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.

've not read the Lorna books- worth a go?

I love them, and there's only two of them.

I also feel sorry for Grizel's stepmother. Mr Cochrane was a stinker - leading the poor woman to imagine she was marrying a wealthy unencumbered man (a rarity in the 1920s as discussed earlier) then dumping his neglected child on her.

Grizel had a horrible childhood - I share the suspicion that her situation might have been close to something in EBD's experience, hence the reluctance to expand the fictional character in much detail - she was too real for that, and her voice might have been too strong for the Chalet School.

EBD said she heard the characters dialogue as if it was a radio play but she must have done some plotting out as well because the Visitors fill-in was written using her own notes.

Her stepmother was still her guardian and the money was locked away until she was ridiculously old. It was after her stepmother refused to release the money that she threw a temper and a match and set Len Maynard on fire. Miss Annesley helped finance the move the NZ then.

Very interesting thought. Very well could be why Grizel so often feels differently written. She’s far more complex than most of the other characters.

IIRC EBD had a step father, and also a younger half brother who died young.

I’m reading Head Girl at the minute, Grisel says so Miss Carthew that she doesn’t think she’ll ever marry and that she wouldn’t teach music for anything. She’s definitely the character I relate to the most, even if I don’t like her much. The temper especially reminds me of myself at her age.

I think her real father left them when she was small. Her brother was called Henzell from what I recall and was about 17 when he died? Or maybe EbD was 17.

Was Henzell her half brother or just her younger brother? I could solve this by getting out Behind The Chalet School, but I can't be bothered until tomorrow.

Presumably not a brother by marriage!

For some reason, this has just reminded me of troublesome new girl (Jessica Wayne?) having a stepsister who is "crippled" and later dies. Either Joey or ML tells Jessica that it's a blessing because she'd only have known a hopeless and helpless life of suffering. Even by the standards of the time... ugh.

Just Googled. Full brother, their father left home when EBD was 3 and Henzell was 2, then Henzell died in 1912. EBD was born in 1894 so he’d have been about 17. www.chaletschool.org.uk/elinor-brent-dyer/

Nothing odd about the use of the word crippled at that time and there are some conditions fraught with pain where it's true that life will very difficult and poor quality. Disabilities of that kind are often used as a reason for termination. I don't see the problem. People still say things like this but not if the individual is living. On the other side EBD has characters with short and long-term disabilities who go on to achieve and find happiness.

Not the use of the word crippled - but the fact that it's assumed that since she can't walk, she's better off dead!

This is, I think, in the late 50s/early 60s (Swiss books).

It does sound rather brutal, doesn’t it?
That’s not the only time the notion that the deceased is better off dead crops up.

There’s one of the Swiss books - can’t remember which right now - where Nina is involved in a car crash. The man driving the other car dies, and Jo comforts Nina by basically telling Nina that the man’s death is for the best because his mother’s just died and he hasn’t any other relatives.

Yikes! I don't remember reading that book- thats a horribly callous thing to say!

I'm reminded of one of the Little Women books where a boy who has a hunchback, but is bright, delightful and well loved, dies between books for no particular reason except that Louisa May Alcott clearly thought it was right and kind to kill him off.

Naomi is cured (related to her sudden belief iIf in God, problematically), Phoebe Wychcote is cured (by virtue of meeting Joey), Stacey is cured, Cherry Christie recovers, Mary-Lou recovers miraculously fast — the only lifelong ‘invalids’ (horrible word, but absolutely reflective of EBD’s ideas about disability) I can think of are offstage characters like Herr Laubach’s wife for whom Joey makes jigsaws at the Hobbies Club, and Rosamund Sefton, Jessica Wayne’s stepsister, who’s just there as a backstory for Jessica being a ‘difficult new girl’.

( In fact, Jessica was horrifically badly treated by her mother remarrying and prioritising her new stepdaughter over her own child, and then sending her child abroad to boarding school when she isn’t thrilled with a ‘blended family’ situation that marginalises her — EBD clearly intends us to think Jessica is wrong and her mother right, but in fact Jessica is outrageously mistreated. I think EBD was fond of ‘explaining’ second marriages as down to anything other than ‘two people fell in love’ — she more or less gives the impression Mrs Wayne marries her bank manager because she wants to look after his disabled daughter…)

Did Joeys daughter recover form Polio as well?

Yes Joey's daughter did pretty much recover from polio but back to Jessica's sister, it isn't that EBD was saying that if you can't walk you're better off dead - its a reference to the horrific pain that some people were in, when EBD started the chalet school there was no NHS, so no chance of a doctor or medical care if you were poor, no antibiotics, no pain relief. Seven of my grandfathers siblings died because they couldn't afford medical care, not the dreaded TB or measles etc just poverty.

You know much more than I do about all the different characters - I wasn't thinking of all the miraculous cures at all actually. The only one that comes to mind at this moment is the lady Joey meets on holiday in England -is she a writer or a cellist?- who comes to Switzerland for treatment and marries a doctor but it's never really cured as she's always treated as an invalid.

I just disagree that there's an assumption people with disabilities are better off dead - I think it's clear she was talking about people who genuinely have been spared a great deal of suffering and looking at it in the most positive light. People still do it! We have to remember there were more chronic conditions.

Phoebe Wychote (the cellist, I believe) has rheumatoid arthritis, I think?

Completely take the point about it being a different world when EBD started the Chalet School, but by the time Jessica Wayne's stepsister is written it must be at least the late 50s and there's very definitely an NHS in England!

I think now we realise that joy can be found in even very challenging lives and saying that severely disabled people are better off dead is quite offensive.

Back when EBD was growing up it would have been far more common to lose children especially with illnesses and disabilities and for people to say it was for the best as comfort, if nothing else. I imagine her thinking didn’t move on much from there.

There’s also a brief, positive reference to Phoebe and her husband adopting two children because she couldn’t have them.

On people being better off dead - I’m suddenly wondering if Jo genuinely believes that, or if it’s just her go-to way of ‘comforting’ bereaved people.

I think that’s her argument every single time, one way or the other, including when it’s someone’s aunt who’s worked incredibly hard all her life to support her niece and died in her 40s or 50s, & Jo says something along the lines of ‘She was worn out and now she can rest.’

I also wonder how she’d have taken it if someone had said that to her when she thought Jack was dead.