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!

[quote Erinyes]@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. [/quote]
A chapel in his actual house.... yes, it all adds up except I can't imagine a saucy French au pair seducing the young JRM. Or wanting to.

The latest set of boarding school books (the Ravensbay series by Cressida Burton) that I'm reading has less excitement in the way of kidnappings and foreign princesses, but lots of horses and lots of satisfying petty squabbles between the girls. Also full descriptions of meals and food, always very important. Plus there is a book per term so far which bodes well for the rest of the series.

@FourChimneys

I'm sure there was a third Enid Blyton boarding school series. Maybe just three books rather than the six each for the original Malory Towers and St Clares series. Does anyone remember them? Perhaps with twins and where they could take their own pets.

The Children Who Lived In A Barn is another story where the parents conveniently disappear (but happily arrive back in the end).

@FourChimneys

OMG I have never come across anyone who has heard of The Children Who Lived in a Barn

If was my favourite book and recently bought it (for a King's ransom) to read again. (I'm in my 60s) It is bizarre how those children were allowed to live, but I have never forgotten the hay box.

OMG I have never come across anyone who has heard of The Children Who Lived in a Barn

We used to have a copy at home, it probably went to a charity shop decades ago.

Holiday books such as Swallows and Amazons, Famous Five etc also dump the parents so the children can have adventures on their own. Although with S&A, there usually is a sympathetic parent available in the background if needed.

DID YOU FORGET SBOUT ME, MR DUPLICITY?
I HATE TO BUG YOU IN THE MIDDLE OF DINNER
IT WAS A SLAP IN THE FACE,
HOW QUICKLY I WAS REPLACED
AND ARE YOU THINKING OF ME WHEN YOU (HAVE POLITE MARITAL RELATIONS WITH) HER???

I hope she did have a rant and a rave.

Cousin Helen should have taken a lover. Probably wouldn't have been allowed have a man in her room unchaperoned, so she should have found a comely female companion. No one would have suspected a thing...

Actually, we probably really need ‘The Secret Diary of Cousin Helen’s Ex- Fiancé’s Wife’, full of mutterings about Little Miss Perfect next door lolling about on her chaise longue looking pretty while some of us dash about worrying about the price of coal and keeping a housemaid and Arthur having his head turned by the hussy at number twenty...

I think all children have phases of thinking their lives would be better without their parents (maybe in a not too Freudian way) so boarding school books are a safe way of indulging in this.

I was a shy, lonely child with an unhappy home life so for me they were pure escapism. I have always thought that the best boarding school book was Masha by Mara Kay because of the way she plays out the main character's shyness and isolation against the background of a boarding environment where she is almost never physically alone.

One thing I never understood was why Katy had to have an upstairs bedroom. Once she was in a self-propelling wheelchair, if she had lived downstairs, she could have gone outside even if it would have been too uncomfortable to go any distance.

@JaneJeffer

There was no Calpol in my day *@StrychnineInTheSandwiches*

Flat seven-up Jane.

Flat 7Up and what was that cure-all cough bottle? Actifed? Phenergan? One of them was so sweet it tasted radioactive.

And there was always a dedicated ‘sick-bowl.’

Agree about Katy’s bedroom, @ClariceQuiff — was it because she’d started off being put to bed upstairs in her own bedroom after the fall, and it was thought it would strain her too much to carry her down?

We used to get the Lucozade which came wrapped in cellophane.

If you're writing an essay on it, you should read Rosemsry Auchmuty World of Girls about girls' school stories. Also, Girls Gone By have published (in 3 volumes) the Encyclopaedia of Girls' School Stories.

Don't forget the boys - Tom Brown (which must be one of the first,) Jennings, Billy Bunter, Fifth Form at St Dominic's and Molesworth, among others. (Not sure Molesworth quite fits, but it wouldn't exist if the school story weren't a thing.)

@londonmummy1966

I think all children have phases of thinking their lives would be better without their parents (maybe in a not too Freudian way) so boarding school books are a safe way of indulging in this.

I was a shy, lonely child with an unhappy home life so for me they were pure escapism. I have always thought that the best boarding school book was Masha by Mara Kay because of the way she plays out the main character's shyness and isolation against the background of a boarding environment where she is almost never physically alone.

Oh I loved Masha but had totally forgotten it!

The problem with the Katy books is that she becomes so annoyingly saintly after her Terrible Accident, under the influence of the ghastly Cousin Helen. The naughty pre accident version would have been more fun to know. I loved the rivers game she invents at her day school, where the girls basically end up trashing their classroom.

@JoanOgden - I loved Masha so much I had it out of the local library for a year as I just kept renewing it to read again. It was very briefly back in print when DC1 was 10 so I was able to buy it for her. She has read it so many times it has fallen apart.

It is such a good book it needs to be better known.

@Ionlydomassiveones

I always parented along the ‘boarding school book’ lines. Children want an element of freedom and self will within boundaries and loving parents to call on, but parents that are in the background and don’t interfere in the main adventure.

That sounds good. Better than the other type of boarding school parenting where it was a bit more: 'we'll see you in three years, darling, when Daddy and I are home from his very important posting in Ceylon'.

Erinyes they are the ones, thank you for jogging my memory.

whywouldntyou yes, utterly bizarre but one of my favourite childhood books. Who could ever forget the haybox? Was it the Persephone edition you bought?

@Obira

Personally I think part of it is a fantasy about being rich. Only the rich get sent to boarding school. I remember reading these stories about girls who spent holidays in the south of France, and attended schools where they had tennis courts and swimming pools, and they rode horses and put on plays. All of which would have been inaccessible to me as a child being raised in a council house on benefits.

That was why I loved them too. These places were completely inaccessible to me, growing up in a back street of Leeds.

I remember that when I was 11 or 12, a girl in my school recommended 'Autumn Term'' to me, and I've been completely hooked ever since.

The teachers were actually very like those in my own school, which was a girls' grammar in the sixties. Very distant, very strict and 'take your hands out of your pockets when you speak to me,' kind of atmosphere.

We were totally in awe of prefects, who wore grey instead of navy blue, and could issue punishments such as lines and detentions, for such minor infringements as running or speaking in the corridors.

How times have changed.

@Lentilsandrice - I remember being a prefect who could set detention etc. Problem was if I set it I had to supervise. Also I thought lines were a waste of time. There were a lot of stroppy teenagers in Portsmouth who were able to recite several Shakespeare sonnets by heart. (My punishment of choice.) Don't think I've had that much authority since - certainly not with my own DC....

then moved onto all the boys’ boarding school books of the 1930s and 1940s
I didn't even know there were boys' boarding school books! I've only read girls' or coed ones (Blyton, Chalet School, Trebizon) @StrychnineInTheSandwiches are they very different? How much is gender a factor?

@frogface69 so sorry that happened to you.

V comforting for children with difficult parents. The books are full ofvteachers happy to assume the role of surrogate mothers. I read them because I was looking for a mother figure.

When i was a child i lived in a small house with my huge, quite impoverished, family. I think my love of boarding school books was just sheer escapism, the idea of spending all my time with my friends instead of my annoying siblings was appealing, also they seemed very glamorous somehow, trunks instead of suitcases, uniforms, straw boaters and blazers, grounds to ramble around in, and of course secret meetings and midnight feasts.

Looking back, Whyteleafe School was remarkably progressive. Rules enforced by the kids, all money shared etc.

Nobody's mentioned tuck boxes yet. Giant chocolate or fruit cakes, giant slabs of toffee, enormous pots of jam - I was a little piggy (still am) so that probably appealed the most!