AIBU To Think Joey Maynard (Of Chalet School Fame) Was Insufferable

[TheShellBeach]

.............with her eleven children, infuriating husband and bizarre tendency to move house (and country) to live next door to the school her sister inexplicably started when Joey was a child.

She also managed to write (at least) two books a year, have a series of multiple pregnancies and poke her nose into the Chalet School's business on a daily basis.

You forgot Russian

Joey spoke English, French and German fluently, including the local Tyrolean dialect. She spoke and wrote Russian with the help of Ted Humphries, her Italian was good enough to chat away to Madge in (how on earth did they both know Italian), she picked up Belsornian through Elisaveta and randomly learned a few Romany phrases from the Tzigane gypsies. How was that even possible?

EBD was very odd about languages. In Exile there is a scene where Mr Flower and Jem are talking Africaans so they couldn't be understood by the Nazis. Firstly, how on earth did they learn it and secondly it was a terrible choice by EBD as it's very like Dutch and Dutch can partly be understood by German speakers.

Oh I did! Yes, learnt just by exchanging letters with Captain Humphries.

That actually leads me to another point - I felt quite judgey about him going off climbing and stupidly getting himself killed and leaving his daughter an orphan.

AIBU to think he should have stayed safely at the San and done something less dangerous.

EBD was very odd about languages. In Exile there is a scene where Mr Flower and Jem are talking Africaans so they couldn't be understood by the Nazis. Firstly, how on earth did they learn it and secondly it was a terrible choice by EBD as it's very like Dutch and Dutch can partly be understood by German speakers

yes that was never explained was it?

Oh and Joey's Russian picked up through a few letters to Ted is good enough to understand Cosimo calling her and Elisaveta brats. I speak one other language reasonably well but wouldn't know the word for brat in that language.

"Dear Joey,
Please can you stop being such an annoying brat.
Love Captain Humphries"

Obviously how she recognised the word.

I think she learnt Romany from the gypsies in the New Forest when she visits Pretty Maids as a teenagers

I wonder if any has actually tried the trilingual thing?

That actually leads me to another point - I felt quite judgey about him going off climbing and stupidly getting himself killed and leaving his daughter an orphan.
Faked his own death to facilitate better spying?

www.ecolemoser.ch/geneve/en/lower-secondary-cycle/lower-secondary-cycle-stream-multilingual-pupils

They seem to get an awful lot of toothaches. I wonder if anyone ever links it to the sugar oblongs and luscious cakes?

I wonder whether some of the toothaches / bilious attacks / sick headaches etc etc are menstrual cramps, which none of them ever mentioned in 40 years. See also waking up in a bad temper.

True. And I wonder at what point they get the facts of life talk? The night before the wedding? Everyone’s almost always astonished when someone - usually Joey or Madge - gives birth.

I always assumed their mothers sat them down the night before the wedding and told them the horrible truth. “Lie back and think of England Austria and Switzerland girls!”

Raises the question of Madge, can you live a sheltered life until 25 and still have a fulfilled sex life? Was she a bit clueless? Did Marie pfeiffen sit her down and give her the talk?

I was going to guess Mlle Lepattre but she couldn’t have been expected to know about that kind of thing… the mind boggles!

Raises the question of Madge, can you live a sheltered life until 25 and still have a fulfilled sex life? Was she a bit clueless? Did Marie pfeiffen sit her down and give her the talk?

Perhaps they left it to Jem too explain? I suppose that a medical education back then ought to have covered the mechanics of sex?

You’d think it might have come up in biology or anatomy classes.

Biddy was raised by the school. Presumably she got it from Madge or Joey.

In New Mistress when Francie’s struggling with her prep, it says ‘It was very
annoying that Friday should be a "French" day and not only were the questions
posed in that delightful language, but they must also be answered in it.’

But that would mean that girls like Carola & Rosamund Lilley & Joan Baker were expected to do prep in three different languages from the start? Which is nuts. It’s all very well getting people to tell you how to say something & repeating it, but that’s not going to work with essays.

Wasn’t there also something about a three weeks grace for pupils asking for help in English, after that had to pay a fine for using it. Three weeks to master a language, eminently reasonable. Even in those three weeks I think they had to ask for help to translate their question or answer, not even just put it in English

In New Mistress
You're racing through them Empress!

FFS They had to do their prep. in the language of the day?
EBD did not think that through properly.

The lack of formal language teaching also doesn’t make sense. Even if someone speaks a language, that doesn’t mean they can write in it.

Also, how do any of these girls (except possibly the ones who have been expected to be trilingual since kindergarten) get decent marks in their exams? They must be not understanding a big chunk of 2/3 of the curriculum.

It’s not that EBD thinks they are all fluent, either. She makes frequent reference to people throwing in English words because they can’t think of the word in French or German. OK, that doesn’t mean they don’t understand what is said to them but it must cause massive difficulties with homework, particularly bearing in mind they aren’t allowed to talk in prep.

There was one scene where there was an issue with misbehaviour in prep (can’t remember the book) and the girl who wasn’t playing up was writing fairly basic French sentences for homework (and getting them wrong!). If she can’t write basic French, how on earth is she coping with the rest of her classes?

The whole ‘trilingual’ thing might have worked if she’d restricted it to the finishing school where social graces are the point but not combined with what EBD tried to portray as an academically rigorous school with multiple girls doing well in public exams.

Just reading some of the early books and the schools smart and inform is white dresses, white hats and white shoes and stockings. The younger girls must have been so grubby so quickly and the school laundry must have gone through gallons of bleach

I don’t think I’ve ever read them in one go before, I just want to keep going!

It reminds me of a time at uni when I shut myself in my room for a weekend with a supply of food & read through a whole fantasy saga from start to finish.

Not to mention anyone starting her period. Or did they have so many layers underneath at that time that it would take a while to bleed through?