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've always thought her refusal to sing in German or to speak German was probably a moment of realism for EBD, too, only of course it would have been far more widespread among the British girls (I can't remember whether there are girls of any other nationalities likely to be harbouring anti-German sentiments at the school) at that time, not just one.

In fact, it would actually have been interesting to have it as a plot line -- something that divided the girls who had come from the Austrian and Guernsey CS and had had close German friends from 'new' British CS girls who had soaked up anti-German wartime propaganda.

But then EBD seemed a lot less interested in the 'war effort' from a Home Front pov once the school had arrived in Armishire. It provides exciting storylines like Jack's 'death', Elisaveta's weird period charring in England rather than write to her friends for some cash (WTF?), and whichever old girl's unwilling Luftwaffe brother it is who manages to throw a message into the CS grounds, but it's not that much of a preoccupation. Plus given the CS's genuine concern for the local poor in the Tiernsee and Vater Johann's parish, I've always been disappointed by Joey's attitude to the London evacuees, and the way in which EBD depicts the girls' response to them.

They dropped German teaching during the war directly didn’t they? And then took it up again a few years later. I agree the descriptions of evacuees were horrible, more proof she didn’t have much respect for the British working classes unlike the European ones.

St Scholastika’s/Die Blumen has just been described as packed because the Richardson’s are staying there too, it used to house a whole school, it can’t be that packed!

Did they drop all German teaching? I thought they just stopped having the different language days for a bit after they moved to Armishire, before reinstating them to mass horror.

Yes, St Scholastika's was never a big school, but surely at its height it can't have had fewer pupils and staff than the Maynards plus the Richardsons! (I know it's had at least two owners since the Saints sold up, including Madge and Jem and their billion-strong nursery, but somehow I always imagine it still looking kind of institutional, maybe because when Joey and the triplets are walking around it, Joey seems to be (in my memory -- it's ages since I read that one) talking about the rooms as they were when St Scholastika's had it...?)

I think I’ve just read the page closest to smut in the whole series, when rugger Roger leaves the lake in his tiny swimming shorts and musses his hair, and Joey chats about his courageous scar. Very uncomfortable!

6 foot of manhood. Woof woof.

I was browsing the archives and found this post about Joey Goes to the Oberland, which sums up everything I dislike about it:

I don't skip it. Part of me enjoys all the demented amount of sheer detail on the preparations and travelling - we practically see every towel being folded at Plas Gwyn - and the re-encounters with Simone and Frieda. I remember the first time I read it assuming that the journey to the Gornetz Platz would be accomplished within a chapter or two, and the rest of the book would be about the school and settling in - little did I know!

Like other people, I am a Simone fan, and am delighted she inherits a chateau, even if I get maddened that she apparently needs Jo to tell her how to redecorate. I think, even more than the Obviously Filler stuff in this one - Joey in the crate, the boys putting blacking on themselves, ENDLESS details on how everyone arranges themselves in the various cars, boats, trains and bedrooms - my real problem with this one is simply that it's Joey at her most bumptious, even though, as someone else said, this is a novel where we're encouraged to see her as fragile and tired.

Yet she dominates every single scene, is incapable of letting anyone else have the last word, ever. She even manages to take centre stage at Daisy's wedding ceremony, and grabs the limelight again as they leave for their honeymoon by hurling wedding cake and wit after the car - and interferes with Daisy and Laurie's plans to cut their honeymoon short for work-related reasons. She's very free with her opinions on other people's children, what they look like, whether they have enough of them - and the 'n*** child' and 'real family' comments, while of their time, are still obnoxious - and can't refrain from topping Simone's pleasure in having a second male child by pointing out that she has four of her own. She can't even invite people for tea without making Ecccentric Look-At-Me sandwiches. (Yet she's unwilling to be the butt of other people's jokes, expressly forbidding any discussion of her crate accident and the boys' blacking encounter.)

I really find her at her most tiresome as an adult in this novel. I know EBD intends us to find her charming, unconventional and witty, as well as mother of millions, but the idea of spending ten minutes in a room with Joey as she is in this book makes me tired...

