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Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)
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Author:  Beecharmer [ Sat Mar 19, 2011 2:39 pm ]
Post subject:  Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Hello all, I'm going to be cheeky and question things again, will be interesting to see what you all think.

I hope this is the right place for this discussion, the idea of formal discussions sounds far too grown up for me, which is why I have put it here. I think I am right in putting "adult matters" in the title since I have specific questions relating to homphobia, or have I got that wrong? Anyway - on to the question.

I have come across several instances in discussions and drabble that suggest a lot of you see Adult Jo as being very unlikely to be sympathetic / tolerant about certain issues, to the extent that the idea that Jo should find out is a real worry to many of you in drabble discussions !

Specific one that has come up again and again is a strong suggestion that you feel sure Jo will be homophobic, and that she is likely to be unworldly / insular.

Now I have thought again and again about this, and I just can't think of anywhere in the books that would give me this impression. If anything I have found to the contrary, which is why I am starting what I hope will be a good discussion. If I am covering old ground, again please forgive a newcomer, there is an awful lot of content on the board to get through !

Is it an assumption because of her religious views? Because although many of the people who are homophobic use religion as an excuse, I have often found that the people with true faith (in whatever religion / ideas they follow) are often quite likely to still be tolerant although they may be unhappy about the situation, they wouldn't react with the "get thee gone, satan" reactions many of you seem to feel Jo is likely to have. It doesn't seem enough to explain the quite nasty intolerant Jo that appears in many drabbles and discussions.

Specific to Jo, and why I think she would actually be one of the first people I would feel safe telling rather than the last - on many occasions she is shown as taking time to get to know people, and as being generally caring and thoughtful, and still caring for her friends and family even if their actions worry or hurt her.

She has not been the most conventional girl / woman of her time at any point, other than marrying a doctor and having a gazillion children. Even that is actually a bit unconventional in the times that the later books were written isn't it ? Aren't the 50s and 60s a time when there were more pressures towards the idea of 2.4 children families etc?

Oh help, my next patient has arrived, just when my brain is in full chalet school flow !! Well at least it will break up my random wafflings for you, and I may have some answers/ discussion to look forward to the end of the day.

Author:  Cosimo's Jackal [ Sat Mar 19, 2011 3:09 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Beecharmer, reassure me you are not in fact performing complicated surgeries with your mind on the CBB! :shock: :)

Could you link to the discussions of Joey as potentially homophobic? I've never seen any of these - are they appended to drabbles? I don't honestly see, personally, what evidence there is either way - there's no evidence that same-sex desire exists in the CS world (rather like needing to pee, atheism and premarital sex :D ) It's a bit like wondering what Joey would have made of the Falklands war, or Kindles!

Not that it isn't amusing to speculate about what fictional characters might have thought about things from outside their fictional worlds - and it is interesting, given Joey's characterisation as a sympathetic, wise listener, to think about how she might have responded to someone confiding they had done something of which she profoundly disapproved. Would EBD depict her as non-judgemental and sympathetic, whatever the confession, or are there limits to her sympathy? Interesting one.

Author:  JS [ Sat Mar 19, 2011 3:35 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I can think of a few drabbles/discussions where it's implied - or stated downright! - that life on the Platz is insular. A possible basis for that could be that whereas in the Tyrol books we used to see the school interact lots with the local community - eg going to the Kron Prinz Karl to hear the Tzigane (sp?), there's no suggestion that there's any interaction with Swiss people in Switzerland (apart from Len telling off the maids when they supposedly gossip about her and Reg :lol: ).

In particular, some people (on the CBB) have sympathy for Len that she's likely to end up back at the Platz with Reg after the wonders of Oxford - although EBD clearly thinks that's the ultimate 'reward' for some of her favourite characters.

I can't think of any discussions or drabbles (not that I've read anything like them all) which suggest that Jo would be homophobic and would tend to agree with Cosimo's Jackal on that one. (Mind you, I'm sure that Joey would have loved Kindles :) )

Author:  Beecharmer [ Sat Mar 19, 2011 4:01 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

LOL ! My apologies, the CBB feels so like various forums/groups/facebook chats that I have been around on for years that I forget sometimes none of you know anything about me really - I am an optometrist (Ophthalmic Optician).

So not doing any surgeries with mind on CBB ! I also do fully concentrate on what I am doing when testing eyes I promise. (mental note to never reveal actual location on CBB in case people report me to General Optical Council for inattention ...)

You did worry me to begin with - I saw your reply on my phone and thought that you were saying that I have been doing mind surgeries on the CBB, which I took to mean being subversive or spoling things by suggesting things that people think aren't there, before I realised what you meant!

It is mainly on drabbles and discussions about drabbles so far, but I may have just been reading mainly drabbles about same sex pairings of characters, (Nancy/Kathy mainly) it just surprised me that people seemed so sure she would not cope. I have read so many drabbles over the past few days it could take some time to find specific links.

Better get back to work before I get caught on CBB instead of writing referral letters. :-)

Author:  julieanne1811 [ Sat Mar 19, 2011 6:13 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Hmmm ... very interesting .... like Cosimo I don't think there's any evidence in the actual books to support any 'for' or 'against'. But would it be possible to give a cogent argument for either position I wonder?

Personally, at the moment (and it's highly possble that my mind will change after reading everyone's posts), I tend to think that Joey would be accepting of such a relationship. Her empathy is one of her greatest attributes (although I can't think of evidence to support what I've just said) an, geven that, I think that she'd be supportive even though she'd disappove. It's perfectly possible to hold such a position, and I think that Beecharmer has summerised it perfectly - the idea that those with
Quote:
true faith (in whatever religion / ideas they follow) are often quite likely to still be tolerant although they may be unhappy about the situation, they wouldn't react with the "get thee gone, satan" reactions ...


So ... for what it's worth, I think that Joey wouldn't approve, but that she would empathise. Can any of you think of a time when she did this about anything else?

Author:  Abi [ Sat Mar 19, 2011 8:04 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I'm not sure EBD would even have seen it as a potential issue; there's certainly no acknowledgement that homosexuality even exists (unless you count the incident when Kathie collapses, but that's highly debatable), so from that point of view it never would have been addressed.

If she'd been forced to, I think EBD would have used Joey as a loudspeaker for her own opinions on the subject and thus would have made her strongly disapprove (of course, I'm assuming here that EBD would have strongly disapproved!).

As far as the characters go, I'm not so sure. I'm rather torn between a position where Nancy and Kathie are partners and she's always known and accepts it with perfect equanimity (which is how I like to write her) and an opposite one where the whole question sort of bursts on her innocent mind, leaving her completely shocked and appalled as she'd never even thought of such a thing. She does have strong empathy, and I think eventually she'd learn to live with it and to accept her friends as they were, even if she never actually approved.

But as far as actual evidence goes - you can pretty much make up whatever response you want, I think!

Author:  Cosimo's Jackal [ Sat Mar 19, 2011 8:30 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

julieanne1811 wrote:
So ... for what it's worth, I think that Joey wouldn't approve, but that she would empathise. Can any of you think of a time when she did this about anything else?


No, I can't. People seem to turn to her in grief or bereavement (Juliet, Matey, Grizel), or looking for advice on behalf of other people (Mary-Lou), or she's chosen to be the one to break bad news to someone (Nina, Jacynth), or someone admits to some source of insecurity that's bothering them (Rosamund) - but no one ever seems to really confess anything, or at least nothing Joey doesn't already know about via a letter from an old girl. (And frankly, given Joey's record on keeping personal information private, I'd only come out to her if I wanted to let the entire Platz and the old girl network know. :D )

I suppose one of the things that makes it difficult to surmise about is the fact that I don't think we ever see adult Joey being really surprised, taken aback or knocked off guard about any revelation - she's virtually always in the position of knowing about whatever someone tells her already...?

Author:  Myth Tree [ Sat Mar 19, 2011 9:06 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I'm not sure. I think she is empathetic and caring but this is seen mostly as needing to help people conform to the Chalet School ideals. I know there is allowance for different characters but, certainly by the end of the series, there is a feeling of stasis probably due to aforesaid insularity.
I cannot see younger Joey being homophobic but later Jo, I'm not sure given her attitude to the 'beatniks'.

I don't think I've expressed that well- forgive me please.

Author:  ChubbyMonkey [ Sat Mar 19, 2011 9:11 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Abi wrote:
...the whole question sort of bursts on her innocent mind, leaving her completely shocked and appalled as she'd never even thought of such a thing.


At which, Jack promptly offers to invite over two of the younger mistresses from school, so that he can help demonstrate to her exactly how it works :lol:

Personally, I think that Joey would be very much supportive of the person in question, but possibly in a very unsupportive way. So she'd try and be helpful by quoting them bits of the bible, organising parties with lots of single doctors and throughly embarrassing all concerned parties, and letting them 'help' with the babies while making several heavy comments about how wonderful motherhood is.

