International Incident at the Chalet School

[RueDeWakening]

Hear ye, hear ye! Gather ye hence, all angels (be-costumed with slightly tacky silver halos and suchlike) with your lark-like notes and prepare to dazzle us all with your charm.

No, not you Joan. Shop bought cake and cheap looks for you, my dear. See Matron for some milk on your way out.

I've just checked Facebook and found they are recommending the "Visit Tirol" page as one I might be interested in.

I blame you lot

the thing is Margot is the eternal naughty one tempted by her devil and that's why she turns into a nun. It's the constant balance between good and evil.

Len is eternally good/boring.

Totally agree Margot has the charisma but Len is the favourite one. She's Anna's favourite too!

I have to say I don't even find Len particularly likeable. I feel about her the way a lot of people felt about Ann Marlow in the Kingscote series.

Yes agree she's blah!

The best thing she did was telling prunella to shut the fuck up but then she outed herself to Joey because she felt she had to apologise. Really?

I actually think Len is the blandest member of the second generation. And given that she's up against Peggy that's saying something. EBD should really have given Madge and Joey less children and developed their personalities more. It would have carried the series through the Swiss years and given them some focus, instead of introducing random characters and dropping them in the next book. The reason the Tyrol and Amishire books worked because they were focussed on a tight group of characters that we actually cared about. Even then, when she focussed one book entirely on Lavender Leigh it didn't really work.

Heh. I cant decide between Len and Peggy, for boringness; but Peggy is at least confined to a small handful of books... Still, I don't think she's less likeable for being boring - in fact I think they're much the same descriptor IMO - there's nothing to really dislike. I can see why she would be reasonably popular at school, because there's nothing about her to divide opinion - apart from her mother living next door with all the earphones and babies, but obviously in the CS nobody is allowed to be anything short of enthusiastic towards Joey.

I've been thinking about the random characters appearing for a single book vs. long-term character development over several books. EBD was clearly very capable of the long-term approach, but for some reason dropped it to a large extent towards the end of the Armishire period onwards. Now, was this because she chose not to do it, couldn't be bothered, lost her touch, couldn't keep track of everyone - or maybe, just maybe - was she advised to do that by her publishers? So that each book could stand alone as well as being part of the series? When I was reading them in the 70s I think the random characters actually worked quite well given that the books were being republished pretty randomly so you couldn't have followed character development had you wanted to. In fact, the Tyrol books were harder to follow for that reason. So were the publishers by the 1950s mindful of the fact that new readers wouldn't have the backstory and couldn't necessarily be expected to have the stamina to follow the series long-term?

I can't get up enthusiasm of any kind for Len, either positive or negative. She just seems there as a plot device to facilitate character development of others - Margot, Ted, Jack and so on. I sometimes think we get Joey's view of Len, the dutiful elder daughter who Joey wanted and could never see past, rather than Len as others see her/she might see herself.

I do think EBD's publishers probably had a hand in the later books. Possibly, because the series was so long at that stage, they figured that if children started to read the books in chronological order they would have started outgrowing them by the time they reached the Swiss years; so it made more sense to create more typical school stories where each book could be read in isolation and still make sense. It could also explain why, in the later books, each one began with the same long winded explanation about the dorms and the splasheries and the daily routine of the school. EBD seemed to be writing to a brand new audience in each book.

Don't worry Nell I've found a nun's wimple, which I am going to wear and tell her I'm considering becoming a nun. if she doens't believe me I shall point out all the naughty things I've done and tell her it's because I was having such a fight with my devil so I'm obviously cut out to be a nun.

I think Len's the sort of safe person most people would vaguely like and go to sit next to if there was no one else, but very few people would actively seek her out.
I always felt sorry for Ann Marlow because she comes across as being desperate to be accepted with wanting to help all the time. I think her family rolling their eyes at her helpfulness probably made her worse because she couldn't see any better ways of showing how much she cared for them, so tried to do more.

Con was the triplet I always liked. Margot irritated me, particualrly as she got away with everything.

I have to say Margot was my favourite. At least she had a spark of personality and IIRC was the only one who baulked at calling her parents Mamma and Pappa when she was in her teens.

