Is there a current chalet school thread? Anyone fancy it?

@BinocularVision

EBD just has a total blind spot about certain favoured characters, like Margot (who was it she nearly brained with a book end Betty Landon? but who should have known better than to make a mildly tactless remark of the kind people make in the CS world all the time to a girl with a notorious temper?) and Jack (who is waaay less charming than EBD clearly intended, and a total thug -- wasn't there also some implicit criticism of a mistress for not realising she should have asked Jack's permission to do something with her own car??? )

And there are some insane double standards with schoolgirl Joey, who is allowed to be all snide and joky about Juliet's love life and be all matey with Grizel in Camp, even though they're both mistresses which is understandable, as they're former pupils and friends and this isn't even at school, but at a guide camp but when Grizel calls her 'my child' in return, the mistresses say she shouldn't be calling Joey that in front of the younger girls.

Though I think one of the maddest moments in the entire series in terms of Joey being the Chosen One is when Mademoiselle anxiously shows her around her new, private, freshly-decorated room in ST Clare's -- I mean, can you imagine another school story in which the Head is visibly nervous in case a prefect doesn't like her carefully-decorated private accommodation and wants to go back to the Green dormitory?

(I mean, obviously there's a total realism to a gentle, rather ineffectual Head who takes over when the beloved school founder marries and leaves, despite never having signed up for being principal of a big school, and is stuck with the beloved founder's very popular sister as her Head Girl, and who is anxious about it because this girl has a lot of power with her sister and all the pupils, but I don't think it's a realism EBD intended!)

The other way this is good writing - Mademoiselle's nervousness is convincing enough. But if it was Madge or Jem or Bill showing her around? It would be utterly unconvincing and I don't think she'd have written it.

It's odd because she absolutely doesn't articulate the power dynamic - founder's charismatic, unambitious sister influencing the school. But it creeps over the edges a lot in this book and others. I think EBD wrote realistic characters and interactions at this stage - the moral she drew from them could sometimes be utterly bizarre, though.

This is another major difference between EBD and Antonia Forest - Nick is obviously her favourite, BUT the Marlows do have enemies (and Lois is a very well-written example), they don't always get their own way (like when Lawrie gets kicked out of the play) and Tim rips the piss out of them for wanting to keep up with their older sisters and be special.

Yes, definitely - and the baddies usually have some good qualities - Lois is attractive and talented; Lieutenant Foley is kind to Nicola when she's seasick etc. Marie is perhaps an exception there, with very little to recommend her, but I always think she's more of a victim than a baddie.

@BinocularVision

EBD just has a total blind spot about certain favoured characters, like Margot (who was it she nearly brained with a book end Betty Landon? but who should have known better than to make a mildly tactless remark of the kind people make in the CS world all the time to a girl with a notorious temper?) and Jack (who is waaay less charming than EBD clearly intended, and a total thug -- wasn't there also some implicit criticism of a mistress for not realising she should have asked Jack's permission to do something with her own car??? )

And there are some insane double standards with schoolgirl Joey, who is allowed to be all snide and joky about Juliet's love life and be all matey with Grizel in Camp, even though they're both mistresses which is understandable, as they're former pupils and friends and this isn't even at school, but at a guide camp but when Grizel calls her 'my child' in return, the mistresses say she shouldn't be calling Joey that in front of the younger girls.

Though I think one of the maddest moments in the entire series in terms of Joey being the Chosen One is when Mademoiselle anxiously shows her around her new, private, freshly-decorated room in ST Clare's -- I mean, can you imagine another school story in which the Head is visibly nervous in case a prefect doesn't like her carefully-decorated private accommodation and wants to go back to the Green dormitory?

(I mean, obviously there's a total realism to a gentle, rather ineffectual Head who takes over when the beloved school founder marries and leaves, despite never having signed up for being principal of a big school, and is stuck with the beloved founder's very popular sister as her Head Girl, and who is anxious about it because this girl has a lot of power with her sister and all the pupils, but I don't think it's a realism EBD intended!)

All Betty did was tell Margot to be quiet, and yet that justifies Margot lobbing a bookend at her according to CS rules. This is another major difference between EBD and Antonia Forest - Nick is obviously her favourite, BUT the Marlows do have enemies (and Lois is a very well-written example), they don't always get their own way (like when Lawrie gets kicked out of the play) and Tim rips the piss out of them for wanting to keep up with their older sisters and be special.

