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.

Ah but she didn't have the delicate stomach of the delicately well bred

Please please can someone remind me about the pink worm?? It's just at the edge of my brain...

Wasn’t Thekla a scion of the Prussian aristocracy, and a cousin of the Von Eschenaus, though? Though it’s odd that cured meat seems to be beyond the pale when the books are forever going on about the superiority of foreign food, and sneering at the Little Englanders who want more for breakfast than rolls and coffee.

But Thekla was precisely a Prussian, like Frau Berlin, and therefore a bad hat in EBD world. Nothing at all like a delightful Bavarian with delicious torte.

Maybe because EBD was not very enthusiastic about the war and the Guides were a bit proto-military?

I know it’s been said before on Mnet, but I’m still astounded that she had refugee characters with an understanding of what was happening to Jewish people in Europe, but not an ounce of war work.

I think she got bored of guides and was relieved when she realised that they could just never start them up again once she moved the school to Switzerland.

Exile is a completely amazing book on n it's way - it was published at the beginning of the war and included a lot of information that many didn't admit to knowing until well after the war was over.

The problem with the war years is that there are the books published out of order that must have taken place during those years (Tom, mystery and Rosalie) which have zero references to anything war related, probably cause by the time they were published no one wanted a reminder. But they leave it all a bit murky for those of us wanting to date the series.

One of the appeals of chalet world and it's Ilk is that it's a world where women have a lot of autonomy. Yes there are always the doctors around and a bit of kowtowing to them, but still, women and girls DO things. Even if it's just put on Christmas plays and dress up fetes.

Yes, it does seem odd that Madge and Joey, who’ve actually escaped the Nazis and know people in concentration camps, aren’t depicted as digging for Victory or doing any of the home front war stuff that was compatible with young children and wouldn’t have taken more than the occasional mention.

But it’s odder to me that there’s such a gulf between the sympathetic attitude to the impoverished Tiernsee peasants and the deeply snide authorial attitude to the Cockney evacuees in Armishire, to the point where even hospitable Joey, who is forever throwing her house open to waifs and strays, adopts two Scottish girls who are actually attending a local boarding school, rather than have any billeted on her.

There are vague references to old girls in service and war work. The MacDonald twins appear because their sister has to go off to do war things. And there is the digging for victory under the excellent-sounding Miss Everett. But there is definitely an overall lack of getting stuck in.

One of the appeals of chalet world and it's Ilk is that it's a world where women have a lot of autonomy. Yes there are always the doctors around and a bit of kowtowing to them, but still, women and girls DO things. Even if it's just put on Christmas plays and dress up fetes

Totally. And they take girls' education seriously, in an era when few people did. And, despite all the dick-pandering to the doctors, almost all important decisions are taken by women.

Is there anything so female-centred for girls today? I doubt it. My DSDs are adults now, but I don't remember any 2000s equivalent when they were younger. There are more kids' books with female heroines now, but it's done very self-consciously. One thing I like about the CS, in retrospect, is that it is totally taken for granted that women are autonomous and in charge.

Is that the one that crawls into the engine of a bus and kill the engine? I don't think it can be when they had to sleep in the bus overnight because that was floods, but I can't remember which bus related catastrophe it caused

oh she would have seen my leg - just as it kicked her right in the shin 😂

🤣

Just read the second book as I've not read it before. Can't believe we're two books in and Madge is being married off already!

Lots of casual sexism and racism; boys can use slang (Madge was obsessed with that) but girls can't; Jo's hair was like a character with mad black hair from Noddy and a particular brand of jam; someone else referred to working like a n*er etc

The Frau Berlin thing was interesting - because she was Prussian. It shows the book was written after WW1, because obviously by WW2 we'd realised that certain Austrians were rather more dangerous. But Austrians and Bavarians are lovely and those Prussians rude and xenophobic (which rather fits in with the premise of A Short History of Germany).

Definitely a very interesting product of their time! I've never read any of the ones that were in Switzerland.

One thing I like about the CS, in retrospect, is that it is totally taken for granted that women are autonomous and in charge

I'm not sure about all the sewing they have to do though. Wouldn't they have maids to do that for them? I'd have been useless.

Yes, surely no sane person would ever get out of bed if their first actions involved shaking a leg for Mary-Lou, having a cold bath and humping their mattress in the only correct manner (I mean, how many incorrect ways of humping a mattress are there? Fnar, obviously...)

I think EBD sometimes did weird things with characterisation, like continually telling you that a character is X and Y, but then continually making the character do things that really aren't, or retrofitting them in a way that really isn't borne out when you look back at earlier books.

