To wonder why MNHQ still haven't given us our Chalet School topic?

[TheObligatoryNotQuiteSoNewGirl]

Because we probably shouldn't still be hanging out in AIBU, four (or is it five?) threads later.

I've been reading all the lovely transcripts, and although I started Prefects yesterday, I don't want to finish it, because it's the last one! :-(

I'm lucky(?) enough to be sufficiently old that I was able to buy the armada reprints in smiths on Saturdays, they might not have just come out (our smiths and a fabulous independent bookshop, Websters it was called, that was then swallowed up by various chains in turn, always carried quite a lot of 'old stock' I now realise) but there were plenty of them. We also had a magnificent second hand bookshop round the corner from us which had an amazing stock of children's books, so many of my CS books are really old tatty paperbacks with prices in shillings and pence on the back, and then the magic figure '2p!' Written in pencil inside the front cover. The people who worked there loved me and my sister, we went in at least once a week and they would save stuff they thought we would like - and we got bulk discount so if we wanted 7 books we could get them for 10p the lot. Wonderful. That might be why I like the st briavels books better, because they are all old and full of character, not nasty 'modern' armada reprints.

Joey needed to grow up because she was daft, not because she needed to recognise the 'awesomeness' of Jack! that was how I saw it in those days. My very first CS book was the first one (from the lovely second hand shop) but my next one was Barbara, from smiths, so I almost always knew who was going to marry who etc. I think reading them out of order was good, actually...although I suppose I would say that...

I like Julian and Janie as characters, but they're another case of him making his mind up to marry her while she's still school age and waiting for her to grow up and realise what's what.

Also they don't have a single disagreement during their first year of married life (chronicled at tedious length in Janie of La Rochelle, much the worst of the La Rochelle books in my view). Except possibly when Julian suggests getting his own breakfast one day as he has to be up early for work, and Janie is appalled at the idea as he would probably spill coffee on the tablecloth

I do remember being a bit at the number of kids Joey had though! even when I was 9. I'm catholic and my mum's mum came from a HUGE family - of 7 kids. Joey's remarkable fecundity seemed a bit suspect to me even when I was small, especially in the light of her 'frailty'. And I always thought her hair sounded stupid. Once she grew it. Not when it was short. I definitely identified most with ML purely because of the hair (I had short curly hair, and the one where she gets nogged was probably the third book I read).

Yeah but Herc, Joey is still daft, even when she is grown up!
(I still feel a lot of sympathy for her fear of growing up - even as an adult myself, and indeed an adult who was a child at a time when my adult options looked hugely better than Jo's ever did. Actually I think adult Jo's continual hankering after her own school days is the least daft thing about her - it seems a very sensible response to a free and enjoyable childhood compared to a very constrained adulthood.)

I v much agree with the benefits of reading out of sequence, btw. I read them at random as a child, and in a slightly more deliberate, but equally un-chronological order, as an adult.

Oh I love Janie of La Rochelle. It reminds me a lot of Anne's House of Dreams.

I've never been able to reconcile Joey's supposed frailty with her super-fecundity. I don't know how much that comes from EBD having no personal (and perhaps no major second-hand?) experience of pregnancy and childbearing, or how much the practicalities just don't figure because they're unnecessary. I kind of think of it as the same as the white hair thing - profoundly incredible, but kind of charming with it. They're almost fairy-tale aspects, aren't they?

Mooncup, the worst thing is I can completely recognise that sentiment in things I hear or read today - that 'oh dear poor feckless men, loveable oafs, I'd never trust my hubby to make his own coffee cos he'll only spill it on the tablecloth and then I'll have to clear up after him' thing. I haven't read any of the La Rochelle books, yet.

Anne's House of Dreams is a lovely book, but it has much more going on that Janie of La Rochelle, what with Leslie and her ghastly marriage, the amusing older characters, the death of the baby, etc. And LM Montgomery is a better writer with a gift for (admittedly sometimes rather sickly) descriptive prose, and more able to hold her nerve in romantic scenes than EBD.

There are a few nice bits of Janie of LR - I like Julian's grandmother - but so much of it is just a relentless chronicle of minor characters falling in love and getting married. In fact, doesn't one male character see a photo of one of the female characters (Nita Eltringham?) and fall in love immediately? It's a bit creepy.

Janie Steps In is nice, though, with really strong depictions of Nan Blakeney and Beth Chester and their difficulties.

I think the courtship between Juliet Carrick and Donal O'Hara is probably the best I can think of. I like Juliet.

True enough. There is considerably more to the Anne story.

Alas, Nell, that is quite true.

On the other hand, I was very glad to see, when rereading Tom Tackles, that EBD argues repeatedly through key characters that pre-pubescent boys and girls are pretty similar, and that Tom's conviction that boys are generally better, more honourable and less sentimental than girls is quite wrong.