(Sorry if I'm being negative but it is SUCH a relief not to have to bite my tongue all the time like I do on the CBB)

as opposed to Antonia Forest (where Marie never gets punished over the Guides incident).

Marie isn't punished in the sense of being sanctioned but 'karma' certainly strikes as she's virtually ostracised by the other girls in her form afterwards (even though they don't know the details of the Guides incident) and then in The Cricket Term (offstage) she drops dead.

EBD just has a total blind spot about certain favoured characters, like Margot (who was it she nearly brained with a book end Betty Landon? but who should have known better than to make a mildly tactless remark of the kind people make in the CS world all the time to a girl with a notorious temper?) and Jack (who is waaay less charming than EBD clearly intended, and a total thug -- wasn't there also some implicit criticism of a mistress for not realising she should have asked Jack's permission to do something with her own car??? )

And there are some insane double standards with schoolgirl Joey, who is allowed to be all snide and joky about Juliet's love life and be all matey with Grizel in Camp, even though they're both mistresses which is understandable, as they're former pupils and friends and this isn't even at school, but at a guide camp but when Grizel calls her 'my child' in return, the mistresses say she shouldn't be calling Joey that in front of the younger girls.

Though I think one of the maddest moments in the entire series in terms of Joey being the Chosen One is when Mademoiselle anxiously shows her around her new, private, freshly-decorated room in ST Clare's -- I mean, can you imagine another school story in which the Head is visibly nervous in case a prefect doesn't like her carefully-decorated private accommodation and wants to go back to the Green dormitory?

(I mean, obviously there's a total realism to a gentle, rather ineffectual Head who takes over when the beloved school founder marries and leaves, despite never having signed up for being principal of a big school, and is stuck with the beloved founder's very popular sister as her Head Girl, and who is anxious about it because this girl has a lot of power with her sister and all the pupils, but I don't think it's a realism EBD intended!)

@JassyRadlett Margot and Jack both get away with much more than other girls. Three young girls get a really nasty punishment for gasping when Verity refuses to sing in German, the Middles in Peggy lose their entire weekend over the Regency slang prank, but Jack and Margot bully people and get away with it. Jane is so sweet, and when Jack attacks her and she tries to defend herself, Maeve has a big go at her, because I guess Jane should have just stood there and let Jack pull her hair. It always seems so out of place in the CS because usually the bullies/bad girls always get what they deserve, as opposed to Antonia Forest (where Marie never gets punished over the Guides incident).

Theodora is actually quite good, except Margot being a Grade A bitch and Mary-Lou's speech to Ted, Emerence and the triplets.

I actually found it more realistic (and probably enjoyed slightly less!) because there was a popular girl who was a grade a bitch but who was also favoured by the school! Agree with your analysis about the triplets - poor bloody Len being told off for how she’d been raised.

I always find myself imagining what would have happened if Theodora arrived at the school and said ‘But I like my name!’ when Joey tells her she’s renaming her, like a rescue dog, and ‘But I like my hair!’when Hilda appears with a brush and a ribbon and ideas for a Fresh Start Hairdo. Cringeorama! Your new Head brushing your hair!

And it seems a bit mad that the supposedly revolutionary new style is just brushing it and keeping it back off her face with a ribbon — I mean, hadn’t anyone ever tried that before? Or plaits or’Kenwigses’, if the single ponytail Joey is unimpressed by in Len is viewed as too racy? Or a Croydon Facelift-type tight bun?

Btw is Cosimo's Jackal in this thread? waves

Theodora is actually quite good, except Margot being a Grade A bitch and Mary-Lou's speech to Ted, Emerence and the triplets. She was out of order throwing Ted's past in her face like that. One, it was none of her business and two, the whole point of Ted joining the CS and being called Ted was so she could make a fresh start. Con did nothing wrong and while Len is an enabler, it's a bit unfair to have a go at her for worrying about her sisters when her parents have been expecting her to be responsible for them pretty much since she was born. They pigeonhole her as the responsible one when she's a toddler and then wonder why she's always worrying. And Joey should have been told, difficult pregnancy or not, and not fobbed off with 'it was very bad but it's over now'. Ted herself is great though.

Also, another thing that struck me during Genius: EBD really, really hates the Reformers, especially John Knox. She has Mary-Lou talk about what a bastard Knox was towards Mary Queen of Scots and how un-Christian he was...even though OOAO is Protestant herself. It's not the first time she's made a dig at them in the books either.