Author:  Abi [ Sat Mar 19, 2011 9:20 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

ChubbyMonkey wrote:
Abi wrote:
So she'd try and be helpful by quoting them bits of the bible, organising parties with lots of single doctors and throughly embarrassing all concerned parties,


Except that, when does she really do this in the books? Generally when people ask her for help she's able to give it, at least to a certain extent. Interesting thought: would her reaction be different if the couple were worried about something (e.g. bad reactions from someone else) and came to her specifically asking for her help, from what they would be if she heard it on the grapevine or discovered it for herself?

Author:  Beecharmer [ Sat Mar 19, 2011 9:28 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I would agree that there isn't evidence in the books either way, although that is the beauty of subtext, if you want to find it you will !

What makes you think that EDB herself might be shocked / unaware / have a negative viewpoint ? Is it the fact of her religion/conversion, or any specific reason from her own history? Or is it that many people first read the books in a more innocent time of their lives so woudn't have thought of those things themselves necessarily then? It would then be hard to think of EDB as anything other than an innocent herself.

I need to look into it again, but I am sure I have read things before about EDB having intense friendships with women that could well be seen in a the context of emotional same sex relationships, whether physical or not. In her lifetime there would be several people that you could not say clearly whether they were unmarried spinsters, or gay and closeted, and a children's author would have had a very good reason for not being found to be "immoral". So just as we have no way to know if she would approve, we cannot really assume that she would be shocked, even with her religious views.

Speaking as someone who is obviously going to see the same-sex side of any question, EDB has created a lot of characters that I could identify growing up with their feelings, behaviour and close relationships.

Many other school books which have maybe one "tomboy" type character, who is nearly always "horsey" or sometimes presented in a slightly unattractive way. Or they show crushes on people in a childish, hero worship form, usually related to the appearance of the object of affection. The difference I feel in EDB is that the crushes that happen are often people being attracted to character and behaviour rather than appearance, and the hero worship is not often treated in a hugely negative way.

In EDB books my other perception is that the characters who are tomboys are often heroines, and very girly types of girls are often slightly dismissed or lesser characters. One of the longest running close-friendships / relationships is that of Hilda and Bill/Nell. And Tom is a very positive character. So whether she was herself gay-friendly / gay, she writes in a way that I feel is positive and encouraging to those of us that perhaps did not fit the typical female role models that we had presented to us. That is what makes me feel she would not necesarily be homophobic herself. As has been said several times, we have no specific evidence either way.

In terms of the religious views, one of the things that she focuses a lot on in the books is behaving in a "christian" way - although there are discussions about prayers, the main message of a lot of the books seems to be to follow the principles and guidance and to think about your actions rather than just doing something because someone tells you. She is clearly promoting her own view of which path she prefers, but it isnt like some books where the idea of religion is that you ought to follow dogmatically every rule and all others must be converted to your view or you can't be in contact with them. Again, that is why I feel she would have Joey understanding, maybe even supporting a commited relationship of equals, same sex or otherwise.

It doesn't seem from the discussion so far that the anti-Jo / Jo as being intolerant feeling is as strong as it had first appearance from the things I had read so far, which makes me feel better !

I completely agree though about not telling Jo anything that you want to keep secret, so perhaps what I have seen as people expecting her to be intolerant is really people saying "Don't let Joey know or everyone else will !"

As a last point - one thing I DO feel, but can't really analyse why, is that Madge actually would have a lot more trouble with understanding than Jo.

The worrying thing is that after thinking about these things I feel a definite plot bunny or two running around in my head, which is not good since I need to concentrate on real life at least occasionally, and sleep is severely lacking after getting addicted to reading various drabbles.

Thank you all for your interest / answers so far, even if it turns out I have more supporters in my view than I had thought. Any dissenters out there who think Joey WOULD have been intolerant ? :-)

Arghhh, just found out there are more interesting posts added while I wrote this !! Nooooooooo I need to eat / sleep / work / walk dog, you are all going cause my partner to send me to CBB anonymous before I have been on this forum even a week !!!

Author:  Thursday Next [ Sat Mar 19, 2011 9:28 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I was very surprised when I read Summer Term for the first time as I really felt her Beatnik reaction totally over the top and, I feel, rather out of character. However I think that is the book I dislike the most as a lot of it doesn't ring true to me.

Author:  Alison H [ Sat Mar 19, 2011 9:34 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

It's very difficult to judge how someone who grew up in a different sort of society would react to something which wasn't generally accepted in that society. I think Jo would probably have been shocked had she found out that Kathie and Nancy were in a relationship, but I also think she'd've been shocked had Con moved in with a boyfriend without marriage, Peggy and Giles got divorced or Stephen announced that he was an atheist, and that's more a reflection of generally-held views at the time than of Joey's own personality. Male homosexuality (the law never covered female homosexuality) was illegal in the UK until the late 1960s, and it wasn't until the '80s that same sex relationships were commonly shown in TV programmes, so I think many conventional people in the '50s might have been taken aback to find that two of their friends were in a same sex relationship.

In the later years, we do seem to see a more reactionary attitude in the books. I'm always quite shocked by the way that Naomi, a 17-year-old agnostic, is forced to attend daily Christian prayer services, and quite bemused that EBD shows an intelligent girl like Mary-Lou being completely shocked that someone should be an agnostic, and being so embarrassed by the word "boys" (in Problem) that she can't even say it without blushing! I'd like to think that Joey would be empathetic and understanding once she'd got over the shock and realised that Kathie and Nancy (or any other couple) were genuinely committed to each other and made each other happy, though.

Author:  Abi [ Sat Mar 19, 2011 9:46 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Beecharmer23 wrote:
What makes you think that EDB herself might be shocked / unaware / have a negative viewpoint ?


Only that I assumed that her beliefs would be more or less consistent with the majority of her generation. Also she seems to have been strongly religious and Christianity, especially at that time, had an extremely strong bias against homosexuality. Obviously there's not really any evidence or proof - it is just an assumption.

But even if she was aware of homosexuality, whether she approved or not, there's no way she'd have been allowed to acknowledge it, let alone endorse it, in a series of books for children!

Quote:
As a last point - one thing I DO feel, but can't really analyse why, is that Madge actually would have a lot more trouble with understanding than Jo.


I think this is probably because Madge is that little bit older than Joey. She fills the role of Joey's mother, and, despite what Joey or EBD say, she does seem to become very much 'that sweet woman, Lady Russell.' I think she was - or perhaps became - a lot more conventionally minded than Joey ever did.

Author:  Beecharmer [ Sat Mar 19, 2011 10:10 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Alison H wrote:
I think many conventional people in the '50s might have been taken aback to find that two of their friends were in a same sex relationship.


Totally agree, although in fact even with greater knowledge and understanding now my experience is that many people now are taken aback too. The big difference is I think more people in the last 10 to 15 years are now curious and supportive more often rather than appalled / disgusted. But it is still quite funny to see people do their best not to react when they realise we are a couple rather than "really really good friends who live in the same place, share a car and go on holiday together and worry about each other if we are ill" lol ;-)

Author:  Beecharmer [ Sat Mar 19, 2011 10:16 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

ChubbyMonkey wrote:
Abi wrote:
...the whole question sort of bursts on her innocent mind, leaving her completely shocked and appalled as she'd never even thought of such a thing.


At which, Jack promptly offers to invite over two of the younger mistresses from school, so that he can help demonstrate to her exactly how it works :lol:



ROTFLMA and quite possibly would scare the cat if I had one.

Apologies for not adding this within my previous post I am as yet my sure how to do multiple quoted from different people in one post.

Author:  KB [ Sat Mar 19, 2011 10:44 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I agree with Thursday Next that the beatnik scene is probably seen by those who portray Jo in that way as the possible justification behind any homophobic reactions. For those who don't remember it:

Quote:
Erica glanced up to behold a couple of young women clad in tight jeans, big, Sloppy Joe jumpers, and with hair that looked as if a rake had been pushed smartly through it. She was a fastidious creature and she made a face as she noticed that the scarlet nails of both had black rims. They carried knap-sacks crammed with artists' materials and a big hold-all seemed to be dedicated to clothes and other necessaries, for a nylon stocking dangled out of it.

"Told you we'd do it," the darker one of the pair observed in a high-pitched adenoidal voice. "All that fuss for nothing! You are an ass, Nillie! Here, sling this thing up. You're taller than I am."

Nillie, who seemed to be a biddable creature, did as she was ordered before sitting down and producing a packet of cigarettes and lighting up. Noticing Erica's stare at the pair, Joey touched her ankle under their table.

"Must you stare at them?" she asked in an undertone. "They might be snakes and you their coming victim! They're only beatniks-that means people in need of a capable nanny and a good tubbing. Incidentally, that sort of thing is going out of fashion, thank goodness! One can put up with all sorts of whims and fancies from people in the teens, but beatniks are plain dirty and nothing else-unless you reckon plain lazy and clearly untrustworthy."

"Why?-untrustworthy, I mean ?" Erica asked, startled.

"My dear girl! If you've so little self-respect you don't care what a sight you look you certainly can't be trusted to respect other people. At least," Joey modified her dictum a little, "that's the impression you give. Now settle down. We'll be off shortly. Got everything you're likely to need?"


Any feelings Joey may have had are supported by the behaviour of the girls themselves:

Quote:
When finally they rolled into the Gare du Nord, they lost their messy companions, much to Joey's relief. She was no prude, but she did object to the downright pro-fanity the pair saw fit to use with every other sentence. And she did wish someone had told them that there were more adjectives than one in the English language!


