read. But entwined within the lightweight, sometimes hilarious, descriptions of the sisters’ everyday life is an exploration of the source and the cause of insanity: only gradually is it revealed that the girls’ mother is far more than merely neurotic.