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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

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

986 replies

TheShellBeach · 28/12/2022 17:11

.............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.

OP posts:
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17
Solasum · 28/12/2022 20:40

OMG. Amazing! Thank you so much.

TinselAngel · 28/12/2022 20:41

Some of her writing was very bad (eg the latter Chalets) but some of it was really good (eg Gay from China, most of the La Rochelles). That we're all talking about her and not eg Angela Brazil is an indication of how good she was at some things.

I tell you who was awful, the person who wrote the Elsie books 😱

Apocalyptichorsewoman · 28/12/2022 20:55

icanwearwhatiwant · 28/12/2022 19:59

Oh I loved Jo and read every Chalet school book I could get my hands on. I desperately wanted to be "delicate" like her. I never was though, not in the slightest 😣

Me too! Fact is, I was a sturdy Yorkshire coal miners daughter, and any hint of delicacy, and am sure they would have left me naked on the hillside for nature to take its course! 😂

Original poster
TheShellBeach · 28/12/2022 20:58

TinselAngel · 28/12/2022 20:41

Some of her writing was very bad (eg the latter Chalets) but some of it was really good (eg Gay from China, most of the La Rochelles). That we're all talking about her and not eg Angela Brazil is an indication of how good she was at some things.

I tell you who was awful, the person who wrote the Elsie books 😱

Oh yes - I agree with you.
I'm just ploughing through "You're a Brick, Angela!" by Mary Cadogan.

It's a wonderfully irreverent book which documents girls' school stories and magazines over a hundred and fifty years.

Mary Cadogan is not complimentary about the Elsie books.....................

(or the Chalet School books, either, actually)

OP posts:
Jourdain11 · 28/12/2022 21:09

Jo of the Austrian books (especially the first few) is like a completely different person to Joey of the later books.

I wonder if EBD intended to write her out after Jo to the Rescue? She needed a new female lead character (and had done such a hatchet job on Sybil's character by that point that she was surely a write-off) and seems to be toying with Bride (who I think is so well written, especially in Lavender), Tom Gay, and then Mary-Lou. But even though she clearly fixed on ML as the successor, it seemed like she just couldn't bear to give Jo up.

Waitwhat23 · 28/12/2022 21:11

I love Joey in the early books but I have some sympathy for the teachers who were newcomers rather than old girls and who wondered why such deference was given to Joey by the staff and students. I prefer when she's a naughty Middle rather than the almost
saintly 'spirit of the School' she turns into.

I'm always struck at how remarkable the War books are, in particular 'The Chalet School Goes to War'. It was written as the War was raging, is practically a contemporary account and EBD always took pains to emphasise that the issue was the Nazi regime rather than the entirety of German people - I can imagine that might not have been the case for others at the time.

Waitwhat23 · 28/12/2022 21:14

A World of Girls by Rosemary Autermuchty is a really interesting look into the history of Girls School stories too.

LavenderLaughs · 28/12/2022 21:17

Auntie’s letter to Jacynth is a wonderful piece of writing. The letter itself is so touching, and then the description of how the pencil has trailed away because Auntie is so weak… I know we laugh, but for me it’s always fondly. Her bar was high for a long time

Original poster
TheShellBeach · 28/12/2022 21:19

Actually, I agree that the books written during the war are not too bad. Exile and Goes To It are well done.

I also don't mind Jo To The Rescue, as it has so many strangely-named characters with strange obsessions, (Phoebe Wychcote and Zephyr Burthill and the weirdness over the cello) - and that's before we get to Dr. Peters' perving over his patient and asking Joey to find out if she would be interested in marrying him. I mean, that's such a likely scenario - not.

OP posts:
TinselAngel · 28/12/2022 21:20

Waitwhat23 · 28/12/2022 21:14

A World of Girls by Rosemary Autermuchty is a really interesting look into the history of Girls School stories too.

Also Rosemary Auchmuty is a big old terf like many of us here IIRC

TinselAngel · 28/12/2022 21:21

LavenderLaughs · 28/12/2022 21:17

Auntie’s letter to Jacynth is a wonderful piece of writing. The letter itself is so touching, and then the description of how the pencil has trailed away because Auntie is so weak… I know we laugh, but for me it’s always fondly. Her bar was high for a long time

I love the Grandma and her family in that book too.