(Personally, I've always felt that this scene was lifted out of real life and EBD may well have faced something similar on one of her trips!)

For this one scene, however, there are many others that show the exact opposite. Unfortunately I think the real tendency to imply such things about Joey comes from the general air of Joey-bashing that tends to be prevalent on this board at time (although it swiftly disappears whenever anyone tries to pin it down or explain it, as can be seen by the comments on this thread).

Author:  ClaireK [ Sat Mar 19, 2011 10:52 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

We also hear that Joey wants to "keep her girls young", which can only be translated as "not having realtionships with boys" as we see that the triplets and Len especially, are actually expected to take on a lot of responsibility. For some reason, Joey wants to suppress the completely normal activity of young people learning about one another (and by this I mean how to get on with people of the opposite sex, nothing more!) and I think that there is eveidence in the books that EBD herself thinks this is a good thing too. So what we have is girls living in a closeted world, where the opposite sex only appears in the form of a male relative or a doctor! Small wonder that the incredibly innocent Len becomes engaged to a much older friend of her parents, whom she has never even kissed.

I would venture to guess that EBD and many others of her generation would never have batted an eye at two people of the same sex living together - because they would just automatically assume that they were good friends. It is only fairly recently that people have become not only aware of same sex relationships, but also feel that they have the right to speculate about other peoples sexuality. And, as I do in fact share my house with a very dear friend and am *not* in a relationship with her, I personally find such idle specualtion rather funny! We share a house as both our marriages broke up and we discovered that pooling our resources made financial sense and also meant we both had company and support.

Author:  Alison H [ Sat Mar 19, 2011 11:20 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I find the beatnik scene hilarious :lol: . No way can I imagine Joey, who in her own teens was always being told off for having messy hair or inky fingers, huffing and puffing about the youth of today needing a good bath and a nanny, or being so irrational as to assume that someone couldn't be trusted because their nails were less than spotless. I can accept that she might've been upset by excessive swearing, but not the rest of it.

There does seem to be a change as the series goes on. Had James H Kettlewell been on a train with the CS people in later years, the girls would probably have been rushed into another carriage and given a stern lecture about not talking to men who were forward enough to address ladies they didn't know, Joey would probably have been put in solitary confinement for a month for going AWOL with Eigen, and Eugen von und zu Wertheim as a young unmarried man would never have been allowed anywhere near the school regatta :wink:. & I'm not sure that Madge as she was in the early days would have been all that shocked by Naomi's agnosticism, Joan's dress sense or indeed a relationship between Kathie and Nancy.

AFAIK, there was quite a lot of discussion at the time at which EBD was writing about relationships between women in GO books - "Grand Passions", crushes, romantic friendships and Anti-Soppism, and some of the scenes in the Abbey books in which one friend describes herself as another female friend's "husband". EBD had to've been aware of that, and she addresses the issue in Tom Tackles, so I would certainly guess that she'd've been aware that Nancy and Kathie's close relationship might provoke speculation.

Author:  Fiona Mc [ Sat Mar 19, 2011 11:53 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I don't know how understanding Joey would be of a lot of things. To me she copes reasonably well with school girl problems and gripes and worries and with death. All things she deals with on a regular basis and has for years. Though at times her comments on people dying can seem a little callous such as the young man who died in the car accident with Nina and the Rutherfords, when Joey says it's a blessing he died because his mother recently died. But then it was to Nina who probably could understand that sentiment.

I think Joey is emphathetic for the most part but isn't emotionally strong and therefore, a lot wouldn't be told to her because there is a lot in life she doesn't cope with, and instead leaves much younger people to deal with it. These are when she faints when Mike goes down the cliff and poor Len at 14 is left to deal with it, and then Len has to deal with the aftermath with Mike. The other is Sybil with her accident with Josette. Madge is dealing with a dying child, and although she forgives her daughter immediately can't be with her as her dying child needs her more. Joey can't forgive Sybil (who is 9) and doesn't step into the breach and be there for her niece who is devastated by the accident and her father's reaction. Another is during the War years both in the escape from Austria and from Guernsey. She doesn't appear to cope but instead colapses and Frieda or Hilary is left to cope instead

My thought is I would not go to Joey as the first port of call because however sympathetic/emphathetic she is, she isn't one of life's copers and she doesn't come accross as someone who can cope in a crisis; she is more likely to colapse in a heap, leaving you with having to deal with her on top of everything else

Author:  Beecharmer [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 1:09 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Very true, there are plenty of people living together for other reasons, I would imagine in many ways you have the opposite situation to us now, where people assume you are a couple nowadays where people might have assumed you definitely were not a couple a while ago. Knowing how annoying it is for me to have people assume there must be a man in the house it must be just as annoying for you now when people assume there wouldn't be a man. One of my partner's favourite saying is from priscilla queen of the desert ( I think?), "Assumption is the mother of all f*** ups" ( excuse the asterisks anyone who might be offended, but the basic saying seemed apropriate here from both sides of the issue :-) ) I didn't mean any offence with my tounge in cheek comment referencing nancy and kathy and their car etc, just being silly really. Sorry if it struck a nerve !

One thing I would add to the above is I imagine people have always speculated about others private lives - the big difference is that we are almost expected to gossip now, with the media reports on which celebrity ate cornflakes yesterday etc etc. Wheras previously it was maybe less socially acceptable to blatently and obsessively gossip as much about other people. While I may enjoy speculating about possible fictional character pairings that might fit my own world view, but I can't be bothered with gossip about real people in general, it's usually rubbish by the time more than two people have passed a rumour around.

Back to the chalet school discussion, I think that is a good point about Jo actually collapsing all over the place, I think in many ways the Jo I have in mind is far more the earlier one than the later one, she seems to change a lot over the years, such that they almost feel like two different characters. A very good Drabble I have just been reading shows Jo having health problems earlier that might explain things like her apparent weakness and everyone behaving carefully around her very well, I think it is called Jo's greatest /biggest challenge (?)

Thank you for the beatnik information, I have never read that book. I do agree aswell that the beautifully messy teenager that Jo was really ought to make her unlikely to comment. Saying that - in a way she is not necessarily talking about mess, but dirt, if you see the distinction - while many of us might end up messy or untidy, I would imagine most if us would still wash reasonably regularly, which could be what she us getting at, rather than untidiness. [ Though I have no evidence for that assumption I suppose, you could well all be filthy dirty people who never wash. With all these drabbles to read and write I could well see functions like washing and eating and sleeping being neglected ! ;-) ]

That is a good point about madge being a generation further apart, and you have clarified to me where my own feeling about it comes from, I expect Lady Russell to be shocked, perhaps less would I expect young Madge Bettany to be shocked.

Although I have myself pointed out mainly the homophobia side, that isnt the only reason i started the discussion. I also noticed, and still notice a tendency to feel joey is innocent and inexperienced. This surprised me, because when you think about it, she has lived in several different countries, is portrayed as being very interested in other cultures and languages, and has been to India travelling. she has also lived through a war that became very close to home on more than one occasion, shows a fair amount of awareness of people less fortunate than herself, has had a lot of experience with grief, married out of her faith, and married a much older man, which might have been unconventional in itself. She is interested in history, warfare and napolean, and has a career that she continues despite marrying at a time when that might be less common. She also seems likely to have some understanding and enjoyment of the physical side of marriage with that many children! ( though perhaps not, maybe that is the problem, she hasn't worked out what causes all these babies ;-) )

I found it interesting that a fair amount of people seemed to consider her so innocent in many ways. But it could well be a theme more noticeable in the later books, as someone has said I believe. I have never been that keen on those ones, so have read them far less than the earlier and middle ones.

Hope that all makes reasonable sense, I know I am only repeating /confirming things some of you have effectively said, but i can't look back at comments easily on my phone so apologies for repetition!

Author:  Kathy_S [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 1:14 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I'm reasonably sure Jo would show herself to be caring and sympathetic with individuals of whom she was fond, however much she opposed any form of "living in sin" at the intellectual level. In other words, in the pastoral vs. dogmatic theology debate, I'd place her on the pastoral end of the scale.

I've never bought the idea that she "never forgave" Sybil. Somehow people seem to draw this conclusion from Jo's statement in Peggy about how very sorry she'd been for Sybil in the aftermath of the accident, because of the guilt poor Sybil must have been feeling. From my perspective, Jo was empathizing there, knowing how she'd feel herself if she'd been the one to cause a serious injury after doing something forbidden - even though it was an accident. If you can feel sorry for the culprit instead of just furious or appalled or vengeful, it usually means you've forgiven them already. Festering lack of forgiveness is much more likely when the culprit takes no responsibility.

Author:  Lesley [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 2:54 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

You know I really don't like the term Joey-bashing. It seems to be used as a way to denigrate the very real concerns and viewpoints about a character who changes in the later books to almost become a caricature of herself. I like Joey as a schoolgirl and as a young woman, she is an excellent, realistic character with many good and bad points. I do not like the way she is allowed to evolve into someone that is perceived to have no real faults, even though the same things in others would be seen as faults - tactlessness, thoughtlessness, one-upmanship. The term Joey-bashing almost seems to be used as a way to dismiss these views - like they are not valid. I don't know, would those who feel that Joey does not have any faults care to be referred to a Joey-loving? And that their viewpoints be dismissed as only that?

