Polly and Lalla Winterton
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#1: Polly and Lalla Winterton Author: Josie, Location: London PostPosted: Mon Jul 11, 2005 12:20 pm

Please discuss Lady Acetylene Lampe and her Lady in Waiting here...

 

#2:  Author: Chair, Location: Rochester, Kent, England PostPosted: Mon Jul 11, 2005 3:57 pm

Polly was never one of my favourite characters. Lala was ok but it seems as if she was a bit too easily led.

It wasn't that I disliked Polly, I just didn't really form an opinion of her in the later books. She just isn't that friendly in Peggy of the Chalet School.

 

#3:  Author: Mia, Location: London PostPosted: Mon Jul 11, 2005 4:04 pm

I hate the opening of this book!

I first read it years ago - I can't've been more than 6 or 7 and it was so off putting I never read another CS book until I was 9! (Richenda - which was so much more about the school).

I don't think Polly is portrayed as a sympathetic character at all - far too abrupt - and Lalla is far too easily led. Peggy Bettany also appears as far too perfect in this book.

Ironically, when I finally read this book through (Red Armada version) the last 5 pages were missing! Aargh!

I will edit this post when I think of anything further to add! Very Happy

 

#4:  Author: Catrin, Location: Wirral (holidays), Oxford (term) PostPosted: Mon Jul 11, 2005 9:25 pm

I never had much opinion on these two either, they seemed to me to be characters introduced to create storylines rather than interesting people. However I had great sympathy with their role-playing (in the non- D&D sense!) - I would have continued till I was 14 had I had anyone to play with.

 

#5:  Author: Chair, Location: Rochester, Kent, England PostPosted: Mon Jul 11, 2005 9:27 pm

D&D sense?

 

#6:  Author: Amanda M, Location: Wakefield PostPosted: Mon Jul 11, 2005 11:10 pm

Dungeons and Dragons - an excellent way to pass the time Very Happy
(I have to confess to still playing now Wink )

Back on topic - I have to agree that the pair of them don't really stand out as characters to me, I'm having to struggle to remember any details really.

Star Wars

 

#7:  Author: LizB, Location: Oxon, England PostPosted: Tue Jul 12, 2005 7:44 am

After a big introduction, they tend to fade into the background - not just in the series, but actually in Peggy. They are almost pushed aside to give way to Eilunedd - (unless there's more of them in the HB) with only occasional references, there's hints that there might be trouble because of them not being used to school/discipline etc. but nothing particular seems to come of it, until they're brought in again at the end.

I have to admit when I first read it the Lady Acetylene Lampe bit really confused me, and I didn't get the joke until I was much older. It was a completely different way to start one of the books, though.

Liz

 

#8:  Author: Susan, Location: Carlisle PostPosted: Tue Jul 12, 2005 10:19 am

I read this part of the series out of sequence for many years as I had lots missing. The beginning of this book always annoyed me and I couldn't place Polly and Lala for a long time. They don't seem to serve any purpose in the series except as a foil to Peggy's perfectness. We never really hear of them apart from the beginning and ending of Peggy.

 

#9:  Author: jennifer, Location: Sunny California PostPosted: Thu Jul 14, 2005 10:00 pm

Susan wrote:
They don't seem to serve any purpose in the series except as a foil to Peggy's perfectness. We never really hear of them apart from the beginning and ending of Peggy.


That's a good point - the book is called "Peggy of the CS". I must say, though, I think I would have prefered to socialise with either of the Wintertons rather than Peggy, who comes off as much too sweet and perfect (down to having fair, unfreckled skin, the consequence of wearing big hats in the summer!)

I was looking over the beginning of the book and I don't think much of their father. He unilaterally decided the family would be better off in the country, and takes off abroad, leaving his wife to handle all of the petty details. He returns, ten years later! and finds his daughter impudent, lazy and rebellious, and decides to bring them into line. When they aren't amenable, he threatens to send them away to separate boarding schools, and not let them come home until they repent of their wicked ways! Great parenting there, although this seems to be a repeated theme in the series.

Polly strikes me as a very strong personality who hasn't been given the training and upbringing she needs to manage herself. Lala's much more easy going naturally, and happy to go wtih the flow. Someone like Polly would proabably have been fine if she had been raised with discipline that was firm, consistent and fair, rather than absolutely no boundaries, occasionally peppered with heavy and arbitrary discipline.

 

#10:  Author: Squeenie, Location: Harrow, London PostPosted: Fri Jul 15, 2005 1:27 pm

I too was hugely confused by the Lady Acetylene Lampe incident at the start of the book (not just the joke but the whole thing) but, being someone given to that sort of thing myself, I ended up really liking it. I agree that Lala was a bit easy-going, but I think Polly had real character (I liked Alex's story about Peggy and Giles where Giles realises that his sisters are completely different to how he remembers them).

 

#11:  Author: Changnoi, Location: New Mexico, USA PostPosted: Sat Jul 16, 2005 7:48 pm

The Lady Acetylene Lampe bit also put me off...once I got to "parabola of my mind", I realized that it must be some character playing games, and, because of the title, I assumed it was Peggy.

I don't particularly care for the Wintertons' father, but I really dislike the Wintertons' brother Giles. He doesn't come home because he feels his sisters are lazy and disobedient? I just...I don't know. I understand what it is not to like family and to avoid going home for holidays because of it. But everything about Giles strikes me as this very uptight military man who wants his women pretty, obedient, and very much in the background. So it makes sense to me that he would marry Peggy, who, in this book, starts seeming a little bit too perfect. (I like Peggy a lot in Lavender.)

As for Polly and Lala, I was just thinking of Polly a couple of days ago. I wish we knew more about her. In Peggy, she is pretty anti-social, not in the usual CS way of being mean, like Diana Skelton, but in a quiet, awkward, abrupt, confused teenager way. I think it's an accurate portrayal of a teenager having trouble growing up! But then Polly never seems to settle in that much. In Barbara, I don't think she's a prefect, but she's there. She's described as a six-foot-tall redhead with a habit of striding around. I assume she goes to Welsen, but it doesn't really seem like she'd fit in--anyone more of a contrast to the built-on-a-miniature-scale silvery-fair silvery-voiced Peggy is hard to imagine. And although in Peggy, there's some mention of her painting and being good at it, we don't really know what she does for a career, unless it's in one of the books I haven't read. I can't see her becoming a teacher, a nurse, or marrying a doctor. I don't really see her ever becoming subservient towards her father or peaceful with his unilateral decisions, either.

Lal[l]a is more biddable. She adjusts to the Chalet School, even if she is a little bit behind for her age, and is much less of a character. She's just your average new girl who comes from a home with poor parenting and needs some time to get into the mold. As a reward, she is a prefect in Switzerland, although she doesn't get to go to St. Mildred's because she's almost 19 and wants to be a journalist like her father. She's fine with announcing that her father has decided she should go to university instead of St. Mildred's. So in this way, she's very typical of a good-EBD character and is respectful and subservient.

I'd like someone to write about Polly.

Chang

 

#12:  Author: Chair, Location: Rochester, Kent, England PostPosted: Thu Jul 21, 2005 11:47 pm

What is the joke about Lady Acetylene Lampe? I don't understand the joke at all. Sorry.

 

#13:  Author: KB, Location: Melbourne, Australia PostPosted: Thu Jul 21, 2005 11:59 pm

This is an acetylene lamp.

 

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