AIBU To Think That The Chalet School Matron Would Be In Prison Nowadays

[TheShellBeach]

..........................for giving unprescribed sedatives to the girls so frequently.

(lighthearted) (in case a million people tell me that IABU)

The Chalet School Matron was forever doling out sedatives to the girls, without even asking Jack Maynard to prescribe them first.
Shocking stuff. Nowadays, she would be jailed and struck off the NMC Register.

The thing is, the two ‘types’ of offences don’t make sense in one character. Blackmail takes cold calculation and planning, the type of assault described was an loss of control (still GBH with intent in my opinion - flinging a heavy object at someone’s head is never going to be anything else - but the intent is immediate not planned). Most criminals aren’t both.

I haven't read anything with blackmail but can't see why people wouldn't do both.

having a temper doesn't mean you can't carefully calmly do other things.

Is anyone reminded of the Mitfords while reading EBD?

Is anyone reminded of the Mitfords while reading EBD?

Well, the CS is a lot less glamorous, and I'm not sure that the Robin would have withstood a day's hunting, followed by the Hons' Cupboard, but they definitely have posh folk with poor impulse control in common 😀

Haha, the Mitfords would definitely be expelled from the Chalet School. Apart from Pam, maybe.

EBD was much more comfortable with the upper middle classes than actual aristos. Though she had a bit more of a thing for continental titled / landed types, particularly in the Tyrol days.

Not read the full thread so might have been spotted already, but it’s Joey and Co In Tirol. Mike runs off a ridge or something, and the shock makes Joey faint (6 weeks after giving birth to the second set of twins,). They go on holiday to Tirol for her to recover. NO IDEA why I remember this!

Oops that was re the book where Mike makes joey faint and she asks why someone didn’t whip him!

I think that's why Madge drifted off in rhe books, EBD gave her a title and then didn't really know what to do with her other than have her drift round opening fetes etc. She is definitely better with the working women

The Malory Towers outdoor sea pool would definitely be a health and safety hazard.
And there was the boyish girl called Tom (iirc
) who rode to school on her horse. Invisioning the modern day version clopping down the M5.

She was deeply insecure about her own class status, clearly — probably not surprisingly, given her wobbly ‘just-about-respectable lower-middle-class’ and the absconded-but-still-local father. It explains her very careful distinction between respectable working-class Rosamund Lilley who loses her accent and fits right in at the CS after a patronising little lecture from Joey about Adam and Eve being WC, and feckless brazen hussy Joan Whatsit, who bullies, swears, doesn’t wash, wears makeup and ‘ungirlish’ dresses, has a perm AND eats fish and chips on the street with boys!

All her working-class good girls (well, two — Rosamund and Biddy O’Ryan! Are there any others, excluding servants, who are either stolid devoted handmaids or skittish, superstitious sillies?) are the daughters of ladies’ maids who learned their ‘dainty’ manners from their employers. All her bad working-class girls (Joan, Elma Conroy, that glue factory heiress who gets booted) are ‘cheaply sophisticated’, interested in boys, and the money that pays the CS fees is from a non-U source like the pools or glue or knick-knack shops.

feckless brazen hussy Joan Whatsit, who bullies, swears, doesn’t wash, wears makeup and ‘ungirlish’ dresses, has a perm AND eats fish and chips on the street with boys!

Oh Joan!

Bill, that was - short for Wilhelmina!

Yes! I do remember now

I never read these as a kid but as an adult I bought one with two stories in one book at a charity shop as I collect those types of books, and really enjoyed the two stories, so I bought the whole lot via eBay and I just couldn't get into them, they were so dreary. I was so disappointed. I donated them to a charity shop.

My favourite boarding school books are Dorita Fairlie Bruce's Dimsie stories. I've got all of those (I think) and still think they're brilliant.

I'd describe them (others may differ) as an acquired taste, @ormaybenot . You have to learn to appreciate the amazing detail and extent of the CS universe, but also the utter bonkersness of it, to enjoy the books properly.

Definitely an acquired taste. Part of that taste involves finding it amusing, as well as/rather than obnoxious, that there are endless descriptions of ‘dainty’ dormitories, unfunny Middles’ pranks, and trilingual is, Joey’s ‘golden’ voice, earphones, fecundity and look-at-me girlishness into her 40s, the insufferable Mary-Lou quoting ‘I will lift my eyes up to the hills’, and blow-by-blow accounts of Christmas plays performed with deep devotion.

And why does EBD make negative comments about the physical appearance or demeanour of lower class girls /women?
Joan Baker has to always be “big Joan Baker” why big? Is she tall?
Servants apparently can only “stomp” not just walk normally.

Oh I love the Dimsie books. I must give them a re-read. I love that she became a herbalist rather than a teacher or just a wife.

I think ‘big’ meant ‘bosomy’ or ‘with a showy hourglass figure that filled out her sophisticated red dress and was nothing like the dainty girlish forms of which EBD actually approved’.

Enid Blyton was the same. The daughters of the nouveau riche were common and pushy, their mothers dressed too showily and their fathers were loud and gauche.

I didn't read more because I found them a bit dreary, but the good ones were good, so to speak. I really need some easy reads now so very glad I found this thread. I remember being very bored by one about twins, one about shocks - where actually nothing happened - and I didn't read any early ones so was a bit confused.

then there was someone fainting at an Easter play, which just seemed very WTAF to a child reading it hoping for fun school stories!

But I have a feeling I'll appreciate them more as an adult.

Not sure we make it into Jo’s 40s. She must only be late 30s in the last books as the triplets are only 17/18 and she was 20 or 21 (depending on which timeline, much like the Gregorian/Julian calendar) when they were born. Still many fertile years stretching ahead.

Shocks really is a bit misnomer, isn’t it? I think someone falls into a ditch at some point IIRC.

I mean that must come as a shock when you remember these are the same girls who thought some jam needed three cheers.

Somewhere in some remote village in the Tirol her magical womb is still popping them out. 'Twins!' she says and twins appear. Always thought that was a neat trick, that she could will multiple births into happening.