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.

I thought Margot became a nun as well? And although the books ran up to 1970, at which stage the experience for women entering convents was in some cases slightly relaxed, a Margot born during WW2 and a Robin born - when, 1925ish? would have had a really grim time, the full 'break this person in order to rebuild them' thing.

Re bathing - they did have hot baths too, just not every day, and I assume that's when the hair washing got done. Lavender floods the bathroom with hot water after forgetting about it - and that's at night, not in the morning.

We get to see Robin as a Nun in Adrienne, one of the last books

Just rereading some of the books, dipping into wrong. The art teacher is a nutter. Knocking desks flying to reach the girl who is laughing in class to shake her! God help me at the CS- I'm neither artistic nor musical. They wouldn't want me in a singing class, either...

Oh the prefects are incredibly bossy and up themselves in C School. Verging on bullying sometimes in fact.

I'm imaging the "prefects" (ie sixth formers) pulling year 8s or 9s in at any normal state school in the UK. I suspect they'd be told to take a long walk off a short pier!

The whole prefect system is interesting, not just in the SC books but others of the period. It's presented as a way to build leadership etc, but there's a strong element of divide and rule, enforce conformity, destroy trust in relationships there as well.

I got myself the Encyclopedis of Girl's School Stories for Christmas and am reading it cover to cover (three volumes) and remembering lots of stuff and thinking about lots more.

Did they really run to the 70s? The school celebrated their 25th anniversary not long before the last book. Which would put it in the 50s. Or was the timescale a flexible event?

Prefects was published in 1970 - School at the Chalet was 1925 - a different world.

They can't have. The triplets were around 18 in the final book. They are definitely war babies, so must be set around 1958, max?
That said, I think the timeline is very flexible indeed!

The timescale in the last 15 to 20 books is haywire (not just the timescale). You just have to take them one by one. There's a recurrent theme of destructive jealousy in those late books which is interesting - made me wonder what was going on in EBD's life (or was she just running out of novel plot devices).

I used to be a nurse, and I think the displaced organ could be a hiatus hernia, where a weakness in the diaphragm can allow the stomach to intrude into the chest cavity - this explains the bouts of nausea a bit better than I think a uterine prolapse would. Plus surgery would involve opening the chest, so would be really dangerous, which fits with how worried they all are about Jo.

Just read Wrong. Seems inconceivable now they could just keep a pupil that no one had any record of really, no permission forms... anything.

Well, I suppose if Carola's aunt was at sea and she didn't have any other relations available, they'd have to hang on to her for a bit. They did contact her father as soon as possible.

I'm also reading Peggy- incredible that the random uncle of a girl on the train keeps 6 children overnight in his home and runs them to school next day and nobody bats an eyelid (the daft coincidence of being related to Miss A aside, he was a complete stranger!)
The CS series could keep AIBU going until at least 2099! - AIBU to put my daughter on a plane to a random boarding school half way around the world before I cable to say she's a nightmare and is in their hands now? (Why didn't they just hand her off to the police, have her sent back and not engage with her clearly insane father?!)

Would they though? Surely in the 1950’s the police etc would have some sort of official procedures in place for dealing with abandoned / runaway children?

At the very least, if they couldn’t contact Carola’s aunt immediately (I can’t remember how long that took in the book), you’d expect there to be a conversation between Miss Annersley and social services discussing what to do with Carola until her family could be contacted.

And as usual, he squashes too many children in his car.

I can’t remember who or in which book, but one of the girls was rushed to hospital with something that was said to be similar to what Jo had. So that feels like another argument against a uterine prolapse.

I was a prefect. It just meant taking registration for one of the first forms once a week & helping them with bake sales etc. Doling out punishments was never on the agenda & I’m pretty certain none of the younger girls viewed the Sixth as role models - I think we’d have been astonished if they had!

The CS prefect system is a good way of being able to employ fewer staff- having them supervising prep, teaching games etc.

Well back then squashing people in the car was normal! My dad used to transport my whole primary school netball team in the 70s!

After Madge and Jem get married I think he drives his car back along the Platz and the car is so full Juliet has to stand on the footplate, which is OUTSIDE of the car. Given how Jem's driving is described in other books ie very fast, I've worried for poor Juliet.

Our prefects were more involved than this, but not quite to the degree of the Chalet ones!

We had House Prefects, and then School Prefects who were the more senior ones - heads of each house, Head Boy/Girl, plus a few other chosen ones. I was only a House Prefect, we didn't have loads of duties but were expected to take turns supervising prep time for year 9/10 (year 7&8 were in a separate junior house), and the boarders had to also help enforce bedtimes and lights out. Plus minor bits and pieces like keeping the house tidy, organising Christmas decorations, sports teams, our weeks of being "in charge" of chapel services, coaching for the house singing competition etc. We had very few disciplinary methods available to us - mostly litter picking, or just sending the culprits to a teacher. Previous generations had been allowed to set lines or other less pleasant punishments (especially in the boys' houses) but that was thankfully going away by my time.

School prefects were generally respected and had a few ceremonial roles in chapel etc, had to supervise queues at meal times and so on. Were expected to generally keep an eye on discipline but I'm not sure how much actual power they had under it all. Nobody ever tried to get us to speak Regency English for a week, or anything like that!

I think they probably hung onto her in case Joey got her hands on her and adopted her (aka initiated her into the Russel Maynard Bettany Clan/Cult)

That book sounds fascinating

And I agree that life at the Chalet school was a good option, especially in the warrior books where there were fewer opportunities for single women to travel the continent the chalet school allowed for a certain amount of adventure and quite a nice lifestyle in terms of food and accommodation and medical care

And the chalet school was a good employer too, they really looked after their staff, sometimes even after they retired. There's a Babrbara Pym book about a day school which shows teachers were not always treated so well or lived so well