The Chalet School 2 - Still talking about it a century later!

[ShellacB]

Hi everyone. Here is the new thread!

I’ve got the Armada version & it’s only just occurred to me that it might be abridged. I’ll have to check.

That’s wild enough though, with Professor Richardson wanting to fly off into space & Laurie being related to the three Rs! Although the most annoying bit in it is when Jo talks about Laurie being a doctor. It’s as if Daisy never even trained, let alone won a medal.

It's not a favourite of mine. Ruey's ok but doesn't really stand out as a character and there's a bit too much of the Maynards en masse. We're getting into the era of every new character being related to an established character.

I've never read the Armada version so I don't know how it differs.

Anyone else think Len and Roger were getting a bit flirty at one point?

I thought so. Surely a better match than Reg Entwistle. I can't believe that at the age of 26 he was asking Jack if he could have a relationship with Len who was just 16 when she left school.

Yes definitely there was flirting! Then the poor girl ends up with Reg Entwistle...!

Yes, I read it recently and wasn’t fussed.

I felt it was a bit of a missed opportunity. A trip back to the Tiernsee should have had more focus on the local area, Joey interacting with characters from that time etc.

Instead it was largely a triplets story full of British school children including the Richardsons which would have fitted better with a trip back to Armiford than Tyrol.

The Richardsons could have been introduced in any of the books. Seemed a strange choice to use that plot in that one.

There wasn’t even much about location in the local area in it.

Setting the storyline for Reunion in Tyrol would have been far better in my opinion.

I agree that book was such a disappointment, a great opportunity for that for some reason EBD totally squandered.

The bits that always crack me up is when Len scolds Ruey, housekeeping for her nutty father and brothers in a remote chalet, for not having things ‘dainty’, putting wildflowers in a jar and and using decorative bed coverlets, and when sensible Len has had to beg supposedly zany Eternal Schoolgirl Joey for permission to change from wearing her hair in plaits to a ponytail, because Joey doesn’t like ponytails! And even then Joey only gives her the most grudging temporary permission, reiterates she doesn’t like it, and warns darkly about it getting tangled! I mean, Len is fifteen, so if her hair gets tangled, it’s hardly Joey’s problem?

This is one of the instances you could use to argue that Joey, far from a chummy, relatable modern mother, is in fact unusually old-fashioned and doctrinaire, for all her zany image.

That's the kind of thing that makes me wonder about the influence of Sydney Matthewman. Both the ridiculous 'space rocket' storyline and that 1950s magazine stuff seem very male, proto advertising executive, and crowd out EBD's own style, based more on character interaction and observation.

That had never occurred to me until I saw it suggested on here. There are certainly some very odd notes in the later books.

This is one of the instances you could use to argue that Joey, far from a chummy, relatable modern mother, is in fact unusually old-fashioned and doctrinaire, for all her zany image.

And very similar to Janie Lucy in the La Rochelle books, who’s also meant to be young & zany but is proud of doing things the way her husband likes them and thinks that oldest daughters should help their mothers to run the house, but would be shocked at the idea of sons having to do any such thing.

I had never seen it before until I saw it on here either. I would agree that in the later books EBD does write a lot of things which are increasingly out of character.

The Mr Richardson in space plot was just bizarre.

I think I commented on the earlier thread that I thought Joey and Co in Tyrol actually felt more dated than some of the earlier books. Joey's mothering of the triplets was Victorian as were the references to space when Armstrong reached the moon only a few years later.

And the amount of time the smallest children have to stay in the nursery until they "can sit at table".

And it’s not just mealtimes, it’s that they live in the nursery in general. Joey says something mad at some point when the triplets are three or so, about how they are going to be ‘kept to quarters’ (ie. live in the nursery)until they learn not to repeat things.

I mean, obviously context matters, and Joey would have been born shortly before WW1, but we keep being told Joey is an eternal schoolgirl who is bit of a revolutionary in her attuned, ‘chummy’ parenting, but it seems like very standard Edwardian parenting, and some deeply trad patriarchal notions about the role of the father in instilling discipline.

The start of Joey and Co in Tyrol is chilling — Mike does something risky, but entirely normal for a child of his age, and Joey faints for two hours, and Len’s immediate response is to send Mike and the younger children away to cosset Joey, and Madge decides Mike needs to be kept away from his own father for a minimum of three weeks, for fear of his rage! He’s been sent to Coventry, eating his meals in the nursery with the younger children, no one talking to him, and Jack, apparently, is afraid to ‘thrash’ Mike because he’s so angry.

In fact the original plan was for Mike to be punished by being kept away from his family for his entire school holidays and going back to school from the Russells’!

Yes this whole storyline regarding Mike is terrible. As was Mike being regarded as a problem child simply because he did a few typically childlike things. He is very young in this book. He can't be any more than eight, based on the triplets' ages and Jack's attitude to him in particular is shocking!

Mike and Margot are the chief scapegoat children in the family. Although, Margot does later get away with an expellable offence to become Games Prefect. Poor Mike gets nothing but grief from a young age. It reeks of Sybil being labelled a terrible girl for years because her younger sister was scalded when they clearly weren't being supervised...

Was that storyline taken out of the abridged Armada version, or was there still a lack of awareness as to how bad that was even in the nineties?

even now only 150-200 sets [of triplets] are born in the UK each year

Good lord, is that true? There were two sets of triplets in reception at a local primary school a few years back. A very aggrieved mother of twins was telling me that hers had been unable to get in from out of catchment because the triplets took priority. EBD would have loved that one.

I read it as Len sending them away to protect Mike from his father’s reaction.

Jo seemed to think her faint was utterly justified. It never seems to have occurred to her that perhaps she should have taken responsibility for the situation.

fadedpage.com have the whole list. You can read them online, or download them.

Taytocrisps; I don't feel sorry for Joan. The whole reason she's at the Chalet School is because she asked to go there; simply because she didn't want Rosamumd to have something she didn't.

Yes, that too — which makes it even more chilling that a fifteen year old grasps that her little brother isn’t safe around his father! Though that whole scene (where Madge is telling Joey what happened several days later) slips somewhat oddly between ‘Jack is furious with Mike because of him disobeying rules’ and ‘Jack is furious because Mike made Joey faint’.

And Joey is presented as almost saintly for ‘forgiving’ Mike and ‘insisting’ that the family start talking to him again, after he’s been sent to Coventry and eaten separately for several days. And for ‘only’ punishing him by sending him away to another country for most of his summer holidays, rather than all of them, and going straight back to school without seeing his family!

Especially since twins ran in the family.

Yes, Joey really isn't mother of the year, despite the fact that we are constantly being told that she is wonderful!

There's some very good 'fanfic' about Mike and his scapegoat role. And some Chalet School/Marlows cross overs!

Apropos of nothing I was watching Bookish the other night and the phrase 'wise in his generation' was used. I've never heard it used outside of EBD so I wonder if Mark Gatiss is a fan? 😁

Google tells me 'wise in their generation' is from the Bible.

Are you reading Mulrania’s Charles & Co series?

Yes, among other gems. I'm on Lime Green Musings 🙂