Some Fretwork and the Interminable Christmas Play at the Chalet School

[EmilyAlice]

Now girls, line up and listen because this term is a busy one. Firstly we are combining our hobbies club and the Christmas play, so we will need our fretworkers to get busy on the scenery, some beautiful découpage for decorations, our nimble-fingered needlewomen on costume duty and some scrapbooks for - er...
Now one other thing girls. As you know the Chalet School has moved from the Tyrol, to Guernsey, to Armishire, to some island or other and thence to Switzerland.
This term we have moved again and the first thing I want you to do is to find out where the bloody hell we are....

I'm currently reading and the Island. How did EBD think it was realistic to get a whole school's cases and 2 cellos in just 2 cars?!

Primrose it is repetitive, but I think it evolves.
In the first year she's very much everyone is going to want to be my friend and I've got to pick the right one. She ends up with Mary-Lou. That may have been to spite Darrell (can't remember) but she's not the one Gwen would choose given the choice.

Then years 2 and 3, she's looking for a good friend, a friend who will still see how great she is and force the others because of that friendship to see that she's important.
There's a big deal in year 2 about her being the only one who doesn't agree to give Daphne a second chance. But actually the crime against Gwen was worse. The others didn't listen to all her stories etc or be with her. Gwen would have had at the back of her mind. "that time when she asked me to check matey wasn't coming up the stairs-was that really so she could pinch something" or "When she told me she'd forgotten her hankie, she was really getting someone's purse" etc.

Year 4 (I think that's Zerelda isn't it?) she is bowled over by the glamour of her. So it's more that she wants to be friends with the important one, rather than have the others see her as important.

Year 5 is where she realises that it isn't the others that are wrong, it's her. And she does make an effort but no one bothers to notice. She really just wants to be accepted then.

Year 6 is a bit of a continuation. She wants to be accepted and doesn't really know what she's doing wrong. When she's telling about the situation with her dad, it's a bit like people posting on AIBU because they want to be told that they're right. When people say YABU they give excuses why they're NU and finally flounce off. She wants people to agree with her.

I think if they'd given her a chance in year 4 she'd have become a somewhat unremarkable outlier to the group. She's have not expressed an opinion of her own in case the leaders disagreed, but she would have tried, with a little help, to fit in. And I think she might well have been very generous.

I think Gwen's a much deeper character than it mostly appears. And I suspect deeper than EB meant to write her!

I feel a re-read of Malory Towers coming on! I still think she'd have been happier at the Chalet School - OOAO Mary Lou would have sorted her out pretty quickly!

Oh, and Island - yes, that bit has always made me smile!

Ooh, I'm also feeling rather tempted to re-read MT now! Have never been so inclined before - I remember hoovering them up at 8ish, but unlike the CS there was never anything that drew me back later on.

There are, of course, various notable CS girls who resist conformity and growth in some way or another - like Grizel, who suddenly regresses after Head Girl and doesn't really get to develop again for about 20 years until Reunion; or of course, Margot Maynard, who is incorrigibly 'the naughty one' all the way through Jo's perfect parenting and the improving CS influence and all the possible turning points like the clock and the bookend and and and.

I have just 're-read island and was going to ask the same question!
Dr and I as reading first term at MT at bedtime. Already she thinks Alicia is very mean to Gwendoline. When I first read them I though Gwen was just pathetic. Clearly dd is kinder than me!!!!

Alicia always scared me. Sort of person you didn't really want to notice you as she could be pretty nasty even to those she was good friends with-except Betty really. Betty in some ways is nastier (imo) because she encourages Alicia and pushes her to be nastier.
I kind of feel that Alicia didn't really see herself as being nasty, more funny and others didn't really have feelings to be hurt, she was pretty thick skinned herself, but Betty knew more that she was upsetting people.

