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.

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

I'm sure there is a scene in the Tyrol where one of the Austrian fathers rows about 13 girls across the lake single handed 😂
The one that always makes me laugh at the image, though, is the person who rescues Jo from the lake in Rivals and dashes around the lake and up to the Saint S school walking on ice skates while carrying a drenched and presumably unconscious teenager. How fast could his progress have been?!

On the subject of dangerous driving, Joey transports her infant triplets in a large wicker basket on the back seat.

I'm not shocked at the driving. In the early 80s my dad used to put 5 of us in the back seat. Younger ones on laps and sometimes one crouched in the footwell as well. I'm fairly sure it wasn't legal, but it wasn't uncommon even then!

I remember it being totally normal for a couple of us to sit in the boot of my parents' estate car in the '80s.

Although also, Jack proudly announces that Minnie the minibus can reach 75mph if she's going all out, so 'fast' is relative.

I was thinking of the time in Exile where Jem is driving down to the school to let them know they needed to move and Jo asks him to slow down because he is driving like a nutter and will get them into 'a fearful smash'. He ignores her and she has to be content with 'watching the countryside flash by' or words to that effect.

She also transports the youngest babies, many years later, in hammocks which are strung up between the seats of a minibus.

I know the driving, and lack of baby seats, seatbelts and so on, seems very dangerous to modern eyes.

But it would probably have seemed perfectly normal to people back then.

I remember reading Boy by Roald Dahl some years ago. There’s a bit in that where he describes being in a car accident in the 1920’s, where all 6 or 7 occupants of the car end up going through one or another of the car windows, and Dahl’s nose was almost completely cut off by the glass in the car window. Fortunately his nose was successfully sewn back on again by a doctor.

I actually remember my dad driving with three of us in the front seat once. It would have been in the 1960s and there were seven in the back seat.

Just unbelievable.

www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwixwKKOnMD8AhUHbcAKHbq6BuUQFnoECC4QAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.songfacts.com%2Flyrics%2Fpaul-evans%2Fseven-little-girls-sitting-in-the-back-seat&usg=AOvVaw0S--fpI3ctnKTTBgL5YeLt

How could they not visit Robin while she was in a French convent????

I’d wondered if that was meant to have happened in between books or something, but Robin actually says that she wishes they’d visited her.

I believe there were some convents at the time who had strict rules around families visiting, they could maybe visit once a year if that. The religious order was supposed to he your family. I wonder if that's why they didn't visit?

There's no other good reason considering how much time they spend wandering round the continent

The Maynards did complain about not being able to afford stuff a lot. Despite having a second home and sending all the children to private school.

I think they only paid fees for the boys. But that must have been a hefty sum even so. Especially as they were abroad and I presume the boys didn't come home for short holidays.

EBD seems to think that somebody becoming a nun means they are Never Seen Again. Which is kind of understandable if they're at the other side of the world but not if they're a train ride away.

Have you read Through the Narrow Gate by Karen Armstrong? It paints a grim picture of life inside a convent and contact with people from your former life is definitely limited.

I worked with a nun (we were nurses) and she invited me for dinner at her convent.
I've never been so full.

Ooh that sounds interesting.

Perhaps Robin didn't want the Maynard clan turning up and made an excuse every time they say they'd be in town and should visit....

Yes! Jack would be sedating all the nuns, Joey would be trying to adopt the orphans by explaining that because she had had triplets that qualified her as an adoptive parent and OOAO Mary Lou would be telling everyone to raise their eyes unto the hills at really inconvenient moments like when they were trying to clean.

Meanwhile random nuns would be wondering why they had been lumbered with babysitting a load of children they had never met, and confused as to why Joey would want to adopt more children when she barely looked after the ones she had.

Anna would be asking if she could join the convent because at least she would get a break at prayer times.

Things were pretty different back then! Vatican II changed a lot of things for those in religious communities, although it wasn’t overnight. Robin was very much pre, as would Margot have been on her own age timeline, although not in the time the later books were written.

In slight mitigation of the car overcrowding, seatbelts were not routinely fitted to cars in those days, and never in the back; and front ones weren't always used even if they were available. So there wouldn't have been the same difference in risk from putting extra people in your car that there is nowadays. Also, far fewer cars on the roads and top speeds being lower would have reduced the chances of an accident.

Maybe that’s why they didn’t have much spare money?

Even if they’re getting reduced fees for the girls, all that must have been £££££

And Jack was only a salaried doctor. Jo would have got some income from her books but she was no JK Rowling.

Jo would have also got income from her chalet school shares and presumably Jack came from a wealthy family as he inherited a stately home in the new forest.