I like Margot in many ways, but I find it problematic that she 'gets reformed' in Theodora but then is back to badness immediately afterwards because she is the Bad Triplet. Con is my favourite. I wonder a bit whether that's more because of the ideas I impose on her, since she's the one we're given least concrete info about (she is the only one who doesn't have her whole life sewn up at 18!) but given how similar ideas about Con seem to be, I guess it's at least from a strong subtext.

Makes sense, about the possible reasons to shift to a more episodic approach in later books. Possibly even inevitable...
Also true about only seeming to get Joey's vision of Len. That idea hadn't occurred to me before. But actually, the whole authorial voice later on seems to shift much more towards the adult characters, maybe? I know EBD is throughout very teacherly - can't have a character using slang without pointing it out disapprovingly etc - but whereas we definitely get Joey's adolescent perspective, I think that approach gets crowded out later on. "It's just Mary-Lou" is very much a staff/prefects mantra (often, but not always, accompanied by her own peers' frustration). Len and Con are basically mini-adults from the time they return from Canada. The difference in her treatment of juniors in Leader and Lavender (hardly the strongest of the early books) is startling. And the last Middle of any note seems to be Barbara Chester - after that they're all faceless followers of some 'gang' or other. Even Ailie and Janice seem to only ever be shown through the moans of prefects. It's very different from Evvy or Biddy's groups.

I agree, the Middles became very bland during the Swiss years. They really don't compare to the Biddy/Elizabeth Arnett group or Bride, Juliet et al or the Daisy/Beth/Gwensi trio in terms of interest, likability or personality. I think EBD focussed so much on Mary Lou in the early Swiss books that the others just became a kind of background chorus. Even Barbara Chester wasn't used as effectively as she could have been, although she was an important link back to the Guernsey and Amishire years. In fact the Chalet School and Barbara was quite a weak book, in my view.

In the earlier books, the naughty Middles are all between 12 and 15, starting with Jo herself aged 12, and Grizel at 14 or so, and Evvy, Margia et al all do their naughtiest worst at about 14. In the later ones, naughty girls tend to be 11 or thereabouts - Jack is 11 at the start if her school career, Lavender is 14 but in a class with Bride aged 10. I wonder if that's just because Len is only 15 when Jack starts so EBD needed Jack to be much younger? But there is a move towards much younger girls being the mischievous ones.

What do we think would have happened in joeys nursery/playroom if say for example Felix had decided to play with the dolls and the dolls house while felicity got into the to king horse or played with the train set?

Does anyone else think it's annoying that during one play Felix has manly toffees and felicity has marshmallows?

How about the crap about Felix being manly/vile to his twin as she's not enough for him and when Len complains that Steve doesn't reply to her letters Joey trills Steve is far too busy my lamb

Ha! And don't forget that Rix and David also go through their phases of shunning the wimminz.
I try to focus on the gender things that I think EBD does get right (career as fulfilment alternative to marriage; girls can do anything boys can do; girls can be tomboyish or girly or anywhere in between) but it's true that she leaves plenty of scope for improvement...

That is interesting, about the 'naughty' age changing - esp because she's so fixed about it earlier on. (Which is the book where one character asks another "why is it always the fourth?" "It's not the form, it's the age, I guess" - actually, possibly this conversation is had a hundred times. I may be thinking of Corney, or Polly, as prefects.)

Oh. And obvs if the Maynard children gender-swapped their toys all that would happen would be that Joey fetched up on mumsnet trilling breezily about it.

My sister-in-law is a teacher and she says the years 8 and 9 are the worst to teach (lower fourth being the equivalent to year 8 and upper fourth, year 9). She put it down to year 7's are finding their feet and years 10 and 11 are settled down and concentrating on GCSE's.

Unfortunately the same theory doesn't really hold for the CS with most of the girls having been there since kindergarten.

Ju Gosling (I think) contends that it's basically puberty, which makes quite a lot of sense. A lot of EBD's descriptions of the Middles being 'revved up like little engines' or whatever feel quite intuitively hormonal, in a way.
If there is something to that theory I bet it's compounded by what your SIL says Robin - I remember v clearly what a nightmare I was in year eight...

Yep it's an interesting mix of annoying stereotypes mixed with glimpses of the sisterhood.

