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Fragile or not?
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Author:  julieanne1811 [ Tue Feb 09, 2010 6:41 pm ]
Post subject:  Fragile or not?

I am always bemused by EBD's use of the words 'fragile' or 'delicate'. We are told, for example, that Jo is delicate, and yet she manages to cope with cold baths every day, and climbing hours up mountains. The younger girls also have to do some strenuous climbing in the snow, and yet they are considered somewhat frail.
Despite their delicacy, Chalet School girls seem to live an extremely full life and they appear to be very robust. In Exile the group of them manage to walk miles over rough terraine, spending nights under bushes and having little to eat. Jo suffers afterwards, but she does cope with the journey at the time. Surely a truly delicate child simply wouldn't be able to do it?
Admittedly the Robin is labelled as delicate and has to go to bed early and have her physical exertions curtailed, but she seems to be the only one who has her every-day activities limited by her frailty.

Author:  JB [ Tue Feb 09, 2010 6:50 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

I've thought this myself and wondered how a truly delicate pupil would get on at the Chalet School ie one who simply wasn't physically able to go for long walks. Despite the school's links with the San and consqeuent expertise in delicate children, it's a very active life. There are other school stories where some girls aren't allowed to play hockey eg Nicky Dare in Clare Mallory's Juilet Overseas isn't allowed to play games and feels left out in her form because of it. Do we ever see this at the CS?

Author:  ChubbyMonkey [ Tue Feb 09, 2010 7:08 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

There's Naomi, of course, but otherwise I can't think of an example. But then it always kind of made sense to me in a funny way; you can be 'delicate' in that you catch every cold passing, and still be able to climb mountains just fine!

Author:  emma t [ Tue Feb 09, 2010 7:51 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

It's never really occured to me, but you are right! Maybe the fact that they do have a healthy life style, and so Joey can participate in such acivities as rambles, etc.

Madge chose Austria dileberatly for the place to have the Chalet School, because it suited Jo, and the mountain air does them good. Yes, she suffers from results of over exersion at times; but she is closely watched afterwards to see that she does nothing too strenuous.

Author:  fraujackson [ Tue Feb 09, 2010 7:56 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

I'd always understood the situation as being one where the 'fragile' girls could cope much better in the mountain air than they could in the damper English climate, so they were able to go on rambles up a mountain (but not across a fell or the South Downs, if that makes sense.) EBD does bang on about the health-giving properties of the climate quite a bit.

Having said that, I might just have been rationalising the situation after the fact, as it were, to get the books to make sense.

Is there a difference between 'fragile' and 'highly strung'/'sensitive' ? Joey (and Robin) are both, which might account for the variety of collapses they go in for, but what about people like Amy Stevens ?

Author:  cestina [ Tue Feb 09, 2010 8:25 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

I think I take "fragile" to mean physically not strong and "highly strung" or "sensitive" to mean emotionally weaker than others. Don't know if that's what EBD meant though!

Author:  Tor [ Tue Feb 09, 2010 8:40 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

It's only really in the Tirol books, I think, that we see many delicate/fragile girls; and these are monitored and kept back from certain strenuous activities. Joey usually gets some kind of physical retribution for any unplanned physical exertion, for example, and other than that, the walk lengths are more circumscribed. By the end of the Tirol books the really 'fragile' girls have been moved to the Annexe, so they are taken out of the walk/sports equation and Joey is no longer referred to as physically delicate. Emotionally she is still fragile/sensitive.

By the time we get to the Swiss books, there really aren't any delicate girls that I can think of - can anyone think of anyone, bar Naomi, who isn't exactly 'delicate'? That kind of makes it a moot point r.e. hikes/skiing. The younger girls still go for slightly shorter walks, I think. Still, it must have been pretty hard going at first for anyone unfit - think how hot and bother Theodora got on her first ramble! If she'd been a Gwendoline Mary, i doubt she'd have made it half way!

Author:  Rosie [ Tue Feb 09, 2010 9:34 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Barbara arrives as a 'delicate' new girl, although apparently nobody thought to tell Matron beforehand, despite everybody having known about her history for years! Doesn't she have to be carried, along with Verity, during a Dramatic Snow Scene because the pair of them are too tired to walk? I get the impression that for some girls it was all a bit much, but I expect the 'normal' ones adapted quite quickly and really were probably all quite healthy.

Author:  Llywela [ Tue Feb 09, 2010 10:01 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

fraujackson wrote:
Is there a difference between 'fragile' and 'highly strung'/'sensitive' ? Joey (and Robin) are both, which might account for the variety of collapses they go in for, but what about people like Amy Stevens ?

Amy Stevens tended to get a lot of colds, didn't she? At least, she was relegated back to the Annexe because of a bad cold. And that makes sense to me. My little sister is 13. She's tall, sturdy and well-built - she certainly wouldn't be classified as 'delicate' to look at. Yet she has only been in school for about 7 days since Christmas. Granted a little of that time was because the school was closed due to the ice, but the rest of the time she's been ill. She was born with a cleft palate, and although it was repaired in babyhood it has left her with a weakness. She catches, quite literally, every germ that so much as looks sideways at her, and her colds usually develop into ear/throat/chest infections that really knock her out for the count. I'd guess that Amy Stevens was much the same way inclined.

Author:  julieanne1811 [ Tue Feb 09, 2010 10:31 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

JB wrote:
There are other school stories where some girls aren't allowed to play hockey eg Nicky Dare in Clare Mallory's Juilet Overseas isn't [color=#808000]allowed to play games and feels left out in her form because of it. Do we ever see this at the CS?

I can't think of anyone in the CS having not to play games because of their physical weakness ... Some children (in real life, I mean) do seem to catch everything going, but inbetween they can be as fit as anyone else. Perhaps this is what EBD meant - a tendancy to catch things rather than being physically frail generally.
Others don't catch things but are just generally weak. It's all that mountain climbing, in snow (to add to the physical stress), that I can't equate with delicacy. Doesn't it take 3 or more hours to climb up to the Sonnalpe? When they nearly get there Jem meets them with the car and there's some comment about Jo being pale (trying to pull the details out of my brain - I might get some facts wrong) and there being concern because she's not strong.
If she is not 'strong' she really couldn't have climbed in the first place.

Author:  Alison H [ Tue Feb 09, 2010 11:47 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

I also take "delicate" to mean not physically strong, and I don't know how someone "delicate" would cope with all that walking and mountain climbing, and someone genuinely delicate would presumably struggle with something like hockey or lacrosse or ski-ing as well.

I don't even know how someone who wasn't delicate but just wasn't very fit would cope with all those rambles in the Swiss books, and even in Tyrol days there was a lot of walking and climbing.

Maybe it was the magical Alpine air? Jo was told off just for walking down the stairs quickly in the first chapter of School At, but she was quite capable of trekking up the Tiernjoch a few months later! There certainly does seem to be a lot of strenuous physical activity, and yet no-one (except Thekla, IIRC) ever even ends up puffing and panting and lagging behind the others, never mind (except for Robin) being told that it'd be too much for them :? .

Author:  Sunglass [ Wed Feb 10, 2010 7:58 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

I was just thinking about delicacy in relation to the unsympathetic treatment of Edna Purdon in Oberland. Edna, like other people, is stiff and sore after her first attempt at ski-ing. Matey and Bill have ordained that everyone should spend the afternoon sitting quietly to rest, but Edna, who only came out of the sickroom (after a cold) the day before, asks whether she can go to bed because she feels so achey. Which doesn't seem unreasonable to me, as Miss Nalder says she was much the worst at ski-ing (as she is at games in general), and so presumably fell over more, and also has muscles like 'overboiled macaroni' to the extent that she gets daily remedials.

This to me suggests that Edna is genuinely feeling horrible, as a rather puny girl, who's just had a cold, and who isn't used to strenuous outdoor activity. But both Matey and Miss Nalder choose to see her request to go to bed as malingering, say there's nothing really wrong with her, and Matey calls her a 'malade imaginaire', even though she acknowledges that 'she'll be lame as a tree with stiffness' the day after! And she gets sent to the sickroom on a boring invalid diet that's specifically used to 'cure' malingerers, with the implication that that's what she's doing!

It just struck me that Edna is, in fact, 'delicate' in the sense that she is demonstrably not as strong as the other girls (puny muscles, easily tired etc), but because she doesn't like games and actually asks whether she can rest more fully than the authorities are prescribing for the rest, she's treated very unsympathetically in a very un-CS way! The CS seems to prefer 'delicate' girls like Joey who are fragile from some identifiable illness, but who nonetheless continually overtire themselves but would never dream of asking to rest.

Can't help feeling a bit sorry for Edna here, even if she's abit whiny in her manner! She seems to be the 'wrong' kind of delicate!

Author:  ChubbyMonkey [ Wed Feb 10, 2010 1:57 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

But isn't that very true to life? Presumably Matey wouldn't have been able to go skiing because she would be too busy with all her inexhaustible duties inside (do we ever hear of her being out with the school?) and therefore, I would think, in a fairly bad mood anyway, then Edna comes along and essentially gets in Matron's way, whether for good reasons or not. If I were Matey, I'd be fairly annoyed as well! And yes she is treated unfairly, but it's nice to see EBD acknowledging (even unconsciously :lol:) that the CS isn't always a paragon of virtue and temper keeping!

Author:  Sunglass [ Wed Feb 10, 2010 5:10 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

ChubbyMonkey wrote:
But isn't that very true to life? Presumably Matey wouldn't have been able to go skiing because she would be too busy with all her inexhaustible duties inside (do we ever hear of her being out with the school?) and therefore, I would think, in a fairly bad mood anyway, then Edna comes along and essentially gets in Matron's way, whether for good reasons or not. If I were Matey, I'd be fairly annoyed as well! And yes she is treated unfairly, but it's nice to see EBD acknowledging (even unconsciously :lol:) that the CS isn't always a paragon of virtue and temper keeping!


God, I know - poor Matey. Though she does of course have under 40 girls in her care here, for once, so you'd think she'd be rather less harassed and able to ski if she felt the urge! I do agree that EBD isn't consciously showing us Matey being unfair - EBD and all of her characters appear think it's natural to prefer the kind of delicate girls who nonetheless try to keep up with the others and continually overtire themselves, but wouldn't dream of asking if they could lie down, even if they end up exhausted from overstraining. I mean, I bet Joey's muscles were like 'overboiled macaroni' in her first months in the Tyrol, too - she's been quite ill for most of her previous life, and can't have had much chance to go in for strenuous activity or sports - but I can't imagine Matey and another staff member being so disparaging about her lack of toughness!

I think it's just that Joey's refusal to take care of her own health as a girl and an adult - her reliance on Madge/Jem/Matey/Jack/Len to police her health for her - has always annoyed me. I think it's quite responsible of Edna to ask if she can lie down, if she knows she's overdone it. Maybe she'd also go straight to Matron if she had a toothache, rather than trying to conceal it for days, or wear rouge to cover her paleness, too!

Author:  cal562301 [ Wed Feb 10, 2010 5:40 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Sunglass wrote:
ChubbyMonkey wrote:
But isn't that very true to life? Presumably Matey wouldn't have been able to go skiing because she would be too busy with all her inexhaustible duties inside (do we ever hear of her being out with the school?) and therefore, I would think, in a fairly bad mood anyway, then Edna comes along and essentially gets in Matron's way, whether for good reasons or not. If I were Matey, I'd be fairly annoyed as well! And yes she is treated unfairly, but it's nice to see EBD acknowledging (even unconsciously :lol:) that the CS isn't always a paragon of virtue and temper keeping!


God, I know - poor Matey. Though she does of course have under 40 girls in her care here, for once, so you'd think she'd be rather less harassed and able to ski if she felt the urge! I do agree that EBD isn't consciously showing us Matey being unfair - EBD and all of her characters appear think it's natural to prefer the kind of delicate girls who nonetheless try to keep up with the others and continually overtire themselves, but wouldn't dream of asking if they could lie down, even if they end up exhausted from overstraining. I mean, I bet Joey's muscles were like 'overboiled macaroni' in her first months in the Tyrol, too - she's been quite ill for most of her previous life, and can't have had much chance to go in for strenuous activity or sports - but I can't imagine Matey and another staff member being so disparaging about her lack of toughness!

