The Railway Children

Mother embodies the ideals of femininity, selfless motherhood, and unbreakable resilience in The Railway Children. From the very opening of the novel, she is depicted as an active mother who is very much involved in the lives of her children, “almost always there, ready to play with the children, and read to them, and help them with their home-lessons” (6). After her husband’s imprisonment, Mother rises to the occasion by becoming the sole breadwinner for the family, turning her love of storytelling into a means of sustenance by writing for various publications.

Mother has a deep religious faith that helps to sustain her in the face of hardship. She also urges her children to have faith and to pray, as when she urges them “to ask God to show His pity upon all prisoners and captives” (141). Although Mother is tender-hearted toward her children and willing to help others in need, such as the Russian Exile and the injured Jim, she also maintains a fierce pride in her own independence and original high social standing. Her pride makes her resistant to accepting any form of charity from others. She admonishes her children for talking about their poverty after the hamper from the old gentleman arrives in Chapter 3 instructing them that, “[they] mustn’t go telling everyone about our affairs” (91), and urges them not to accept any award money if they are offered some at the reception in their honor after preventing a train disaster. Mother is also defined by her stoicism. Although she is deeply saddened by the absence of her husband, she does everything she can to maintain a cheerful demeanor toward her children, which in turn allows the secret of their father’s imprisonment to be kept from them for much of the novel.

The old gentleman functions almost like a fairy godfather within the world of The Railway Children: he somehow manages to turn up exactly when needed to solve every pressing problem the children face. The old gentleman rides in the first-class train carriage of the Green Dragon train and establishes a ritual whereby the children wave to him and he waves back every time the train passes through the station in the countryside. As a passenger on the Green Dragon, the old gentleman represents the children’s enduring connection to a wider outside world, both literally and figuratively. They believe that by waving to the old gentleman, they can send their love and greetings to their father. And it is, fittingly enough, the old gentleman who will indeed eventually restore their father to them at the novel’s end.

The old gentleman is a man of wealth and high social standing. He is the “District Superintendent” of the railway and dresses in a way that is slightly eccentric but indicative of material prosperity. He wears “rather odd-shaped collars and a top-hat that wasn’t quite like other people’s” (62), and carries gold accessories such as “a gold pencil-case” and “gold-rimmed spectacles” (184). He is both generous and sensitive; when the children write him a note complaining about a lack of money and treats, he sends them a large hamper stuffed full of goods in Chapter 3. He uses his connections in London to help reunite the Russian Exile with his lost wife and child, and shows tact while dealing with the children’s mother, who admits to him that their reduced circumstances means she is unable to host him in their home more than once.

The old gentleman is also the grandfather of Jim, the young boy injured in the steeplechase who becomes friends with the railway children in Chapter 12. Most importantly of all, the old gentleman secures Father’s release at the end of the novel, making the family whole again. In this way, the old gentleman functions as a sort of older, wiser mirror-image of Bobbie’s generosity of spirit, while also helping to move the plot along at several key junctions through his timely interventions.

The Russian Exile appears in Chapter 5 at the train station, disheveled and bewildered. When the children first encounter him on the platform, he has attracted a crowd and is speaking in a language no one present can understand. He appears “with long hair and wild eyes, with shabby clothes of a cut Peter had not seen before” (127), an appearance that emphasizes both the hardships he has endured and his foreign origins.

Despite his rough appearance and initially fragile emotional state, the Russian Exile turns out to be a man of culture and resilience. He communicates with Mother in French, since no one in the family knows Russian, and is an author of considerable fame and importance in his homeland. As Mother says, “he is a great man in his own country, writes books—beautiful books—I’ve read some of them” (133). His backstory is tragic. Mother explains to the children that he suffered three years’ imprisonment “in a horrible dungeon” on account of his writing about the plight of the Russian poor (138).

The Russian Exile’s plight mirrors the plight of the children’s absent father, although the children are not aware of this fact at first. Mother’s deep sympathy toward the Russian Exile is therefore rooted in two factors: first, the fact that they are both writers and share a love of storytelling, and second, the fact that his suffering reminds her of her own husband’s misfortunes. When Mother urges her children to pray for God’s mercy “upon all prisoners and captives” (141), she has both the Russian Exile and—secretly—her own husband in mind. The Russian Exile’s eventual reunion with his wife and child foreshadows the reunion of Father with Mother and the children at the novel’s end, suggesting that miscarriages of justice can be overcome if one endures long enough and keeps the faith.