To start a new term at the Chalet School?

[Vintagejazz]

Happy for this to be moved to Chat if posters agree but thought I'd start it here as this is where we've all been loitering without permission when we should be doing our housework homework.

So welcome to a new term everyone. Cases upstairs to the dormitories, form lists on the notice board. And you'll all be pleased to hear that even though we've moved to a different location, Joey has tracked us - -down moved in next door, so we'll still be seeing too much-- plenty of her

thebody - I was thinking about the cellist too! Lovely name if so!

fairnotfair yes it's beautiful.

Wabbitty agree about changing the child's name.

And that adoption/abduction was well dodgy too. Love to have seen that home study of the family!

That's another name I have no idea how to say.....
I always liked Jesanne as a name...and I like her as a character in The Lost Staircase.

I've just read guides, and loved this paragraph from Bill towards the end...

But, Domestic Economy – what is that?' asked Marie.
'Oh, cooking and washing, and housework, and so on,' said Juliet. 'It's a very good idea.'
'I think so, too,' said Frieda. 'If we should wed, and have learned housewifery at school as well as what
we learn at home, we shall be able to make happy homes for our husbands and children.'
'More than that,' added Miss Wilson, who had joined them in time to hear Frieda's last sentence. 'Every woman, whether she be peasant or princess, should know how to keep house. It should be part of every girl's education. I dislike the habit so many English schools have of turning out girls who can construe Horace, but are unable to cook a dinner; who can work out a theorem in Geometry, but cannot patch a shirt; who can read French and German in the original, or know about the growth of Parliament, or the course of the Trade Winds, and yet who cannot wash a pair of socks or bath a baby.'
'But we do that in Child Nurse!' protested Marie.
'I know,' replied Miss Wilson. 'But not every school runs Guides. In many schools where Companies may
be found, there are yet girls who are non-Guides. Now this is all wrong. Eve's first work when she left the Garden of Eden was to be a homemaker. Of that, I am sure. It should be our first work, too. I know that many people talk a lot of nonsense about women being emancipated from such “drudgery”. Believe me, girls, the woman who is above tending her husband and children or – if God does not give her those – helping other women who need such help, is a poor creature, developed on one side only. And we are not meant to be that. We are sent into the world to develop as many sides of us as as possible. What would you think of a rose that produced petals on one side only? You would say that it was deformed. And woman, when she tries to ignore the human side of life, is deliberately deforming her nature.'
'But there are some women who never can learn homey sort of things, aren't there?' asked Jo doubtfully.
'That is true, Joey. But they are in the minority – very much in the minority. And none of you can plead that lack.'

Turns out, I am only half a woman!

It's interesting because I get what she is saying, but I come at it from a different angle.

My dd1 is in year 8. They do lessons in sewing and cooking (and other arts type things) for about a term and a half over years 7 and 8.

But I totally disagree with what they learn. They spent ages in "textiles" learning about different types of material, and researching about fashion designers etc. Now I think they'd be better spending the time learning sewing that can be useful. Why not teach them how to hem a skirt, sew a button on, repair a pocket, turn up trousers etc.

Ditto whatever they call cooking. Teach them basic cooking stuff so that they can follow a recipe, peel apples, work out timings to make a meal, bake a basic cake and some basic meals. Not designing new packages and that sort of things.

Equally well on other things, can't they teach them how to rewire a plug, screw something to a wall, iron a shirt, change a tyre on a car, mend a puncture on a bike etc.

And both girls and boys need to do all of it. I shared a flat at university and the lads did not have a clue on sewing or cooking (nor could they mend a puncture for that matter).

I think doing stuff that may come in useful would be so much better than trying to learn round the subject.

Sorry, but just going back to The Chalet School Goes To It:

How come Daisy Venables was living with Joey even though it was Jem and Madge who were her aunt and uncle?
And how come her little sister Primula was boarding at the school instead of living with Joey as well?

Is that a fill-in book silvershadows if so!

The thing is, Bill, I know how to cook a dinner, wash socks and bath a baby (ignoring the parts about patching shirts and darning things). I just hate the general drudgery of cleaning the house over and over - and, correct me if I'm wrong, but most of these middle-class girls would have had maids to do the cleaning drudgery while they swanned about arranging flowers. And Bill, a university-educated woman who lives in a school most of the time (although she does have a small cottage somewhere or other), doesn't exactly do much in the way of housework either.

