to think that the Malory Towers gels where a bunch of bitches?!

[Bogeyface]

Just re-read the last two as they were my favourite and Oh Em Gee, what a bunch of fecking cows they were!

I have a HUGE EB collection starting with Five run away together, that mum bought me for my first Brownie camp. DD got into them (she is 8) so I thought I would buy her the MT box set. She was over the moon, and last night and today I read 5 and 6 as they had been my favourites although I hadnt read them in years.

These naice gels are bullying, bitching snotty nosed princesses! They were vile to newcomers, vile to younger ones, unspeakable to any girl who was a little bit different, encouraged one twin to dump her other twin in the name of "independence", looked down on parents who werent the right sort, self satisfied, self obsessed and utter snobs! And of course every book ended with the "not our kind" becoming a decent MT girl!

I have always, as an adult, read EB and particularly Famous Five with an air of amused irony ("Anne, you really are a proper little housewife!" "I know, but I do love looking after you all!"). But, and I realise that I am probably over thinking this, MT is awful and I am slightly regretting buying them for DD :(

So were they bitches or was I just the girl that would have left after 2 terms because I wasnt the right sort?!

I re-read Mallory Towers a couple of years ago, first time as an adult and the thought occurred to me that Darrell Rivers is a bit of a violent thug.

I so wanted to go to boarding school as a kid!! I loved EB books and dd1 now has loads but we haven't got to MT yet.

I think I need to re-read them, as I remember liking Darrell and most of the others. I liked the way they didn't have any truck with anyone too prissy, vain etc. If you were the sort of girl who'd object to games and a bit of cold water (i.e. not someone I could ever relate to) then you weren't OK with Darrell and that was OK with me.

Wouldn't have been okay with me Alittlestranger. I hated sports at school. I remember loving the Mallory Towers and St Clare's books although I suspect I'd be at some of the attitudes now. But those books were set in a very class concious era and I'm sure little upper middle class gals in the 1940s and 1950s would have related perfectly to some of the snobby rubbish attitudes that prevailed around the school.

Don't forget the fact that French girls don't have a sense of honour

Darrell Rivers came right in the end didn't she though, and learnt to control her temper for the most part? I think they are of their time in terms of how they behaved. Fairly sure some would have been excluded from school in this day an age. Though having said that,boarding schools can be a world apart from normal school life.

I used to love those books. I spent years asking to go to boarding school. First Malory Towers and then Hogwarts

Mind you, at least the girls in MT had a bit of fun. In the Chalet School you had to be ever so prim and proper and law abiding to fit in. And anyone who tried expressing a bit of individuality soon found themselves on the receiving end of a sanctimonious speech from Jo.

Ah yes, Claudine with no sense of honour because she was French! And stupid, vain, American Zerelda! The national stereotyping was ridiculous.

I forget which characters were from MT as opposed to St Clare's..which ones had Jo, who had a brash 'nouveau riche' father who was an 'awful sort 'because he spoke too loudly, was too informal with the teachers and didnt respect the pocket money rules?

I wanted to be Darrell.

And the pool at the bottom of the cliff path - how fabulous was that.

The closest I ever got to Boarding school was eating sardines out of the tin.

DD goes to a private girls school and it is not much different in terms of bitchty bullying.

Another one here who loved Malory Towers as a kid. I introduced DD to them when she was about 7 and was impressed that she picked up on their behaviour as bullying very quicky. It would never ever have occurred to me that the "naice" girls were bullies when I was that age.

Dear assorted First Formers,

No, we are all a lovely bunch of gels in the North Tower, Claudine may have undone her suspender on the grass, Darrell may have thrown Sally over a chair but she felt awful afterwards, Zerelda polishes her nails so they are little mirrors & says twenny instead of twenty but we gels soon put her right.

We are all in the lacrosse team & have midnight feasts composed of boiled eggs & tarts

You are all inferior so you have to live in the West Tower & your horses are not as good as ours. You are all huge strapping athletes while we are dainty with neat hair.

You will obviously not be attending our exclusive finishing school in Switzerland so here's a good view of our nostrils & I hope you make your life as decent as you can.

love, the Upper Sixth

YABVU!

Has anyone a hairbrush?

Binks

I have a hairbrush. Or perhaps we can make them run round the paddock 20 times :)

Angela Favourleigh at St Clair's was the worst, surely?

I loved the St Clare's books but was much less keen on Malory Towers when I was about 7/8. Then I discovered the Chalet School books when I was 9 & decided that I would much prefer to go there because people generally seemed much nicer. Although I always loathed Mary-Lou - am responsible for a friend of mine's SatNav being called Mary-Lou because it's so bloody bossy: something incredibly satisfying about responding to it's contradictory instructions with "oh do shut UP Mary-Lou"

That said, I got my step-niece (just turned 8) some of the Naughtiest Girl books for Christmas...

Oh & yes, Enid Blyton was a very strange woman: quite deeply disturbed, I think

Does anyone remember 'The Six Bad Boys' ? it was her attempt at social realism, although, like all of them, horrible stereotyped. It still makes me cry!!

my favourite one ever I just wanted a plane like the one they flew in..

I think I had Six Bad Boys but I can't remember much about it now.

My DD1 has the audiobooks of MT and they have given some of the girls really cracking voices. Alicia is absolutely terrifying (as she always was in print).

And I do cringe a bit when they say things like, 'Kathleen if only you would stop eating so many sweets and go for a long walk, your hair would stop being greasy and you wouldn't have so many spots'. I don't want DD to develop that sort of superiority so as an antidote to MT I gave her 'Blubber' by Judy Blume to read. Anyone remember that one?

My grandma has many original Enid Blytons from as far back as the 40's I believe. Lots of 'swarthy foreign types' and I remember recently being shocked at one book with a 'negro' called Sam - the picture was unbelievably crass, I don't know why I wasn't shocked as a child.
Having said that I adored them all when I was younger and longed to go to boarding school.

I remember Blubber.

And I remember Forever being passed round the class

I loved MT as a child, I actually got to go to boarding school and was bitterly disappointed when I didn't morph into Darrell Rivers and that the reality was very far removed from the fiction.

I re-read them recently, dd1 (8) was given some of them for her birthday last summer. I was shocked as to how snotty and superior the characters were and how it seemed that the aim of every story was to make all the characters into MT clones. DD1 couldn't get into them at all, can't say I'm sorry.

I've only read OP so apologies for duplication but we've just ordered the Mallory towers and st Claire's set from WHS, reduced from approx £40 to £8.

They just weren't as good as the chalet school books!

The Chalet School was definitely stricter. Midnight feasts there were a major crime, while I'm sure EB's staff turned a blind eye to them on occasion.

As for the idea of someone trying to play tricks.....