AIBU To Think That The Plots Of The Chalet School Books Were Really Improbable

[TheShellBeach]

.................................such as Prince Cosimo, the endless kidnappings, all the train crashes/bus crashes/car crashes/plane crashes/boat sinkings hang on a minute, were there any boat sinkings

Okay, I've just remembered that there were a couple of near misses with boats when the CS was on the island. Joey was nearly flung overboard once (a missed opportunity for EBD to get rid of her IMO) and there were probably others.

Anyway - all aboard and ahoy there.

SDL hasn't been working for several years. The CBB disappeared more recently - last few months I think. I believe some of both sites is available via way back machine, but most has gone.
People have started reposting stuff on LGM, as others have said, and there's a fair bit on A3O (archive of our own) as well.

I think (the) Robin was Polish, yes...but goodness knows how she's fluent in French. Something to do with the father's job and where they lived, perhaps?

I always laugh when I see the title "A Difficult Term for the Chalet School" - which term WASN'T difficult?

Can't believe there have been all these Chalet School threads, and I didn't know!

Don't get me started on 'The Robin'. EBD got quite sickening about her, as time went on. Robin is more of a creepy fetish, than an actual person. In the book where a crazed Deira hits Grizel in the head with a rock, Robin sits on a remorseful Deira's lap to comfort her. The gag-inducing scene is described thus: 'As she felt the soft weight of the baby tumble into her lap...' Robin, at this point, is 10 or 11. I lost count of the (borderline inappropriate) descriptions of Joey's adoration of her. In one passage, she thinks of Robin and 'her splendid eyes grew misty at the thought...' Oh dear. These girls (and their mistresses) could have done with getting out of their cloistered existence a bit more.

She jumps from a "baby" (aged up to about 13, older than when Joey started at the school!) to a fully capable young adult and head girl. And then just vanishes! I know she's a nun in Canada, I'm kind of surprised Jo ever let her go.

She had to join a convent to get away from Jo!

Yes, and then even when her order transfers her to Europe Jo never gets round to visiting her!

After the post about Matilda recently, it is obvious that there is a cadre of people who cannot tell the difference between reality and fantasy.
I doubt children at boarding schools have midnight feasts a le Mallory Towers, or that anyone has a picture in their attic that ages the subject while he gets younger in real life..
It's a real fucking worry to those of us who understand how the world works

It's called literary criticism. I have seen a comparison between 'Doyleian analysis' which centres on the author, his influences, style etc, and 'Sherlockian analysis' which centres on the character.

Many of us enjoy doing both. If the existence of fiction is 'a real fucking worry' to you I suggest you avoid it.

I'm not quite sure of the internal chronology but is it possible that Robin was only 8 in Rivals? - still far beyond beyond being a baby anywhere sane - Jo goes borderline nuts in Lintons when Joyce treats Robin like a stranger she has just met.

Note Robin not THE Robin - that the small bird name thing is so annoying and infected other writers - Dorita Fairlie Bruce has Carolyn called ' the Lintie' (linnet) and there's a 'the Shilfie' (chaffinch) somewhere else.

I think Robin is 6 when she appears in Jo of the CS, so I think probably 8 or 9 by Rivals?? And the incident with Deira and Grizel is before that, in Head Girl, so she would be a little younger. But still not a baby, and as the owner of two kids in that age range they don't "tumble softly" anywhere!

At the same time, in Rivals, she is allowed to run halfway around the frozen lake in order to sing to Joey...

Ooops, sorry. So many near-fatal accidents, I get confuzzled.

Am I imagining a stereotypical Irish character in Rivals - an irritating mid point between Deira and Biddy?

Maureen something? The one Joey falls in the lake trying to rescue??

The timeline in the first few books (probably the whole series!) is a bit confusing and inconsistent. Until Exile, I don't think it's tied to any external real world events, and that only happens because she basically had to "move" the school once the Anschluss and then WWII happened. There is 13 actual years between the first book being published and Hitler's invasion, but only about 8 book years (Jo is 12 at the beginning and I think 20/21 in Exile). In fact once the war is over, again things are more disconnected from the real world timeline.

I have thought about this far too much!