Sweetest, I've got a lot more than that - some kind MNer sent them to me a few weeks ago and I have read about 13 CS books since! There are about 30-odd, plus I did have a few more on my old laptop but I can't make it stay on for long enough to email them to myself. I'll have another go at the weekend when DH is around to help. I'll type the list out when I'm not at work.

It's not a fill-in - she means Chalet Girls in Camp. Is it bad that I recognise the paragraph?

Ha! I've also just read that same passage in Camp, and my 8yo (as in, since age 8, not since 8 years ago - until these threads reminded me, I hadn't thought to reread CS as an adult) crush on Bill took a massive blow. :(

There's no messing about in Camp, though - none of this euphemistic milk, Jo gets sent off to bed with neat brandy!

Vintage, Daisy and Primula move in with Joey because Sybil is so horrible to them, I think. Is that right? Primula may be boarding due to the distance she'd have to cycle in winter - seem to recall that both Robin and Daisy have to board at times when it's snowy.

I always suspected Robin and Daisy lived with Joey so they could do the donkey work because Joey was too terribly delicate. They certainly seemed to do more of the child care than she did.

Thanks Cheddar.

I think I said on one of the other threads that that speech just isn't Bill. EBD creates a character but lacks the imagination to make her too different from her own views. IMO.

Another lovely bit of crappy Reunion is Jo and Grizel shuddering over the idea of being a feminist. I do wonder if Grizel would really have found it so objectionable.

Do you want clues one at a time or all together, Vintage and Body?

All together pleeeeeese!

To what extent does it even reflect her views, though, vs the predominant views of the time? (Technically the views of an earlier time, in the later books - I think I'm repeating earlier points that she seems to absorb the social change of the 40s-60s somewhat selectively...)

Either way, I am glad if we can separate Miss Wilson from that speech. I kind of can equate bits of it with her - the focus on self-sufficiency, and that people ought to be able to do things for themselves regardless of social class - but I don't want to think too much about domesticated!Bill, and especially not all this 'embrace the drudgery as womanly' crap.

Obviously lots of people at the time felt like that, but plenty didn't. Ironically she makes Bill disapprove of the sort of schools that were not creating little home makers, when in fact I reckon she was the kind of woman they were full of.

I have Exile waiting to read... And I am holding my breath and putting it off, because I reeeeally loved it best as a child and if it is actually semi-awful, I would rather preserve the memory. I do remember it having its ridiculous moments (isn't it the "solid lump of comfort" one?) but also as atypically well-written and nuanced. And dramatic, in a good, serious way as opposed to a charming "Joey falls down a hole" kind of way.

Should I read it? Will it thrill or disappoint? Actually I don't even need thrilling, I'd settle for comfortable, I just don't want the disappointment possibility.

Bugger it, I did mean Camp!

I agree with DeeWee, people should be able to be self sufficient - I cannot sew on a button, but my DH can because he did sewing at school. My school didn't go in for any home ec classes and it wasn't something I saw at home.

I like all these contradictions, Too - I suppose it's another layer of appreciation. I think it is (partly) why CS bears rereading as an adult, whereas I don't imagine Enid Blyton does.

Calls Joey 'aunty'; born in India; Joey knew her mother when she was there with Robin; fell in a hole on the cricket pitch and damaged her ankle.

I was just thinking this morning (because I seriously need to get a life) that if Joey's triplets were born in 1940 and were still in the school in the last Chalet book which was written around 1970, they would have been thirty leaving school.
So I wonder at what stage the books stopped being set in roughly the time they were being written in. It would explain why some of the later ones were so out of touch with reality.

Tinuviel no together is fine

Didn't Daisy and prim move in after josettes accident as Madge had to nurse her?

Primula boarded as she was delicate but Jo can't do without Daisy's help with the triplets.

Daisy moves back to Madge when the highland twins flora and fauna ( ha ha ha) Joey move in I think.

Off to darn my husbands socks, oh fuck it I am not.