Sorry rant over - it's late.


Re Joey's reaction to a same-sex relationship - Joey did have a rather sheltered upbringing, she mixed mainly with middle class people and values and her views on the lower classes and on change in general was very conservative. She never really stepped outside her comfort zones - yes she was involved in the escape from Austria but never actually had to take responsibility for herself or others. She would, I think, have difficulty accepting a same sex relationship but I'm not sure that she would actually be nasty about it. More likely she would keep throwing single doctors at poor Nancy and Kathie (or anyone else) in the hopes that they would get over their phase.

I don't think that the fact she was a convert to Catholicism should make anyone feel she was more or less likely to have strong views against homosexuality - Joey's basic nature has always been that she cared about people.

I'll stop now as I'm falling asleep at the keyboard. :roll:

Author:  Beecharmer [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 3:25 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I agree about the later Joey, as said before, although I still like Joey overall. But the whole point of the discussions (other than for exercising plot rabbits I would imagine) is debate and exchanging views, so Joey-bashing or Joey-loving, it is interesting to see all of the views.

Have found one of the places where I found this tendancy - was from reading the brilliant and hilarious posts in the Alternative Romance archive, at the beginning there is a fair amount of suggestion Joey wouldn't cope. There were other discussions, but the chance of me remembering them all is minimal.

Author:  Miss Di [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 3:48 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

As EBD had friends who were theatricals I am sure she would have met homosexual people. I also don't think she wrote about them even coded as it wouldn't have been done at the time she was writing.

That said, I'm sure Joey would have been totally oblivious. Many women of Joey's age didn't marry because their potential partners had been killed in the war and many women shared households for companionship. Who knows how many of them shared a room!

Author:  Alison H [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 8:12 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I think some people now seem to find it difficult to accept that any two people, whether two men, two women and a man and a woman, can be "just good friends" unless they're clearly in relationships with other people! For example, I can imagine people these days assuming that Grizel and Deira were together, when Grizel moved to the other side of the world to live and work with Deira, whereas in CS times people just accepted that they were two friends sharing a home.

Joey in later years does seem to assume that her lifestyle is what everyone would aspire to: she quizzes Rosalie about why she's never married, and makes comments about how Samaris's parents should have had more children - which I find very tactless bearing in mind that she's got no idea whether they've only got one child through choice or because they weren't able to have any more. I don't think she'd've been nasty about a same sex relationship once she'd got used to the idea, though. Also, as someone who read a lot of history, she would probably have been more familiar with the idea of same sex relationships than most people around her, although I'm never sure whether or not people genuinely would've taken all those references to James I and Edward II's "favourites" in older history books to mean "just good friends" ... like that scene in which Joey, Evvy and Grizel go to Salzburg and we're told that the house which a former bishop built for his mistress was built for his female "friend"!

Author:  ClaireK [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 8:58 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I must say that when I devoured historical novels (such as those by Jean Plaidy) as a teenager, I never thought that "favourite" meant anything other than someone who was a very close friend of the monarch. Perhpas it might be reasonable to assume Joey had much the same outlook, given that she is meant to be about 50 years older than me? My point being, that up to the mid-late 70s, main-stream books were much more subtle about same-sex relationships - there may have been the implication, but put in such a way that it would roll-over the heads of "gentle" readers. That seemed to change with the advent of authors such as Susan Howatch, who used historical characters, but updated the settings. And then came "Flowers in the Attic", with all the incest/abuse storylines and a whole new genre was begun. But prior to these examples, IMO books were much less "in your face" in general. What was seen as quite shocking is now a part of mainstream fiction and we also have the "true life" stories of abuse which seem to proliferate. Hmmm - give me a nice Jean Plaidy anyday - or an Anya Seton.

Author:  julieanne1811 [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 10:34 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Alison H wrote:
I'm always quite shocked by the way that Naomi, a 17-year-old agnostic, is forced to attend daily Christian prayer services


This is OT but I have to comment on it quickly. I wouldn't go so far as to say Naomi was 'forced' - she was at a school where daily Christian prayers were the norm, and as a pupil of the school she would be expected to fit in with everyone else, whatever her personal views of the time.

The Fourths might moan about classes but one can't (well, one can, but it would be a bit odd!) really suggest that they are 'forced' to attend class and I think Naomi's case is similar. There would have been many shades of belief at the school, admittedly most of them 'Christian'), and at what point in the shading would one then consider that anyone is 'forced' into going to daily paryers and performing them as prescribed at the school?

Author:  cal562301 [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 10:35 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Alison H wrote:
I think some people now seem to find it difficult to accept that any two people, whether two men, two women and a man and a woman, can be "just good friends" unless they're clearly in relationships with other people! For example, I can imagine people these days assuming that Grizel and Deira were together, when Grizel moved to the other side of the world to live and work with Deira, whereas in CS times people just accepted that they were two friends sharing a home.

Joey in later years does seem to assume that her lifestyle is what everyone would aspire to: she quizzes Rosalie about why she's never married, and makes comments about how Samaris's parents should have had more children - which I find very tactless bearing in mind that she's got no idea whether they've only got one child through choice or because they weren't able to have any more. I don't think she'd've been nasty about a same sex relationship once she'd got used to the idea, though. Also, as someone who read a lot of history, she would probably have been more familiar with the idea of same sex relationships than most people around her, although I'm never sure whether or not people genuinely would've taken all those references to James I and Edward II's "favourites" in older history books to mean "just good friends" ... like that scene in which Joey, Evvy and Grizel go to Salzburg and we're told that the house which a former bishop built for his mistress was built for his female "friend"!


I hope I don't offend anyone by this, but as a 50+ single, who has never been in a long-term relationship with either sex, I have been slightly concerned over recent months by what appears to be the increasing number of drabbles and discussions about same-sex relationships in CS.

I'm not sure whether this is a reflection of the make up of the CBB membership, but it is a fact that homosexuals are a minority in society.

Someone mentioned platonic friendships. I have lots of good friends (and a few very close ones) of both sexes, but even with the closest ones there is no suggestion of anything sexual on either side. It is actually possible, believe it or not, to live a happy and fulfilled life without being involved in a sexual relationship with another human being.

Miss A and Bill are prime examples of that from CS, although I know there have been suggestions from some that even they have some sort of deeper relationship.

My question is: why is this emphasis considered necessary? Let the characters be. I don't want to stifle discussion, but I, for one, feel that the pendulum has swung too far the other way.

And for those of you who are involved in same sex relationships, I respect your right to live the way that you choose. But I still feel that there is too much assumption on the board that because two characters are very close, they must be sexually involved.

Author:  KathrynW [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 10:39 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

julieanne1811 wrote:
Alison H wrote:
I'm always quite shocked by the way that Naomi, a 17-year-old agnostic, is forced to attend daily Christian prayer services


This is OT but I have to comment on it quickly. I wouldn't go so far as to say Naomi was 'forced' - she was at a school where daily Christian prayers were the norm, and as a pupil of the school she would be expected to fit in with everyone else, whatever her personal views of the time.

The Fourths might moan about classes but one can't (well, one can, but it would be a bit odd!) really suggest that they are 'forced' to attend class and I think Naomi's case is similar. There would have been many shades of belief at the school, admittedly most of them 'Christian'), and at what point in the shading would one then consider that anyone is 'forced' into going to daily paryers and performing them as prescribed at the school?


If I was in Naomi's position, I would feel that I was being forced into going. In fact, at my senior school, we eventually went on strike and refused to go to the one religious assembly of the week until they had a separate agnostic/atheist assembly.

Author:  Beecharmer [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 11:31 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

ClaireK wrote:
give me a nice Jean Plaidy anyday.

Agreed, lots of books now seem to have to be filled with angst and pain in order to get published, including a lot of children's books. While it is important children have at least some of these issues covered so those in the situations themselves can find ways to understand themselves and deal with it, I am glad to have been able to escape into chalet, Enid Blyton etc as a child, without the stories having to always be up to date and hard edged.

I would disagree that the books might not have been written with subtext because of being written in at that time. The communication with like minded people is not a new invention, even in the 50s, it is more that people nowadays dont necessarily have to write obliquely - it almost seems to be a rule in many programs now that they must have a gay character!

In many ways the books being written at that time would be more likely to have to give more mainstream readers one view and others a different view. Whether that was done consciously by EBD, subconsciously because she couldn't accept her own self, or with compete innocence and she would be shocked now, we can't really know. I would imagine everyone would fall into putting EBD's personal experience to fit their own world view. which is why there is so much great debate on this board - variety of viewpoints :-)

If people post their drabbles in an appropriate way and indicate discussions with adult matters, surely the idea is that people who would be distressed about these interpretations don't have to read them ? It seems sad to see the idea on here that because someone perceives homosexuality as a minority they don't want people to use their imaginations / life experiences in debate or drabbles.