Girls are seen as just as valuable as boys and just as intelligent etc but either get married/motherhood or have a career. Not both.

Joey seems to be the only one to buck the trend with her writing but it's around the family and done at home.

To be fair that was the prevailing fashion as my mother tells the take of having to leave her job on marriage circa 1955, mind you she's never been back so not one of your career women anyway.

The fourths being a pita rings true. Mine were all vile at 13.

Don't forget that Madge and Jo return to teaching on a number of occasions as needed - and not only during the war; Simone, too (during the war) as well as Marjorie Durrant/Redmond who returns after very sadly losing her daughter before she knows she has also been widowed; Biddy teaches for a term after her marriage, until she's pregnant. As ever, it's looking a bit dated into the sixties, but I expect she wasn't far off deciding a married woman might stop at three or four children and then return to teaching once they were all at school themselves - I could see Biddy being that first character to do so, actually. Or Hilary...

Re-skimming Lintons recently i see Marie Pfeiffen was back to work by the time her eldest was two months old. Fortunately her children conveniently disappear once they're too old to be the nursery-mates of the young Russells...

Yes that's true they do return although I always see that as helping in emergencies or during the war.

Marie Pfeiffen though is a working class woman so would have been expected to do both wouldn't she?

And yes her children disappear but we meet her in I think Joey In Tyrol and she has a huge family 16/17 or done phenomenal number.

Bet she doesn't count as beating Joey though as not a gentle woman.

On the age of naughtiness going down, isn't there a discussion in the book where that well-known rebel Len insists on wearing a ponytail (can't remember which book) that girls grow up more quickly now than in Tyrol days? If my two girls and their friends were anything to go by, 10/11 was the age of 'nice naughtiness' in the EBD sense. 13/14/15 was the age of teenage strops and they alternated between acting like mini-adults and acting like oversized and over-articulate self-centered toddlers! Margot with the bookend is the only one who comes close to anything recognisable to me as a teen tantrum.

My mum (working class) left work when my sister was born in the early 60s and never went back to working full-time. I certainly remember it being the norm in my primary school (late 60s early 70s) that all the 'mummies' came to school assemblies because they were all full-time mothers. Under pressure when we went to secondary school my mum got a series of low-paid part-time jobs and was always slightly resentful about it - I think she would have stayed a full-time mother had we been able to afford it. My secondary school which was more mixed in terms of social class did seem to have a good many kids whose mothers were full time SAHMs as we'd now call them. And I think among the women teachers, far more were 'Miss X' than 'Mrs X' even by the time I left at the start of the 80s.

Y y yes to that. My mum never sent back to work either and if friends mums worked it was part time like a dinner lady or secretary but always around the children.

As you say I left school in 1982 and can't remember anyone's mum being a doctor/lawyer etc. a few teachers and nurses but again not many.

The working class I referred to was wondering if it was different for 'servants' although maybe not. Unsure about the status of an Anna or a Marie though at they are almost part of the family. Faithful to the end.

It is funny really, because I worked full-time from when my two were three and one (mid seventies) and pretty much everyone I knew worked as well. Lots of us were teachers, but I had friends who were solicitors, doctors etc. I think most of my friends waited until the children got to five to start but we were lucky in that there was an excellent LA nursery where we lived. My mother worked full time and so did my Grandma (as indeed do my DD and DiL) and I honestly never thought of doing anything else.
I do think a lot of women worked in the war and then afterwards they weren't needed so Bowlby et al told them their children would be traumatised unless they stayed at home.
One of the brilliant things about being in the Women's Movement in the seventies was the feeling of challenging all those stuffy attitudes to working women and saintly motherhood though. There was a really strong feeling of excitement and purpose in our group that I have rarely felt since.
I think university and protest in the late sixties and feminism in the seventies made a huge difference to my generation. I do feel lucky to have experienced it.

Emily that's really interesting and guessing you went to uni so mixed in circles where it was accepted for girls to go and then to continue work. Would that be the case?

No one in my family went to uni until my dsis went in 1979. It was a proud moment for my parents.

In dhs family he wanted to go but his dad thought it was for 'lefty layabouts' and got him am apprentaship instead.

To this day dh regrets not going and ours went.

I don't know maybe not a class thing but an attitude thing.