New Home for the Chalet School

[Vintagejazz]

Welome everyone. Dormy lists on the board as usual and I know you are all hoping like mad that you are all not in the same dormitory as Mary Lou. But only some of you can be the un lucky ones and the rest of us will have to make do with each other.

Oh, and the good news is that Joey has sabotaged discovered something wrong with the roof on her house and believe it or not, the only property available to rent is right next door to the school.

Shit Hurrah, lucky us.

Got to go. Matey wants me for unpacking.

I have an enormous soft spot for Rosalie. Vicar's daughter turns career woman with international travel thrown in, and a decent amount of backbone to boot. Does she ever marry? (I'm saving the later Swiss books for my hols)

And I bet she puts up with more than her fair share of "I've got a large family" by Joey.

But the Bubb had to come to a sticky end my lambs as she didn't appreciate the perfection that was Joey.

If you don't like Joey you don't survive,literally, or at best you get expelled or sacked.

Didn't Rosalie originally have a sister? In reunion she just has step brothers.

Yes why would Joey ask if her big family had been mentioned to miss Bubb. The woman is dying ffs. I wanted Bill to reply why On Earth would we mention you.

I'm imagining the interview now:

Hilda glasses-free: what could you bring to the role?
Miss Bubb: (cough cough) excellent coaching skills and 2 degrees
Hilda glasses-free: JOEY MAYNARD HAS 23 CHILDREN and would 2 days a week suit?
Miss Bubb: runs for the hills (slowly as she is dying of the white man's plague and is also a bit peckish).

Lonny.

There is a lovely Rosalie moment in I think Reunion where Joey says something like "you're pretty and likeable - have you really never wanted to marry?" and Rosalie laughs and says no, never, I'm perfectly happy with my life as it is. I really like Rosalie, which is why her being the most resentful of ill Miss Bubb, years later, disappoints me a little - even when I sort of understand it.
Also my lambs don't forget the odd storyline-that-wasn't, in Highland Twins, when Rosalie inexplicably is followed (?) to the door in the dark, and that's the end of that.

Also, not that I'm sure what acknowledgement I'd actually want, but it seems as though it's forgotten in the later part of the series that Peggy Burnett is Rosalie's cousin. Does Rosalie go to the staff room ever? She seems to mainly spend her time with Hilda, even when not quite working, which is obviously nice for Hilda who doesn't really have anyone else until the finishing school moves nearer, but surely not much fun for Rosalie.

I do always think Miss Wilson's actual response ("I don't think Miss Bubb exactly cottoned on to you, Joey") is pleasingly even-handed, given the propensity for Joey-fawning in the later books.

And DeWee I hadn't thought of that but you're right, it would have made it much more realistic if she'd not recognised the school. It seems she doesn't recognise Bill anyway, on account of her not looking ill and exhausted any more bloody Joey and given there seemed to be about 3 Chalet Schools in Wales there must have been heaps more in Switzerland. But of course she has to demonstrate how charitable and forgiving the School is!

Oh! But also, and this bit I think links back to what someone (OOAOVJ?) was saying about the less-than-cosy lives of authors on the last page. (I think - apols if I "miss my guess" on what in particular you were getting at.)

I think too much is sometimes made of these childless, unmarried women like EBD and EJO giving their central heroines such tediously lengthy families. I don't mean that either didn't want a husband or children - though I do wonder how much it may have been a case of the grass always being greener - and I know I am half joking when I say I want an Anna, really.
I think the fact that EBD wanted someone to look after her, at least some of the time, shines through and makes perfect sense - but I also don't think she portrays marriage as the only way of getting this (eg it's something Nell often seems to do for Hilda, esp when the latter has just returned from her head injury, and I remain convinced that Hilda is at least as much the character she'd have liked to have been, compared with Jo).
And I think she's too conscientious of her audience and her responsibility to them, to want to come too close to 'promoting spinsterhood', partly through it being socially unacceptable and partly through knowing, herself, just how hard it is. But while Jo does indeed appear to 'have it all' (incidentally, the only married woman who does), she also has a number of genuinely fulfilled and contented unmarried women - Kathie Ferrars, as well as Rosalie, declares her total lack of interest in marriage at some point, though I think she phrases this as being 'completely a teacher' rather than 'completely in love with Nancy. And she also has a number of women quite evidently squashed by marriage, or at the very least compromised - early in the series a teacher (poss Mollie Maynard) explains to a student (poss Grizel) that of course Madge misses teaching very much and wishes she still could, but is even happier on the Sonnalpe with Jem and David, which seems much more honest than later treatments, where we just get Joey breezily going "oh well that's off" wrt Julie Lucy's planned career at the Bar, or Daisy's medicine dropping without a backwards glance. And there's that bit where Hilda tells Len that marriage is all about darning your husband's socks - I think we're supposed to think of Hilda as having an almost religious vocation to teach, but this also sounds like not marrying hasn't seemed much of a sacrifice to her.