I think it's just that Joey's refusal to take care of her own health as a girl and an adult - her reliance on Madge/Jem/Matey/Jack/Len to police her health for her - has always annoyed me. I think it's quite responsible of Edna to ask if she can lie down, if she knows she's overdone it. Maybe she'd also go straight to Matron if she had a toothache, rather than trying to conceal it for days, or wear rouge to cover her paleness, too!


If I'd been Edna, I think I would just have gone to lie down and taken the consequences later. After all, they couldn't have done anything too terrible to her, could they? :shock:

But possibly she was too intimidated.

On a more general note, I think EBD never really makes it clear what her definition of frailty is, whether physical or mental and treats different pupils differently.

I too get irritated with Joey sometimes, particularly in the later books, as she stlll seems incapable of taking responsibility for her own wellbeing. After all, she is the mother of 11. Is it me or does she often fly into a panic when one of the kids is ill? You would think with all that experience, she would know how to cope better.

Incidentally, it just occurred to me that Joey went through several pregnancies and childbirths (including multiple births) in a comparatively short time. Might this not account for some of her weakness in the later years? I'm neither a medic nor a historian, but I think it's generally acknowledged that bearing lots of children in centuries past shortened women's life-spans and did nothing for their health.

It's often remarked upon how Madge's family is spread out and Joey's much closer together. (Did Madge use some form of contraception, which was available though not so widespread or reliable as it is today?)

Joey couldn't have done as a good Catholic, of course.

Sorry, I'll stop there, as I'm starting to ramble.

Author:  Alison H [ Wed Feb 10, 2010 5:51 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Maybe they didn't like the girls thinking for themselves, instead of waiting for matrons, mistresses and doctors to do it for them!

I'd've been the totally unfit kid puffing along way behind everyone else and struggling like mad to scramble up a particularly difficult bit of mountainside :oops:, and I bet plenty of people behind the scenes moaned and groaned about having to go on yet another ramble, instead of saying "Oh goody!" which is all we ever see :lol: .

Incidentally, I think it was incredibly insensitive of Naomi Elton's aunt to send Naomi to a school (recommended by Peter Chester or otherwise) which put so much emphasis on sports and physical activity :evil:.

Author:  JB [ Wed Feb 10, 2010 6:01 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Alison H wrote:
Incidentally, I think it was incredibly insensitive of Naomi Elton's aunt to send Naomi to a school (recommended by Peter Chester or otherwise) which put so much emphasis on sports and physical activity :evil:.


Not to mention a school in a snowy country where the poor girl wouldn't even be able to go for a short walk for part of the year.

Author:  sealpuppy [ Wed Feb 10, 2010 7:45 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Alison H wrote:
Incidentally, I think it was incredibly insensitive of Naomi Elton's aunt to send Naomi to a school (recommended by Peter Chester or otherwise) which put so much emphasis on sports and physical activity :evil:.


Perhaps the prospectus was still trumpeting the 'special care' for delicate girls? But by the time the school moved to Switzerland, TB was getting under control, with antibiotics, etc. This would mean (wouldn't it?) that pupils with hereditary lung problems/tendencies wouldn't be so much at risk. And what caused the 'delicacy' anyway? Potential TB inheritance, obviously, but also a heart murmur? In which case, shoving the poor girls up a mountain or into a cold bath, could surely have bumped them off?? :shock: (I remember my cousin being dosed daily with malt extract because she was 'delicate' ie asthmatic. I was green with jealousy, but too robust to merit a spoonful)

Actually, later in the Swiss books, the emphasis on TB has more or less vanished and the San seems more like a general hospital. However, by the mid fifties I believe there were special Swiss clinics specialising in monkey-gland therapy, for rejuvenation purposes. Maybe that explains Miss Annersley's famed lack of reading glasses? And Joey's girlish gambolling? They'd been guinea pigs?

Author:  julieanne1811 [ Wed Feb 10, 2010 8:12 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

And something else (part of which I've just posted as 'reading in bed').
The girls had to get up so early. Of course, it would take some time to get everyone washed and dressed, and that could account for a degree of early rising, then there's the pre-breakfast practice, which is later stopped after the report that someone fainted during her practice, because she was hungry.
Fragile people cannot cope with early rising, however early they go to bed. Or perhaps I should say Owls can't and Larks can. It's a genetic thing - people with one genetic make-up are better late at night, people with the other genetic make-up are better early in the morning, both regardless of the amount of sleep they get. I am an 'owl', perfectly useless in the morning, much more active at night, and able to get things done.
I think I'm trying to say is that if you're 'fragile or delicate' the amount of sleep you get doesn't always help - normal everyday things are going to make you tired and less able to cope, however well you've slept.
AND - that leads me on to a comment about TB and the Robin's inherited tendency to the disease. It's very clear that EBD had little understanding of illness and first aid. The RObin is treated carefully because of the risk of her developing the disease. But as the illness is an infection, coming from contact with people who have the active disease, the chances of her getting TB were no more than anyone else.
I know that her mother died of the illness, but the Robin's risk would have been while she lived with her living mother. Once her mother had died, the risk has gone. If the Robin had caught the illness and it was lying dormant, careful treatment could have reduced the chance of it becoming active. But that would mean that she did actually have TB at the time. If she did not have TB, no 'careful' treament was necessary, since it is not inherited ...

Author:  MJKB [ Wed Feb 10, 2010 8:46 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

I don't think you can win at the CS. People are castigated for not reporting to Matron if they're under the weather and told that they are absolute nuisances for not looking after their health. Yet poor Edna is treated as a malingerer for doing just that.

Author:  ChubbyMonkey [ Wed Feb 10, 2010 8:50 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

I don't want to disagree, julieanne, because I don't actually know anything about it, but would they have known that at the time that the Robin was growing up? From discussions on here I've always assumed that not a lot was known at the time, and Jem would have been something of a pioneer, in which case he could be excused for taking unnecessary precautions if he didn't know that they were unnecessary?

Author:  julieanne1811 [ Wed Feb 10, 2010 9:46 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

The TB bacillus was isolated first in 1882 and the first San was opened in Germany in 1854. By 1889 it was known that it was preventable and not inheritable, but until antibiotics were available 1945-60 the only treatment was rest, fresh air and good food.
So I think really it was Elinor's lack of understanding that accounts for her treatment of Robin.

Author:  Alison H [ Wed Feb 10, 2010 10:26 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

EJO seemed to share the old-fashioned belief that susceptibility to TB was hereditary: in EJO's The Troubles of Tazy, a couple seek medical advice on whether or not they should get married as both their mothers had TB and so they were worried they'd be passing on a double dose of genetic problems to their own children.

TBH, I think EBD's medical knowledge was lacking in a lot of areas. A lot of characters had/have very unspecified and vaguely-defined illnesses and conditions - Erica's mum, Jessica's stepsister, Margot Venables - or are just described as being "delicate". Not to mention Joey's infamous displaced organ :roll: . Or young Joey apparently being susceptible to "brain fever" because she was excitable and imaginative, which sounds gloriously Victorian.

Author:  julieanne1811 [ Wed Feb 10, 2010 11:05 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

I read a priceless comment in The Lost Staircase, over Christmas:
"Mercifully, the fracture had proved to be a mere fracture and not a break" ...!!!!!
ANd think of poor Eustacia's 'resusitation - they find a pulse and commence CPR. This goes on for some time (if the poor girl wasn't in cardiac arrest at the beginning she would be by the end. They then wrap her up and take her back to the CS where they spend another two hours trying to save her. I expect those two hours had to be done because of the damage they had done on the mountainside. ANd maybe her survival was due to the brandy which they had put onto her lips and pulse-points ... that might have been standard resus treatment of the time, but knowing EBD's weakness in this area I suspect not. It might have seemed simply like a good idea to her at the time!

Author:  Alison H [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 12:16 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Just changing tack slightly, and without wishing to sound too morbid, it was a huge responsibility for Madge and Mlle Lepattre to be in charge of all those girls at a time when medical treatment was so much less advanced than it is now and many of their families were at least a day's travelling distance away. Even in the later books, Julie (another one who didn't tell Matron she felt ill), Mary-Lou and Naomi all nearly die whilst at school. The CS admittedly has an exceptionally high accident rate :roll: , but an outbreak of an illness could have proved very serious: although the measles outbreak in Jo Returns doesn't spread to the school, we're told that Peggy Bettany was very ill and that at one time they weren't sure she was going to recover.

Sorry, this is getting rather morbid and Bronte-esque. It was a really big responsibility, though. I don't particularly like Trials as a book, but I really feel for Hilda when we see her looking so strained under the pressure of coping with Naomi's accident.

Author:  RubyGates [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 12:25 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

But Alison the CS has to have a high accident rate; how else are the older girls/younger mistresses going to meet suitable doctors to marry? :lol:

Author:  Alison H [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 12:30 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Poor Hilda: she had to bear all the responsibility whilst other people bagged all the doctors ...

Author:  RubyGates [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 12:39 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Hmmm, now imagining Hilda sitting at her study window watching another teacher swanning off with a doctor and thinking "curses, foiled again. Oh well better answer this letter from some strange people named Health and Safety, seems they want to ask some questions about the abnormally high accident rate here."

Author:  Kathy_S [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 12:42 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

I think the caution concerning Robin was perfectly reasonable, given the knowledge available about the disease at the time, when TB was among the top ten killers of children. Children did most often contract the bacterium from older infected persons, generally relatives, and since the primary infection often comes and goes with no one suspecting more than a common cold, having the more serious version of the disease appear later from latent bacteria was a common scenario. Thus, my great-grandmother died of TB in 1924, but was not followed by her "delicate" son until 1933.

Although the Mycobacteria are certainly responsible for TB, it is hard to argue that the health and what would have been called the "constitution" of the potential victim don't affect the ability of his or her immune system to deal with them.

Author:  Llywela [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 10:01 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Alison H wrote:
Just changing tack slightly, and without wishing to sound too morbid, it was a huge responsibility for Madge and Mlle Lepattre to be in charge of all those girls at a time when medical treatment was so much less advanced than it is now and many of their families were at least a day's travelling distance away. Even in the later books, Julie (another one who didn't tell Matron she felt ill), Mary-Lou and Naomi all nearly die whilst at school. The CS admittedly has an exceptionally high accident rate :roll: , but an outbreak of an illness could have proved very serious: although the measles outbreak in Jo Returns doesn't spread to the school, we're told that Peggy Bettany was very ill and that at one time they weren't sure she was going to recover.

*nods* In...oh, one of the early Swiss books there is an outbreak of flu that wipes out more than half the school, including most of the staff, and it is fantastic because it really shows how hard illness can hit in a closed community, and how everyone has to scrabble about trying to cope both with the nursing and the continued care of those that have remained healthy.

Part of my job revolves around business continuity - ensuring that procedures and contingency plans are in place in case something similar should strike the university where I work, so that story really strikes a chord with me.

Where the Robin's mollycoddling is concerned, what always strikes me isn't so much that such a huge fuss is made of her, but that she is treated so very differently to any other child in the series. We are told how crucial it is that she is handled with care because her mother died of TB - but in those early years, especially, the school is full of students with relatives at the San, some of whom die. If the Robin requires such careful handling because of her exposure to TB, then the same rule should apply to those other girls, surely.

Author:  julieanne1811 [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 10:03 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Kathy_S wrote:
I think the caution concerning Robin was perfectly reasonable, given the knowledge available about the disease at the time, when TB was among the top ten killers of children.
Although the Mycobacteria are certainly responsible for TB, it is hard to argue that the health and what would have been called the "constitution" of the potential victim don't affect the ability of his or her immune system to deal with them.

This is true - the disease can lie dormant, and can then be prevented by ensuring the (possibly) infected person maintains their health at its optimum leve. But EBD is quite clear that concern for the Robin comes from the possibility of her having inherited the illness ...

Author:  JB [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 10:09 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

julieanne1811 wrote:
This is true - the disease can lie dormant, and can then be prevented by ensuring the (possibly) infected person maintains their health at its optimum leve. But EBD is quite clear that concern for the Robin comes from the possibility of her having inherited the illness ...


I wonder if EBD was confused between the two things? Much as we love her, she wasn't always the clearest at describing things and perhaps "inherited" was her way of saying that Robin had been infected by her mother. If TB had been "passed on" in whatever way from Robin's mother, I doubt EBD would have made a distinction as to precisely how.