The Shilfie is in Schoolgirls and Scouts by Elsie J. Oxenham.

The episode with Joyce Linton not kissing the Robin goodnight five minutes after she first meets her, Joyce having just travelled by train and road from England to Austria with her seriously ill mother to a TB sanatorium, is particularly mad, because why on earth would you want someone who has been living with an advanced case of TB kissing a famously fragile child? (A child is always about to get TB from the moment she arrives at the school until the school moves to Guernsey, when she suddenly morphs into a completely healthy schoolgirl, only for it to raise its head again when she ‘tries to do settlement work’…)

I think we’re even told at the start of Lintons that Mrs Linton has been told by her GP to avoid public gatherings (isn’t Joyce nagging her to take them to the cinema?), which is about the only time EBD appears to think about infection. Otherwise, it is completely fine to take a bunch of fragile girls, many of whom have immediate family at the San with TB, and put them all living together!

The Oberammergau Passion Play they went to was in 1934 (notoriously approved of by Hitler because of its antisemitism). Which I think scrambles the chronology a bit too.

Otherwise, it is completely fine to take a bunch of fragile girls, many of whom have immediate family at the San with TB, and put them all living together!

Ah but the air is so good they'll soon not be fragile any more!

I think the Jo and Robin bit that annoyed me most is the one which involves Stacie in I think Chalet School and Jo.
Jo's been told that Robin is potentially showing signs of TB, and is worried. She immediately blames Stacie because she "caused" the party to be late back from an expedition the previous year and Robin worried all night.
That it was her fault is definitely debatable, because all she did was pull back from being offered help, and unfortunately that caused Miss Wilson's bad ankle to flare up so they were slow, and had to shelter in the inevitable storm that was coming. They clearly wouldn't have got back all the way before the storm hit anyway, and if they'd been more understanding of Stacie, then she probably wouldn't have refused help.

When Jo's told about Robin (which again I question the wisdom of telling her and let her fret when they get the result a week later. Surely with Jo's "sensitive" nature it would be better to see first) her response is "I know who to blame". And she's very off with Stacie for the rest of the trip.

Then when she's told Robin is fine, Stacie approaches her and says that she knows she would have been to blame if Robin had been ill, then Jo airily says that wasn't the case at all and she shouldn't blame herself. And Stacie "bears a huge gratitude to Jo for saying it."

But it is totally clear that if Robin had been found to be ill, she would have continued blaming Stacie, probably quite nastily from what we see of her behaviour.

In the same situation we also have her telling Marie, and Frieda and telling them not to tell Simone. They're meant to be a close set of friends, and Simone can feel excluded anyway. That would have been really hurtful to Simone if she'd found out. She probably could tell that they had some sort of secret that week anyway.
It made me suspect that Simone's "fusses" about Jo were probably really down to her being treated as an outsider when things mattered, rather than it being in her head as it was often portrayed.

I often think Jo comes across as a bit of a bully.

She’s extremely entitled.

Interesting that the Shilfie was in Schoolgirls and Scouts - so Oxenham started it, well before the Chalet School.

She gets worse as she gets older.

I'm amazed this thread has resurrected itself

Chalet School early stories were quite good and some of the war and early post period ones were quite good [ the Wales setting]. However it became more gloriously bonkers as it moved to Switzerland
The idea of teaching in a language the girls were unable to understand....learn a phrase a day, yep, that'll crack it....

The idea of teaching in a language the girls were unable to understand....learn a phrase a day, yep, that'll crack it....

The mistresses seemed to be able to speak three languages with ease, which also seems highly unlikely.

And not even just the teaching but the three different sets of textbooks / set texts, the essays - if you wrote an essay over 3 days would it start, continue & end in 3 different languages? I bet all the actual exams were in English though I can’t remember if there are any references to O- and A-levels.

For me, in terms of improbable plots it's the number of times Joey is at death's door for standing on the doorstep in the cold for 10 seconds

Well yes.
She should not have risked her health in such a foolish and dangerous manner.

And later, once she's married to the insufferable Jack, she's always very coy about announcing yet another pregnancy - because Jack will tell her off for trudging next door to the CS to eat cakes with Miss Annersley who must be sick of the sight of her