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.

Well my mother wasn't too keen when I went off to uni in 1968 and I was definitely the first in my family. She said she would have preferred me to have gone to a posh secretarial college and stayed nearer home, worked in London and married the boss.
I think really it was down to the feisty single women teachers in my school with the brown and flame uniform, who saw that I had the potential and helped me through the process.

Interestingly I am in touch with quite a lot of my school friends and we have all had careers. The education was pretty ropey in some ways, maths and science teaching was definitely inadequate (I amuse myself by doing retrospective Ofsted inspections on it), although one of my contemporaries has managed to ended up as a professor of chemistry.
I do remember my English teacher (more like Bill than Hilda) telling me to go away and read Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary and Hedda Gabler and then come and tell her what I thought the role of women in society should be. I will award her an outstanding for that.

I think really it was down to the feisty single women teachers in my school with the brown and flame uniform

[inserts jealous icon]

I am super envious of Emily's Women's Movement experiences.

And I was about to tut at mornington for shallowly being more interested in the brown and flame uniform, until I read properly.

It is interesting, the variation in 'everyone went back to work' vs 'hardly anyone went back to work' - there's got to be a lot of factors explaining that, haven't there? Obviously class is a big one but even beyond that - differences by micro-region, or micro-class? I was actually talking with my grandma about this stuff quite recently - once her children had all started primary school (late sixties) she worked part-time - she said everyone she knew did, and she couldn't have afforded not to.

I am really quite fascinated by Marie Pfeiffen, now. I wonder what it was like to live with her husband at Die Rosen, I wonder what it was like to see her children growing up with the Russells/wards; the bit where she is back at work within a couple of months of giving birth to her first (Gretchen?) only caught my notice because it's when Sybil is born - I guess a real life Marie would have made nothing of being pregnant and having a baby so close in age to her employer, because those weren't comparisons one made, but as a modern reader I think that's quite an interesting coincidence - I can imagine their postnatal experiences might have been markedly different! I wonder what it was like for Rosa, who is tasked with looking after the Russell children alongside her nieces/nephews - would they have felt different, to her?
It is another aspect of how very much more interesting Die Rosen is than Freudesheim - the only interesting thing Anna and Rosli ever manage between them, apart from juniper tisanes, is Anna refusing a marriage proposal, and that's not so much interesting as bizarre and sadly unexplored!

I think the perception of working / not working may be as simple as the fact that if you worked you knew other working women and SAHMs knew other SAHMs.
My OH worked for a company for a while where a lot of the company wives (shudder) didn't work. One of his colleagues asked what my hobbies were and when I explained that I taught full-time, he said, "Well I suppose it gets you out of the house".
It seemed to me that a lot of the company wives got traded in for a newer model later on and were left without much in the way of means of support.
There is a fascinating book by Margaret Hunt called something like Women in 18th Century Europe. It is a very detailed history of how women have always worked; in trade, in commerce, on the land, in factories and how the twentienth century view of "women's place is in the home" is just a brief glitch.
I think EBD struggled a bit with it all and would probably have joined us in the Women's Movement. Joey could have had a column in Spare Rib.

Joey could have had a column in Spare Rib

Which girl or mistress do you think would have started a feminist CR (consciousness raising for those too young to remember!) group for boarding school survivors? My money's on Verity, whose spirit seems to have been crushed by her early experiences at the school, but who must surely have retained some independence of mind and spirit behind that moony exterior.

Going way off topic now, but did anyone hear the recent Writing the Century serial on a woman's experiences at the Greenham Common women's peace camp? She sounds like she started as one of the 'company wives' Emily describes. I visited Greenham a few times and I certainly met women like her who were discovering whole unknown parts of themselves after years or decades of being dutiful wives and mothers, but I can't remember if I met the actual woman the serial was based on.

No I didn't hear it, but it sounds fascinating. I knew a few people who went to Greenham, too.
I do find it hard on Mumsnet (not this thread obviously) when people dismiss anyone over 60 as conservative, dull, conventional etc. I think bloody hell, some of us were out protesting and trying to change the world in our youth; we haven't changed inside. And then I think how dismissive I was of previous generations of women before I knew any better.
I think Verity might indeed have started the survivors' group. There would also be a long queue of girls going non-contact with narcissistic parents.
BTW did we ever find out what happened to Professor Richardson? Is he still floating around in space saying, "the children must be quite twenty by now, I hope those nice passing acquaintances looked after them...."

Two good friends of mine - actually one good friend and one ex - both visited Greenham repeatedly as starry-eyed teenagers. I so yearned to have had a similar kind of youth, but modern life is rubbish and so I got nothing like it.

I'm sure we can incorporate some Greenham songs into the next performance of humping the kapok for you, Nell. Then you won't have to feel like you missed out completely.

Didn't Professor Richardson die at some point? I seem to remember Ruey having one of Those Conversations with Joey at her most motherly. Or was that just when they found out he'd headed space-wards?

I just read the ultimate in comfort reads, Juliet Overseas. I do like the way everything goes so right in Clare Mallory's books. Although Juliet's efforts to make her house the crack house have a rather different ring from that intended by the author! I lose track a bit with the Chalet School of when the houses are age/stage-related, and when they get girls of all ages in them. When they do go mixed age, is there ever any inter-house competition? I don't remember it as a defining feature of the books in the way it seems to be for so many school story authors.