EBD is inconsistent about Robin and her health. In Head Girl, she happily skates across the lake but a few books later we're told she's always been too delicate to learn to skate.

Author:  Sunglass [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 10:30 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Llywela wrote:
In...oh, one of the early Swiss books there is an outbreak of flu that wipes out more than half the school, including most of the staff...


:shock: :D :D

Gosh, Llywela, this sounds wonderfully apocalyptic and Black Death-ish!

On the Robin, when Joey is discussing her entering the convent, she says that Jem had always hoped she wouldn't marry - implicitly because of a percieved threat of passing on TB to her children. (Though presumably he also feared the rigours of childbirth for her?)

Besides a certain amount of confusion on medical issues, I think EBD, despite her total fascination with fragility, also worries from time to time about coddling and its effects. I think this is one of the reasons the Robin as a child gets such different treatment to other girls who also had close relatives with TB and who should technically have merited equal care - that Robin, because of her intensely angelic nature cannot be over-petted or molly-coddled. The more you fuss over her health and shower her with affection, the sweeter she becomes. Whereas I think EBD is afraid that such careful treatment and attention (which she does equate with 'petting' in the Robin's case) might ruin the temperament of 'ordinary' girls, and make them end up over-indulged nervous wrecks like Lavender Leigh, or slightly whiny girls who take their own aches and pains very seriously, like Edna Purdon. Which, I think, is part of the reason that, despite the CS's USP being care for fragile and especially possible TB-risk girls, there's still an ambiance of cold baths and hearty sportiness, rather than anything which risks making the girls look coddled, or like hypochondriacs.

Julieanne, had never thought about Eustacia's resuscitation from a purely medical point of view before - that's hilarious! She's lucky she wasn't killed!

Author:  cal562301 [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 10:36 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Llywela wrote:
Alison H wrote:
Just changing tack slightly, and without wishing to sound too morbid, it was a huge responsibility for Madge and Mlle Lepattre to be in charge of all those girls at a time when medical treatment was so much less advanced than it is now and many of their families were at least a day's travelling distance away. Even in the later books, Julie (another one who didn't tell Matron she felt ill), Mary-Lou and Naomi all nearly die whilst at school. The CS admittedly has an exceptionally high accident rate :roll: , but an outbreak of an illness could have proved very serious: although the measles outbreak in Jo Returns doesn't spread to the school, we're told that Peggy Bettany was very ill and that at one time they weren't sure she was going to recover.

*nods* In...oh, one of the early Swiss books there is an outbreak of flu that wipes out more than half the school, including most of the staff, and it is fantastic because it really shows how hard illness can hit in a closed community, and how everyone has to scrabble about trying to cope both with the nursing and the continued care of those that have remained healthy.

Part of my job revolves around business continuity - ensuring that procedures and contingency plans are in place in case something similar should strike the university where I work, so that story really strikes a chord with me.

Where the Robin's mollycoddling is concerned, what always strikes me isn't so much that such a huge fuss is made of her, but that she is treated so very differently to any other child in the series. We are told how crucial it is that she is handled with care because her mother died of TB - but in those early years, especially, the school is full of students with relatives at the San, some of whom die. If the Robin requires such careful handling because of her exposure to TB, then the same rule should apply to those other girls, surely.


Living in a community, I can identify with this as well. I remember the panic a few months ago when someone got swine flu! Fortunately, it never spread beyond him and his immediate family.


Robin seems to be treated differently to the other girls in a lot of ways. Is this favouritism or victimisation on the part of EBD?

Sunglass wrote:
On the Robin, when Joey is discussing her entering the convent, she says that Jem had always hoped she wouldn't marry - implicitly because of a percieved threat of passing on TB to her children. (Though presumably he also feared the rigours of childbirth for her?)


If Robin didn't inherit TB from her mother, surely there couldn't be a danger that she would pass it on to her own children? Sorry, not medically qualified, but doesn't seem very likely to me.

Edited once to correct typo.

Author:  Llywela [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 10:41 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Sunglass wrote:
Llywela wrote:
In...oh, one of the early Swiss books there is an outbreak of flu that wipes out more than half the school, including most of the staff...


:shock: :D :D

Gosh, Llywela, this sounds wonderfully apocalyptic and Black Death-ish!

:lol: It does, actually, now that I re-read. Of course, I meant wiped out as in became ill rather than suggesting a terribly mortality rate, dramatic as that might have been. :wink: I believe at the height of the epidemic they are down to two members of staff who have to provide some semblance of normality for about 50 girls, everyone else in school being laid up. As I recall, even the housekeeping staff were badly hit.

Although presumably the nursing staff remained immune, to care for the sick.

Author:  julieanne1811 [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 12:49 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Sunglass wrote:
On the Robin, when Joey is discussing her entering the convent, she says that Jem had always hoped she wouldn't marry - implicitly because of a percieved threat of passing on TB to her children. (Though presumably he also feared the rigours of childbirth for her?)

If Robin didn't inherit TB from her mother, surely there couldn't be a danger that she would pass it on to her own children? Sorry, not medically qualified, but doesn't seem very likely to me.

I'd forgotton this comment too. It does rather support the idea that EBD did believe TB is inheritable, doesn't it?
It can't be inherited. It can only be 'caught' through close contact with an infected person.

Author:  Tor [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 1:08 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Bless EBD, I think she'd be the first to admit that science wasn't her strong point! Her ideas on inheritance are very, very sketchy - look at Adrienne and the Robin, for example!


What I quite love about her, though, is that despite this she appears to be fascinated by science and medicine - she's always slipping them into the story lines. Obviously there is the San, but there are so many other little vignettes dotted about the place that makes me imagine her loving to follow the popular press coverage of science: there's the 'fresh air' fiend professor in Head Girl, the mention in the Swiss (?) books about humans being related to monkeys, Professor Richardson and Space. EBD was clearly fascinated by science... though only the Great Doctors appear to get her full approval...!

Author:  Artemis [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 4:07 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Quote:
Children did most often contract the bacterium from older infected persons, generally relatives, and since the primary infection often comes and goes with no one suspecting more than a common cold, having the more serious version of the disease appear later from latent bacteria was a common scenario. Thus, my great-grandmother died of TB in 1924, but was not followed by her "delicate" son until 1933.


Yes this did happen – I’ve recently been reading a book about Darwin’s relationship with his daughter Annie, who died when she was ten. After the normal run of childhood sniffles and colds, she contracted scarlet fever in 1849, and was never well afterwards. She died in 1851 of what researchers believe now to be TB, but not the pulmonary form, as her terminal illness appeared to be gastric. It was really common for TB to be ‘activated’ after an initial infection.

One reason for this was the immune system assault suffered by children who had streptococcal infections. These are very common, but are easily curable by penicillin, which of course there wasn’t. The most common entry point was an episode of ‘strep throat’ or a septic throat infection, caused by a particular streptococcus. Streptococcus pyogenes, in various strains, can cause cellulitis, necrotising fasciitis, glomerulonephritis, a kidney disease, scarlet fever, puerperal, or childbed fever, and rheumatic fever. Indirectly, the toxins produced by the bacteria unchecked by antibiotics affected the heart, causing acute endo- peri- and myo-carditis, which could kill directly or lead to long term heart damage – including mitral stenosis where the valves of the heart become scarred, thickened and narrowed and lead to congestive heart failure.

So the sequence would look something like this:

Child gets an upper respiratory tract infection after immune system dips possibly after exposure to cold/ getting a chill/ sitting in wet clothes. In addition child has a sore throat which turns septic (Jane Austen’s ‘putrid throat’) Child worsens, and gets rheumatic fever, or recovers and a few weeks later goes down with rheumatic fever. (Maureen Donovan in ‘Rivals’) Alternatively child contracts scarlet fever directly. (Beth, in Little Women). No antibiotic treatment is available so child either dies at that point or appears to recover.

However, toxins released by the infecting bacteria have caused heart problems - not always mitral stenosis, which can take ten years to develop, but a low grade endocarditis. Child begins to suffer because her heart is not working properly. At this point she may display any or all of these symptoms:

She will be pale, anaemic looking and fail to gain weight and thrive. Initially she will be weak, with breathlessness on exertion, lacking energy, and liable to have faint and dizzy spells and palpitations (atrial fibrillation: think Clarissa in Malory Towers with her ‘weak heart’ which ‘flutters’) As the condition progresses, she will be breathless at rest, and may have cyanosis (blueness) of lips and fingernails. She will be constantly liable to chest infections, as fluid and blood begin to build up in her lungs, and may cough bloody sputum. At this stage of her disease an initial TB could well be reactivated as her immune system is no longer supported by a healthy heart, so her lungs are even more under threat.

Finally, even without the TB, she will develop acute chest pains and severe breathlessness caused by congestive heart failure and die, (Beth in Little Women) having been a ‘delicate’ child since that initial infection, which could have been as long ago as her first or second year of life. She may by this time be in her mid to late teens. If she has survived to reach childbearing age with only minor heart damage, she may well die during her first pregnancy or during childbirth, as her heart will not function well enough to support her through these physically taxing states. If her mitral stenosis is mild and has been medically recognised, she may be on bed rest (with its attendant risks of thrombosis) throughout pregnancy in an attempt to avoid strain to her heart, although it is far more likely that she will have been advised that she should not attempt to conceive. (Phoebe!) so she will not bear children.

Had she been treated with penicillin, she would have survived.

So when EBD talks about Matey fussing about ‘delicate’ children I think she is aware of this, although not necessarily of the precise medical events, more a ‘folk knowledge’ that certain children, after a brief and apparently minor illness from which they appeared to recover, later fail to thrive, become ‘delicate’ and later die, typically in their mid to late teens. The signs of this ‘delicacy’ were recognised: the causes were not put together.

And even if the causes were known, there was ultimately no treatment. When Matey fusses over coughs, colds, chills, sore throats and wet feet, she is looking at a scenario where an apparently healthy child catches one of these, and then becomes chronically ill. And without penicillin, the outlook for the child’s parents was one of a constant struggle against persistent and debilitating symptoms, a loss of health over a period of years, gradual at first and then gradually increasing, remissions and relapses, the latter caused by those other opportunistic infections to which all children are liable but which this child has no stamina to combat, painful, unpleasant, and ultimately useless treatments for an imperfectly understood condition, possible separation from the child if she had to visit a warmer country for her health, or stay in hospital, but eventually the knowledge that death was extremely likely – and that nothing could be done about it.

It does rather put the reason behind Matey’s fussing. She would have known the medical history of the children, and she would have known the reasons why a child might be ‘delicate’. (I’m not saying that EBD necessarily writes it consistently tho’) Equally she would have made a sharp distinction between the ‘delicate’ children and those who were unfit, work-or-games-shy, or lazy.

But it does make you realise what a difference penicillin makes. Rheumatic fever is now almost unheard of and scarlet fever is minor. And ‘strep throat’ or ‘septic tonsils’ does not lead to heart disease . . .

Sorry if this is a bit long - I find the subject interesting; it's all so different now: we have different medical demons for our children - such as meningitis!

Author:  Saffronya [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 4:33 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Thanks Artemis. That explains a lot about all the illnesses you can hear about in books. I was aware that treatments weren't exactly brilliant, but never really understood the fuss about cold and sniffles, especially as we rarely treat them with medicine these days. I think I just imagined that medical understanding was less, and therefore more fuss was made about minor things just in case they turned into something else. Was almost jealous as it seemed to mean a good few days in bed, when I need to drag myself into work!!! Really interesting to know the true progression of these things!

Author:  ChubbyMonkey [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 4:46 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

That was really interesting! Thankyou for sharing it - and it really does put Matey's fussing into perspective!

Author:  Llywela [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 4:51 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

That was really interesting, thanks for such detailed information. :)

I'm wondering whenabouts things started to really change - when did penicillin become widely available, thus resolving a lot of these problems?

I'm thinking now of Barbara Chester (having just recently read that book) who definitely falls into that pattern of childhood illness and general delicacy with a tendency to bronchitis, but recovers fully to become a perfectly normal schoolgirl. That would be in the 50s, I believe. Or late 40s? Whenabouts did the School move to Switzerland?