In the UK the impression is that those who have strongly held conservative religious beliefs are often in a minority, ( I know i will probably be flamed for expressing that view, but as someone with my own deeply held beliefs and respect those of others I actually think it is a sad fact that if you look at church numbers relative to the population it might be hard to see religious people as a majority any more. Even people who still go to church do so on a social basis, not necessarily to listen and understand. ) but it would be very sad if perhaps the less religious majority would want them to stop talking about how the religious views books gave them support in times of need or doubt. The religious views are expressed more openly in the books than possible subtext, but plenty of people reading might not have thought about them much, and may well have skipped over those aspects of the books as not interesting them as much as falling down mountains or escaping nazis, or have seen them but have strongly opposing views. But they can see a tendancy towards a religious drabble and chose to read or not to read.

Nor, although I maybe don't personally like to lose my more innocent and positive views on the characters, would I want to stop people writing about abuse, gory violoent deaths to characters or real teen issues like bullying or anorexia and other issues in the chalet school context. This is because I like to see the strength of imagination and debate on the board.

Also if one person who is struggling with their issues can read and feel they are not alone, then for those people that Drabble / discussion has had a positive purpose. Oh dear I think I have just contradicted my own view at the beginning of the discussion that books ought to be more innocent ! Well I never promised to be logical !

Apologies cal, have just re-read your post and seen some more if what you mean - that is true, it is no better people enforcing a same sex view all the time with no regard for the opposite sex viewpoint than it is the other way around. From my brief stay on the board I havent felt that the same sex discussions were necessarily in the majority, simply because I was in fact looking for them and found it initially quite hard to find drabbles that didn't have mainly straight romance, but I am obviously reading an awful lot of archived rather than necessarily recent posts, so perhaps for someone who has been here longer it may well be that there has been the big shift you have seen. I also completely agree with the over sexualisation of the world in general, although I had found the drabbles etc here generally quite romance and emotion based - nothing graphic that I have seen so far, which is good to my viewpoint.

Apologies all for the long posts, I will settle down soon, there's just so much to say at the moment !!!

Author:  Mia [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 11:59 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

cal562301 wrote:
I hope I don't offend anyone by this, but as a 50+ single, who has never been in a long-term relationship with either sex, I have been slightly concerned over recent months by what appears to be the increasing number of drabbles and discussions about same-sex relationships in CS.

I'm not sure whether this is a reflection of the make up of the CBB membership, but it is a fact that homosexuals are a minority in society.



There have been Nancy/Kathie drabbles on the CBB long before you were ever here and there will probably be some long after you depart.

It would be useful to know exactly what your concerns are exactly?

Author:  ClaireK [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 12:10 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Beecharmer23 wrote:
Agreed, lots of books now seem to have to be filled with angst and pain in order to get published, including a lot of children's books. While it is important children have at least some of these issues covered so those in the situations themselves can find ways to understand themselves and deal with it, I am glad to have been able to escape into chalet, Enid Blyton etc as a child, without the stories having to always be up to date and hard edged.


With respect, I have to disagree. Over the past few years there has been an oft-heard cry in the media that those who are part of a "minority" group (whatever that may be - racial, sexuality, whatever) need to have models on TV etc with which to identify.

Why?? As a member of a minority group, I never had examples of children of Polish heritage on TV or in books. And guess what? It didn't matter. I was reading books about girls who had horses or went to boarding school. I had a dog and went to day school! I watched Bonanza on TV and wanted to ride the wide open spaces of America. We are talking about escapism! Reading for pleasure, reading to ener fantasy world and get away from your own mundane life. Why on earth would anyone want children to read about sexual abuse before they even know what sex is? IMO that would just store up real problems for the future. There is a time and a place for such things.

Yes, it is a sad fact that some children are abused. And this is not a modern phenomenom. CHildren are taught about inappropriate behavior from adults at school and I would hope at home also. But does this then need to enter children's literature? Whatever happened to reading for pleasure? Preserving the innocence of children and letting them just be children? I may be living in some sort of utopia, but that's fine. Personally, I find the row upon row of books such as "A Child Named It" deeply disturbing and can only imagine that some people get a warped sense of delight in reading about abuse.

IMO while it may be interesting to speculate about Nancy and Kathie, this is all derived from a single line of text. Perhaps it might be better to view the "darling" remark in the same context as someone who never swears uttering a profanity when they bang their thumb with a hammer. Does it mean they really have a filthy mouth or does it mean that they are in extreme pain and this is one way of coping with it?

As a devout Catholic, EBD would be taught that same-sex relationships are an abomination. She may also have followed the creed "hate the sin but love the sinner". I can't see there is any possibility she would have condoned such a relationship. Please note: the above does not reflect my own views - I am just expressing the teachings of the Catholic Church *at the time*.

Author:  Mia [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 12:17 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

ClaireK wrote:
As a devout Catholic, EBD would be taught that same-sex relationships are an abomination. She may also have followed the creed "hate the sin but love the sinner". I can't see there is any possibility she would have condoned such a relationship. Please note: the above does not reflect my own views - I am just expressing the teachings of the Catholic Church *at the time*.


I disagree: my grandmother was a devout Catholic of the same vintage as EBD. She was still very fond of all her gay friends... I don't think you can just assume someone will act in a certain way because of their religion.

Author:  Beecharmer [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 12:23 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Quote:
ClaireK wrote:
Beecharmer23 wrote:
Agreed, lots of books now seem to have to be filled with angst and pain in order to get published, including a lot of children's books. While it is important children have at least some of these issues covered so those in the situations themselves can find ways to understand themselves and deal with it, I am glad to have been able to escape into chalet, Enid Blyton etc as a child, without the stories having to always be up to date and hard edged.

We are talking about escapism! Reading for pleasure, reading to ener fantasy world and get away from your own mundane life. Why on earth would anyone want children to read about sexual abuse before they even know what sex is? IMO that would just store up real problems for the future. There is a time and a place for such things.

[\quote]

Totally agree, I was saying it makes me sad, although I can see the reason behind it.

[quote]
IMO while it may be interesting to speculate about Nancy and Kathie, this is all derived from a single line of text. [\quote]

Unfortunately this falls down a bit for me, since I had never heard of the "darling" line until recently, but still felt from my own perception that there were potential relationships throughout the chalet school. But again - I wouldthink that because my brain is more wired up to see same sex relationships as natural and they appear more likely to me than to someone whose brain is wired to see male female as the only possibility for them. But I can see if you aren't that way inclined you might think it was only one line !

Author:  ClaireK [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 12:26 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Mia wrote:

I disagree: my grandmother was a devout Catholic of the same vintage as EBD. She was still very fond of all her gay friends... I don't think you can just assume someone will act in a certain way because of their religion.


But that is just what I was saying - she loved her friends, reagrdless of their sexuality. But it is a *fact* that the Catholic church did then and still does say that homosexuality is wrong and that is what she would have been taught. You can see how she followed the teachings of the church in that she had Joey say that her children would be brought up Catholics and then later converted to Catholicism herself. At the time, the Catholic church pursued a hard line over mixed marriages, saying taht you *had* to bring up the children as Catholics. It is made very clear that not only will the triplets be Catholic, but Joey's own sister canot be a godmother bcos she is not Catholic. I would say this shows Joey and ther creator are follwing the Church's teachings to the very letter - and possibly beyond. You have to remember that this was a different time when many people simply accepted the dictats handed down and did not question them

EBDs personal feelings can only be guessed at - they could have been either way. One *coulc* argue that because there is no mention of any same-sex relationships that this demonstrates she disapproves. Or that she is suppressing her own feelings. Bascially, you can argue to prove any point you wish! But it is all mere speculation.

However, given that she seems very much to believe in a loving God, I did feel it was likely taht while she knew the Church's teaching on the sin of smae sex relationships, she may have been likely to "hate the sin, but love the sinner".

Author:  Mia [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 1:03 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Just to clarify, my grandmother didn't care for the teachings of the Catholic church on homosexuality (and some other things) so she basically ignored them. My suggestion was that maybe EBD did the same.

"Love the sin and hate the sinner" doesn't seem to be part of any RC teaching according to Google. It's attributed to Ghandi. Apologies for the pedantry.

Author:  JB [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 1:16 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Beecharmer23 wrote:
From my brief stay on the board I havent felt that the same sex discussions were necessarily in the majority, simply because I was in fact looking for them and found it initially quite hard to find drabbles that didn't have mainly straight romance, but I am obviously reading an awful lot of archived rather than necessarily recent posts, so perhaps for someone who has been here longer it may well be that there has been the big shift you have seen.


I've been here pretty much since the beginning and I'm not aware of any "big shift".

Please don't apologise for the long posts. It's always good to see new people come along and stimulate discussion.

You mentioned in an earlier post that you thought Formal Discussions might be too grown up for you. They're not at all - they're simply based on a schedule of planned discussion topics rather than the ad hoc ones which are started in Anything Else (as an FD mod, I thought i'd give them a plug). :)

Author:  Beecharmer [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 1:52 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

JB wrote:
Please don't apologise for the long posts. It's always good to see new people come along and stimulate discussion.