@MinorCharacter there was apparently a massive row on the CBB which resulted in one poster getting banned, about whether Joey and Madge would have taken evacuees in or not, and the poster pointing out that it was a bit weird they didn't, and people were saying 'oh but they totally did, EBD just didn't show it', even though it's EBD's world and if she wanted to have Madge and Joey taking in evacuees, or doing something for the war effort, she'd have mentioned it.

Apart from Joey being a racist piece of shit, the comments about Simone's house are just...ugh.

Actually, 'racist piece of shit' does seem unfair as everyone and their mum called black people that word in the '50s and it was acceptable. But by Christ do the comments about Frieda's baby grate.

@KevinTheGoat, you saying that just had me google to look for that thread (annoyingly, I didn’t find it...) but found a different Joey Goes to the Oberland discussion which has a lot of disapproving clucking about ‘not being able to understand the negativity surrounding Joey’ and ‘all the negativity about Robin becoming a nun’ — one poster claims indignantly (in response to someone saying Robin’s never shown any signs of being particularly religious) that ‘calls from God can be be very sudden’ and she has read about someone who got the call when she was writing to her fiancé about their wedding.

I wonder how EBD would have handled that, if one of her blushing brides had been struck with a sudden vocation practically en route to the altar. God vs a San doctor???

But the CBB is a deeply odd spot, with the whole ‘never criticise’ and ‘your modern reading is harshing my CS mellow’ thing. There’s someone on that thread who says Anna should have been grateful for being given a little room up a ladder in Freudesheim because maids in Asia today sometimes sleep on the floor of the children’s room.

Ahh, that'll be because the thread I was referring to was archived. It's here: www.the-cbb.co.uk/board/archive/files/FD_joeygoes_120209.html

The one you found is the current CBB one. One of the posters has been doing a reread of each CS book, plus the La Rochelles and books like The Lost Staircase. The Joey Goes to the Oberland thread got super wanky. One poster said it made her blood pressure go up. I get some people like Joey and don't like seeing people make fun of her all the time, but I hate the way it comes down so harshly on critical or modern readings and tbh it'll just put posters off.

Robin becoming a nun happened because EBD didn't want to kill her off but didn't want to marry her off either, and she had convert fever, so being a nun was perfect for her. It also essentially wrote her out of the series, Adrienne aside.

I'm not sure why Robin becoming a nun seems surprising, if that's what the controversy was? It seems a perfectly reasonable in-universe development to me. She's one of a small number of devoutly Catholic schoolgirls coming of age in the mid-twentieth century to do so in the course of the series? Why not? She seems to join a French order - going back to her roots with her parents' common language. Social work in Oxford to a probably 19th century French religious order - they specialised in social aid - is an easy step. And she went to boarding school at six - she's got to be institutionalised!

I agree that EBD's convert zeal would play a part here, but she barely touches on Robin's life as a nun - it's not proselytising. The whole school being thrilled about anniversary chapels is more of a stretch. But it's not as if you could find poor Robin a reason to trail eternally after her old school to Switzerland, is it?

It's more that becoming a nun is one of the holiest things a person can do. I don't think EBD is proselytising with Robin, unlike with most other characters. One of the big debate topics in CS fandom about Robin being a nun is whether she could have lived an ultra-regimented life. I'm in the side that thinks she could have, because she's used to having her life planned out for her by Jem, she's very biddable, and she's very determined (just look at how she is in Exile). And her health does pick up.

I wonder what EBD would have done with her otherwise. I don't think she would have married her off.

It’s not that it’s ‘surprising’, more that after she’s been forbidden by Jem from doing settlement work on the grounds of her fragility, and we’re told Jem had ‘always hoped she wouldn’t marry’ (presumably on the grounds of not being strong enough for pregnancy and birth, and also for fear of passing on hereditary TB — though no one ever says the same of Joyce and Gillian Linton, whose mother has TB, and both of whom marry), entering a religious order, particularly pre-Vatican II, would have required even more robust health. Part of the reason for the postulancy was to weed out women whose health wasn’t up to a life of rigorous self-denial, work, physical hardships and lack of health exceptions made for the fragile.

And given that Robin has never seemed any more religiously inclined than anyone else — we get none of the hints during her schooldays we get with Margot — it smacks to me of EBD just writing her out arbitrarily.

