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.

I am not so sure. All the girls fell asleep as soon as their heads touched their pillows.

Whatever it was, I need some. Sleep eludes me.

Maybe I need a brisk walk along the platz with my hair in snails and then a jorum of milk in my cubey.

Possibly all that fresh alpine air and exercise?

I read a good fanfic once in which it turns out she had somehow got her hands on opium poppy seeds (without realising) and managed to get half the girls addicted to laudanum. It only came to light when she got sick and they all went into withdrawal. 🤣

Frankly, I think you’d need at least Valium to deal with being a Chalet School girl. Otherwise the sheer boredom would do you in.

I wish someone would sedate me. I'd love a good nights sleep!

The homemade jigsaw obsession would have sent me to sleep sans sedative

Perhaps this is why adult life in the real world has been such a shock, because I grew up assuming every time I got nasty bit of news a matron or my husband or my sister would knock me out with a hefty dose of sedatives

That must be how Joey had eleven DC.

Considering she married young, had converted to Catholicism, presumably wasn't using contraception (maybe the rhythm method at best) and had multiples 3 times so only had 7 pregnancies, I was surprised then and am even moreso now that she didn't have more children than that.

There were so many people coming and going at the house, and both parents were so busy, maybe they hardly ever had a chance to actually do it? Best contraception of all, that.😂

@Talia99 I don't suppose you remember where you found that fanfic?! Opium seeds sound excellent. Perhaps someone got their ingredients mixed up, as so often in cookery lessons at the CS.

Perhaps all the 'delicate' girls were actually opium addicts.

I love this thread!

Weren't they always given brandy?

The presentation of middle class girls is interesting and shows massive changes in our attitudes nowadays when we expect our girls to aspire to everything boys do.
A lot of the girls are ' highly strung' seemingly making it ok for either Matey or Dr Jem to issue sedatives. And this continues right into adulthood when they've had babies. Nobody in the books think ' highly strung' girls would be the exception rather than the rule with even the supposed strong minded heroine Joey being 'managed' by her husband who makes the decision regarding when she should be sedated.
The chalet school girls are shielded from everything. Big difference between these middle class girls and working class girls who would be out in the work force at 14. In fact the chalet school maids would have left home to work there at an age the schoolgirls were very much kids ... mischievous middles.
Interesting the different attitudes to pregnancy as well. Again the women are delicate. Madge needs plenty of rest and can't have Joey coming to stay her usual weekends. And Madge and Joey so close but nobody thinks it would be right to let Joey know her sister is pregnant. A cloak of secrecy covers this up. Maybe If they had told the delicate Joey she would have needed a dose from Matey to recover from the shock. 🤔😂

@Talia99 do you remember the name of that fanfic? Or where you found it? Sounds like an interesting read 🤣

My theory is that Joey’s earphones were intended as a sex deterrent.

(Hairstyle — supposed to be a bit ‘zany’ and quirkily old-fashioned, like her making her children call her and Jack ‘Mamma and Papa’ — rather than audio accessory.)

There’s also one of the books where Joey faints (for about 2 whole days 🙄) because of something her Mike did, when she wakes up she asks “why didn’t Jack or Jem just give him a whipping?

So sorry I never read those books, they sound hilarious.

Love this thread. I think I'm still a little bit in love with Dr Jem. Tall, blond, piercing blue eyes, super brain, gets a knighthood for practically curing TB, stays in Austria and Guernsey to deal with the Nazi occupation after everyone else has left. What's not to love? Reckon I could cope with the occasional sedation so I could get some rest from his magnificent masculinity.

It was probably the Chalet School bulletin board but that doesn’t narrow it down much. I didn’t bother to save the link.

They are hilarious, but the funniest element is that they are completely unaware of the ways in which they are hilarious. The stuff that is funny isn’t the schoolgirl pranks or errors the author intends to be funny (and aren’t), it’s stuff the author clearly finds enormously appealing, like all good girls marrying a masterful doctor who drugs you all the time, including for such things as you accidentally falling into a packing box, or the ‘zany’ main character, an authorial Mary-Sue who has 11 children for the zany fun of it, prides herself on never growing up and still continually refers to herself as a ‘Chalet girl’ in her mid-40s, and manages to move countries on several occasions to live close to the school.

Really? How did I miss that?

I am slavishly currently reading through the books yet again and carefully whizzing past the boring shit (plays, pantomimes, half-terms in Basle) and reading the good bits (girls being beastly to one another, mistresses fainting because they're "bilious", & Gaudenz rescuing fifteen girls who have got lost in fog).

I do not recall Joey fainting for two days, although given EBD's limited and shaky medical knowledge, it seems par for the course, really.

Maybe it's in a GGB edition and I just haven't come across it yet. Does anyone know which book it's in?

OK Cowpie, now I have to read them even though I am much older than matron!😅

"...............refers to herself as a ‘Chalet girl’ in her mid-40s, and manages to move countries on several occasions to live close to the school"

The San also manages to move every time the school does. Wherever the school ends up, the San immediately closes down and moves itself so that it's right next door.

I mean, seriously? How can a whole hospital (and all its staff) move from country to country just to be situated next to a school?

Is it the drugs again? Is the Chalet School a front for an international drugs ring?

An evil cabal of Matrons, intent on sedating the world?

Given that Joey ended up with pleuro pneumonia about 4 hrs after opening the door to see snow for a second in one of the early books you’d need ready access to a hospital full of doctors. Some of the kids are very very delicate.

Brilliant

There’s also one of the books where Joey faints (for about 2 whole days 🙄) because of something her Mike did, when she wakes up she asks “why didn’t Jack or Jem just give him a whipping?

can't remember which one offhand, though I do remember Madge telling her that jack was too angry to be able to beat Mike because he might not be able to control himself, and ji then says that his uncle was clearly the fit and proper person to do it! Followed by something about not being beaten being the quickest way to harden mike's character, and Madge telling her not to worry, mike is so upset that he's being crying himself to sleep ever since....