What’s the appeal of boarding school stories?

[Meduse]

Good morning!having read the long thread about the Chalet school books I’m very interested to discover the ongoing appeal of boarding school stories.It’s an area I’m thinking of studying for an essay so the chalet thread was timely. Malory Towers is still being read ( and has new stories published with new characters) but real boarding schools are less common,especially in the state sector.
I have theories but would love to know any thoughts…
Thanks!

This will make me sound like a very sad child, but I loved the descriptions of the uniforms - lots of detail in Antonia Forest, and Anne Digby, for example, really leant into that trope in Trebizon. I loved the idea of having to wear a smart and 'proper' uniform, with a special hat band if you had your colours! Also the idea of everything being ordered - breakfast, lessons, prep, bed - and perhaps more than anything, traditions and customs that mattered (speech day, school plays, mark reading), and things like being form captain actually mattering to anyone.

I think I'm outing myself not just as a saddo but as someone who went to a school which was very much the opposite of all that!

AND..... I think it's about the appeal of the posh, tbf. Like an infant version of Made In Chelsea.

Historically boarding school weren't as posh as they are now, private school was the only available option in the early and mid 20th century if you wanted your children educated post 14. DH and his siblings were at private school in the 80s, their mother didn't do paid work and their father was a university lecturer. Nowadays the fees for DH's old school would be more than the entire salary of a university lecturer.

I read them as an escape from a terrible life at home. I used to will myself to sleep by pretending that I was in a dormitory at Malory Towers. When I was woken to be abused then THAT was my dream.

@TheMerrickBoy

This will make me sound like a very sad child, but I loved the descriptions of the uniforms - lots of detail in Antonia Forest, and Anne Digby, for example, really leant into that trope in Trebizon. I loved the idea of having to wear a smart and 'proper' uniform, with a special hat band if you had your colours! Also the idea of everything being ordered - breakfast, lessons, prep, bed - and perhaps more than anything, traditions and customs that mattered (speech day, school plays, mark reading), and things like being form captain actually mattering to anyone.

I think I'm outing myself not just as a saddo but as someone who went to a school which was very much the opposite of all that!

AND..... I think it's about the appeal of the posh, tbf. Like an infant version of Made In Chelsea.

And Nicola and Lawrie, the last of the Marlows, the only two girls at Kingscote still wearing the navy uniform years after the rest of the school switched to scarlet, because they have multiple big sisters' handmedowns.

I hear you on the orderliness being appealing. My school specialised in fighting and truancy, and staff were so dispirited they didn't even try to teach. I only lived to tell the tale because I was befriended by a deeply scary girl I sat next to in maths, of whom everyone was afraid. (Last heard of in jail.) Being concerned with wiping the blackboard so you wouldn't lose point for the Tidiness Picture, or a Guide Court of Honour felt like another universe.

I note your name, @TheMerrickBoy. Are you a fan of that golden-eyed sister-swapping cad, then?

I liked them because I was quite lonely as a child. Boarding school books seemed like everyone had friends!!

For me it was the elements of detailed ritual and repetition - variations on a reassuringly familiar theme over a long series.

And while the parental absence trope might have been true of the Enid Blyton books I realised as I matured that more than half the joy of the Chalet School was the total incorporation of parental figures and home life into the school story. It was a triumph of world building.

private school was the only available option in the early and mid 20th century if you wanted your children educated post 14

Really? Yes the Education Act 1944 pushed it along, but the idea that only private schools were available post 14 is nonsense.

My Dad took the School Certificate aged 16 in 1942, he failed (or in his words he failed "Matriculation"), and started working in an aircraft factory.
His family certainly couldn't afford to pay for education, his dad was an invalid from the 1st WW, and his mum raised 6 kids (2 died) throughout the 20s and 30s as a cleaner, skivvy & taking in washing.

I'm here in the hope that I'll learn about a series I've not read yet.

I loved them as a child to the extent I wrote away for boarding school prospectuses so I could make up stories about the people in the photographs . I am sure my parents found me a very strange child at times . I started off with the Naughtiest girl books and ended up with Chalet School .

@Grinling

I note your name, *@TheMerrickBoy*. Are you a fan of that golden-eyed sister-swapping cad, then?

I've used a few Marlow names in my time - I agree he's an absolute cad!

@frogface69

I read them as an escape from a terrible life at home. I used to will myself to sleep by pretending that I was in a dormitory at Malory Towers. When I was woken to be abused then THAT was my dream.

I’m so sorry to read this 💐

@midsomermurderess

Harry Potter is set in a boarding school? How did I not know that?

Are you joking?

My favourite boarding school book of all was probably What Katy Did at School. Definitely a romanticised view of boarding, but lovely all the same.

