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.

Were there still strong anti-Catholic prejudices in England in the mid 20th century? I know it was a problem for some centuries after the Reformation, but I’m not sure when it died down.

To respond to this, from the last thread, there was very strong anti-Catholic prejudice in my mum's background (she was born in the mid fifties). But my grandparents were fairly unusual people in a number of ways, so maybe that was just one of them. My mum certainly wouldn't have been allowed to go to a Catholic assembly, and my gran briefly helped in some way or other with a Billy Graham crusade (in a very low key way, think making the tea!) but dropped it like a hot potato when she realised Catholics were allowed to be involved.

I'm reading the Chalet School and Jo, thanks to the Dropbox link.

I am amazed at the plans they had for Biddy O'Ryan. Train her up to be a ladies maid. Then they send her off to a local school - why not just join the Chalet School. The costs of having join class would be minimal compared with keep and clothing.

I agree with @MissTrip82 Jo could be quite unpleasant as a child at school. She would hold grudges against people, and particularly anyone that refused to worship Robin. And the way she behaved towards Eustacia (a recently bereaved younger child) was really nasty.
And yet everyone thought she was wonderful?!

Maybe Joey was blessed with a good portion of charisma?
A magnetic personality powerful enough to draw her peers in and causing them to either overlook or minimise Joey’s flaws?

Or maybe there was a proportion of the other pupils who loathed Joey, or were wary of her because of her grudges and short temper and connections with the management, but EBD didn’t give those views airtime…

Or maybe there was a proportion of the other pupils who loathed Joey, or were wary of her because of her grudges and short temper and connections with the management, but EBD didn’t give those views airtime…

I imagine anyone who disliked Joey would feel they’d better keep quiet.

Exactly, doesn't this quite often happen with "popular" people though? They get away with murder because nobody wants to be the one to overtly disagree with them?
Was Jo a classic "mean girl"

Also on appendicitis, now it's normally keyhole surgery, which it wouldn't be then.

Ds had it during covid when they couldn't do keyhole surgery and I was told to keep him very quiet (they said it would have been no school if he'd had any) for a fortnight, and treat him as vulnerable for 6 months.

It had been a particularly difficult op-his appendix was in the wrong place and twisted too, but a bracing holiday by the sea would have been good for him.

I've a friend whose appendix burst inside him and he missed a year of school in the 80s too.
So EBD wasn't necessary being ott.

Jo fainting at the Oberammergau Passion Play amazed me. I couldn't imagine a girl my age being overcome by religious fervour.

Religious fervour in that time, fainting at the Beatles in the 60s, obsessing over whoever is current now. We just express the same thing slightly differently, mediated through the norms of the society we live in.

I love the books and enjoy a reread of my favourites for comfort whenever I'm having difficult times. I may well be critical in discussions of the books and see their absurdities, and I'm not (and never really was) a big fan of Joey, but it comes from a place of real affection, EBD may not be the world's greatest writer but these books have been a great source of enjoyment for me for many years.

I don’t think it has anything to do with early 20thc religious fervour, more EBD’s idea that the ideal schoolgirl heroine was highly imaginative, delicate and emotional (while also being jolly, good fun and mischievous). She’s clearly setting up Joey as a future literary genius, so it always interests me that she downgrades this into Joey being a much more ordinary, very popular school story writer. Presumably she thought that being the foremost novelist of her age was incompatible with 11 children and being an eternal Chalet School girl.

I’m currently watching an old film on Talking Pictures called White Cradle Inn. It’s from 1947 and filmed in the Swiss Alps. I’m paying very little attention to the plot (something to do with a runaway French evacuee boy) but am enjoying the scenery and the depictions of domestic life given that it must reflect the intentions of EBD in at least the early Swiss era books

I am doing a re-read now (thanks to Dropbox) and up to 25 or do.

I have twice collected then sold all 50 odd.

Only one I have now is the controversial chalet girls grow up which I find great but lots hate it. It's how one of us would imagine what really happens after that school rather than in the style of Ebd.

Published by girls gone by publishing -who own the chalet copyright and publish the books (and newly commissioned fill ins) so check them out.

I always think that Kathie coming in as an outsider is bemused by the whole we-all-love-Joey thing. And when Kathie dared to question the Mary-Lou love she was quickly shown the error of her thoughts. Which was such a shame as Kathie's difficulties with Mary-Lou could have made an interesting story line and perhaps led to ML being far less irritating

The Robin was my particular pet hate. I always thought she’d have been a nun of the most sadistic variety.

I also believe The Chalet School in Exile is an important book from a historical perspective. It was published in 1940, and is absolutely explicit about what was happening to the Jewish people.

Please may I have the drop box link if it's still possible? I loved these books 🙂

She was unapologetically herself. I like that about her. She was also very, very kind to people she had no reason to help. I think her style of talking looks very breezy and bossy when written down and it can be grating. But to be fair to the character we have to imagine that with the warmth that we're told went along with it.

When one of her children had to have his appendix out, she says something to her oldest girl Len as she's leaving to take him to the hospital. I can't remember what, but her character has real depth and compassion among the brash high spirits.

She's the sort of person who would seek out and bear with the kind of unlikeable person that others would ghost (whether they appreciated it or not!) and she does listen and offer great sympathy. She doesn't try to tone herself down or people please and she is presented as flawed. In an era of saccharine, submissive heroines, I rather like her.

This is the Dropbox link
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/sdcbk2zhq7o17iv/AABbGAAlbHTrT6WRTACUCda?dl=0

EBD may not be a brilliant or polished writer but she is not terrible! Her characters live to be annoying or loveable in a way that still appeals. You only have have to compare her to long forgotten contemporaries to see that. I appreciate that the EBD books have helped many a school girl through difficult periods and are largely against the pettiness that drives other school stories. I can't say more than that to defend her because I know she is wide open to all sorts of criticisms! But you wouldn't be discussing the books if they hadn't made some kind of contribution however slightly insane and inane.

I went to the Passion Play this year at Oberammagau and was quite disappointed not to be so overcame I fainted.

But do you also get life-threatening pleurisy from standing for a second at an open door in winter, or get sung back from the jaws of death by an Engelkind lisping ‘The Red Sarafan’? If not, you’re probably the Wrong Type.

(In my head ‘The Red Sarafan’ is some kind of violently nationalist rebel song, and the Robin is in fact singing the equivalent of ‘Come Out, Ye Black and Tans’ on Joey’s deathbed…)

Enjoy.
Here is The Red Sarafan in all its hideousness.

A while back I was soaked to the skin and had to stay outside in wet clothes all day. Sadly I was not able to take to my bed for six months or so. Just got issued new waterproofs and was back in work the next day 🤣

Do you know, actually, today DH and I went to collect our Morrisons shopping and got wet.

I did have several glasses of Prosecco when we returned to ward off pleuropneumonia though

So weird that I’ve seen this thread - bought a 2 in 1 of the chalet school books today at a charity shop to read with dd because I always see them mentioned on here and we both love Malory Towers. Bit worried now 😂

Cornelia was one of the very many pupils who was unfortunate enough to be kidnapped.

Luckily, a peasant rescued her. Or was that someone else?

There were so many kidnappings that I cannot keep track of them all.