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

That's a worrying thought.

Maybe they only had one at a time - i.e. you popped one in the laundry when you changed for dinner on Saturday and your fresh laundry appeared that evening having been washed during the week?

You just never see them assert themselves around the triplets. Frieda tries to calm Jo down, Marie talks sense to her about Eustacia. There's a real sense that they ground her and they are maturing faster than her - even Simone by the end. They are fond of Madge but rooted in their own families and cultures.

The triplets' friends are more like protégées - and Joey is like a substitute mother to several of them. I can't think of any storyline where a triplet turns to them for advice, or they disagree - after any initial reforms. They seem more like satellites.

Len and Con sort of are, a few of the new girls - Ros, Richenda, Ted - end up forming a friendship group with them, but it's never really as strong and cohesive as Bride's friendship group (my favourite) or the Quintette. Margot has Emerence, and to a lesser extent Francie and Connie, but that's it (and Francie has a ginormous crush on Margot).

Rosamund is lovely and I wish we'd seen more of her as Head Girl, but I guess she was just a placeholder for Len. I wish we'd seen more of Ted too. I loved her and her genuine struggles with trying to overcome bad habits, but she got overshadowed in her own book by Margot's nastiness. She's not a bad kid at heart, just very lost and her mum doesn't give a shit about her.

And because there are the three of them, they aren't surrounded by a strong friendship group that pushes them into shape. Jo doesn't mature evenly or much at all while she's at school, but her friends do. They manage her, and they push back against her a bit.

It's a shame we never see Rosamund as headgirl because we never do see the triplets except as leaders and centre of attention after the focus moves to them in Inter V. Pity they weren't left split up. They had some really lovely friends who kept getting elbowed out of the limelight.

They have a few German pupils in the Swiss years and I think Gisela's daughter Natalie is a pupil while they're in the UK, but that's it.

(I couldn't get @MinorCharacter 's post as a quote.)

I think EBD finds herself in a lot of difficulty with the second generation of Chalet girls in this regard - she wants the characters to be interesting and well rounded, obviously, but she also doesn't want to criticise the parenting they've received in the way she would perfectly naturally do if they were random newcomers.

It's less of a nightmare with Madge's children, partly because Madge and Jem are not centre stage any more by this point and partly because they're not on such a pedestal anyway, but I do think it's part of the hiccup with Sybil. (Again, there's a very conceivable version of events where Sybil's self-esteem issues stem directly from growing up in a welcoming and loving household where her mother is already mothering half the world and perhaps overcompensating for absent parents at her own child's expense... but I dont think EBD intended that!)

With Joey's kids, she paints herself into a corner by giving each triplet a single adjective and sticking doggedly to it in spite of everything. It's not simply that they can't grow: Grizel for example is also a character who doesn't magically outgrow her shortcomings until Reunion - she's reflective, not static, but she's still a prickly insecure adult when she returns as a teacher and sets Len on fire etc, and it's a believable state of affairs. (But Grizel of course can be blamed on bad parenting trauma.) For me the issue with the one-dimensional triplets is that one adjective doesn't create a personality, and I think if they'd been a set of triplets with insignificant parentage EBD would have accepted this after a couple of books and faded them into the background, but obviously she can't do that with Jo's children.

I wonder whether EBD envisaged, whilst writing about the toddler triplets lisping charmingly with their varied hair colours and their single character traits, that she'd end up writing their entire school career...

Sorry! By the time I'd managed to get the @ bit to work, the question had been answered.

@helpmechoosewheretolive She's often referred to as "our one and only Mary-Lou".

I really need to know what OOAO means........

I'm so glad I was never inspired to imitate it

*Today 21:04FelicityBeedle

Today’s line which made me laugh
“ “Gabrielle—she’s new: French, but quite nice”*

Never noticed that I thought only Prussians were automatically unpleasant.

Do German girls ever come back to the school, after the war?

EBD was terrible at writing little kids. I will say that she was great at writing tweens, which is why I love Three Go so much.