You mentioned in an earlier post that you thought Formal Discussions might be too grown up for you. They're not at all - they're simply based on a schedule of planned discussion topics rather than the ad hoc ones which are started in Anything Else (as an FD mod, I thought i'd give them a plug). :)


Thank you JB, I have looked at them and found them interesting, so will quite possibly be waffling on there before long !! (you have been warned ;-) )

I know I have said it elsewhere, but it is always worth repeating a compliment - this board is so friendly and welcoming, it is great to see. :-) thank you all for creating such an interesting place.

Author:  Cosimo's Jackal [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 2:04 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I don't read drabbles, so I'm unaware of what kinds of trends go on in them, but as they are essentially fan fiction (which has always had a strong component of slash, or inserting same-sex relationships into novels/films/TV shows where there was only the faintest subtext, or none), wouldn't you expect a large percentage of them to contain same-sex relationships, just because that's the nature of the genre? Inserting something that isn't there, playing with or against the expectations of the original text, where the the Love of a Good (Male) Doctor is the ultimate reward for a woman? Rather like the 'Lines Unlikely to Appear in a CS Novel' thread which is full of extramarital sex, poledancing, the prefects doing tequila slammers at the Auberge, and everyone needing to pee all over the place, and is only funny in relation to the unwritten rules of the CS series?

That scene where Kathie collapses and Nancy is so distraught a not-particularly-astute CS girl leaves the room to allow them some privacy would strike me as a classic slashy moment to build on, just as in, say, The Lord of the Rings, the fact that Gimli and Legolas become close friends, despite the enmity between elves and dwarves, has often been the starting off point for people writing their relationship as romantic/sexual. No one is suggesting that that's what Tolkien 'really meant', it's just a way of playing with the assumptions of the original text. And - rather like the original post on this thread - wondering what the responses of familiar characters would be to an unfamiliar situation.

Author:  Spoot [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 2:36 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

KathrynW wrote:

If I was in Naomi's position, I would feel that I was being forced into going. In fact, at my senior school, we eventually went on strike and refused to go to the one religious assembly of the week until they had a separate agnostic/atheist assembly.


But were you at a private school?

Naomi did not have to go to the CS - she asked to go (or, rather, her aunt asked her to go), knowing the ethos of the school and that she would have to attend prayers of some kind. And she (again, her aunt) agreed.

Really, the only person who can be seen as forcing Naomi into going to prayers is her aunt, who chose to send her to a school at with an ethos that included daily prayers.

Now, if this were her local public/state school, then I can see viewing as something that the school is forcing her to do.

Author:  Beecharmer [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 3:10 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Actually the Naomi part never rang that true to me, another instance of the change over the series. While I would certainly have expected naomi to have been "brought back to the true path" as they would see it, the original chalet books indicated a tolerance to other people's interpretation of faith, for example they don't expect the Protestant and catholic girls to share the same prayers, rather than the ethos in my school which was C of E or else ! Also madge seems content for Joey to observe both and decide for herself.

Also I actually do wonder whether EBD would have been such a by the book catholic as that, having explored other aspects of faith first. The Joey converting could well be seen more as her being thoughtful to Jack's beliefs, the theme all the way through that she and madge are open minded to either type of mainstream Christianity. If EBD or Joey were such fanatical converts as seems to be being implied, i feel the books might have included more discussions about it. There are still even at the end, many Protestant characters, and the chapels are for both. Also there doesn't seem to be any friction between the catholic and non catholic parts of the Bettany/Russell/ Maynard clan. This points me to a more tolerant EBD even with her conversion.

I guess where I am aiming is that I like to think EBD might have been more like the grandmother mentioned earlier. And I don't think that was can assume that just because someone believes in the central tenets of a faith they have converted to, that they will automatically follow every aspect to the last detail.

Author:  Mel [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 3:48 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I don't see Naomi being forced into religious services or lessons, as someone said, it would have been clear in the prospectus that the school is Christian in ethos. Also it would not be usual in that type of school for other provision to be made. They try to 'force' Verity to sing German songs because the authorities know best and I can't imagine what they would do about a vegan (no milk!)
EBD's Catholicism we can only speculate about, but she is so definite, has such a stong authorial voice, that I can't imagine her being less than a zealous convert. Sometimes she romanticises or misunderstands some aspects of RC life, such as sending her two frailest characters (Robin and Margot) into convents.

Author:  ClaireK [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 4:02 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Yes, it is impossible for us to know EBDs exact beliefs. However, it is important to remember that she converted pre Vatican II, and was accustomed to a very different church than the one most people today are familiar with. And the earlier suggestion that people can pick and choose the parts of their faith that they do/do not agree with is a particularly modern way of thinking. Catholics were taught that homosexuality is a sin and furthermore, EBD was writing at a time when this was punishable by law. Perhaps she would have felt very guilty about any sympathies she may have felt and confessed this as a sin against herself? We can never know whether she accepted all the teaching of the church - unlike Antonia Forest, who clearly does not agree with Vatican II and makes that very obvious in her writings.

We know that the triplets have a prie dieu in their rooms and that Joey gave Jack a new rosary before he goes off to war. Len has a missal with her at school. I think it is fair to assume that all the Maynards will fast before Mass and will not eat meat on Fridays. They may even have a holy water stoup in their home to bless themselves with before they go out. We certainly know that Joey has a statue of St Therese. Margot's decision to become a nun is completely accepted without question and nobody tries to talk her out of it "Gosh Margot, that's awfully noble of you - but don't you want to go to dances and date boys when you are at university?" IMO this all pionts to the Catholic faith being an integral part of the day to day life of the Maynards.

ALthough EBD does not specifically mention big rites of passage, I think we can assume that all the children make their first communion/first confession and are later confirmed. Then again, we don't see any C of E confirmations either! Funny that these major events are just ignored - but then maybe as an adult convert she did not realise how important they are to a child? In general, I would say that the convert to a religion, especially an adult convert, is often more devout and accepting than someone born and brought up within that faith.

Anyway, I think we would all like to imagine that EBD was tolerant and sympathetic towards same sex relationships, but the reality is that most people of her generation, regardless of denomination, found homosexuality morally wrong and also feared the "corrupting" influence of homosexuals in positions of authority - the play The Children's Hour explores this theme. Many people today would be uneasy if a housemaster in a boy's boarding school was gay - I've heard so many statements that imply the speaker believes gay men spend all their time prowling around looking for boys to corrupt. Why female teachers are not accused of lusting after their pupils in the same way seems to escape their logic.

Of course - there is a third possibility - that just like Queen Victoria, EBD was blissfully unaware of the possibilities that exist and thought only in terms of male and female relationships, with no other alternatives!

Author:  Cosimo's Jackal [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 4:20 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Mel wrote:
EBD's Catholicism we can only speculate about, but she is so definite, has such a stong authorial voice, that I can't imagine her being less than a zealous convert. Sometimes she romanticises or misunderstands some aspects of RC life, such as sending her two frailest characters (Robin and Margot) into convents.


Yes, she never strikes me as an 'a la carte' Catholic in the slightest, I must say. There's something very 'all or nothing' in the way she depicts people adopting a cause, enthusiasm or point of view, with no caveats or quibbles. And I do think her depiction of the entire CS as so pious that the dedication of two school chapels leaves them subdued and prayerful for days suggests someone quite zealous in the pursuit of her own faith. (Does Behind the CS have anything to say on her religious side?)

I'm not convinced that necessarily maps onto her acceptance of same-sex relationships, though, other than that she would certainly have bene under no illusions as to what orthodox Catholicism says about it. I think a better place to look for clues (again, with the caveat that overt sexuality is unlikely to have shown up in girls' school stories of the time, anyway) is her strong distaste for 'inappropriate' expressions of sexuality, or in fact any signals of it at all, unless it's carefully inside the bounds of engagement and marriage to a man your parents approve of - there's the distaste for Joan Baker's sexually-savvy self-presentation and talking about boys, and Elisabeth and Betty's 'cheap' lipstick-wearing etc etc. I think a gay relationship might strike her as similarly inappropriate because it can't be a matter of rings, blushing brides and orange-blossom, not to mention inviting the entire CS to the ceremony... :)

And, as ClaireK says, there's the fact that (male) homosexual acts were illegal during the time period of the CS, which I can't feel EBD would see lightly, even leaving aside religion.

EBD may well have known gay people - that she knew were gay - and it's not unlikely she came across gayness in books, if she read Proust or even something like Kate O'Brien's best-selling novels The Land of Spices and Mary Lavelle, both of which feature gay characters in prominent roles. But I think the later CS in particular is such a heavily idealised, black-and-white, Cinderella Meets the Handsome Doctor kind of world, which omits so much about real life, that it's as difficult to imagine Joey dealing with someone coming out as it is to imagine her dealing with a serial killer or ET!

Author:  ClaireK [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 4:26 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

ET would be swiftly stuffed into a gentian blue dress and doped up to his little googly eyeballs with luscious coffee and a cream bun before he could blink twice. And with his motto of "be good" I'm sure he'd fit in without a problem.

Joey would transfix siad serial killer with a twitch of her "mobile" features (is everyone else expressionless, a la Botox, I always wonder?) and then subdue him with a burst of the Red Sarafan, before untwirling her earphones and using her plaits as restraints. bruno would then sit on him and there would be an ex-serial killer.