In Heather Leaves School (another of the La Rochelle ones, and rather fun) Heather has a sister of ten or so who is obsessed with mechanical things and has a massive toy railway. EBD is pretty sympathetic to tomboys throughout the series.

But with Juliet and Donal there's the whole Kay backstory which is a little odd.

Oh yes, it's Kay and Juliet who are the real love story, isn't it.

On the other hand, at least with Juliet and Donal it's not a case of Donal spotting Juliet and laying claim to her, which is the usual pattern of EBD couple relationships. I can't think of any case where the woman spots the man first and thinks, 'Oh, he looks rather tasty!'

Yes - is that a thing of the time, or at least of the genre? Blyton is also very accepting of tomboys. I can't recall though (because my memories of her books are so vague) whether she also uses this as a platform to point out the equality of girls. I really like that speech from Matey to Tom, about how boys do sentimentality too.

At times, Nell and Nancy are also depicted as really quite masculine, although she seems to flip-flop about in both cases. And Tom doesn't ever seem to have to grow out of her tomboyishness, from what we do hear about her after she's left the school.

With Juliet and Donal, it feels as though she has far more agency in the courtship than any other woman I can think of in the series. It helps that she meets him as an adult, and that he's not another milk-wielding doctor! Juliet could choose to remain unmarried and teach - I'd like to think that since she seems to actively choose to do otherwise, it is a fairly nice relationship she is choosing. I still feel sorry for her over Kay, though. (Actually this is also something I quite like about the relationship with Donal - she goes into it having experienced something of love and rejection already, rather than suddenly and inexplicably going from schoolgirl to "married woman and proud mamma".)

I should probably re-read Reunion to see what I think of Grizel's eventual marriage - my instinctive feeling is that I don't like it because it's as though she is eventually 'redeemed' for her bad previous behaviour and accordingly rewarded with a husband, and actually I really like 'badly'-behaved Grizel. But I might be being really unfair here and it is another notable marriage outside of the traditional San-School connection. Grizel must be well into her thirties by this point, too?

I seem to remember George in The Famous Five being seen as silly for being a tomboy and Anne being more approved of. Haven't read any for a while though.

Was Kay a man or a woman?

Kay is a woman - she's Donal's (older?) sister. She is very kind to Juliet and Juliet rather idolises her. At some point after Juliet takes up with Donal (is this described as an engagement already? Can't remember), Kay discovers that Juliet's biological family - from whom she is effectively estranged - are bad'uns, drops Juliet and persuades Donal to do likewise. I don't mean to imply that there is some kind of lesbian relationship here, if anything I suppose the thing it can best be compared to is a sisterly one - but I think the kind of non-familial love and loss, rejection, anger involved has a lot of relevance to adult emotional relationships.

Obviously Joey leaps in and fixes everything and tells Donal what for and he apologises (?) to Juliet and they get engaged afresh. This is an occasion where Joey interfering actually doesn't get on my nerves though - she comes across quite well in this episode I think.

Eating that's true - I was thinking particularly of the horsey tomboy in Malory Towers - Bill, I think? Does she have to grow out of it by the final year? (Obviously because the series ends here we don't see what happens after, which is always the more telling/interesting bit, but I'm just wondering if there's any authorial condemnation or indications that she will now be "a lady" or not.)

I think "Bill" opens a horse training school with Clarissa in Malory Towers IIRC. I don't think she grows out of it.

I find myself playing a 'which Chalet School character' game when I am out and about at the moment. At a trendy bar at the weekend (left the knitting in my gimmer bag) there was a perfect Blossom Willoughby and very passable Simone Lecoutier and Jack Lambert. I am in the city today and have seen a Sybil Russell and a Jack Lambert, and am currently on the train opposite a definite Floppy Bill.

I do that when watching television. Must start doing it when out and about. Will make those bus journeys much more interesting.

Oh yes. Sadly RL appears to have a shortage of bronze hair and violet eyes.

I used to have bronze hair. Green eyes though.

DD1 has bronze hair currently (but it's out of a bottle, she has blondish/honey coloured hair naturally) and dark blue eyes - but I think it would be stretching it to call them violet.

Eating it's funny, but I never read George like that. There's a lot of "Good old George; good as any boy" sentiments. There's also at least two other tom boys like George-Henry in Mystery Moor, and The Two Harries in Finniston Farm. You've also got Jo the gypsy girl. All of those are "good" characters. (George doesn't like Henry, but the others do and she prroves herself in the end)
There's also the American girl Bertha (?) who is disguised as boy in Plenty of Fun, I think. She doesn't like being disguised as a boy and is potrayed as a bit silly.

I certainly didn't take Anne as the sensible one, and George as disapproved when I was reading them.

I always thought George was the 'star'. She was the one who owned the island (and the dog) after all.