EB did give comeuppance when Alicia fails her School Cert because she's got measles.
Actually I didn't find it very realistic. If she'd fainted and not been able to do them, fair enough, but Alicia was top of the class, she'd have scraped a pass (having done exams when really not very well, yes I did worse, but not that much worse). I think she'd have found it humiliating enough to be beaten by say Belinda and ML etc.

Margot Maynard, who is incorrigibly 'the naughty one' all the way through Jo's perfect parenting and the improving CS influence and all the possible turning points like the clock and the bookend and and and

Yes, the strange case of Margot. It's very odd, because almost all the way through the series EBD is at pains to demonstrate how her 'baddies' haven't really had a fair chance in life. Right at the start there's Juliet whose recalcitrance is shown to be the effect of neglect, and who reforms as soon as she's shown love and understanding. Grizel has her flaws which we're told repeatedly are the consequence of her stepmother's maltreatment (though I think her father gets off the hook rather lightly for failing to mention to his bride-to-be that he had a young daughter). Eustacia, Betty, Annis, Ted, and so on, all have a backstory to show them more sinned against than sinning.

And then you get Margot with her devil. Was EBD making some kind of point about original sin? Had she got fed up with excusing everyone's bad behaviour? Or just needed one of the triplets to be the bad girl, despite Jo's perfect parenting?

Hello all! I'm new to the Chalet School books and I have been very kindly pointed here to ask politely if I may please have the shared drive details?

I love boarding school books. I've read the MT books about a dozen times, the St. Clares less so. I have those two series as ebooks, complete, if anyone wants/needs them. I also have the first five Chalet books - but that was all I was able to find!

(Since we're talking about characters EB wrote that are deeper than she intended, can we talk about George from FF???)

I've not read many of the later books, but I feel Margot does reform a bit. In Mary Lou she doesn't join Emerence with the sledge, but tried to persuade her not to.

Lola I think that is meant to be the start of Margot reforming. However she doesn't show any other definite signs after that-even as a prefect she's shown as having a temper. Which is a pity, because EBD could have had her biting back her words and speaking mildly and Len/Con/Miss A being impressed with how much she's worked at it.
Even with the toboggan, if I remember rightly, she is tempted but doesn't go on it because of there being a row, not because "we shouldn't because we were told not to."

Ah, i've not read any of the books where Margot is a prefect - I.didn't even know she was. But I can't see how she became one, unless it's just because she's Joey's daughter and that isn't fair!

She's games prefect and we hear the juniors (?) talking about her nasty temper on the sports' field, if I remember rightly.

Yes - there is a bit about her temper and the juniors. Doesn't she actually snap at some juniors? The worse bit is, I think, in Triplets (?) where she throws a bookend at Betty Landon in a temper and knocks her unconscious. You do get the feeling that she's allowed to stay because she's Joey's daughter - Thekla was expelled for bullying but Margot is not expelled for her treatment of Ted (which is pretty horrible). I'm never quite sure I've understood the 'reason' for Margot's behaviour either - EBD seems to imply that it's because she is struggling against the 'call' to enter a nunnery. Maybe it's because that idea is just so far removed from anything / anyone I've experienced, but it seems a very complex reason for the unpleasantness of a teenager, and not in keeping with the rest of her characterisation (which is, let's face it, quite selfish, jealous, impatient, and often quite disrespectful of Joey compared to Len and Con).

On another note, I'd like to see a 'Con at the Chalet School' fill in. I like Con :-)

The better reason given is that Joey thought Margot wouldn't live so spoilt her. That's certainly much more plausible.
Although I don't think there was much talk about her being more delicate than the others except in retrospect. Ditto, I don't think we see any spoiling for that reason, although from an early age she expected to get her own way even among her siblings.

I think actually it was more along the lines that having had triplets then three boys, the boys were being conditioned to be gentlemen, giving way to the girls in everything (wish dbro had been ) and because she was the youngest the older ones were conditioned to look after her-especially Len, and you get the impression Con would do it for a quiet life.