Simples! :lol:

Author:  MJKB [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 4:36 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I'm not absolutely sure why I feel uncomfortable reading this thread, but I do, but that's my problem!
I want to contribute to the discussion from an Irish perspective, which may well be very different to the British. Incidently, I concur with those who believe that the Joey we know from the series would have been empathic towards her close friends' same sex relationship without necessarily approving - that, I believe, is the way things worked then. Anyway, getting back to the Irish 'way', the proctocol around 'non regular unions', which I extend to include extra marital relationships as well as same sex relationships, was 'managed' by following certain, unspoken rules:If the couple did not flaunt their relationship, people did not concern themselves with what went on behind the bedroom door. Ironically, if they did, they'd be committing the sin of scandal as well as entertaining 'bad thoughts' an absolute no no then.
Even at the height of the glory days of the Catholic Church in Ireland, a notorious same sex theatrical couple, Michael Mc Liammoire and Hilton Edwards were beloved by the Dublin population. Most people knew they were homosexual, but they loved them and they turned a blind eye to a way of life that was not only condemned by the Church, but was outlawed by society. In this way, the Irish could show tolerance and understanding without breaching the moral code. Now whether you regard this as the height of hypocracy, as many do, it was how things were 'done' when morality was seen very much in black and white terms.

Author:  shesings [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 5:20 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

That's exactly the way I remember attitudes from 1950s Scotland, MKJB! As long as people weren't interfering with bairns, or making a public exhibition of themselves, their private lives were their own.

I think I have said elsethread, that, when one of the two lovely ladies who ran our local sweetie shop died, all of the neighbours treated the survivor as the widow. I went with Granny and our Irish neighbour, Kathleen, with the customary gifts of food. My usually undemonstrative Granny, herself a widow, clasped the grieving woman in her arms telling her she understood how hard it was to lose your life partner. Don't know why it stuck in my mind but it did!

And as someone who is 'straight' (happily celebrating my 44th wedding anniversary today, btw) I have to say that I haven't noticed any great recent increase in the number of drabbles suggesting same-sex relationships. I have no idea what proportion of the CBB membership is gay/straight/bi/transgendered or any combination, but I think it is good that people can feel comfortable writing within their own terms of reference.

Author:  Kathy_S [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 5:37 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Mia wrote:
"Love the sin and hate the sinner" doesn't seem to be part of any RC teaching according to Google. It's attributed to Ghandi. Apologies for the pedantry.

Usually in Catholicism, though the English is indeed attributed to Ghandi, the sentiment is considered a loose translation of Augustine's "cum dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum," "with the love of humanity and a hatred of sins," which was applied pretty broadly despite the quote's original not very edifying (IMHO) context. Love of people despite their sins is rather important in most versions of redemption theology, and humans are therefore enjoined to do likewise. The traditional pulpit examples usually feature parents loving their children no matter what they've done, and broaden out from there.

Author:  cafeconleche [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 5:50 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Apologies, I know this is very pedantic. As an Indian though it's always been my pet peeve that his name is "Gandhi" not "Ghandi" as many westerners spell it... Since this came up twice, I couldn't resist. Sorry.

Kathy_S wrote:
Mia wrote:
"Love the sin and hate the sinner" doesn't seem to be part of any RC teaching according to Google. It's attributed to Ghandi. Apologies for the pedantry.

Usually in Catholicism, though the English is indeed attributed to Ghandi, the sentiment is considered a loose translation of Augustine's "cum dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum," "with the love of humanity and a hatred of sins," which was applied pretty broadly despite the quote's original not very edifying (IMHO) context. Love of people despite their sins is rather important in most versions of redemption theology, and humans are therefore enjoined to do likewise. The traditional pulpit examples usually feature parents loving their children no matter what they've done, and broaden out from there.

Author:  Mia [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 5:55 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Yes, that was on Google too, however I see it is disputed - as all these things are I suppose.

Please don't judge all Westerners on my bad typing skills

Author:  Kathy_S [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 5:59 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Oops! Thank you for the spelling correction.

Author:  cafeconleche [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 6:03 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Mia wrote:
Yes, that was on Google too, however I see it is disputed - as all these things are I suppose.

Please don't judge all Westerners on my bad typing skills


Didn't mean to imply any judgement. It is a common mistake.

Author:  Mia [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 6:10 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I was joking, darling!

Author:  cafeconleche [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 6:14 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Mia wrote:
I was joking, darling!


Oh okay, good. I'm too used to smileys! :)

Author:  MaryR [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 6:15 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

cal562301 wrote:
Someone mentioned platonic friendships. I have lots of good friends (and a few very close ones) of both sexes, but even with the closest ones there is no suggestion of anything sexual on either side. It is actually possible, believe it or not, to live a happy and fulfilled life without being involved in a sexual relationship with another human being.

Miss A and Bill are prime examples of that from CS, although I know there have been suggestions from some that even they have some sort of deeper relationship.


I would agree, Cal. There are such friendships, and anyone who finds one is a very lucky person, even if the loss is incalculable when one of them dies.

Some people have suggested that I show H&N as being in a relationship in ND, but to me they are just two rather lonely, hard-working people who found something good about the other, some spark of understanding and empathy, that drew them close and helped them build a loving and giving frienship, where loyalty and trust and total acceptance meant all was known and all was forgiven - in other words, they each had a friend who would walk in if the rest of the world walked out. And it was not based on sex – so less emotion involved to cause tension, which suited their self-controlled and impassive natures down to the ground. They were not much given to baring all, but each had a bolt-hole in times of trouble. Plus, they were both Headmistresses, so couldn’t let their hair down with the staff, hence they needed each other for sustenance in their jobs, as well. And so there grew a mutual dependency – which is why Hilda is grieving so badly for Nell in my drabble. It would still be like losing a part of herself, even though not part of a *sexual* relationship.

I grew up in the fifties and early sixties, leaving school in 1965 but, although a staunch Catholic, I never had any problem at all with same sex relationships, even though forbidden by my church. I didn’t run away screaming when one friend told me, just after I had started uni, that she had feelings for me – it gave me a jolt but didn’t alter our friendship. So I’m not sure that Joey would have let it alter hers, either. She might have been shocked, but I don’t feel she would have shunned that person. She had too much empathy and understanding for people. And I feel Madge, Hilda and Nell grew up at a time when these things were there, unmentioned but accepted. After all, so many men had been lost in the Great War. So they wouldn’t have been shocked or outraged by it, but they might have not wanted their pupils to know about it or have encourage them to follow that path, because at that time it would have led to exclusion by society in general (and of course imprisonment for men).

Despite all that, I’m not sure I have made any contribution to this topic at all.... :hiding:

Author:  KathrynW [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 6:29 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Spoot wrote:
KathrynW wrote:

If I was in Naomi's position, I would feel that I was being forced into going. In fact, at my senior school, we eventually went on strike and refused to go to the one religious assembly of the week until they had a separate agnostic/atheist assembly.


But were you at a private school?


Yes I was, does that make a difference? (It certainly didn't to a bunch of self-important 15 year olds!)

Author:  Spoot [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 6:43 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

KathrynW wrote:
Spoot wrote:
KathrynW wrote:

If I was in Naomi's position, I would feel that I was being forced into going. In fact, at my senior school, we eventually went on strike and refused to go to the one religious assembly of the week until they had a separate agnostic/atheist assembly.


But were you at a private school?


Yes I was, does that make a difference? (It certainly didn't to a bunch of self-important 15 year olds!)


As I said in the rest of the post (the part you didn't quote), yes, in my opinion it absolutely does.

Your parents choose to send you to that school, knowing that there was a weekly religious assembly. If you had an issue with the assembly, you should have taken it up with your parents, not the school. It was your parents (and not the school) that was "forcing" you to attend the assemblies, by choosing to send you to a school that had them.

Author:  whitequeen [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 6:56 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Our school (in the 80s-90s) also didn't have any provision for non-Christians - we had one Muslim girl, and she had to still attend religion class, until she pointed out to the teacher that she (the teacher) had said something wrong when listing Muslim beliefs, and was thrown out of class. (And even that class consisted of "we believe X, they believe Y, and they're wrong!" I think it may be different now!)

There were prayers every morning at assembly and occasionally before classes - many teachers came in and instead of saying good morning/afternoon, they said "in the name of the father..."

The only thing that was done was after a certain point when we were taken to the school chapel for confession, we were able to ask for a blessing instead, but we still had to go into the cubicle at our turn, and the priest would deliver a lecture along with the blessing. I don't think we ever felt that we were being forced - we were, of course, but it was a Catholic convent school so I suppose we accepted there was nothing we could do about it till we left! So I guess Naomi's situation wasn't that unusual to me, apart from the shock-horror-disbelief that she could possibly have an alternate view. We were all well aware that there were alternate views, some of us were cultivating them ourselves, and we didn't all agree with the "they are wrong" stuff we were being taught. We just didn't air it in school.

This thread is really interesting BTW. I'd have to agree that Joey as a teenager might have coped better with a revlation than she would as an adult.