My understanding of EBD's life is that, though she was constrained by having to provide (care and money) for a mother who she lived with til close to her own death - which must have been a difficult relationship in its own right, coupled with the social stigma accorded to spinsters even in a generation where they were inevitable - she also seemed to find fulfilment in many friendships, had some involvement in am dram etc. I suspect she may have lived a fuller life in some ways than her married counterparts did. There is a line one of the teachers says in a book, and it strikes me as an odd line because I think it's in response to the wrong thing - "we don't get paid much, but we do see much". I think that's v much EBD putting her own thoughts in (hence clumsily shoehorning it in at a sub-optimal moment!).

Nell

Yes, you got exactly what I meant. I have to say, I also find it a bit depressing when a totally modern and retrospective slant is put on the way some women writers lived at the time.
In those days it was quite normal for an unmarried daughter to remain in the family home or, if they had no family, to set up home with an unmarried friend. Nowadays, however, such women are often presented by contemporary critics and analysts as 'repressed' or obviously involved in a lesbian relationship. Obviously in some cases that might have been true, but often these things are analysed in a contemporary as opposed to pre war context, or whatever.
I was reading up about Enid Blyton yesterday and it's very interesting how her two daughters have completely different versions of the mother they were both reared by.

I always felt that Miss A was EBD as she saw herself, and Joey was who EBD would like to be.

That's interesting DeWee. In some ways I think EBD might have been torn as to whether she'd like to be the wise and kind but also awe inspiring headmistress, or the happily married mother of a large family without having to give up her love of writing children's books.

Both Miss A and Joey were highly idealised characters, whose life choices turned out to be perfect for them. There is never any hint that Miss A sometimes would have liked a home life of her own or felt at times overwhelmed by the challenge of running a large school. Or that Joey ever felt torn between the demands of her children and her writing career or had to sometimes choose between one or the other.

Madge is the most realistic of the adult characters really. She had to give up her job on marriage; she was a loving mother but not always a perfect one; her generous taking in of various nieces and nephews was shown to cause problems with regard to her eldest daughter; and ultimately her husband's highly successful and distinguished career meant she had to step back completely from any engagement with the school. She was someone who really did have to make sacrifices and choices and deal with the consequences.

When Miss A felt overwhelmed at the school, she would hand it over to Joey or ask advice from Jack.
I suspect EBD would have liked that option. I suspect many heads would like that option. Problem child: hand over to old pupil who sorts them out. maybe by hypnotism like the demon Headmaster

I think that's one of the most difficult aspects of the later books, tbh - it enormously undermines Miss Annersley that she can't seem to cope with really quite basic problems without sending them to Joey. I appreciate that it's a plot device to keep Jo present (and centre stage) but it has a great cost. It's also a big part of why Bill and Madge are so sidelined, I think - fewer other possible voices of wisdom and experience to detract from Jo's role of Solving Problem Girls. I can see it on occasion, phrased as "I think this girl is having X problem and it would be far more helpful for her to hear sympathy/empathy/advice from a non-official adult", kind of similar to when the prefects deal with a problem themselves without involving the staff because it changes the nature of the thing, but it's just this automatic 'girl is unhappy, naughty, aloof, jealous, un-Chaletian? To Freudesheim she goes!' nonsense.

Maybe that's not even what EBD wanted herself, by that point - maybe she/publishers couldn't see any alternative but to keep Jo as the thread running through the series, the 'spirit of the school' holding it all together. I don't always feel that she enjoyed writing the later books, which is entirely possible I imagine - after forty years, she could quite easily be sick of them! And afaik she always needed the income.

Agree that Madge is a much more plausible character. I think it's interesting that EBD seems to recognise she's basically run her course by the middle of the series, but doesn't seem to think the same of either Jo or Miss A, who continue being predictably 'nothing but a Chalet girl, spirit of the school' and 'justice tempered with mercy, excellent eyesight' for book after book after book. It's this that makes it formulaic, I think - she experiments with peripheral details like motorboats and astronauts, but the number of central tenets which are unchangeable just seems to increase and increase and increase.

I think Grizel is similarly realistic - spends many years in the job she didn't really want to do, sees the man she thought would marry her marry her friend and business partner etc. I do think characters like Grizel and Madge provide ballast for the more idealised Jo and Hilda - some people in life do compromise more than others, and what represents an unbearable compromise for one is the best of both worlds for another. I would absolutely hate Jo's existence - she continually harks back to things which happened when she was 16, because those were the best days of her life, and never seems to have anything to say for herself in the Swiss books apart from these reminiscences, plus news (usually husband or baby related) of other Old Girls. Going back to "we don't get paid much, but we do see much" - I'm always struck by how very, very little Jo sees, and I'd hate that. But she definitely gives no indication of being stifled or unhappy with her lot.

Enid Blyton: I am much less familiar with her work and the details of her life than I am with EBD. I have automatic sympathy with the daughter who says she was a rubbish and inattentive mother partly because I think she'd have to have been to have sustained that quantity of output, and partly because I think there's a real unpleasantness to a lot of her work. (Sometimes this is more realistic than EBD, I grant you.)

Now I think about it, I suspect my sister and I would both give very different accounts of our upbringing and our mother... Not sure if this just means it's totally normal, or means my home was similarly dysfunctional.