Not always - there were communities that accepted women in poor health back as far as the 1600s. Though I think I agree with your wider point - Robin's delicacy doesn't stand up to much scrutiny as a theme. It does seem to come and go in service of the plot. And EBD does seem to treat entering religious life like "putting your name down for Oxford".

As to more religious than the others - I don't think any of the prospective nuns or missionaries in the series come across that way. Not even Margot - we get dramatic hints about her vocation but do we see her praying? Extra religious instruction? Extra religious services, consulting with school chaplain or local sisters? Maybe we do - I'm not so strong on the later books. But given Robin's background and the school ethos - I've no problem seeing her as part of the upsurge in religious vocations in the 1940s and 50s.

I forgot ‘putting your name down for Oxford’. Was that only for CS girls, or do I remember Jack ‘putting down’ that of Roger Richardson, or some other male ward?

What do you suppose Joey and co would have opined if Robin’s order had returned her with thanks halfway through her postulancy as insufficiently robust or Not Quite What We’re Looking for?

The attitude to Robin’s intermittent incipient TB always reminds me of Mr Perry in Jane Austen’s Emma, the physician whose reputation rests on the attack of illness Mr Woodhouse never actually gets.

I think they would have opined that a good stint as mother's help at Freudesheim would set her back on her feet

That is a brilliant thought about Mr Perry. Do you think Jem's elevation to the Great Sir James Russell and all that globetrotting around conferences might be based on his miraculous treatment of Robin's non-existent TB? So every now and then he had to whip up some drama?

It was always Oxford. Not Cambridge or Durham.

One of the GGBP books, I think it's Adrienne, has an essay about Robin becoming a nun. It's an interesting read.

A handful went to London for uni and I think a single one went to at Andrews

Edinburgh and the Sorbonne also make the cut
And I think someone's brother goes to Vienna.

Wouldn't it be great to be able to traipse around the Continent now. Wonder how the CS would have coped with COVID ...

Well they were always very compliant with quarantine for every ailment they attracted!

Has hot milk and aspirin been tried, I wonder ...

Don’t forget tripe boiled in milk and bread in milk. The school must have kept half of Europe’s dairies in business

Thanks for the thread! I recently re-read the lot thanks to Parker, and also found them just right after bereavement.

The thing that most fascinates me is as one of the posters said, the way that the story EBD actually tells is quite different from the story she thinks she is telling. Margot is basically written as being possessed by the devil, but what does she actually do that’s so terrible? The worst trouble she ever gets in is for running ahead on an excursion. Jack on the other hand is an appalling physical bully - is this ok because she is a tomboy and boys’ violence is acceptable? Jo drooling over teenage Roger is just bizarre. The way they all conspire to make the Robin a hypochondriac with no medical basis is like Munchhausens by proxy.

I do like the slice of life aspect but I wonder about how accurate it is - eg the TB treatment is never updated - EBD seems never to have heard of streptomycin or PAS.

And then the malapropisms - so EBD was appropriately ignorant for her age and education, but did no one at her publishers ever hint that pussy-struck does not mean what she thought it meant?

@Gremlinsateit

Thanks for the thread! I recently re-read the lot thanks to Parker, and also found them just right after bereavement.

The thing that most fascinates me is as one of the posters said, the way that the story EBD actually tells is quite different from the story she thinks she is telling. Margot is basically written as being possessed by the devil, but what does she actually do that’s so terrible? The worst trouble she ever gets in is for running ahead on an excursion. Jack on the other hand is an appalling physical bully - is this ok because she is a tomboy and boys’ violence is acceptable? Jo drooling over teenage Roger is just bizarre. The way they all conspire to make the Robin a hypochondriac with no medical basis is like Munchhausens by proxy.

I do like the slice of life aspect but I wonder about how accurate it is - eg the TB treatment is never updated - EBD seems never to have heard of streptomycin or PAS.

And then the malapropisms - so EBD was appropriately ignorant for her age and education, but did no one at her publishers ever hint that pussy-struck does not mean what she thought it meant?

I'm sorry for your loss, @Gremlinsateit.

