Eloise isn't a woman - yet - but she's definitely a female character you have to meet. She lives her enviably anarchic life in the Plaza Hotel and various other luxurious locales over the course of a series of children's books by Kay Thompson.
Every so often a children' book comes along that so grips the imagination that adults remember and read it with as much fondness as children. The wonderful Maurice Sendak (Where The Wild Things Are) categorised Eloise as a "brazen, loose-limbed little monster" and indeed she is. Half her charm is in Hilary Knight's illustrations of her gangly, pinafore-togged form, but the rest is definitely in the way that Thompson perfectly incapsulated that precocious wisdom and unintentional comedy that comes from children.
On the surface of it, Eloise lives the life we'd all love to; she is wealthy, her bedroom is a hotel room, room service on tap and a whole wonderful world of beautiful rooms and strange people is on her doorstep to explore. The only thing that can stop her is her Nanny, and she's pretty ineffectual, if loving.
Her life is also wonderfully modern. In the 1950s, when the Eloise books were written and published, girls and young women were encouraged to have great decorum and Eloise shatters that with her intelligence, vibrant personality, temper, imagination and exuberance. Her advice is given matter-of-factly and in a tone of statement rather than suggestion: "“Getting bored is not allowed.” and “You have to eat oatmeal or you'll dry up. Anybody knows that.”.
And yet there's a sad element to Eloise; I remember being a little unsettled as a child because she had no parents around to love and care for her, and a lot of her vibrant imagination is surely down to boredom and benign, but nonetheless continuous, neglect. It is perhaps something that's more distinct to adults rather than children, but I'm a strong believer that children should be offered stories that are not simply simpering tales or outright comedy, but have depth.
The pink and black world of Eloise is one that has never, after twenty years, left me, and I recommend that you introduce yourself to her.
Alex Roumbas is Deputy Editor of Shiny Shiny and is also a city child.