I think EBD had plans for a book about Joey going to India but never wrote it.Same with Gay when she was in China.

There are a couple of good FB groups I’m on,
Chalet School sales and wants
New Chalet Club

I’ve bought and sold on the sales and wants, it works well.

There's a fill-in called Two Chalet Girls in India, I think, by Priyadarshini Narendra. It was pretty good.

@FelicityBeedle and anyone else who likes social history, if you read 19thc novels in general, you might love Judith Flanders' The Victorian House -- which is a brilliant chunk of social history on Victorian domesticity, and wonderfully dippable-into. She goes around a Victorian house (basing herself on the middle classes, but with excursions up and down the social scale) and in bedroom, parlour, scullery, breakfast room, sickroom, nursery, dining room, bathroom, kitchen etc, she basically analyses what people did, ate, wore, worked, their hobbies, social lives etc. There are fascinating descriptions of Victorian laundry, courtship, mourning clothes and the rules of mourning, visiting cards, relationships between mistress and servants, the growth of suburbs, the treatment of illness, childrearing practices, as well as heating, lighting, sanitation, home decoration fashions etc etc.

It illuminates all kinds of things about 19thc fiction, and made me understand things in fiction I'd never thought much about, like why Katy Carr has most of the furniture and the carpet and curtains removed from Amy Ashe's hotel room when she's ill, and has the floor scrubbed with soap and the bed pulled out from the wall, or why Mrs Fairfax has to hand over the keys of the storeroom to enable the servant to make a meal for Jane Eyre when she arrives at Thornfield..

The other one I'd recommend from a social history perspective is Jane Austen and Food by Maggie Lane, which is brilliant on the things Austen does with food, meals etc which would have been understood by her contemporary readers -- like the significance of the big difference between the Longbourn breakfast time and the Netherfield one, or what the significance of the fruit served at Pemberley is.

Virginia Nicholson's Singled Out is also very good on the very interesting lives of the 'Surplus Women' who would have expected to marry, but whose potential pool of men was decimated by WWI, and what they did instead -- some of the CS mistresses would have been from this demographic.

Also on a re read of the series at the moment. Although I’m not doing them in order - what a rebel!

I’ve also been enjoying some of the fill ins, my favourite so far being “A refuge for the chalet school” by Amy Fletcher. Some of the fill ins are hit and miss though, I really didn’t enjoy “The Bettany Twins” the plot was just silly.
The Armishire books are my favourite, love the war years and I like the characters more in those books.

I think one of Joey's daughters is a contralto. Con? Margot can sing, but I have a feeling she's a soprano. (I'm a natural mezzo myself.) When Joey sings, it's nearly always folk or religious music. I was legit surprised when Debussy - who I really like - got a mention in Genius, as his stuff is relatively avant-garde for the CS.

The dress sounded fugly with that crimson honeycomb pattern. I don't know why the girls were all so enthusiastic about it. If you've got the GGBP version of Ruey, there's a section about uniforms at the beginning and it's an eye-opener.

Ha ha! Yes, that's the one. Elma sounds like the most normal teenager to ever attend the Chalet School.

They definitely seem to focus on sacred music rather than opera. I love the thought of them putting on their own performance of something like La Traviata or Madama Butterfly. Imagine the tableaux they could do! That would certainly raise money for the free beds at the San.

Is this the book with Elma Conroy, who plays cards on Sunday and has gone to 'roadhouses' with her unsuitable boyfriend?

That's what you get from listening to Schubert sung by unsuitably young singers.

It still amuses me, though, because I think implicitly, it's not a matter of her age making the song inappropriate (after all, we've seen the CS girls regularly act characters much older than themselves in various plays and pantomimes), it's the fact that it's a passionate and very sexy lied, sung by a fallen woman -- I think the implicit message is that you should only be singing about kisses and longing if you're married and hence have a legiimate reason for having kissed a man. In which case you shouldn't be on the stage, you should be at home darning your husband's socks, or whatever it is Miss Annersley says about marriage at some point. But in that case, Bill, Mlle and Miss Norton, all unmarried, should definitely not be listening to it and pronouncing authoritatively on it, either.

Do you suppose Joey and Verity's voice training, such as it was, had to explicitly avoid operatic arias by fallen women? Joey's repertoire, insofar as we ever hear about it seems to be largely English art songs or folk, doesn't it?