She was also very weird about looks and it's one topic that comes up on the CBB a lot - on the one hand you've got Len being applauded for making a snotty remark to some random woman about praising to the face, rather than being told off for being rude, and on the other you've got teachers swooning over how beautiful the school's staff are and girls obsessing over each other's looks. No wonder so many fans write slash. Ruey and Ted are expected to look a certain way and be neat and trig and whatnot, and Joey makes an incredibly rude remark about Ted's eyebrows, but Felicity King gets a bollocking for ordering anti-freckle lotion because she should be happy with her G-d-given looks. So Felicity has to accept her freckles but Ted can't accept her eyebrows or thick hair? I suppose you could make the argument that a young skin doesn't need chemicals plastering on it, but it does confuse me a bit.

Joey and Len butting in is what TV Tropes call an 'informed attribute'. Joey only really butts in as an adult. Mary-Lou is incredibly proactive (she Gets Shit Done), but I never get that impression with Len, apart from maybe when she and Ros help Ted with her languages when they're in quarantine.

The weird bit there and I've not read Jo to the Rescue in aeons, but I think it was in that one (which is a pretty weird book, anyway) is that Len and Con, also three, are so thoroughly versed in hushing it up, rather than throwing tantrums of their own. (Had EBD ever actually met a three year old, do you suppose?)

Margot is one of those girls EBD seems rather conflicted about -- she's the tempestuous redhead who is always about to reform, but never quite does, but is somehow given far more leeway than other girls, presumably because of her parentage, and of course is never damned by the school as having been damaged by bad childhood 'training' or 'heredity', and ends up heading for being a missionary nun.

But EBD herself doesn't seem to realise at all what an unpleasant, violent, uncontrolled character she has created in Margot, and even stuff like Grizel in Reunion meeting the triplets for the first time in years and being very critical of Margot's good looks, dubbing them 'showy', is strange and interesting considering it's being applied to a 'Perfect' Maynard.

It's as if EBD was caught between wanting to write Margot as an interesting bad girl who reforms (though that is usually a plotline that happens when a new girl with an unhappy past joins the school and changes over one transformative term -- whereas Margot is a wonderfully-raised Freudesheim child with perfect parents) and wanting to do something more psychologically complex (reform isn't instant or forever), but being hampered by the fact that she's set up the triplets as three 'flat' characters who are just there to illustrate three aspects of Joey's character, the Butter-In (Len), the Dreamy Writer (Con) and the Madcap (Margot).

Plus there's the fact that all badness in the CS world can be explained by unhappiness due to a 'warped' or neglectful or unloving upbringing, but Margot has had none of that in EBD's eyes, so she has to keep bringing Margot's violent temper down to nature (her 'devil') rather than nurture.

I think 'pussystruck' = 'gobsmacked'. I wonder if it's an NE England/Scots thing, EBD often had characters using Scots expressions like 'drookit craw', 'drat and drabbit it' and 'ask nae questions and ye'll be tellt nae lees'.

EBD was the complete opposite of Enid Blyton and her midnight feasts. The MT/St Claire's girls were always sneaking off to have them and never got done by teachers or ended up with food poisoning.

Yes she clearly has interpreted it as a sweet little version of “thunderstruck”.

That’s true about Margot - she does do some awful things later, but she has been thoroughly scapegoated since a young age for doing things I think are quite developmentally appropriate, and seems to be in more trouble for those than eg the bookend.

What contexts does EBD use ‘pussy struck’ in? I mean, is it clear from the context that she meant it to mean ‘extremely surprised’ or ‘baffled’ or something?

And I very much hope someone in the CS world was having lots of fabulous, non-reproductive sex under all those dainty cretonne bedspreads, but I doubt it. I bet there were no locks on staff bedroom doors, Con Maynard was always sleepwalking, or Jack Lambert going after burglars, or someone reporting another girl ill for eating ‘contraband’ after hours. (EBD seems to have had a touching belief in its being fine to eat any amount of sweet, rich food at mealtimes, but if you eat it one minute after lights out, you get ill and need castor oil...)