I think Margot is worse than that -- she blackmails Ted by threatening to disclose her expulsion from three previous schools, information she'd found out while eavesdropping on her mother and Rosalie Deane being characteristically indiscreet in the garden of Freudesheim AND she throws a bookend at Betty Landon and gives her a serious head injury, something the school covers up promptly, and actually blames Betty for (although all Betty has done is tell Margot to keep her voice down). And she's a Senior in both cases, not a young child.

But in fact, you can entirely see why Margot turned out as she did -- EBD and her family label her the problem triplet from toddlerhood, and even aged around three in Jo to the Rescue, Len and Con are covering up for her tantrums, and Joey institutes this 'confess your sins at bedtime' thing, then she's handed the whole weird 'It was my devil' alibi, and both school and home start banging on about how Margot 'has a particularly hard row to hoe' because of her temper, and letting her off all kinds of hooks, to the point where Betty is blamed for almost being killed.

Is it Margot who also harangues and slaps a complete stranger when she panics when a lift loses power? Which I get may have been well-intentioned (the slap) to stop her panicking, but no one else was endangered (so it's not like smacking someone who's trying to pull you underwater when you're rescuing them) and telling this girl to stop being a coward etc suggests someone really not in control of her own actions.

Emerence is often described as one of the worst girls the school's ever had but she pales in comparison to Margot and Jack, who are both actively malicious. Emerence did cause Mary-Lou's accident, but it wasn't on purpose, whereas Margot's bullying campaign against Theodora was calculated, as was Jack's against Jane (and it was over something that wasn't Jane's fault, and because Len is a doormat, she enables Jack's behaviour). Margot getting a jealous streak was very out of the blue. She never seemed bothered about Ros and all of a sudden she doesn't want her sisters having friends...even though she has Emerence. And yes, Margot is the one who hits a random woman when a lift breaks down.

@MinorCharacter that is EXACTLY what I was getting at (and a Catholic poster on one of the old threads said that no, Catholics do not typically have bedtime confessions and Joey is putting herself in the role of a priest).

• In Jo to the Rescue, Margot has a horrible temper tantrum over sharing toys. In Theodora, she bullies Theodora, blackmails her and attacks her when she stands up for herself. In both books, we get the usual 'hard row to hoe' line and guff about devils, even though Joey previously told Margot to stop blaming things on her devil.
• In Jo to the Rescue, Len tries to calm Margot down. She's three. In Theodora, Mary-Lou chews Len out for constantly worrying about her sisters. Len also tries to calm Margot down when she's yelling at Theodora.
• In Jo to the Rescue, Con calls Margot a pig and just calmly does her own thing. In Theodora, Con finds out that Margot was eavesdropping on a conversation and that she doesn't want Len becoming friends with Ted, gets angry with her and warns her that she'll tell Len if Margot tries to split her and Ted up. She also notices the swanky clock and comments on it, attracting Len's attention, and OOAO is frankly rude to her about how tactless she is.
• In Jo to the Rescue, Joey tries to keep the kids' tantrums from Jack, but Jack sees Margot screaming and manages to calm her down by giving her the silent treatment. In Theodora, Joey is kept out of the loop because she's preggers, and Jack refuses to speak to Margot for two weeks.

Incidentally, both Anne Seymour and Betty get punished for telling Joey and Margot to be quiet. Although at least Joey doesn't yeet a bookend at Anne and nearly kill her.

-Miss Ferrars and Miss Wilmot were certainly pussystruck-

What contexts does EBD use ‘pussy struck’ in? I mean, is it clear from the context that she meant it to mean ‘extremely surprised’ or ‘baffled’ or something?

And I very much hope someone in the CS world was having lots of fabulous, non-reproductive sex under all those dainty cretonne bedspreads, but I doubt it. I bet there were no locks on staff bedroom doors, Con Maynard was always sleepwalking, or Jack Lambert going after burglars, or someone reporting another girl ill for eating ‘contraband’ after hours. (EBD seems to have had a touching belief in its being fine to eat any amount of sweet, rich food at mealtimes, but if you eat it one minute after lights out, you get ill and need castor oil...)

Yes she clearly has interpreted it as a sweet little version of “thunderstruck”.

That’s true about Margot - she does do some awful things later, but she has been thoroughly scapegoated since a young age for doing things I think are quite developmentally appropriate, and seems to be in more trouble for those than eg the bookend.