Is there a current chalet school thread? Anyone fancy it?

[FelicityBeedle]

Was introduced to these on MN a few years ago, having a reread. Forgotten the extent to which I want to shake Mary Lou!

I quite enjoyed Oberland actually, but genius and New mistress are my favourites

I’m terms of Joey changing she fainted at the banshee incident when she was head firm

What was that Felicity?

Haven't read a Chalet School book in so long but loved them so much when I was in school (in the 90s). Joey Maynard and her magic womb like Mary Poppins' carpet bag, The Robin and her pious prattling who disappointingly never succumbed to her weak chest (or whatever it was), overly confident Mary Lou who grew a perfect head of curls after one of the bi-annual avalanches/fires/earthquakes, Joey's sociopathic triplet (was it Margo?), everyone being C of E or Catholic and trotting off to morning prayers, people with perfectly nice names being forced to adopt hideous nicknames like Bill or Ron, Biddy O'Ryan who was basically an untamed wild mountain child whose parents just happened to be able to afford to send their kid to a Swiss boarding school.

I think I'll have to re-read one!

he only form of sexuality allowed in the CS is a jolly schoolgirl or girlish mistress catching the eye of a doctor, whose proposal always comes as a total shock, and then a marriage with as many children as can possibly be squeezed out, preferably as multiple births, while still protesting about being really just a CS girl

So true.

Did anyone ever have a crush a nice chap, or did they all just go from schoolgirl to wife without any of that unsavoury (lower class) courting.

I think Biddy was telling stories after lights out about banshees, Alixe started sleepwalking and wailing and scared Joey into a dead faint when she was head girl. Biddy was ‘adopted’ by the school, they paid for her to go to the village school in Tiernsee but then she was far too clever and well mannered so started attending the chalet school, both her parents were very dead @Serpenta

We started reading these. I didn't read them as a kid, but loved Malory towers.

I'm struggling to redact the racism and explain the sexism. The books use the n word and Mumsnet threads hadn't warned me about the time they read up on the klu klux klan to know how to run a vendetta. Sadly concluding they can't take it as far as putting fake coffins outside the door!!!!
Wtf?

Ah, I had totally forgotten that detail about Biddy's life, @FelicityBeedle. I almost feel a bit guilty now . Well good for her for staying true to her roots. I'm sure even when she's an adult her 'brogue' is still constantly remarked upon. Good woman, Biddy, take their education but don't take their fancy ways!

@ThinkAboutItTomorrow I don’t think I would ever read them with kids if that’s what you’re doing, not unless they’re definitely old enough to have a grown discussion about changing attitudes. I read them for the glimpse into a past life, but every time I read the shocking racism or sexism I do recoil a little. It improves a little as you get on in the series but not very much

I read Chalet School
Books when I need a bit of mind blanking comfort. I loved the first 3 as a kid, it was all so romantic and exciting sounding, but after Jo married and has the triplets I gave up a bit. Mary Lou is a right pain in the arse. At least Jo was a bit of a prick at times. I actually went to Achensee - the lake where EBD set the book - it's bloody glorious.

They're my comfort reading too; I recently lost my mum and they've been a great way to occupy my mind without taxing it too much. I try to accept them as "of their time" and agree that so much of it is outdated. I've also been to the Achensee though and it's a stunning place!

Ah it's just a beautiful part of the world! I'm re-reading Jo OTCS at the moment and it's really hard to look past some of the racism. I get the whole of it's time bit but it's hard to read!! Also the fainting episode after the Passion play is really quite vomit inducing

Robin's mum died of TB and everyone was scared she'd get it as well (though they weren't like that about the Lintons), and she was a bit sickly as a child.

Joey Goes to the Oberland is a weird book. It's definitely one for the hardcore fan. It was one of the first CS books I read and there were a lot of allusions to past books, plus it was basically Joey travelling around Europe with her 8 kids and Daisy's little sister. If you were new to the series you'd be thinking, "WTF is this? Who are all these people?" And Frieda should have bitchslapped Joey into infinity for her oh-so-charming nickname for Carlotta.

I've actually been to Oberammergau and it's just as the books say, though I didn't go the Passion Play (it was supposed to be last year, but COVID happened). It's very pretty, lots of wooden chalet-type buildings with religious murals, and the scenery is gorgeous.