What is interesting, is something I was pointed out a few years back. Of EB's girls, the one who describes her as the bad mother is the one who is (or was then) much more involved with EB stuff, like I think she was consulted on the FF 90s series and was very much in the middle of the Enid Blyton Society.

I wonder how happy Joey was really. Her constant attention seeking and need to be the best at everything actually could be read as how insecure she is, and how shallow she knows her life is.
She needs to have the adoration and attention of everyone. I can imagine her dropping her tea over her dress or something if the conversation was about someone else and she was unable to bring it back to her by anything but an incident.

Can you imagine what a biographer would have made of Joey?

Insisting her children address her as Mamma.
Obsessed with her schooldays.
Never satisfied, no matter how many children she had, and insisting on adopting or fostering every waif or stray in sight.
Constantly seeking the limelight.
Pressuring Len to get engaged before she even left school.

They'd have a field day.

Not to mention being able to pop out 11 sprogs but unable to cope with falling into a box without needing bedrest and drugged milk.

Am reading Adrienne - Jo stares rudely at Adrienne for ages and then writes to Robin that she can't think who the child reminds her of. Similarly, neither can Miss Annersley, Rosalie, Bill et al, who have all been consulted but are stumped. Along comes Mary-Lou, who can really hardly have known Robin, given that she was away at Oxford/doing settlement work/in Switzerland to recover from said settlement work during the time that Mary-Lou was living in Howells village, and Jo was in either Carnbach or Canada when Robin would have come home for holidays, so can't have seen much of Mary-Lou then either, and instantly recognises just who it is that Adrienne resembles! Come to think of it, does Mary-Lou do any uni work or does she just pop up at the Platz continually after actually leaving school?

Sorry, that sentence is incredibly convoluted!

Never mind biographer - psychologist?!

One wonders how on earth any of these educated and supposedly highly competent teachers coped with life before Joey and OOAO came along...

(Can you imagine EBD plotting these things, btw? Doling out the moments of cleverness and glory - "Joey, Joey, Joey, Joey, ML, Joey... Throw in gratuitous reference to Miss Annersley understanding girls... Joey, Joey...")

Just reading Lavender and in there is (I think ) the first mention of Jo's parties for the new girls, Lavender is told she doesn't have a choice about going. It mentions that maybe Jo can help Lavender see things in the right light as she's not very far from her own school days, I think she'd be about 24 at this point, I can sort of see this might be the case although in past books EBD has said sometimes that even the prefects couldn't help certain people as they seem elderly to the youngsters. And surely in the next few years Jo would be well beyond her school days and therefore seen as ancient to young girls - I know that my 10 year old dd thinks my 23 yo niece is verging on the very old!!

And talking about age, this bit in Lavender about her aunt makes me feel positively ancient - 'But dear Auntie is a trifle elderly for that - well over thirty, if not forty' if she's a trifle elderly then I'm ancient, this was said by Miss Annersley by the way.

Ah but haven't we all been getting younger Why? 40 is the new 30 and all that.

I guess most people had children in their 20s, rather than 30s back then.

Sounds like a convincing EBD plot Nell perhaps with storm, illness, Red Sarafan added for good measure.

I've finished the transcripts and feel slightly bereft. Are any of the fill-ins recommended?

Lols at the elderly aunty. Mind you Miss Annersley knocks a few years off her age at some point - as indeed does Miss Wilson, in Gay which I reread yet again today. Interestingly, the dedication of Gay is to a Mrs Way. I wondered firstly she was the reason Rosalie's surname is Way, and secondly if she was the reason Rosalie's surname stopped being Way?

Re: fill-ins. All the ones I most fancy the look of are predictably out of print and correspondingly overpriced (Headmistress, Gillian, Juliet). Difficult Term I enjoyed - thought it v convincingly EBDish in style and content, but def not one of my top ten CS books if that makes sense - not in the same league as the run of books from mid-Tyrol to mid-Armishire, but certainly runs seamlessly into Island. And I did like the unofficial Hilda Annersley: Headmistress one, which is v staff-oriented and written for the adult reader (v much my bag, but not everyone's I know) and unfortunately did need a much better edit for basic grammar than it got.

Sorry, just reread that and realised am rather damning both recs with faint praise. They're books I would, without hesitation, reach for ahead of any of the Swiss books (bar Reunion and New Mistress), but I wouldn't mention them in the same breath as Exile, Gay, Lintons, Goes To It etc.

Is anyone having trouble getting into the transcripts at the moment? It's saying someone requested security change or something

Could be me being stupid though. I'm definitely feeling elderly since my holiday- mind you I am 46

Well maths isn't my strong point but I could never understand why Jacynths auntie was old.
I'm the book the orphan Jacynth is put into aunties 22 year old arms

So she's bloody 36 when the kid goes to school. Apparently she's worn herself out providing for her education and so slips away feeling glad to go

Jesus she's a baby.

Yes and why does Joey accuse Len of playing fast and loose with Reg?

If that was one of my dds my advice would be go to uni, have a brill time and see how you feel in 3 years!