(edited to add question)

Author:  julieanne1811 [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 5:50 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Thank you Artemis - it does explain a lot of the symptoms described in GO books for different girls. Saffronya makes a valid point too - we have forgotten the dread of minor coughs and colds and garden scratches, all of which could lead to full-blown infections needing penicillin, which wasn't available at the time. We are a little careless these days as a result, I think. If a scratch becomes infected we get treatment, but in the past the only treatment was to treat the initial problem fairly aggressively - iodine on cleaned stratches, going to bed when you had a cold, isolation ...
Artemis' points make it very clear how some girls could be debillitated following an apparently 'minor' event, and have to live lives as delicate flowers from then on ... Very interesting!

Author:  cal562301 [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 5:52 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Llywela wrote:
That was really interesting, thanks for such detailed information. :)

I'm wondering whenabouts things started to really change - when did penicillin become widely available, thus resolving a lot of these problems?

I'm thinking now of Barbara Chester (having just recently read that book) who definitely falls into that pattern of childhood illness and general delicacy with a tendency to bronchitis, but recovers fully to become a perfectly normal schoolgirl. That would be in the 50s, I believe. Or late 40s? Whenabouts did the School move to Switzerland?

(edited to add question)


I know that penicillin was widely used in miilitary circles in World War II, but more generally I have no idea. It's first discovery (I think) was in 1928, which is a full ten years before the war.

CS must have moved to Switzerland late 40s or early 50s I would have thought. No doubt someone on here can give a more precise date!

Edited to remove answer from middle of quote! :oops: :lol:

Author:  sealpuppy [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 5:54 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Yes, we do tend to forget how recently things have improved, medically speaking. My grandmother had a younger sister who died at 10 of 'brain fever', probably meningitis. (She also had an even younger one who died as a toddler, from an 'abcess' on her spine - presumably spina bifida?)

And this belief that TB was hereditary is very prevalent in Victorian books; Charlotte M Yonge, for example, is very aware of the possibility, as outlined by doctors of the day. As for catching TB rather than inheriting it, there was a report, very recently, suggesting that Jane Austen caught TB from nursing her brother (James?) and that it was TB that ultimately killed her. And in my recent Victorian mystery, my editor wanted me to specify the illness one of my characters was suffering from - enough to send her to Bath for treatment. I had to explain that diagnosis in the 1850s was pretty inexact, and just shoved in some hints about something gnawing away at her, poor soul. :(

Author:  julieanne1811 [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 6:00 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Llywela wrote:
I'm wondering whenabouts things started to really change - when did penicillin become widely available, thus resolving a lot of these problems?

Penicillin became available during the 2WW. It had been discovered before this but it wasn't until then that it began to be widely used. The first men to have it (injured forces) had their urine collected so that the antibiotic excreted could be recovered for use again. It was all rather experimental, I think - doses were worked out as they went along, and it was mostly given by injection. In those times that meant into the muscle, not IV as they are given now, and they are very painful injections to have.
I suppose that after the war, more had been learned about how they worked and so on, and they became more widely available.

Author:  Alison H [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 6:08 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

My grandma had a sister who was a perfectly healthy teenager and then died of meninigitis, which would have been c.1920. & sadly EBD would have been all too well aware of how easily these things could happen after losing her brother :cry: .

Author:  Artemis [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 6:10 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Fleming worked on penicillin through the 1920s, but stopped researching it in 1931 and restarted in 1934. Apparently he thought it would be excreted by the body too fast to kill bacteria – which was a problem with the early types. Howard Florey did a lot of work on it in 1939, and the first trials were around 1940: the first person whose life was saved by it was in 1942, and he was suffering from streptococcal septicaemia – blood poisoning -which picks up Saffronya and Julieanne’s point about scratches.

When the first cure was made in March 1942 it took half of the available amount in the USA, and by June 1942 there was enough for ten patients. By 1944 there were adverts for penicillin (Penicillin cures gonorrhea in four hours – see your doctor today!) but by then the supply had cranked up because of the war effort, and most of it was being used by the troops. I guess it was the advent of the National Health Service in 1948 that made it available to all and sundry.

Bet the doctors at the San didn’t use it for STDs – not in that clean-living atmosphere!

edited to remove typo

Author:  JB [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 6:43 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

That was fascinating, thanks Artemis.

Author:  julieanne1811 [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 7:33 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

How interesting, Artemis! I remember now - I saw a docu-drama about it all. Fleming discovered it but Florey did all the ground-work and persisted with it after Fleming decided it wouldn't work. But once it was found to work Fleming stepped back in again, and it is he who is remembered for its success now, not Florey ...

Author:  Mel [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 7:36 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

To go back up the thread to Barbara Chester, didn't she catch measles which, after a sharp illness left her much stronger than she had ever been? Yet Peggy Bettany gets measles which leaves her vaguely delicate for ages after. There is no doubt thet EBD was fascinated/obsessed by deilicacy or fragility. As far as we know she was a robust child. Do you think she yearned to be pale and interesting commanding fuss and cossetting?

Author:  Tor [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 7:43 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Quote:
But once it was found to work Fleming stepped back in again, and it is he who is remembered for its success now, not Florey ...


It's not quite so bad as for some (most female scientists): it certainly used to be on the science curriculum that you learnt all about Florey and Chain, and at least they got to share in the Nobel Prize. And I best he's (Florey) very well known in Australia (for a scientist, that is).

Author:  cestina [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 7:51 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

A friend in the Czech Republic contracted some dread disease as a teenager, can't remember what, just as the German occupation of Czechoslovakia came to an end in 1944. He would certainly have died had his village not been in the very small part of the country liberated by the Allied Forces as opposed to the Soviets. In his case it was the Americans and he tells how he was taken to their field hospital in a farm cart and treated with penicillin which saved his life. A school friend of his was not so lucky, and died. I believe they did not have enough for both......

Author:  julieanne1811 [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 8:16 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Quote:
It's not quite so bad as for some (most female scientists): it certainly used to be on the science curriculum that you learnt all about Florey and Chain, and at least they got to share in the Nobel Prize. And I best he's (Florey) very well known in Australia (for a scientist, that is).


That's the problem with docu-drama - the 'drama' part. One is never sure what is true, and to what degree ...

Author:  Llywela [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 8:49 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

sealpuppy wrote:
Yes, we do tend to forget how recently things have improved, medically speaking. My grandmother had a younger sister who died at 10 of 'brain fever', probably meningitis. (She also had an even younger one who died as a toddler, from an 'abcess' on her spine - presumably spina bifida?)
Alison H wrote:
My grandma had a sister who was a perfectly healthy teenager and then died of meninigitis, which would have been c.1920. & sadly EBD would have been all too well aware of how easily these things could happen after losing her brother :cry: .

My dad had a sister who died of meningitis when she was 3 in 1942 (before Dad was born). She was my grandparents' second child and died just a few weeks before the third was born (there are no photos of that aunt as a baby at all, although plenty of the older two - it was a terrible time for my poor gran, having to care for the new baby while grieving the toddler she'd just lost). According to family history, my grandmother always believed Hazel could have been saved if her husband had only gone for the doctor sooner, but he was worried about money and left it too late - she never quite forgave him, although they went on to have three more children (plus one fostered).

Author:  julieanne1811 [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 9:22 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

It is so interesting to hear what everyone has to say ... so far, this is what I'm getting:
1. Before the advent of antibiotics and vaccinations (measles was an 'expected' childhood diseae, yet leaves a high percentage of problems after the illness), children could become 'frail' or 'delicate' following any illness usual to children.
2. This could result in heart problems or general debility.
3. The CS had the Annex, where fragile children would attend.
4. Thier prospectus said that they cater for children thought to be at risk of physical ill-health in some way.
5. But most girls were at the main school, not the annex.
6. This means that there are some 'delicate' girls at the main school.
7. There seems to be no accomodation made for 'delicate' girls at the main Chalet and they are expected to do the cold bath, long morning walks, other walks up mountains in all weathers ...
It is the statement that someone is 'fragile' along with ignoring what this means in day-to-day life that confuses me.
I LOVE EBD's writing and books! But I do find a great inconsistency in this respect. Perhaps she does like the 'pale and interesting' image, but perhaps she also wants a school in which there is the hale and hearty sports-playing, healthy atmosphere held as the ideal of the time. And it's marrying these two that is tricky.
I really wish she had written some books based at the Annex so we could see the difference more clearly ...

edited typo ...

Author:  cal562301 [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 9:28 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Regarding measles, my younger brother caught measles from my sister and me when he was about 13 months old. This would have been in 1962. I can remember him being really ill and I know they were worried about his eyesight for ages afterwards, though that's not exactly delicacy.

Maybe the fact that he caught it so young made a difference, but I don't know.

Edited to amend year, as I got my brothers' birth years mixed up! :oops:

Author:  JB [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 9:35 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

julieanne1811 wrote:
It is so interesting to hear what everyone has to say ... so far, this is what I'm getting:
3. The CS had the Annex, where fragile children would attend.


But then the Annexe didn't exist for very long, so after the school left Austria, delicate girls would be at the school proper.

Author:  Artemis [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 10:54 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Thought this might interest people writing drabbles in which this aspect of school life features:

http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=303307

Note the concerns over lack of weight gain, an issue which was discussed in another recent thread.

Author:  Alison H [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 11:33 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

julieanne1811 wrote:
I
Perhaps she does like the 'pale and interesting' image, but perhaps she also wants a school in which there is the hale and hearty sports-playing, healthy atmosphere held as the ideal of the time. And it's marrying these two that is tricky.


I think that's a very important point. She seems to like the early to bed, early to rise, lots of outdoor exercise, lots of delicious fresh food, jolly hockey sticks idea, but at the same time she also likes the Victorian idea of the delicate fragile heroines - as opposed to, for example, Enid Blyton who pretty much sticks to the healthy outdoorsy types only.

EBD was born in 1894, so she'd've been at school during the period when there was a lot of discussion - following the problems which arose with the poor health of men joining up to fight in the Boer War - about childhood health (although more in relation to working-class children than children from better-off families). I don't know if maybe that had some effect on her writing? Also, the main justification for Madge setting up a school in Tyrol was Jo's health. I wonder how that came about ... did EBD, after her holiday in Pertisau, decide to write a story about a British school being set up there and come up with the idea of Jo being "delicate" to fit in with it, or did she want a "delicate" heroine anyway? Sorry, am waffling now :oops: .

Author:  Rosie [ Fri Feb 12, 2010 1:08 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Mel wrote:
Do you think she yearned to be pale and interesting commanding fuss and cossetting?


All I have to say to this is that this idea went really badly for Madame Bovary...

Author:  Artemis [ Fri Feb 12, 2010 6:20 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Quote:
I think that's a very important point. She seems to like the early to bed, early to rise, lots of outdoor exercise, lots of delicious fresh food, jolly hockey sticks idea, but at the same time she also likes the Victorian idea of the delicate fragile heroines - as opposed to, for example, Enid Blyton who pretty much sticks to the healthy outdoorsy types only.


There’s a good book which deals with the changes in attitude from writers liking to portray the fragile delicate heroine to preferring the breezy, healthy outdoors type – it’s called ‘Good Girls make Good Wives’ by Judith Rowbotham, and it examines how heroines developed over the 19th and early 20th centuries. (But it’s hard to get hold of.)

It makes the point that the traditional Victorian heroine was often seen as sickly or even dying because it enhanced her spirituality and showed that she was not at home in the world. It also enhanced her ‘pure maiden’ and ‘redeemer’ status. It was her spiritual purity and strength that rescued the perhaps erring hero – although of course she might have to die in the process, because the ‘Angel in the House’ was not a sexual being. (Think Little Nell, Little Eva and many others.) It’s only later that fragility goes out of fashion and there is more an emphasis on health, both mental and physical, as attractive in women. So I guess EBD is showing evidence of that conflict of / change in views.

Robin’s, and to a lesser extent, Joey’s, fragility enhances their value as spiritual mentors – think about the Robin’s powers of redemption (eg with Deira in ‘Head Girl’) and Joey’s fabled influence far and wide. Mary Lou’s redeeming power only becomes really evident after she has been ‘purified’ by suffering (again, a very Victorian concept: for example Katy in ‘What Katy Did’). The physical attenuation, thinness, pallor and increased fragility, even the angelic curls as opposed to mundane plaits, after the Emerence escapade then put Mary Lou more in the ‘fragile = spiritually more developed' category of heroine. Until that accident, although she’s a leader, she is not given the ‘redeemer’ role so much, I think. (And she’s much easier to accept!)