I do snark the books a bit, but I genuinely love them. I wouldn't read them if I didn't. The Tyrol/war books are the strongest, Eustacia aside, and I actually like the St Briavel's ones as well because they have a strong cast. There is a lot of Mary-Lou, but she's younger, has Verity (before she develops a personality transplant) and Clem to rein her in and actually gets told off when she's obnoxious. The Swiss books are a mixed bag. They're very formulaic and because each book is set in a different term, they're more compressed and you end up with Len being Head Girl for about 6-7 books and she just isn't a strong enough character to carry a plot like her mum or Mary-Lou. This was also when EBD was getting super-Catholic and conservative to boot - the speech about beatniks was her talking, not Joey. Joey used to be a scruffy little thing and the books always talk about how messy she is, she's not in a position to claim that being untidy means you can't be trusted, or have a go at Ruey and Ted for not being pretty enough. Just like Miss Wilson's incredibly cringey speech in Camp about how every woman should be a good little housewife and how emancipation is a load of rubbish. It sounds so off coming from an unmarried science teacher. It also explains things like the prayer circle in Triplets. EBD wasn't interacting with girls by then and she was very out of touch. Girls in the Chaletverse were still putting their hair up at 18 and only listening to folk and classical music, even in the late '50s.

One of the weird things about the Lintons was that just after they arrived at the Sonnalpe after a long journey across Europe with a patient suffering from quite advanced TB (and who’s been advised to avoid public places, so EBD has given some thought to infection), Joey gets cross with Joyce for not kissing the Robin good night, thereby bringing her into direct physical contact with a serious TB case!

But a group of naughty 14 year olds all kneeling in the forest and saying Hail Mary? Come on.

There's a section in one of the Dimsie books (if you're not already familiar but like CS you will probably like Dimsie) where this happens too. I suspect EBD lifted it from Dimsie.

@BinocularVision

One of the weird things about the Lintons was that just after they arrived at the Sonnalpe after a long journey across Europe with a patient suffering from quite advanced TB (and who’s been advised to avoid public places, so EBD has given some thought to infection), Joey gets cross with Joyce for not kissing the Robin good night, thereby bringing her into direct physical contact with a serious TB case!

I never got that either. Also, Joyce has been travelling across Europe and her mum is seriously ill, why should she care about some random little girl she doesn't know?

@Serpenta: Mary-Lou got her curly hair after she smashed her head against a tree, thanks to Emerence being a fuckwit, and had to have her head shaved. Margot is the psycho triplet, and oddly, Jack and Joey's parenting is never called into question. Biddy's parents were dead, but her story is pretty bizarre: a group of Middles find her and keep her in a shed for a bit (which I think EBD lifted from What Katy Did, Katy also kept a little Irish girl in a shed) until the prefects find out food is going missing and see some wet footprints and find Biddy in there, and the school sort of adopts her. They're going to send her to a local school and talk about training her as a maid for the Robin, but she's bright enough to be a CS pupil. She never loses her Irish accent despite spending most of her life outside Ireland. And of course, her mum was a maid and she learned naice manners from her mum's mistress. And when she's older, she gets a Hot Doctor Boyfriend. (As well as Bill, we also have Len, Ricki, Ted and Dickie. Someone said Len and Reg sound like a pair of plumbers.)

I notice we have a @margotsdevil in here as well.

Oh, I've had such a yen for a CS thread over the past few months! I fell off them a few years back (EBD would meaningfully say I was "very busy") but I loved them. I spent some time on the CBB too and there was a mix of really good and insightful conversation and a lot of people for whom... the safety of the chalet school was sacrosanct. I mean I obviously have a strong attachment to the books and characters too and they are my go-to comfort reads and I will defend so many ridiculous aspects of them, but also the reason I want to discuss them (much more so than eg the Kingscote books, which are undoubtedly better) is because of the imperfections and oddities and problematic bits and the slash fic possibilities. So the more playful MN threads were better for me.

I bought my children a shop cake called Frieda (the caterpillar) this afternoon! I daresay they'll be bilious later and I've ruined my chances of nabbing a solid lump of doctor.

I feel the same about MN, and not just because I can swear without getting yelled at by mods. I can talk about slashfic and some of the odder/more annoying bits of the books. I don't mind the ridiculous bits in the Tyrol/war books like Robin singing The Red Sarafan or psychic Fiona, because the books were good enough for me to overlook them. And EBD wasn't as preachy, although Jo to the Rescue was a sign of things to come. I do love Kingscote and the fact that Forest didn't make her characters all believe the same things as her. Ann Marlow would have fitted in well at the CS though.