EBD seems to regard houses as kind of dispensable entities - they only really seem to warrant a random mention once every few books when it becomes appropriate (like when they get the boats in one of the island books, or whenever she wants to randomly indicate that a member of staff is somewhat senior by making them a housemistress) - it makes me wonder whether she taught in schools where they weren't really a feature? Lols at Mallory's crack house!
The Chalet School houses become mixed ages from the term after New - this transition is actually covered in the Gillian fill-in, but it's talked about in the first chapter of New - Ivy Norman (who is head of Le Petit Chalet) grumbles at the prospect so Nell helpfully tells her she ought to ask to be demoted.

I think I kind of assumed that Professor R's rocket exploded as it took off, or something - that his disappearance into space basically marked his death. But I clearly made that up because the text isn't anything like as clear, and I am unwittingly using later real-world knowledge to inform my skim-reading...

I am super-excited at the thought of Greenham songs at the next rendition of humping the kapok! I am also pretty excited at the mere thought of future kapok-humping - shall we incorporate this into our Christmas traditions, or do we need to decide another such occasion?

Hear ye, hear ye. |The village nativity play happened today with out loss of life , no angels caught fire and I don't think any ones Halo got glued to their hair.

The donkey was smelly and very tolerant, the sheep were smelly too, and also quiet. The iclkle baby jesus slept throughout. Mrs Maynard was no where in sight ( oops did we forget to tell her it was on) and thus NO maynard/ russel/ bettany children had starting roles.

My lad was "star carrier" by virtue of showing up with his own star.

Hunting the kapok sounds like a good Christmas tradition. shall we start it this year?

The unfortunate girl who find the kapok in her Christmas pudding( blanketed in featherbeds of whipped cream) is hunted mercilessly round the school and then flung off the side of the mountain, only to be stopped from hurtling to her death by her school frock catching on a branch and a loving mistress injuring herself terribly in eth rescue attempt.

Makeshift rope of petticoats, or Guide cord, UniS?

I hope nobody tried to applaud the nativity btw. Did you borrow us any other livestock to keep the bullock and Shaun the naughty sheep company?

Nazareth the donkey is now tied up the shrubbery. He could do with a good brush and maybe a wash before we trot along to St Lukes hall.

This thread is sooo good.

Emily yes it probably is that if you are a sahm you generally mix with sahms and visa versa.

I went to a girls grammar in the 70s and I too fantasise about Ofsted visiting. Quite half of the teachers were definatly below par with a few inspirational ones. One English teacher wrote for the Archers and introduced a racy storyline about lesbians. My dh was shocked to the core.

It's interesting that history sees the woman's place in the home as a modern glitch. I guess it's money really. The difference between wanting/needing to work.

My dm is very very sniffy about me working even though my youngest is 15. Very strange attitude of farming out children etc but I guess she's trying to justify her own decisions. There's a lot of that still on mumsnet.

Lobbing the hunting the kapok a bit like the chalet school hunger games.

Nell what's with the no applause from a nativity? Never get that.

I am flicking thorough Tom and can't for the life of me understand her mother allowing her dh to spout such crap as girls are dishonest and underhand. WTAF was she thinking? And why was he such a prat? Xx

Shit what's with the kisses? Sorry ladies must be the sloppy silly woman Cannon Gay describes.

I think the history of women working is partly about money, but perhaps more about status. What is really interesting in the Hunt book, is all the historical stuff about older women, mainly widows in Middle Eastern countries, who were highly successful merchants and traders in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (also earlier I think from memory). Also interesting is all the bit about more affluent women never breastfeeding or seeing their babies for years, as they were farmed out to wet nurses.
I think the very narrow view of women's place in history is part of the oppression of women really.
I am starting to think there might be a thesis for someone about why feminists love school stories though.

BTW, the nativity play was never applauded at my school either. Applause was seen as disrespectful of the subject matter, also it was often in church where you never clapped (and certainly not happily).

Ahem, what's a kapok .

Think Prof Richardson just disappeared. They may have been mention of wreckage found, but not sure about that. I suspect EBD may have been leaving it open to potentially bring him back if she decided it was a good idea.

Mine have grown out of nativity plays now. Even my youngest, ds in year 3, they do a "Christmas assembly" which in real terms means them sitting in school uniform singing a few songs, mostly pop, while a select 10% act something that has vaguely something to do with Christmas. Followed by the head having taken Miss A's suggestion of finding as many different superlatives from a thesaurus and repeating them.
On the basis I'm on dc#3 and am definitely feeling jaded when it comes to attending, I can imagine how thrilled the people round the school were to be invited to come.
Ds had the height of success last year (so he thought) though... he was the donkey!

Kapok comes from a discussion of how you hump a mattress. It is a sort of cotton fibre from the Kapok tree (highly flammable apparently) that humpable mattresses used to be made from.
Then "humping the kapok", in one of the surreal twists in which these threads abound, became a sort of celebratory country dance.

Thanks EmilyAlice.

By the way, how long has this thread series been running now? It must have broken the Mumsnet record.

The unfortunate girl who find the kapok in her Christmas pudding( blanketed in featherbeds of whipped cream) is hunted mercilessly round the school and then flung off the side of the mountain, only to be stopped from hurtling to her death by her school frock catching on a branch and a loving mistress injuring herself terribly in eth rescue attempt.

Excellent stuff. Is applause allowed?

You forgot the random doctor to be on hand to rescue and then marry said mistress.