Remembering descriptions of Quaker Row, Shaker Row and Attic Row, the infamous Christmas boxes and exploits and fun with Rose Red.

@TheMerrickBoy, I always suspect Patrick is essentially a posher Jacob Rees-Mogg with ‘golden’ eyes — young fogey, trad Catholic who thinks Vatican II was a vulgarism, rebelling against his peer group with a short back and sides, bigwig dad, homes in London and the country etc. Perhaps the gorgeous blondes next door also fought over a young JRM.

@ArabeI

My favourite boarding school book of all was probably What Katy Did at School. Definitely a romanticised view of boarding, but lovely all the same.

Remembering descriptions of Quaker Row, Shaker Row and Attic Row, the infamous Christmas boxes and exploits and fun with Rose Red.

Oh, yes - and the raging indignation I felt when Katy was accused of sending that note to Berry Searles. The note referred to last term! Katy wasn't even there last term! I fume on her behalf whenever I re-read it.

I used to read them because I just wanted some friends. A group to belong to. That kind of thing.

@ClariceQuiff Yes, the injustice! They'd have been forced to leave, if they hadn't lived so far away. The most touching part, I thought, was poor Rose ineffectually pleading their case.

@ArabeI

My favourite boarding school book of all was probably What Katy Did at School. Definitely a romanticised view of boarding, but lovely all the same.

Remembering descriptions of Quaker Row, Shaker Row and Attic Row, the infamous Christmas boxes and exploits and fun with Rose Red.

See I think that’s a deeply unromantic view of boarding! The good head is replaced by a poor one, the food is inadequate, the building is cold, they have to parade down the public baths weekly to wash, the authorities get it wrong on a disciplinary issue, and the education on offer sounds pretty poor…?

See I think that’s a deeply unromantic view of boarding! The good head is replaced by a poor one, the food is inadequate, the building is cold, they have to parade down the public baths weekly to wash, the authorities get it wrong on a disciplinary issue, and the education on offer sounds pretty poor…?

I think the romance is in the camaraderie of the girls, the way the SSUC rallies round when Katy is falsely accused, their cosy meetings and so on.

The teachers do eventually realise they did Katy an injustice and Miss Jane goes so far as to apologise. When Katy marries Ned in 'Clover' both Miss Jane and Mrs Nipson send her wedding presents!

I used to be fully obsessed with boarding school stories. Ripped through all the usual suspects like St Clare’s, Mallory Towers, Chalet School and then moved onto all the boys’ boarding school books of the 1930s and 1940s. You used to be able to pick these up easily at jumble sales in the 80s and 90s (I miss jumble sales). They had titles like The Pride of the Upper Fourth, For the Honour of St Cuthbert’s, A Jolly Sporting Term. Devoured them all. It’s amazing I didn’t turn out to be a Ukipper.

It’s the combo of the quaintness of a bygone time, the lack of parental figures, the everything comes right in the end-ness, the jolliness, the japes, controlled peril, the Fair Play.

I only read What Katy Did At School once. A sure sign it didn't chime with me.

@ClariceQuiff

See I think that’s a deeply unromantic view of boarding! The good head is replaced by a poor one, the food is inadequate, the building is cold, they have to parade down the public baths weekly to wash, the authorities get it wrong on a disciplinary issue, and the education on offer sounds pretty poor…?

I think the romance is in the camaraderie of the girls, the way the SSUC rallies round when Katy is falsely accused, their cosy meetings and so on.

The teachers do eventually realise they did Katy an injustice and Miss Jane goes so far as to apologise. When Katy marries Ned in 'Clover' both Miss Jane and Mrs Nipson send her wedding presents!

Oh, I love it too, but the most likeable bits aren’t the school as an institution, they’re the SSUC, Rose Red, the Christmas boxes etc. (I think I was mentally comparing it with the Chalet School, or the Enid Blyton school series, where everyone is continually banging on about the wonderfulness of their school above all others, its set on cliffs above a majestically lovely cove, and it transforms problem girls into paragons etc!

I think when I first read it as a child I was mostly intimidated by the SSUC’s facility with writing spontaneous verse!

"I think the romance is in the camaraderie of the girls, the way the SSUC rallies round when Katy is falsely accused, their cosy meetings and so on."

This^

Strychnine Just out of curiosity, did you enjoy any of the other 'Katy' books?

'School' is rather odd in that it takes quite a while to get to the school bit - there's the unrelated episode of Elsie and Johnny's disastrous visit to the Worretts' before the events leading to the older girls going to school even starts.

Re. the education on offer - I got the impression the school was almost more of a 'finishing school' than a place where the girls were expected to learn a lot.