Emerence is often described as one of the worst girls the school's ever had but she pales in comparison to Margot and Jack, who are both actively malicious. Emerence did cause Mary-Lou's accident, but it wasn't on purpose, whereas Margot's bullying campaign against Theodora was calculated, as was Jack's against Jane (and it was over something that wasn't Jane's fault, and because Len is a doormat, she enables Jack's behaviour). Margot getting a jealous streak was very out of the blue. She never seemed bothered about Ros and all of a sudden she doesn't want her sisters having friends...even though she has Emerence. And yes, Margot is the one who hits a random woman when a lift breaks down.

@MinorCharacter that is EXACTLY what I was getting at (and a Catholic poster on one of the old threads said that no, Catholics do not typically have bedtime confessions and Joey is putting herself in the role of a priest).

• In Jo to the Rescue, Margot has a horrible temper tantrum over sharing toys. In Theodora, she bullies Theodora, blackmails her and attacks her when she stands up for herself. In both books, we get the usual 'hard row to hoe' line and guff about devils, even though Joey previously told Margot to stop blaming things on her devil.
• In Jo to the Rescue, Len tries to calm Margot down. She's three. In Theodora, Mary-Lou chews Len out for constantly worrying about her sisters. Len also tries to calm Margot down when she's yelling at Theodora.
• In Jo to the Rescue, Con calls Margot a pig and just calmly does her own thing. In Theodora, Con finds out that Margot was eavesdropping on a conversation and that she doesn't want Len becoming friends with Ted, gets angry with her and warns her that she'll tell Len if Margot tries to split her and Ted up. She also notices the swanky clock and comments on it, attracting Len's attention, and OOAO is frankly rude to her about how tactless she is.
• In Jo to the Rescue, Joey tries to keep the kids' tantrums from Jack, but Jack sees Margot screaming and manages to calm her down by giving her the silent treatment. In Theodora, Joey is kept out of the loop because she's preggers, and Jack refuses to speak to Margot for two weeks.

Incidentally, both Anne Seymour and Betty get punished for telling Joey and Margot to be quiet. Although at least Joey doesn't yeet a bookend at Anne and nearly kill her.

-Miss Ferrars and Miss Wilmot were certainly pussystruck-

I think Margot is worse than that -- she blackmails Ted by threatening to disclose her expulsion from three previous schools, information she'd found out while eavesdropping on her mother and Rosalie Deane being characteristically indiscreet in the garden of Freudesheim AND she throws a bookend at Betty Landon and gives her a serious head injury, something the school covers up promptly, and actually blames Betty for (although all Betty has done is tell Margot to keep her voice down). And she's a Senior in both cases, not a young child.

But in fact, you can entirely see why Margot turned out as she did -- EBD and her family label her the problem triplet from toddlerhood, and even aged around three in Jo to the Rescue, Len and Con are covering up for her tantrums, and Joey institutes this 'confess your sins at bedtime' thing, then she's handed the whole weird 'It was my devil' alibi, and both school and home start banging on about how Margot 'has a particularly hard row to hoe' because of her temper, and letting her off all kinds of hooks, to the point where Betty is blamed for almost being killed.

Is it Margot who also harangues and slaps a complete stranger when she panics when a lift loses power? Which I get may have been well-intentioned (the slap) to stop her panicking, but no one else was endangered (so it's not like smacking someone who's trying to pull you underwater when you're rescuing them) and telling this girl to stop being a coward etc suggests someone really not in control of her own actions.

Thanks for the thread! I recently re-read the lot thanks to Parker, and also found them just right after bereavement.

The thing that most fascinates me is as one of the posters said, the way that the story EBD actually tells is quite different from the story she thinks she is telling. Margot is basically written as being possessed by the devil, but what does she actually do that’s so terrible? The worst trouble she ever gets in is for running ahead on an excursion. Jack on the other hand is an appalling physical bully - is this ok because she is a tomboy and boys’ violence is acceptable? Jo drooling over teenage Roger is just bizarre. The way they all conspire to make the Robin a hypochondriac with no medical basis is like Munchhausens by proxy.

I do like the slice of life aspect but I wonder about how accurate it is - eg the TB treatment is never updated - EBD seems never to have heard of streptomycin or PAS.

And then the malapropisms - so EBD was appropriately ignorant for her age and education, but did no one at her publishers ever hint that pussy-struck does not mean what she thought it meant?