I do think that for someone who herself was physically endangered by WW2 action and who escaped the Reich, EBD, while depicting her as endlessly hospitable and kind-hearted, risks making Joey look callous and snobbish by having whichever old mistress sends her the Highland Twins say I know you don't want evacuees 'because of the precious Three', despite having three spare bedrooms and the fact that other minor characters in reserved occupations like farming and with presumably far smaller houses and no staff, were required to taken them.

(I mean, I can imagine not wanting to take in extra children if I had triplets, but I also wouldn't be roaming Europe taking in random babies saved from train wrecks or complete strangers whose father got lost in space or whose mother had once known me at school if I had a giant family of my own...)

The sewing is a hangover from the Victorian era, when upper and upper middle class women were expected to be forever sewing - known as 'their work' - ironically, since it was always something decorative (the maids did the grunt work). I think the idea was that it occupied them in a womanly way, so that they didn't have time to be dangerously distracted by reading or Having Ideas.

But it’s odder to me that there’s such a gulf between the sympathetic attitude to the impoverished Tiernsee peasants and the deeply snide authorial attitude to the Cockney evacuees in Armishire

I think that there are a few things here.

The impoverished peasants were helped by taking them on as servants or by throwing a play to raise money, help from a distance. The evacuees would be taken into their homes as equals not servants (appreciating that didn't always happen with evacuees).

I think there is a level of respecting hard work too. Peasants were acceptable in Austria because they were seen to work hard, and they were portrayed as clean, church going people. The evacuees are portrayed as ignorant, maybe not so clean and godly and I think maybe the work their parents did pre war was not as valued?

Also the school/Joey valued lower class people if they were intelligent (Reg, Biddy etc) and the evacuees were portrayed as ignorant in places. Perhaps if one had been a prodigal they would have found their way into Joeys house.

It's all that wierd balance, they are snobby but anyone openly snobby is derided.

That makes perfect sense!

I'm not sure about all the sewing they have to do though. Wouldn't they have maids to do that for them? I'd have been useless.

I think it's that upper middle class instead of upper class thing. They are teaching the wives of doctors, bankers, missionaries, teachers, vicars etc. Plus future nuns, teachers, housewives etc. And this was in a time especially post war where getting servants was increasingly difficult.

I think plain sewing was getting more of a think amoungst the upper middle class as well. Sewing for missionary boxes and knitting for the poor etc. So even if someone else mended their clothes I think there was an expectation of having the skills themselves.

And of course in the Austrian era the Austrians expected their girls to be good home makers even if they married well.

Although I stand by Joeys early resentment at the idea of having to sit around darning her husbands socks (which she later does 🙄) Although somewhat Ironically as a prolific sock knitter I do darn my husbands socks but always berate myself because my darns aren't practically invisible and Mdlle/matron would not have approved them

Didn't they hold a party of the evacuees? So they weren't completely dismissive of them... just kept them well away.

Some of the girls must have had a complete culture shock if they joined the womans forces. Even nursing!

I'm not sure. Only the very richest people by the 30s had servants who would have done a lot of mending - most people struggled to find domestic staff and they did the real grunt work. Darning/knitting/plain sewing/clothes making were very much household tasks that were done by women across the board, even if you had a 'daily'. Women of my mother's age (90s) were brought up expected to be able to 'turn a needle' to things. Darning socks is the eternal job of Jo as an adult don't forget.

Cross-posted with @Heavyraindropsarefallingonmyhead !

Also on evacuees, it was a much more difficult situation that we probably think of it as. Taking in children, some pretty young, abruptly separated from their parents in a way that we would now consider very traumatic, living with strangers, led to some behaviours that their hosts found tricky to live with. Kids would arrive dirty, and not expect to keep to the rules of another house. There were class issues, but so many other aspects at play. The attitudes towards them are hard to read now as we can see them as small children away from home, but they were disruptors in a household, through no fault of their own.

When I read it as a child I didn't even know what a lesbian was. I just thought they were good friends!

Domestic science was introduced into the school curriculum post ww1 - I think there was a concern that girls weren't learning the womanly arts at schools.

Some schools barely gave any time to such things. They were run by women determined to give girls education that was the same as the boys - who were never expected to spend time learning cooking cleaning and sewing. Other schools took on the role of teaching girls to be wives and mothers. EBD was a teacher, she knew the arguments being put forward. And she knew too that her audience was as much middle class mothers as girls. By the later books she was writing newsletters for a fan club that was massive given that it was pre-Internet.

It's really only in the 60s and 70s that fast fashion arrived. Before that most clothing had to last and mending was a major chore that took up hours for middle class women.

If we go back to guides - scouts never had to learn laundry and cooking and buttonholes. But guides did. It's why they set up an entirely new movement - the girls who originally set themselves up as scouts wanted to do as their brothers did and it was too revolutionary.

I think she got bored of Guides

As did I.