I think EBD was very much a product of that Victorian development of views. If you think about the literature she would herself have read as a child, she would have had access to all of those views. We know she read Little Women, because there are bits lifted from that in her texts. For example in one book, I can’t remember which, there’s another cooking incident with someone flavouring something with the wrong stuff. Cornelia, having taken a massive mouthful of the disgusting mess, chokes, and leaves the table precipitately, in almost exactly the same words as Amy does in Meg and Jo’s ill-fated dinner party in Little Women. So EBD has her Jo March avatars, but she also has her version of Beth.

We know she read the ‘Elsie’ books, not only because Jem gave them to Joey to read - he should have been ashamed of himself as they are really disgusting in some respects – but because the incident where Joey falls when skating, nearly has her hand run over by a male skater, and is rescued by Jem, exactly parallels one in the ‘Elsie’ books with Lulu Raymond.
So she’s heavily influenced by that ‘fragile = spiritual’ meme from there too. A lot of the ‘instant obedience’ I think may come from the ‘Elsie’ books as well.

There’s also the C M Yonge books (which we know she read because of the way the girls in the Chalet school use them in the Sales) which have a heavy emphasis on spirituality. In ‘The Daisy Chain’, Margaret May, after an accident, dies slowly and beautifully over a period of several years, falling in love, but declining after her fiancé dies heroically. Her pale and interesting presence permeates the book like a delicate lavender mist, working its refining influence on untidy, over-intellectual Ethel, heedless Harry, and eventually even ‘worldly’ Flora (who meets her come-uppance for being a working mother when her little girls dies after being overdosed with an opium-based cordial by the nurse to whom she has farmed her out so she can get on with being a political hostess!)

When I re-read EBD it amuses me that there are so many references to Victorian canon children’s literature in her books: I’d love to do a sort of concordance, looking at all her adaptations and lifts.

I promise I’ll try not to post anything as long as this tomorrow . . . but I was just reflecting.

And I agree about Madame Bovary. Arsenic is not nearly as attractive an end to write as TB . . .

edited for typo

Author:  julieanne1811 [ Fri Feb 12, 2010 12:17 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Artemis, I love your posts! They take an unexplored query in my mind and give it substance. Thank you so much! I am about to try and do a post about how adult men in the CS books treat the women as if they are children, and how the women go along with it all ... I hope that you'll post some of your thoughts on that too!

Author:  julieanne1811 [ Fri Feb 12, 2010 2:06 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

And it's not only the girls ...
I’ve been reading Head Girl recently, and have been struck by the way Madge is spoken about as if she is extremely frail. In several books we are told that the girls shouldn’t grow up like spineless jelly-fish, so they should be informed of various war events, not sheltered from what was happening. But in Head Girl Madge is protected from knowing about Cornelia’s escape because ‘it would kill her’, and ‘it would make her ill if she knew!’ Of course, she has just had her first baby, but considering that just prior to the birth she had made the incredibly arduous climb back up to the Sonnalpe it appears somewhat unlikely that knowing of a child running away would result in illness for Madge. I just can’t join up in my mind these two attributes – physical fragility on the one hand and obvious physical strength on the other. Perhaps it’s the wonderful health-giving air of the Alps?!

Author:  Alison H [ Fri Feb 12, 2010 3:12 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Madge had a difficult time when David was born, but, as you say, she does get over-protected. Jem doses her when Sybil's kidnapped, and refuses to let her go and see Joey when the triplets are born as she's recovering from a stomach upset (I could understand it if he was worried about Joey or the babies catching whatever it was, but he only seems worried about Madge!).

It mainly seems to be Jem and Jack, and possibly Commander Carey with Doris at the time of Mary-Lou's accident, who are over-protective, and it mainly just seems to be with their own wives. No-one ever seems to worry that Hilda or Nell or any of the other CS staff members are liable to collapse with shock at hearing bad news, and I can't particularly imagine Phil Graves dosing Hilary, Gottfried Mensch saying that bad news must be kept from Gisela or Eugen Courvoisier going mad because one of the kids'd done something that worried Biddy. Sadly, I can very well imagine Reg dosing Len.

How many "delicate" males are there in the books, other than men who actually had a named illness and were being treated at the San? Mr Denny, Blossom Willoughby's brother Aubrey, possibly Charles Maynard ... are there any others?

Author:  emma t [ Fri Feb 12, 2010 8:31 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Alison H wrote:
.

How many "delicate" males are there in the books, other than men who actually had a named illness and were being treated at the San? Mr Denny, Blossom Willoughby's brother Aubrey, possibly Charles Maynard ... are there any others?


I don't think there are many others! The men liked to be in charge, and as the husbands of the Chalet girls seem to be doctors they can easily dose them (that's very convinient, don't you think?!) Did they not ever worry about how much, and how often say Jem or Jack were giving their wives? It seemed to be quite alot, and whenever they were stressed.

No-one does seem to question the doctors though, when they do does their wives. I am also surprised that Madge and Joey allow them to do so(I aplogise if it's already been discussed) though I know Joey once or twice says 'I assume you've made sure of that' when Jack sends her off to bed, with a sweetened cup of tea!

Author:  Cel [ Fri Feb 12, 2010 10:03 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

emma t wrote:
No-one does seem to question the doctors though, when they do does their wives. I am also surprised that Madge and Joey allow them to do so(I aplogise if it's already been discussed) though I know Joey once or twice says 'I assume you've made sure of that' when Jack sends her off to bed, with a sweetened cup of tea!


I'm just thinking seriously about this for the first time, and trying to imagine my SLOC bringing me tea laced with a sedative and me knowingly drinking it as if I didn't have a choice in the matter... how times have changed.

Author:  julieanne1811 [ Fri Feb 12, 2010 10:34 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

emma t wrote:
Alison H wrote:
I don't think there are many others! The men liked to be in charge, and as the husbands of the Chalet girls seem to be doctors they can easily dose them (that's very convinient, don't you think?!) Did they not ever worry about how much, and how often say Jem or Jack were giving their wives? It seemed to be quite alot, and whenever they were stressed.

And think of Phoebe as well - she ended up marrying Dr Peters ( a rather dodgy situation, as the relationship was developing while he was her doctor ...) Phoebe would never be strong and there, she has her own personal physician to care for her medically as well as in marriage. Curious.

Author:  Sunglass [ Sat Feb 13, 2010 11:41 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

julieanne1811 wrote:
And think of Phoebe as well - she ended up marrying Dr Peters ( a rather dodgy situation, as the relationship was developing while he was her doctor ...) Phoebe would never be strong and there, she has her own personal physician to care for her medically as well as in marriage. Curious.


I think EBD genuinely found that dynamic - the fragile woman and the masterful doctor husband taking care of her medically and maritally - genuinely appealing, not to say erotic, dubious though it may sound!

Despite the series' emphasis on standing on your own feet and not being a spineless jellyfish, there are so many scenes where someone just gives in, exhausted, ill or emotionally drained, and is put to bed, looked after, fed (and often sedated) by someone else, not necessarily a doctor - sometimes a school authority, or Joey. But EBD writes so often and so vividly of the sheer relief of someone else taking over responsibility when you can no longer cope - whether it's Miss Annersley sending a miscreant to bed in the sickroom with a tray because they've cried themselves sick in the study, or Joey collapsing onto Jack after the picnic where Robin disappears with the CS Peace League document - that I think that's partly why she sees marriage the way she does. It's a pleasurable surrender to someone else's authority, where you no longer have complete responsibility for yourself.

(And it's why hardly any of her men are allowed to be ill, fragile, or have any kind of emotional fragilities of their own, because their job is as SLOC to more fragile women.)

Author:  Tor [ Sat Feb 13, 2010 2:30 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

I know it has been rasied before, but I think that you are right, Sunglass, about EBD really finding the idea of being able to divulge oneself of all responsibilities so attractive. It makes me sad, because I think it gives quite a sad insight into her own life.

On a lighter note, I would not be surprised if one day a few torrid doctor-nurse/patient romances turned up that were written by EBD under a pseudonym (like Louisa May Alcott's penny dreadfuls). In fact, how about truning the Phyllis Matthewman wrote Prefects theory on its head, and say EBD helped out with some of Phyllis' output....!

Author:  julieanne1811 [ Sat Feb 13, 2010 3:48 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Tor wrote:
I know it has been rasied before, but I think that you are right, Sunglass, about EBD really finding the idea of being able to divulge oneself of all responsibilities so attractive. It makes me sad, because I think it gives quite a sad insight into her own life.


I don't find it sad that Elinor might have found it attractive to one's responsibilities taken away by someone else ... I live alone and have indifferent health. SOmetimes, when I'm not well, it would be so nice to have someone make a cup of tea. As it is, one has to gather all one's reserves and do it alone. I do hope this doesn't sound too sad ..! There are many benefits to the single life too (which Miss Read often talks about, and with which I fully concur). It's just that sometimes, it would be nice not to have to handle the post or do the garden alone. The garden is something particularly challenging. My best male friend sometimes comes and helps and we fall into him doing the garden while I bake a cake for tea. Not planned, but that division of labour seems to work well, and naturally, for us.
That said, I would HATE the control exerted by some of EBD's male characters over their wives. I would prefer to be alone than to be married on the condition that I was controlled in such a way ...

Author:  Margaret [ Sat Feb 13, 2010 3:49 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Tor wrote:
I know it has been rasied before, but I think that you are right, Sunglass, about EBD really finding the idea of being able to divulge oneself of all responsibilities so attractive.


Actually there are moments when Penny Rest appeals to me too!

Author:  Tor [ Sat Feb 13, 2010 4:03 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

What I mean is, I find it sad that is keeps on popping up over and over again. To me this suggests she was craving just that kind of release and support, and not getting it.... I think she had to bear a lot of burdens on her own

It's not sad to want help and support (don't we all at times), but it is sad if you don't get it

Author:  ChubbyMonkey [ Sat Feb 13, 2010 4:41 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

I'd have to agree Tor - though I'm now slightly worried what that says about me, given that I never really saw anything wrong in such behaviour :?

Possibly I'm being silly here, but might EBD have made a conscious decision not to show delicate men just because it's a series aimed at young girls? As a child reader, I'd hardly have wanted to know all about, say, Jack having a cold! Girls I can understand, because it's far easier to emphasise with them when you're young and boys are a completely different species altogether.

Author:  Artemis [ Sat Feb 13, 2010 4:53 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

With regard to the doctors dosing their wives with sedatives, I actually think that there is something seriously morally wrong there. As I understand it, doctors are not supposed to treat their own families medically at all, as it blurs the boundaries of personal and professional relationships, and is effectively malpractice even if the 'patient' consents, because a proper professional distance and objectivity has not been maintained.

It leaves the doctors open to accusations of abusing their professional standing, and the 'patient' open to serious exploitation because the normal safeguards for a person who is vulnerable either physically or emotionally are not in place. If you imagine one of the doctors performing any other medical procedure, it does also make you think. What is acceptable and what not?

Would it be acceptable for Jack to perform a termination on one of his daughters who became pregnant accidentally? To anaesthetise her to set a broken bone? To undertake the surggical repair of Joey's 'displaced organ' - obviously either a prolapse or a hiatus hernia? To prescribe any other drug for any other medical condition?

And where does he get the drugs from? Most hospitals and surgeries have very strict procedures for where drugs are kept, who keeps a check on supplies, who has access. He's either nicking them - which is very dubious, or he's being given them by the hospital, in which case they're colluding. Would they give him enough to euthanase someone? How do they know that they haven't . . .

I don't think EBD thought this one through at all . . .

Author:  Sunglass [ Sat Feb 13, 2010 4:59 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Tor wrote:
What I mean is, I find it sad that is keeps on popping up over and over again. To me this suggests she was craving just that kind of release and support, and not getting it.... I think she had to bear a lot of burdens on her own


Yes, I entirely agree. I know very little about her life, but the way EBD writes so often about relinquishing control and being looked after in various ways, suggests that she was someone to whom this happened all too infrequently in real life. The wistful way it comes up repeatedly suggests that she was someone who generally had to do the coping and the looking after without the luxury of fainting/running a fever/taking to her bed, or being protected from bad news or a difficult situation because she was perceived to be physically or emotionally 'fragile'.