My brother's cat is called Frida! After Kahlo, sadly, not after Joey's mate. I had to explain to him what the Chalet School books were, he knows how obsessed with them I am.

@Apileofballyhoo

I must go back and see if I can figure out Joey changing. Exile was/is a great read, except for Joey and the triplets and it being hilarious and so Joey and whatever. Did it all go downhill from there?

I think Joey specifically goes downhill from (including) Exile, yeah, but in spite of that I think the series stays strong up to and including Gay from China after which the drop is quite stark. I still quite like the rest of the Armishire ones and the island ones, and there are some im particularly fond of (CS in the Oberland, Shocks, Reunion, New Mistress), but for me there is a clear shift after Gay.

I don't love Joey even as a girl, but she's flawed and it's clear EBD realises she's flawed, and also she's just a bit more complex and interesting and introspective. In Joey Returns and New CS (immediately prior to Exile) iirc there's quite an interesting exploration of what her life might become post-school, with her doing a bit of writing, a bit of teaching, very clear that hanging around at Madge's isn't going to fulfil her. However from the start of Exile she's really annoying, being a spineless jellyfish on the journey out of Austria and promptly becoming implausible tactless supermum thereafter.

Yes Ann would have fitted right in and Karen and Rowan too at a push, but Ginty and Lawrie would have needed near-death experiences and tears in Miss Annersley's office before becoming real Chalet Girls

I have quite a fondness for the truly perverse even in the later books (drugs! motorboats! beatniks!). In fact by that point the madness is becoming the highlight...

And then there are the perplexing things where you think 'has so much really changed in 60 years? How did EBD expect this to land?', eg. when Jo hilariously writes to Madge that she's so fat the ceiling broke and Madge cancels her holiday and goes on a slimming retreat instead

@NellWilsonsWhiteHair

Oh, I've had such a yen for a CS thread over the past few months! I fell off them a few years back (EBD would meaningfully say I was "very busy") but I loved them. I spent some time on the CBB too and there was a mix of really good and insightful conversation and a lot of people for whom... the safety of the chalet school was sacrosanct. I mean I obviously have a strong attachment to the books and characters too and they are my go-to comfort reads and I will defend so many ridiculous aspects of them, but also the reason I want to discuss them (much more so than eg the Kingscote books, which are undoubtedly better) is because of the imperfections and oddities and problematic bits and the slash fic possibilities. So the more playful MN threads were better for me.

I bought my children a shop cake called Frieda (the caterpillar) this afternoon! I daresay they'll be bilious later and I've ruined my chances of nabbing a solid lump of doctor.

Shop cake? The next thing you know they’ll be eating fish and chips in the street with the ‘unsavoury’ Vic Coles, wearing heavily braided red dresses and lipstick, and sneering at Elinor Penney’s girlish frock and la-di-dah voice, paper games and dancing with no boys, the hussies.

I absolutely agree that it’s entirely possible to combine deep affection for the CS world with acknowledging that it can also be batshit, error-riddled, snobbish, racist, unintentionally comic, maddening, hilariously inconsistent and plain weird.

I'm so orry for your loss, margots. I like them for easy but engrossing reading too. Read quite a few during the first lockdown for that reason.

^so sorry that was supposed to be.

I like Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time books. I recently read The Shadow Rising and it made me cry. They're also incredibly sexist (he had some very odd ideas about gender and an obvious spanking/humiliation/femdom fetish). You can like stuff and still get irritated when you have Joey happily throwing the n-word around and characters being snobby towards girls who aren't like them. I wish the CBB would realise this.

Joan is an arsehole towards Ros, she's very nasty and manipulative, but she does get better afterwards and even has a cool moment in Richenda where she helps get smaller girls over a flooded river. But EBD never lets the other girls really accept her.

EBD also has a weird obsession with weight. Characters are always commenting on how fat other people are. And no, nobody called Sophie Hamel Fatty at school, Madge would have stopped that. And that's before we get into girls obsessing over how pretty their peers are or the staff congratulating themselves on being good-looking. No wonder so many fans write slash.

@margotsdevil

They're my comfort reading too; I recently lost my mum and they've been a great way to occupy my mind without taxing it too much. I try to accept them as "of their time" and agree that so much of it is outdated. I've also been to the Achensee though and it's a stunning place!

I'm sorry for your loss. The CS books, to me, are the book equivalent of comfort food, especially the Tyrol ones.