Madame Crommelynck as a turning point in Jason’s adolescence

My first impression of Jason Taylor was that he was very self conscious, and edited himself so much to others, to a point that no one really knew him (this is also similar to Holden and Esther). Jason really isn’t the “type” that all the other popular kids in his class are; he writes poetry, has nerdy interests, and has a stammer that he uses his extensive vocabulary to hide. Jason’s worst fear is that any of this humiliating information about him is revealed to his class, so he does all he can to hide it and fit in. Jason is so obsessed with the social politics of his grade and is desperate to move up from his current mid-ranked “position” in his class. He recognizes classmates, like Ross Wilcox, who didn’t used to be cool, and is bewildered by how they were able to move up. Jason begins taking any chance he can get to improve his social standing with the other kids, as well as keeping up the act of hiding his stammer and unpopular interests. One example of this is in “Bridle Path”, when Jason stumbles upon a brewing fight between Grant Burch and Ross Wilcox, and figures he can gain popularity by supporting the winner, who he thinks will be Grant Burch, however Grant ends up losing, and Jason has to fumble his way out of the situation.

His perfect chance to finally be accepted comes in the chapter “Spooks”, when Jason finds himself with Pluto Noake, Gilbert Swinyard, and Pete Redmarley, pulling a ding dong ditch prank on his teacher, Mr. Blake. Jason proves himself by courageously tying a string to the door and successfully pulling off the prank. This earns him an invitation to join “the spooks”, the group of popular kids that he’d been dying to be a part of. Jason breezes past the challenge to get into the spooks, and finally gets a glimpse of his dream life, until he begins to have doubts when he’s essentially forced to choose between the spooks, or his best friend Dean. When Jason ultimately chooses Dean over the spooks, his life at school all falls apart, and he’s sent back to square one along with the “lepers” and weird kids, as well as relentless bullying. Even though this is a new low point in Jason’s life, it leads up to a major turning point in the novel: Madame Crommelynck.

Jason meets Crommelynck in the chapter “Solarium”, when he’s invited to the house of who he thinks is the vicar, who he’s been sending his poetry to. It turned out that it wasn’t the vicar living there though, but Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck, a belgian aristocrat, who had been reading Jason’s poems, and sending them off to the vicar’s magazine. Madame Crommelynck is intrigued by Jason’s poems, and has many criticisms, but seems to genuinely want to help him. One of Crommelynck’s many criticisms is Jason’s pseudonym of Eliot Bolivar and how his anonymity diminished the value of his work. She questions many cases of Jason’s self-censorship and helps him break down why he’s so desperate for attention and being inauthentic to himself. I found it especially funny during the scene when Jason tries to stumble around telling her how writing poetry is “gay”, while she has no idea what he’s talking about. Crommelynck’s main role isn’t really to tell Jason anything he doesn’t know, but to force him to break down what he is (and isn't) writing in his poetry, and realize why he’s trying to hide his true self. 

Jason’s repeated meetings with Madame Crommelynck come at such an important point in the book as well, because he’s already at rock bottom with nothing much to lose. By about this point in the book, Jason’s stammer comes out to the whole school, and although his life is worse than ever before, he doesn’t have to worry about keeping the secret anymore. In the chapters “Goose Fair” and “Disco”, Jason finally gets back his chance to be cool, not by being a phony, or by following someone like Pluto Noake around, but by breaking rules he had set for himself in his head based on the social setting of his class. Some examples are Jason returning Ross Wilcox’s lost wallet, or Jason grassing on Neale Brose’s bullying. Both of these are things that Jason would have never done at the start of the book, out of fear of humiliation; but both of them are also examples of Jason finally being true to himself. Jason’s somewhat sudden confidence at the end of the book is a result of Madame Crommelynck’s push for Jason to be authentic to who he is, and to express in real life the emotions he shows in his poetry.

- Sahnan