This is because he tried to stop her from going to a Swiss finishing school and instead has told her a few hard truths about herself, telling her she should get a job when she finishes school. She starts her final year without the usual histrionics at being parted from the family, in fact she is very cold towards her father. Gwen does eventually turn herself around a bit, but too late for most purposes including being thought of well at Malory Towers. Her second-worst is probably from her first year where she secretly bullied Mary-Lou by damaging and stealing her belongings, so that Mary-Lou would come to her for consolation and support, with the added bonus that she could blame girls like Darrell for it. She doesn’t just have one funny turn during a run, she deliberately feigns a several little moments of a fluttering heart and feeling ill – only when sympathetic adults or pupils are around of course – and worries her family sick. I think one of her worst pieces of behaviour is when she fakes heart palpitations in order to get out of sports. She manages to carry on like this for almost the entire series. She believes herself to be quite wonderful, and stuffs up her parents with tall tales of being the most popular and the best at tennis and swimming (her mother laps it all up and makes it all ten times worse of course). On top of that she is not a pleasant person to be around. She is even worse at sports and does not endear herself by moaning constantly about even the least strenuous forms of exercise. She is not good academically and she comes up with excuses as to why she hasn’t done well in tests and is bottom of the form (often blaming her governess for not teaching her better when she was younger), instead of knuckling down and studying. Gwen is Malory Towers longest-lasting non-success and unfortunately she doesn’t turn things around before she leaves. As I said in my previous post not every girl at Malory Towers is a success, though there have only been two real failures.

Malory towers book 6