It makes me admire her, but also to feel a bit impatient with some of her characters who are let off the hook repeatedly because of perceived delicacy or highly-strungness. Because someone like Joey is so cosseted by Madge and Jem, and later by Jack, her domestic help and her children, it's hard to know whether she could have coped without her faints and sedations, if she'd absolutely had to. I mean, if she hadn't had Bill and Frieda on the crossing from Guernsey, she would presumably have had to cope with three small babies under fire alone, and if it had depended on her to get Mike off the cliff face solo, or to get her entire family across Europe by train in Joey Goes,she would presumably have managed it because she had no choice.

I suppose I would just have liked to see EBD actually let adult Joey have to cope more often in this kind of situation, when schoolgirl Joey is so spunky about saving Grizel, Rufus, Elisaveta, Maureen etc. And I do feel strongly about the way in which Jack and the triplets behave as though she must be spared the slightest stress. But given that Joey is a kind of fantasy version of EBD herself, it's hardly surprising that she tries to spare her character the pains of managing difficult situations without support...?

I think this is also a central part of EBD's fascination with fragility - that there is a Genuine Medical Reason for you to be treated with kid gloves and watched over and protected by other people, so it's not just indulgence or spoiling. It might also feed into her particular preferences for very slender, ultra-feminine, 'dainty' looks - presumably her feeling is that a slim, fragile, girlish creature is more likely to find protectors than the kind of solid, jolly-looking woman EBD seems to have been herself...? Think how different it would have been if tiny, fragile Verity was rushing around looking after hefty, healthy pre-accident Mary-Lou - I think EBD wouldn't have taken that scenario seriously at all, even though there's no reason why the tiny, frail-looking girl has to be the clingy 'mooner' and the solid one the 'coper'...

ETA - entirely agree with Artemis's post about the deeply dubious morals of 'familial' medical treatment in the CS. But I do think EBD finds it both deeply reassuring and kind of erotic!

Author:  Tor [ Sat Feb 13, 2010 5:03 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Quote:
With regard to the doctors dosing their wives with sedatives, I actually think that there is something seriously morally wrong there


I agree, Artemis - and I also agree with you that this is probably something EBD just had not thought through at all (like Phoebe and Peter whatshisname). I think it may have something to do with a contemporary belief in the 'goodness' and saviour-like properties of modern (as it was then) medicine and science, as well as playing into whatever private issues EBD had with wanting to be looked after etc

r.e. the drug access, well, I sippose Jack had to cover all those school fees somehow. Perhaps he was trafficking drugs as a sideline, and had his own little operation go on up on the Platz.... :twisted:

Author:  cestina [ Sat Feb 13, 2010 5:20 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

I think it's extremely unlikely that Jack and Jem were using sedative drugs in the sense that we think of them nowadays. My guess is that they were using something like Valerian which I can remember my mother taking in tincture form for her "nerves"and insomnia. As far as I remember it was available over the counter and regarded as helpful but harmless.

Author:  julieanne1811 [ Sat Feb 13, 2010 5:34 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Artemis wrote:
With regard to the doctors dosing their wives with sedatives, I actually think that there is something seriously morally wrong there. As I understand it, doctors are not supposed to treat their own families medically at all, as it blurs the boundaries of personal and professional relationships, and is effectively malpractice even if the 'patient' consents, because a proper professional distance and objectivity has not been maintained.

It leaves the doctors open to accusations of abusing their professional standing, and the 'patient' open to serious exploitation because the normal safeguards for a person who is vulnerable either physically or emotionally are not in place. If you imagine one of the doctors performing any other medical procedure, it does also make you think. What is acceptable and what not?

Would it be acceptable for Jack to perform a termination on one of his daughters who became pregnant accidentally? To anaesthetise her to set a broken bone? To undertake the surggical repair of Joey's 'displaced organ' - obviously either a prolapse or a hiatus hernia? To prescribe any other drug for any other medical condition?

And where does he get the drugs from? Most hospitals and surgeries have very strict procedures for where drugs are kept, who keeps a check on supplies, who has access. He's either nicking them - which is very dubious, or he's being given them by the hospital, in which case they're colluding. Would they give him enough to euthanase someone? How do they know that they haven't . . .

I don't think EBD thought this one through at all . . .


Re: procurring drugs
As far as I know (which isn't far, really ...), in the past - 1920s included - it was easy to buy sedatives from the chemist without prescription. I saw an old B&W film recently (can't remember which one) and the hero did just that. And the sedatives weren't herbal. In Jane Auston's time (before any control of course) laudenum was the sedative of choice and easy to come by. Over time sedatives became more sophisticated and various control mechanisms have only come in slowly, bit by bit. So I don't find it suprising at all that the CS doctors found it easy to get hold of such things. Also, sedatives were much more freely used at the time. When I was doing my nurse training 1979-83, it was usual to provide night sedation in the form of sleeping tablets. Temazepam came in during the 1st Gulf war, and was 'tested' on the air force. It was thought that the drug had no hang-over effect, so it could be taken at night, giving a good sleep and the pilot would wake the next morning ready to take off again. Now temazepam is a controlled drug, and it is not routine to give patients night sedation, as it was in the early 80s.
So things change, and I think that in ELinor's day sedation was easily available and routinely used. Matey, too, often doses the girls, and that would certainly not be allowed now! I was going to say that she would have had to have had a standing order of some kind from a doctor to allow her to do this. But would she, in the 1920s? Perhaps then nurses could access drugs and use them without some kind of standing order being written up? I don't know ...
I wonder if the fact that there was very little real treatment available for anything meant that patients generally suffered more than nowadays, and in that case sedatives might well have helped to a degree?

Author:  Alison H [ Sat Feb 13, 2010 5:50 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

I also live on my own - I'm not the sort of person anyone would want to live with - and there are times when I would love for someone to come along, take charge and sort out all my problems! Especially as I am absolutely useless at any sort of DIY or anything practical and never know where to start when something breaks: maybe it's Hansi or Gaudenz I need, rather than Jem or Jack :lol: .

However, I find the whole dosing thing very creepy ... although it would have been much easier to obtain drugs then (as it still is in some countries).

Neil Sheppard, nice though he is, seems initially to take an interest in Grizel because she's clearly troubled and possibly heading for some sort of breakdown :shock: .

Sunglass, I'd also have liked to see Joey having to cope alone - as you say, if there hadn't been someone to catch her when she went around collapsing all over the place then presumably she'd've got on with it, as Elisaveta did.

Author:  Tor [ Sat Feb 13, 2010 6:02 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

This discussion makes me think that Mary-Lou becomes an interesting case - she gets a whole lot of burdens pied on her that she doesn't shirk *or* get rescued from by a passing doctor. Yes she comes to the Platz for support from Joey etc, but she doesn't get bossed around in the same way; rather she quite often ends up butting in to help out someone else at the same time.

Maybe, in Mary-Lou, we see the beginnings of EBD creating a more modern, independent female heroine.... the times they were a changin'. after all

Author:  Cel [ Sat Feb 13, 2010 7:17 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Artemis wrote:
And where does he get the drugs from? Most hospitals and surgeries have very strict procedures for where drugs are kept, who keeps a check on supplies, who has access. He's either nicking them - which is very dubious, or he's being given them by the hospital, in which case they're colluding. Would they give him enough to euthanase someone? How do they know that they haven't . . .


Most doctors nowadays will carry a supply of drugs in their 'on-call' bag (usually kept locked in the boot of the car) for house-calls and other emergencies, so access to these isn't usually a problem. And this would generally include a small amount of morphine as well as some sedatives - however, these are designed for use with the highly disturbed and agitated patient, not for slipping in your wife's tea if she's got herself a bit het up... :D I'd imagine that the control of drugs was probably a lot more lax in the 1930s and 40s.
On the issue of doctors treating family members - this is still a bit of a grey area, and I think most medical authorities have guidelines on it rather than hard and fast rules. In general, the practice is that it's acceptable to treat family members for acute minor ailments, but not for anything more serious or more long-term than that. And surgery on a family member would be an absolute no-no, unless it was some desert-island scenario... Again, though, these are 21st century ethics, and I think that it used to be common practice for doctors to treat their only family as any other patients.

Author:  Alison H [ Sat Feb 13, 2010 8:41 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Tor wrote:
This discussion makes me think that Mary-Lou becomes an interesting case - she gets a whole lot of burdens pied on her that she doesn't shirk *or* get rescued from by a passing doctor. Yes she comes to the Platz for support from Joey etc, but she doesn't get bossed around in the same way; rather she quite often ends up butting in to help out someone else at the same time.

Maybe, in Mary-Lou, we see the beginnings of EBD creating a more modern, independent female heroine.... the times they were a changin'. after all


Mmm ... in Reunion Mary-Lou arrives on the Platz feeling sad and alone and having taken a break from university, and it looks as if the stage is all set for her to be swept off her feet by someone from the San, and settle down to life as a doctor's wife and mother of dozens of children in a nice chalet on the Platz, without even having a go at a career in archaeology, but it doesn't happen. I've always been very glad about that. Although it does annoy me when she goes on about handing over responsibility for Verity to Alan Trevor, which is far worse than anything anyone ever says about Joey's relationship with Jack or Madge's with Jem :shock: .

Author:  sealpuppy [ Sat Feb 13, 2010 8:43 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Perhaps if Joey had been forced to cope with triplets on her own when escaping from Guernsey, the family might have stopped at three!
As for drugs being available, I have a vague memory of doing errands for our next door neighbour when I was about 10, (and getting sixpence as a tip!) However, my mother and granny had a nose inside the shopping bag and I was forbidden to do anymore trips to the chemist's for her. Somewhere in the back of my mind is the suggestion that I'd had to buy laudanum for her. That was in the early/mid 1950s.
Not so far-fetched when you know that Dr Collis Browne's remedy (for whatever ailed you, but specially the runs) contained laudanum. After that ingredient was removed by law, it never tasted so oddly exciting again! :oops:

Author:  Thursday Next [ Sat Feb 13, 2010 9:08 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Cel wrote:
.
On the issue of doctors treating family members - this is still a bit of a grey area, and I think most medical authorities have guidelines on it rather than hard and fast rules. In general, the practice is that it's acceptable to treat family members for acute minor ailments, but not for anything more serious or more long-term than that. And surgery on a family member would be an absolute no-no, unless it was some desert-island scenario... Again, though, these are 21st century ethics, and I think that it used to be common practice for doctors to treat their only family as any other patients.


My father was a gp and would treat the family for minor complaints. If I had a sore throat for instance and needed anti-biotics then he would give me some and he did the same for my mother and my brother and sister. I don't think anyone would have seen anything wrong with that. When any of us had anything more serious then we would have seen someone else. I think most of his colleagues did the same with their families.

Author:  julieanne1811 [ Sat Feb 13, 2010 9:13 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Joey certainly had a lot of help not available to women with families today, unless they can afford it. I have friends who live in east London. He is a Pastor of a church. They have 11 children and live in an unused pub which was derelict when they bought it. They did the pub up and educated the children at home.
I know that they coped without help most of the time - until the eldest children were preparing for their A levels and the grandparents came to help with tuition.
Anyway, they would say that things actually got easier the more children you have, because the older help with the younger. But Joey's crew was sent off to school and she had help with the house and cooking, which was probably a relief to Jack, considering Joey's level of cooking skills. I guess she didn't have to cope with vast amounts of laundry, cooking and general house management. She had her writing, of course, but nothing that would stress a frail person ... I do think that she had things quite easy within the home.
It's the same for Madge, with all her help in the home too. They both seem to have a lot of the pleasure of family life without to much of the daily physical stress that most people experience. I'm leaving things out like Margot's difficulties, because I think that not having to do the daily grind of small things actually gave Joey more freedon and time to attend to the bigger things.

Author:  Mrs Redboots [ Sat Feb 13, 2010 9:15 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Cel wrote:
And surgery on a family member would be an absolute no-no, unless it was some desert-island scenario... Again, though, these are 21st century ethics, and I think that it used to be common practice for doctors to treat their only family as any other patients.


