Chapter 2, Summer Holidays Summary and Analysis

Beatrix began to see her Crompton heredity influence her personality. Despite her boring and ritualized childhood, her life was full of the Crompton legend, a legend her parents respected, despite not living it. Beatrix grew up very lonely and did not take part in her parents' life. She was shy and sometimes tongue-tied but was rarely unhappy. Solitude did not bother her. Further, she was without superstition. Beatrix liked spending time with her schoolmistress, Miss Hammond, who encouraged her interests in art and nature. Hammond left evenually, as Beatrix had learned everything she had to teach. Afterward, Beatrix tended to her education herself, which she later came to appreciate.

Beatrix disliked her childhood surroundings; she saw them as pretentious and boring from an early age. But when her family stayed in Scotland in the summers, she reveled...