MargaretThursday · 28/12/2022 21:22

Naughty middle Joey has no relation on Jo Maynard the adult, despite people always saying that she never changes.

TinselAngel · 28/12/2022 21:26

The best thing about EBD's books IMO other than their great sense of location is their values. Internationalist (the Chalet School Peace League) , anti bullying (Jack Lambert aside), pro common sense (no big crushes) in a way that was ahead of her time.

I've visited both the Austrian and the Swiss locations and strongly recommend. I need to get round to going to Guernsey next.

Yugi · 28/12/2022 21:33

I read a fanfic a while back set about three years after the triplets left school. Jo is described as suffering from fairly severe mental health issues and ends up institutionalised. Her obsession with babies and the school are definitely raised as symptoms. They had had to ban her from school premises.

Jourdain11 · 28/12/2022 21:34

Jack Lambert is such a thug!

LavenderLaughs · 28/12/2022 21:37

Yes, humorous working class salt of the earth, but written as absolutely worthy of respect. I feel quite protective of all the Chalet School even with the utter randomness of the latter Swiss years. I cannot imagine being the person I am today without EBD and Elsie Oxenham’s guiding precepts.

Yugi · 28/12/2022 21:41

LavenderLaughs · 28/12/2022 21:37

Yes, humorous working class salt of the earth, but written as absolutely worthy of respect. I feel quite protective of all the Chalet School even with the utter randomness of the latter Swiss years. I cannot imagine being the person I am today without EBD and Elsie Oxenham’s guiding precepts.

Yes, I criticise but still enjoy them. Evidence is that the dropbox account is mine and a while back I needed the storage space for something else but I went and found something less convenient so that could stay there for people to read.

TinselAngel · 28/12/2022 21:42

LavenderLaughs · 28/12/2022 21:37

Yes, humorous working class salt of the earth, but written as absolutely worthy of respect. I feel quite protective of all the Chalet School even with the utter randomness of the latter Swiss years. I cannot imagine being the person I am today without EBD and Elsie Oxenham’s guiding precepts.

I honestly think EBD contributed a lot to my own values.

Northernlurker · 28/12/2022 21:44

I love them. Totally absurd of course but enchanting nevertheless.

Who doesn't want to organise their drawers a la matey's way, learn three languages with the greatest ease through having milky cakes and fluffy coffee daily, travel though Europe and marry a nice doctor?

Squirrelsnut · 28/12/2022 21:47

I loved their weirdness, and some of them were well written and structured. Jo fainting at the Oberammergau Passion Play amazed me. I couldn't imagine a girl my age being overcome by religious fervour.

StitchesInTime · 28/12/2022 21:53

I know I can be a bit critical about some of the things in the Chalet School book, but some of them are very good.

And the fact that the people on these threads have read and reread them often enough to go into such detail should give some clues about whether we enjoy EBD’s work as a whole!

Catinabeanbag · 28/12/2022 21:56

Another one here who loved them as a kid and now still sort of loves them, but is a lot more critical of all the weirdness. Never understood Jo fainting at the Passion Play (or the way she swoons at almost everything, to be fair), or the way she caught pneumonia standing on a step with no coat on for three minutes....
The Swiss books are basically the same two or three plots rehashed in various ways, but earlier ones are way better - and 'Exile' isn't half bad.

KathielovesNancy · 28/12/2022 21:57

TinselAngel · 28/12/2022 21:42

I honestly think EBD contributed a lot to my own values.

Show quote history

another who feels the same (although both adult Joey and OOAOML are irritating in the extreme)

PuttingDownRoots · 28/12/2022 22:01

I think,like many authors, she just carried on the story for too long. Austria,Guernsey and Howell were good. Then it got repetitive and rather silly.

In a way that's what's make St Claire and Malllory Towers by EB so good... just 6 stories around a handful of characters.

TinselAngel · 28/12/2022 22:08

I like Barbara and Genius, but I could probably do without the rest of the Swiss Books.

Oh I like Problem too. And I'll probably think of some more shortly...