I think that in What Katy Did, Katy doesn't get treated by her father, does she? I know he explains what's gone wrong and why, but even then (admittedly in the US - I do remember, as a small child, being quite shocked when told that this is where the story took place, and that somewhere could be a thousand miles from the sea!) the ethics seem to have been that a doctor didn't treat his own family.

And, to be fair, Jack doesn't treat his own family other than minor first-aid (and the infamous sedatives); Phil goes to the San when she is ill, and Joey goes to England to have her displaced organ put back. In fact, doesn't she go to England for tests, even, to find out exactly why she keeps getting tummy-upsets?

Re TB - my father, born 1923, had a tubercular gland in his neck removed when he was a toddler, and he says, blithely, "Oh, everybody had TB in those days; it was like cancer is today!"* And I have known two people, one the same age as my father, or thereabouts, the other slightly older and now gone to glory, who have had TB in recent years - in one case, in the hip, it was definitely a recurrence of a childhood infection; the other was TB of the spine, and I am not sure whether the person in question had been infected as a child or not, but I am inclined to think so.

* This isn't as wild as it sounds; a cancer specialist told me, some years ago, that everybody has some cancerous cells in them, but what isn't known is why they suddenly start reproducing. He said that if people routinely lived to 110 or more, they would probably all die of cancer.

Author:  Lesley [ Sat Feb 13, 2010 9:25 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Isn't it thought that one reason there is more people dying from cancer is because they haven't already died from conditions that used to kill regularly? Drugs like penicillin and those to treat TB meant that people lived long enough to develop cancer.

Author:  Mrs Redboots [ Sat Feb 13, 2010 9:33 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Lesley wrote:
Isn't it thought that one reason there is more people dying from cancer is because they haven't already died from conditions that used to kill regularly? Drugs like penicillin and those to treat TB meant that people lived long enough to develop cancer.


Yes, indeed - hence the comment that if we routinely lived well into our second centuries we'd all die of cancer. There's not a lot left to die from!

(I had measles as a child, before vaccinations were available, and I really wouldn't wish them on anybody, they were HORRIBLE!).

Author:  Artemis [ Sat Feb 13, 2010 11:15 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

I think my issue is with the fact that these are sedatives, and I don't think they are herbal sedatives such as valerian. (I've used valerian myself: it is calming, but not narcotic; also although after a period it is possible to become habituated to it, it's not addictive. It used to be given to WWI soldiers suffering from shell shock.)

It's fairly clear from the books that Jack doses Joey with something that produces deep sleep, and it's also clear that she doesn't know that she is being dosed. Sedation removes or alters a person's consciousness, and affects their ability to make decisions: many sedatives are also addictive as was discovered in the Fifties when they were routinely prescribed for unhappy housewives.

So he may well be giving her, without her knowledge or consent, a drug that renders her effectively unconscious, and is addictive. If a doctor in a hospital today did that, I think it would be called misconduct: and I think that we as patients are required to consent to treatment except, obviously in life threatening circumstances. And I think it would have been deemed to be misconduct then - because of the nature of the drug, and its being given without knowledge or consent. I am sure doctors did dose their families with antibiotics and so on, or treat minor stuff - but the patient knew they were being treated. It wasn't done surreptitiously.

So if I went to my doctor, distressed, and suffering from stress, and he called a nurse to get me a glass of water and 'slipped a tiny dose' into it, and presented it to me and told me to drink it without telling me what was in it, he would be in breach of professional ethics. I think that the only case in which a patient can be treated without their informed consent, is either in a life-threatening emergency - or if they have been sectioned under the Mental Health Act, and are no longer deemed capable of controlling their own lives - which happened to a friend of mine who was dying of AIDS and suffered from episodes of AIDS-related dementia.

I do agree tho' that with EBD there is a rather wistful longing evident for someone who would treat her as a delicate, feminine flower, and take away the burdens she had had to deal with all her life. I wonder if that's related to her lack of effective fathering - didn't her father disappear or something? She does seem to have issues around control - the 'instant obedience' thing with children and the need for a strong male authority figure.

Author:  ChubbyMonkey [ Sat Feb 13, 2010 11:44 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

But I don't see how you can argue that Joey didn't know about it. Surely she didn't keep waking up three hours later going "Well, where does the time go?" Sorry, I'm not trying to take a side on this debate in particular, because I don't feel qualified enough to say whether or not Jack should have dosed Joey - I just think that it would have been impossible for him to do it without her consent...

Author:  Lesley [ Sat Feb 13, 2010 11:53 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Even if she did wake three hours later and realise that she had been sedated - the fact remains that it was done without her consent. If Jack or whoever gave her a drink and a tablet and said, 'here, take this, it will calm you down' that would be consent - she could choose to take or not take the medication - but 'slipped a dose' in a drink smacks of subtefuge and was not taken with consent.

Author:  Artemis [ Sun Feb 14, 2010 12:41 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

It's OK Ariel, I like being argued with! :D If I recall correctly he puts her to bed with a drink that contains a sedative on several occasions - I'll look at the wording. But I may well be being picky about this 'cos I'm a bit of a control freak and anyone who tried it on me would be dead (or at very least looking for his wedding tackle in the shark bait box) if I ever found out. It just annoys me because it's that high-handed 'I know what's best for you' attitude, so I'm reacting to that as well.

And it removes from Joey the opportunity to grow and develop, which is unfair. . . but that takes us round to the emotional fragility being seen as desirable - which is part of the romantic fiction that delicate sensibilities imply a higher level of consciousness and moral worth. (It's more romantic to be Marianne than Elinor, although Jane Austen seems to favour Elinor's sense over Marianne's sensibility.)

Author:  Lisa_T [ Sun Feb 14, 2010 5:13 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

This is really interesting, and it recalls some conversations with my housemate re Margot's delicacy for DT. We thought that it was possible that a good many of EBD's 'delicate' children were in fact undiagnosed asthmatics, including Joey herself, but I've since read specific mentions of asthma in EBD's books since (Thrilling Term at Janeways being one, IIRC), so I doubt that theory holds any water. It could be an alternative to the inherited TB thing though since it seems that asthma can run in families.

Other points:
-Flu can still decimate boarding schools. I was tutoring a girl last summer who is at a boarding school somewhere in the south of England (like most of 'em) and she had to go home with a friend when the school closed as a result of the swine flu outbreak. I remember thinking that was ridiculous, because in 1995 we had a rather spectacular CS Does it Again style flu outbreak at school, and virtually everyone was ill. The sixth form block was used as a san to all intents and purposes, and one of the care staff/matrons in Year 7's boarding house managed to catch it no less than three times because of the endless nursing. Makes you wonder about Matey's indestructibility, really!

-Antibiotics
The discussion re strep struck a chord for me. I had repeated throat abcesses and tonsillitis eight years ago, and even with antibiotics it never cleared up. I've never been delicate in my life, but I came very close to it that year. The throat trouble wouldn't clear, the doctor started asking if I was having pains (he was worried about rheumatic fever, which I remember thinking was very Phoebe-ish), and I caught everything going. Then there was the constant exhaustion. In retrospect I wonder if part of the trouble could have been caused by glandular fever bobbing up again. I didn't really recover until after tonsillectomy, and hate to think what my life would have been like if the surgery had not been an option.

-Staff health
It's true that the CS staff are pretty hardy by and large - except for Hilda Annersley. From post-Gay on, she's treated as potentially if not actually frail. Joey tells Nell Wilson in Gay that she'd always been stronger than Hilda, then in Shocks Matey goes waaay OTT about slightly wet feet. In Trials Matey's orders to Hilda about getting rest are understandable after the scarlet epidemic, but by Triplets Hilda is routinely being marched off to bed as a result of exhaustion. In Jane Rosalie is anxious enough about Hilda's suddenly white face to enquire if she needs 'something'! Ditto in Althea/Prefects - after a nocturnal disturbance Rosalie tells Hilda to go to bed or she'll be 'dead in the morning' and Matey appears to back her up.

This doesn't happen with the same regularity to any other member of the teaching staff - the only time I can remember it happening to Nell (Stubai aside) is in Gay when she's anxious about Jacynth, and Jack/Jem/Peter Chester orders her to bed - but again, that's understandable considering it's not that long after the bus smash. They don't keep on with it.

Author:  Nightwing [ Sun Feb 14, 2010 5:35 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Artemis wrote:
It's fairly clear from the books that Jack doses Joey with something that produces deep sleep, and it's also clear that she doesn't know that she is being dosed...


I'll have to admit to being fairly ignorant about sedative (and most medical-related things, actually!) but I always took it that the sedatives were to get her to sleep, and then the rest was supposed to be her own natural sleep? Presumably sedative don't actually work like that, but in all honesty I wonder if EBD herself knew how they worked and were supposed to be used - she does come up with some rather odd medical 'solutions' to problems, at times!

Author:  Llywela [ Sun Feb 14, 2010 7:51 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

I'm pretty sure that Joey knows or at least guesses that she is being dosed at least some of the time - after Mary-Lou's accident, she and Jack even have a veiled conversation about it. Jack wants Joey to drink hot milk and sleep, she insists that she won't sleep because she hates hot milk, he brings the hot milk and says again that she will get some sleep after drinking it, and she grumbles that of course that means he's made sure of it.

Author:  Tor [ Sun Feb 14, 2010 11:21 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Quote:
Jack wants Joey to drink hot milk and sleep, she insists that she won't sleep because she hates hot milk, he brings the hot milk and says again that she will get some sleep after drinking it, and she grumbles that of course that means he's made sure of it.


But that's even worse - or rather weirder - in my book. To happily accept that your husband wont openly 'dose' you, but will slip things into your drink... :shock: Why couldn't Jack say, "Joey you need to sleep, would you like to take something to help you get off?"??!!

At a push, I suppose you could recast all the examples of the dosing of Joey by Jack as a kind of in-joke/husband and wife special language where the underlying meaning and consent are understood between them. But the way EBD portrays it is much more easily read as doctor/husband knows what's best for you, and doesn't need to discuss it with you.

Author:  cestina [ Sun Feb 14, 2010 1:31 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Well, Jo always had the option of chucking the milk out of the window! I think she colluded quite happily ( after all, it could have been a slug of brandy). But I'm sticking to my valerian idea rather than a strong sedative :D

Author:  Tor [ Sun Feb 14, 2010 3:00 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Quote:
Well, Jo always had the option of chucking the milk out of the window! I think she colluded quite happily


Maybe - but neither of these options would strike me as healthy in a relationship at all!

Author:  Artemis [ Sun Feb 14, 2010 3:07 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

I actually loathe hot milk - it gets a skin on it and its horrible. At least he could have given her a stiff drink!

Hope no -one thinks I am being too deadly serious, or pushing the point.

Author:  Cosimo's Jackal [ Sun Feb 14, 2010 4:30 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Tor wrote:
At a push, I suppose you could recast all the examples of the dosing of Joey by Jack as a kind of in-joke/husband and wife special language where the underlying meaning and consent are understood between them. But the way EBD portrays it is much more easily read as doctor/husband knows what's best for you, and doesn't need to discuss it with you.


What alarms me a bit about the dosing, whatever is actually being given - and given its obvious strength in causing sleep, I'm not convinced by the valerian argument, much though I'd like to be! - is in the context of dosings in the whole series. Joey was dosed all the way through her schooldays by Matey, and Jem took over in the holidays and immediately after she left school, while she was still a dependent minor. It's appropriate enough, if authoritarian, behaviour for adults who are in a position of authority over a child in their care, by the standards of the day.

I think adulthood and marriage changes the kind of dynamic that is appropriate, though, but EBD never acknowledges that, and blurs it further by blurring the roles of doctor/husband and patient/wife (as I suppose she blurred the roles of doctor and brother in law earlier and doctor/lover patient/beloved with Frank and Phoebe later...) What freaks me out a bit with the dosing is that EBD thinks it's OK for Jack to act towards his wife as Matey or Jem acted towards a child who couldn't be expected to fully understand her own illness or treatment because she was too young! But Joey is an adult - why not ask her whether she needs something to sleep?

Author:  fraujackson [ Sun Feb 14, 2010 5:43 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Sunglass wrote:

I think EBD genuinely found that dynamic - the fragile woman and the masterful doctor husband taking care of her medically and maritally - genuinely appealing, not to say erotic, dubious though it may sound!