But I think having put that out there, EBD then realised that it was a criticism of Joey as parent, so she then introduced the "struggling against her call" idea, as then making it look like a positive thing.

Margot wasn't much more delicate until the really nasty go of bronchitis just before Highland Twins, and then there was the 'nasty go of throat' when Plas Gwyn had its 'drains' problem. Then she's shipped off to Canada where the miraculous dry cold makes her more robust than the others by the time she sees them again, so we never actually see Joey worried about her health or any of her actually being delicate.

Nor the spoiling - I do wonder how much of Len martyring herself for her sisters was innate and how much was encouraged by her parents. I get the impression she was a motherly helpful type age 3 or so and got praised for it and it got into a feedback loop.

The bit with the bookend in Triplets is Margot's final wakeup call really, isn't it, along with her realisation she has a vocation. She only becomes a prefect the year after Len and possibly Con, IIRC. Probably because the rest of the Sixth at the time are colourless types and all named characters we've ever heard of are prefects...

I re-read both MT and St Clare's recently. I'd never noticed before how St Clare's is clearly set pre-war and with a wealthier clientele, and Malory Towers is post-war, clothes and food rationing clearly in the minds of the author if not explicit, and laughing at the snobbery of schools like Redroofs and I'm sure there's an envious mention of St Clare's tennis facilities somewhere.

But of course MT is so much more sensible and has the sea-filled swimming pool. Alicia is always there with a quick retort, I'm guessing because she's learned that kind of banter from her older brothers and been trying to keep up with them. One gets the impression that teasing was to be expected and weaknesses hidden in the Johns/Hill homes, and even if girls' schools weren't as boisterous with creating a pecking order as boys' schools, no-one's ever told Alicia she's wrong. She's supposed to magically figure it out from never being chosen as head girl of her class, which is a bit much for a 13-15 year old.

It was the sea filled pool that did it for me, Citrus. I wanted to go to MT!

Hello! I'm just reading "Althea joins the CS" and had to share this with you. It's right near the beginning, where the Major is trying to decide what to do with Althea and her brother:
"Tony will be all right. Strangeways runs a home-from-home for boys whose parents are out of the country and he can spend his holidays there."
So, especially given that EBD was (I think) a Northerner, was she having a laugh there?

Papergirl I unexpectedly did end up at a boarding school overlooking the sea, with four towering boarding houses... the swimming pool was a plain rectangle in a purpose-built building, which was fine by me as it was heated!

Got bored rigid of sea views though, by the time I left. Give me trees any day!

I did manage though to talk myself out of a scholarship by telling the Head of Languages (who happened to be the Spanish teacher) that of course I'd choose German over Spanish in third year, because German is so useful for business across Europe. I blame EBD...

Ohh, Citrus, I'd have loved to have gone to any boarding school in truth. In theory anyway. The older, wiser me acknowledges I'd have probably hated it!

NotCitrus did you ever score the winning goal in the dying seconds of a hockey match? Or shove someone over a precipice so that you could take their part in the Nativity play? Or go round speaking loudly to bring about the dismissal of a member of staff you didn't like? Do tell.

Mornington I got knocked unconscious saving the crucial goal in a boarding-school lacrosse match. I got carried to San and everything. Do I win a prize?

Fair especially if you're the scholarship new girl looked down on by the nasty girl because she's a snob while the rest of the upper fourth take you to their bosom...

Is there room for a new girl? I would have been here at the beginning of term but my mother couldn't remember the name of the school and I wasn't sure of the location. I've therefore wandered the globe looking for a group of girls in brown and flame.

Cheeky request from a new girl who should, I know, be content in the background for a while but if anyone could share the location of the shared drive I would be grateful.

Hello o both new girls...(I think there was someone else further up too?) Sadly my technical knowledge is lacking so despite being told more than once about the one drive I can not help. In the meantime are we having a sale this term? What is the theme???(or have we returned to pre Swiss days and had it last term and I missed it?)