Despite the series' emphasis on standing on your own feet and not being a spineless jellyfish, there are so many scenes where someone just gives in, exhausted, ill or emotionally drained, and is put to bed, looked after, fed (and often sedated) by someone else, not necessarily a doctor - sometimes a school authority, or Joey. But EBD writes so often and so vividly of the sheer relief of someone else taking over responsibility when you can no longer cope - whether it's Miss Annersley sending a miscreant to bed in the sickroom with a tray because they've cried themselves sick in the study, or Joey collapsing onto Jack after the picnic where Robin disappears with the CS Peace League document - that I think that's partly why she sees marriage the way she does. It's a pleasurable surrender to someone else's authority, where you no longer have complete responsibility for yourself.


I was wondering if the 'being put to bed when you were ill' idea was just EBD's logical continuation of the school situation in the adults' world ? Adults who readers are encouraged to identify with,
like Joey (who the girls say has never really grown up - as a compliment :) ) can therefore be treated in a familiar, 'school-like' way in their adult lives. I'm not saying I agree with the dosing at all, but might it just be a way of making the (possibly strange) 'adult' situation more familiar and school-like for younger readers ?

I agree with all the people who've said how lovely it would be if this being taken care of (not dosed !!) happened in real life !! Sometimes I'd love to have the leisure just to give up for a couple of days...!

Author:  Llywela [ Sun Feb 14, 2010 7:12 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Artemis wrote:
I actually loathe hot milk - it gets a skin on it and its horrible. At least he could have given her a stiff drink!

:lol: I actually quite like hot milk some nights - do it in the microwave and there is no skin, and a spoonful of honey stirred into it makes it just right.

I totally think that Jack should have been upfront with Joey about the dosing - how hard is it to say 'you're worn out, I really think that you need a good few hours of sleep, let me give you something to help you get off because I don't want you lying awake fretting for hours'?

Author:  Joey [ Mon Feb 15, 2010 11:40 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Artemis wrote:
I think my issue is with the fact that these are sedatives, and I don't think they are herbal sedatives such as valerian. (I've used valerian myself: it is calming, but not narcotic; also although after a period it is possible to become habituated to it, it's not addictive. It used to be given to WWI soldiers suffering from shell shock.)


I'm not trying to argue at all (this has been a very interesting discussion), but valerian has a deeply sedative effect on me. I once drank a calming herbal tea that had a small amount of valerian as one of the ingredients, and I fell asleep for two hours. Four years ago, when I was having serious trouble sleeping, I tried taking valerian in tablet form. It knocked me out for ten hours: I was exhausted and completely unrested when I woke up, and I was sluggish for the whole of the next day. I have avoided it since. Clearly different people are susceptible to different things!

Also, in one book - I can't remember which, sorry - we are actually told that the dose consists of Aspirin - rather different from controlled sedatives!

The one instance of inappropriate medication that really does shock me is in Reunion. Margot takes her party to Trummelbach and the lift breaks down. A girl who is not in their party becomes hysterical: when they get out of the lift, Hilary Graves digs in her handbag and hands over a tranquiliser to the girl's aunt, with instructions to put in the girl's drink to calm her down!

Author:  Lyanne [ Sun Feb 21, 2010 11:02 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Artemis wrote:
Thought this might interest people writing drabbles in which this aspect of school life features:

http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=303307

Note the concerns over lack of weight gain, an issue which was discussed in another recent thread.


The special school in my area for children with moderate to severe physical and associated learning difficulties started out as a school for delicate children - I can't easily find out the history to see but I think it was an open air school too.

Author:  sealpuppy [ Mon Feb 22, 2010 11:32 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Just about on topic: have just had an illustration of how the alpine air can benefit a 'delicate' child. My 9 year old granddaughter has just got back from a week's skiing with her family and as on their previous 5 trips, she has been a transformed child. She's asthmatic but copes well normally, though my daughter keeps a strict eye on colds; she tends to be a bit of a grizzler too. I was sure she'd be better in the mountains, because I always am (mildly asthmatic too). What happens, though, is apparently dramatic: practically one sniff of the cold, clear air and she's raring to go. No whinges, no coughing, no sneezing, full of energy and a delight to have about the place.
(She has a managing disposition so I'm envisaging a teaching career at the CS, for her! :) )

Author:  Alison H [ Mon Feb 22, 2010 12:43 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

We don't have much access to "Alpine air" here :lol: but - and even more so in previous generations when our local area was full of factories belching out smoke - there's definitely an idea that a day out at the seaside or anywhere else where the air is cleaner will do you a power of good.

I went on a day trip to Zermatt whilst I was in Italy last summer, and there's definitely something about the air in the Swiss mountains: I couldn't describe it but it definitely feels different.

Author:  julieanne1811 [ Mon Feb 22, 2010 7:38 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Alison H wrote:
We don't have much access to "Alpine air" here. I went on a day trip to Zermatt whilst I was in Italy last summer, and there's definitely something about the air in the Swiss mountains: I couldn't describe it but it definitely feels different.

I spent a lot of time in Switzerland during the 90s, and did most of the country (bar the Ticino), all by the fabulously-efficient and easy to use rail system. I, too, had a day in Zermatt. We sat on the grass on a mountainside and had a picnic (I love Ovosport bars ...!), with the beautiful Matterhorn seeming so near ...
And about the air (kind of). My Grandmother used to tell of children being rushed outside whenever there was a steam roller in the village in order to breathe deeply of the tar. It was supposed to kill any lurking infection of the lungs. Not quite Alpine though ..!

Author:  Fiona Mc [ Mon Feb 22, 2010 10:58 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

In a sense I can understand why Jack doses Joey without her knowing. She's not the most sensible, down to earth person about her health or following what I would call reasonable doctors orders but instead seems to go out of her way to flout them if she can! We see this in Genius/Fete when Jack is trying to enforce Dr Peters orders after Joey has had Cecil and Joey is complaining and protesting all the while. I would want to dose her just to get her to do without having to deal with the complaints and the I'm not doing it. I think we see the most tragic results of Joey not listening to doctors regarding her health is in Joey & Co go to Tirol when 8 weeks after the twins are born Joey insists on taking all the kids for a walk and then with Mike going down the side of a cliff, she holds it together to get him back up but promptly faints for 2 hours and leaves all the responsibility to Len. Len is only 14 and was fully aware of the danger to Mike and to her Mother. I mean who was the adult Joey or Len. Even after the lengthy faint she was protesting about being made to rest

If I was Jack I would have been furious with Joey for not being more sensible about taking 11 children for a walk around the cliffs especially so soon after giving birth which did have a very difficult pregnancy before it. Maybe that was why he was so strict with the kids taking on responsibility so much as he had a wife who point blank refused to and insisted on being a girl all the time. It may be he was forced in the end to dose her because she refused to listen to reason and be sensible.

In Mary Lou when Joey refuses to leave, she ends up being dosed instead of being made to rest during that time. I see it in ICU all the time, families insisting on staying and us nurses and doctors insisting they go home and get some rest and we emphasize that they will be too exhausted to care for their loved one when they are awake. It's completely different when they're dying, stay as much as you want to. If Mary Lou had of been changed when she was awake, she would have needed Joey then not when she was unconcious and Joey would have been too exhausted to help.

I don't think Joey is so much physically fragile as emotionally fragile and can't be sensible and grow up but insists on staying a Chalet girl her whole life, with the emotional maturity of one. She doesn't listen to anyone but insists on doing what she wants even to the detriment of her health and to the detriment of those around her. I can see how Jack would be driven to dose her on the quiet because he can't seem to get Joey to listen to reason as she continually treats his justified concerns as a joke

Author:  JB [ Mon Feb 22, 2010 11:12 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Fiona Mc wrote:
If I was Jack I would have been furious with Joey for not being more sensible about taking 11 children for a walk around the cliffs especially so soon after giving birth which did have a very difficult pregnancy before it.


I think that's an excellent point about emotional fragility. How physically fragile can Joey be when a couple of weeks after the cliff incident she's beating a sporty 16 year old boy in a swimming race? :roll:

Author:  Jennie [ Mon Feb 22, 2010 11:26 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

The whole point about it is that EBD loved to dramatise the 'fragile' aspects of Jo Maynard, but wrote her as a woman of 5'9" tall, strong enough to play tennis against teenagers, walk for miles, boast that she still does her daily dozen, manages long journeys, swims like a fish, and gives birth to eleven children. She also writes her as the fount of all wisdom, full of good advice to others, but then as someone who refuses to take responsibility for her own health and welfare.

I don't think she can have it both ways. For heaven's sake, if the woman is still emotionally fragile, why write her in situations where she is the direct line of all this sturm und drang?

If someone is supposedly mature enough to sort out all these problem girls, she ought to be mature enough to know when she has reached the limit of her strength and ability to cope. That's what maturity is.

Author:  Sunglass [ Tue Feb 23, 2010 6:53 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Jennie wrote:
The whole point about it is that EBD loved to dramatise the 'fragile' aspects of Jo Maynard, but wrote her as a woman of 5'9" tall, strong enough to play tennis against teenagers, walk for miles, boast that she still does her daily dozen, manages long journeys, swims like a fish, and gives birth to eleven children. She also writes her as the fount of all wisdom, full of good advice to others, but then as someone who refuses to take responsibility for her own health and welfare.

I don't think she can have it both ways. For heaven's sake, if the woman is still emotionally fragile, why write her in situations where she is the direct line of all this sturm und drang?


That's exactly right - you could certainly put together a convincing argument for seeing Joey as unusually physically strong, from her days of carrying three six month old babies around in a basket, to her quick recoveries from her many multiple births, to her ability to out-climb and out-swim strapping teenagers of both sexes in her mid or late thirties, the exercise regime she mentions in Reunion, the continual dog-walking, running up and down stairs in her huge house, and the evident physical energy of her continually 'whirling' around etc!

But EBD can't quite relinquish the idea that 'fragile' is much more interesting than 'strapping', so I think she does try to have it both ways, even though any real notion of Joey as frail vanishes during her schooldays. And even the rationale EBD produces early for her emotional fragility, which replaces the physical fragility to some extent - that she's a genius, and has a genius's mercurial temperament which will enable her to write great books, but also cause her to suffer, as Jem says during her schooldays - is downgraded later in the series to a more ordinary 'talent', so that line of reasoning (Joey is mentally fragile because she's so gifted) also doesn't quite work. Presumably because EBD is also trying to have it both ways in another sense - Joey is both a talented and successful writer, and a gregarious, happily-married wife and mother (rather than someone set aside and walled off from ordinary life by her gift, like Nina Ruatherford).

Author:  Alison H [ Tue Feb 23, 2010 8:56 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

I think a lot of problems (if that's the right word) are caused by EBD's desire for Jo to be all things to all people. In the early books, Madge and Gisela are the strong, responsible ones who take charge of things and dispense wise advice to those who need it, a role they could have continued with had EBD moved them to the Platz (or which could even just have been left to Hilda); Robin is, by the later Tyrol books, the fragile one who needs looking after; and Grizel is, in the early books, the one who goes off doing rash things. In the Swiss books, Jo is supposed to be all these things, as well as the never-quite-grown-up person who plays slidey mats with the kids and can't detach herself from the school, and it doesn't work because no-one can have every personality trait going!

Author:  Tor [ Tue Feb 23, 2010 12:01 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

Quote:
I think a lot of problems (if that's the right word) are caused by EBD's desire for Jo to be all things to all people.


Maybe in Jo we see an allegory, a harbinger of the stress we women are apparently under trying to do just that (perfect our bodies, our careers, our families, our friends...). Yes I am sure that was what EBD was aiming for :wink:

Author:  ChubbyMonkey [ Tue Feb 23, 2010 2:08 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Fragile or not?

I think that Jo worked very well as a character in the earlier books, and I don't think that she necessarily changes as much as we think (after all, she's 'fragile' but she can skate and ski and climb mountains) - it's just that her situation changes, and EBD finds herself writing this woman with 11 children, but she still needs Joey to be the Joey of the earlier books for the books to hold together with Joey there. If Joey wasn't still a CS girl at heart and rushing around getting involved, there would be no real reason for her to be in the series.

I think that what I'm trying to say is that EBD made a wonderful character, but had to give her an ending that she just wasn't suited for, and so we get this very skewed character at the end of it!

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