Author:  ChubbyMonkey [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 7:15 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I have to say that I don't think there's been a big shift on the board, but I have noticed myself that there seems to have been at least more discussion about same sex relationships of late - though it's been brought up before, I don't recall it being quite as big a discussion point as now (though given my memory, I am more than happy to be corrected!) However, I think that most of that feeling for me is that we had one lengthy (and rather good) drabble tackling the issue, and that perhaps this led people to think of it and so start other drabbles/discussions. So there may be more of it now as a trend, but this may not be a bad thing? Just a sign of a big topic at the time. I seem to recall it happening before with certain things, where they get discussed more intensely than other issues for a while.

^^ My half penny's worth (if it can be worth that much)

From what I've heard of EBD's background on the board, I can see her as being very aware of the issue, and also possibly very sympathetic, thanks to her theatre friends. She certainly didn't sound as if she had had no real 'life experience' of things outside the middle-class suburbia that the Platz seems to develop into. On the other hand, recalling that letter a while back about her trip to Austria, she does read as slightly naive - two young women (?) on their own who are thoroughly shocked that men would try it on and try and rob them. Or perhaps that's just a sign of the times, and we're now so over-warned about these things that we've just come to expect them!

In either case, I am interested to know why exactly people think that EBD's views would be relevant to how Joey would react, as seems to be the suggestion from the thread? I, for one, don't quite buy the idea that Joey was just a mouthpiece for EBD's own views; though, again, this is pure speculation, I just think that we might be creating links that aren't actually there.

Or I have just spouted a load of complete nonsense and should be ignored at all costs!

Author:  NorwichCitygirl [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 8:44 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Chubby Monke wrote:
Quote:
From what I've heard of EBD's background on the board, I can see her as being very aware of the issue, and also possibly very sympathetic, thanks to her theatre friends. She certainly didn't sound as if she had had no real 'life experience' of things outside the middle-class suburbia that the Platz seems to develop into. On the other hand, recalling that letter a while back about her trip to Austria, she does read as slightly naive - two young women (?) on their own who are thoroughly shocked that men would try it on and try and rob them. Or perhaps that's just a sign of the times, and we're now so over-warned about these things that we've just come to expect them!

In either case, I am interested to know why exactly people think that EBD's views would be relevant to how Joey would react, as seems to be the suggestion from the thread? I, for one, don't quite buy the idea that Joey was just a mouthpiece for EBD's own views; though, again, this is pure speculation, I just think that we might be creating links that aren't actually there.



The old pension EBD stayed at with her friend sounded to me particularly unfriendly and unsafe, and EBD not remarkably naive. We overdramatize everything nowadays (partly to fill up 24 hour news channels!) but it's still true that most people are generally OK and not out to attack/rob/murder/abuse strangers.

I've generally held the view that Joey (later version) is EBD's mouthpiece. Her views on all sorts of things from childrearing to hairbrushing to healthy diets are held to be the one true way, and people who deviate generally regret it! Although I am reminded of Mr Darcy accusing Elizabeth of professing to hold opinions that are not really her own for the sake of being perverse. Perhaps EBD was a bit like this...

Author:  ChubbyMonkey [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 8:57 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

NorwichCitygirl wrote:
Although I am reminded of Mr Darcy accusing Elizabeth of professing to hold opinions that are not really her own for the sake of being perverse. Perhaps EBD was a bit like this...


:lol: Now why couldn't I have just summed it up that neatly?

Author:  Beecharmer [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 9:43 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Help, too many good points to include and reply to on my phone ! Will just say great discussion to most of you, though may well waffle on when I am awake properly and not on my phone !

Quote:
. Most people knew they were homosexual, but they loved them and they turned a blind eye to a way of life that was not only condemned by the Church, but was outlawed by society. In this way, the Irish could show tolerance and understanding without breaching the moral code. Now whether you regard this as the height of hypocracy, as many do, it was how things were 'done' when morality was seen very much in black and white terms.


Yes that is nice to know as it was a feeling that I have had from older family relatives and reading about people's attitudes to homosexuality in the past century. The situation in London at least I would say was the same as described.

Mary R - on the contrary, you have contributed a lot, it is interesting to read.

While I am perhaps more likely to think of a couple having all sides of the relationship, since I want them to be happy together in all parts of being a couple, there is nothing wrong with seeing a same sex relationship as no less valid if it is intense, close and platonic. Emotional relationship rather than romantic. If it makes the straight reader more comfortable, fair enough. It's again down to your own life experience and what makes you happy, how you interpret things.

I also agree with the people who doubt whether EBD was this compete innocent that a lot of people seem to see her as.

The more this discussion goes on, the more I feel the later books may well not have been written by EBD.

Author:  Abi [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 9:56 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Beecharmer23 wrote:
The more this discussion goes on, the more I feel the later books may well not have been written by EBD.


I may wrong, but as far as I'm aware there isn't any doubt over any but Prefects, and possibly Althea (as they can seem like two parts of the same book, but Prefects was the only one published posthumously, I think).

I do think that by the later books she'd become a lot less original and broad-minded in her thinking. The books seem to follow a fairly standard formula, with a couple of exceptions, and the same cliches and GO tropes are trotted out over and over again.

Author:  JB [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 10:02 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I agree Abi that the question mark is over who finished Prefects, although her final books took her much longer to write which probably also affected her style.

Author:  cal562301 [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 10:24 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Beecharmer23 wrote:

While I am perhaps more likely to think of a couple having all sides of the relationship, since I want them to be happy together in all parts of being a couple, there is nothing wrong with seeing a same sex relationship as no less valid if it is intense, close and platonic. Emotional relationship rather than romantic. If it makes the straight reader more comfortable, fair enough. It's again down to your own life experience and what makes you happy, how you interpret things.


This was precisely my point. Two close friends of the same sex don't have to have a sexual relationship in order to be fulfilled. It's the apparent assumption that one is not possible without the other to which I object. Because your use of the word couple in itself implies a sexual relationship. Otherwise they would just be close friends.

Author:  Beecharmer [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 10:59 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

cal562301 wrote:
Beecharmer23 wrote:
Because your use of the word couple in itself implies a sexual relationship. Otherwise they would just be close friends.


Does it? Does a relationship between people who have never slept together or can no longer sleep together (for example through illness or disability, I don't mean breakdown of desire) not qualify them as a couple? Or people who are not interested in forming a relationship with someone else of either sex, but are getting the emotional and practical support typically seen in a relationship. They might not be a conventional couple in either case, but if one person's life is not complete without the other I would still dignify them with being a couple.

Sorry, I guess I am being pedantic, as I see your point that the assumption is that couple means sexual, but relationships would be very one dimensional if the only connection the couple has was sexual ( though still fun perhaps ;-)) I would probably describe two people with only a sexual relationship as having an affair / fling rather than being a couple.

I don't think we are likely to agree on this issue, but it is interesting seeing alternate point of view so do keep posting if you want to !

Author:  ClaireK [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 11:42 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

To me a "couple" means two people who make a commitment to one another. That's a world away from close friendship. I share my house with my dearest friend, who has seen me through the worst 18 months of my life, when my marriage broke up, I didn't know if I would be able to keep my house and i was diagnosed with an illness that meant there was an 80% chance my life expectancy was no more than 5 years. Sure, I can't imagine my life without her, and I don't know if I would here without her - but in no way, shape or form are we a couple. We are two individuals, who have no desire for one another and would not be averse to an actual relationship with a person of the opposite sex, should that opportunity arise. Some times frinedship is just that - friendship. Why on earth can't two people share a house and a friendship without others assuming there is something more?

Author:  Beecharmer [ Sun Mar 20, 2011 11:54 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Agreed Claire - I think I have said before I can see how that would be just as annoying for you as it is for me for people to assume that we ought to have no rights to be seen as a couple simply because we are not a conventional one.

As I said, in a way I was being pedantic - I just think there is an assumption sometimes that people who like the idea of same sex relationships between characters are only interested in hearing about them jumping into bed together. Though that is also sometimes fun to read, if you read most of the same sex drabbles, they are far more romantic and emotional than physical. (though Nancy and Kathy seem to be very bad at remembering to lock doors ;-) )

If you read what I said, you two would not be something I would describe as a couple, since I (I think?) qualified with the idea that it might be considered a couple if the people are not interested at all in the idea of a relationship outside of the two people involved. Even if an outside relationship is unlikely, that is not the same as not being interested at all in the possibility.

It also perhaps comes down to whether you see being described as a couple as a negative thing. For whatever reason it seems that you do. I can understand that in the sexual context, and in the fact that people assuming things is really annoying in any context. But it is a bit sad that people do tend to sexualise a lot of things as if that is the only aspect of life.

Author:  Abi [ Mon Mar 21, 2011 12:18 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I think the majority of people would assume that the term 'couple' implies a romantic, if not necessarily a sexual, relationship. It's generally about a commitment that's been made between two people that they mean something special to one another that they can't share with others. I've certainly never heard it used in any other way when talking about two people.

If there's not a romantic or sexual relationship, I'd call the people 'friends'. To call them a 'couple' would imply more than actually exists. A relationship, of course, exist between any people, from those who are mere acquaintances to those who feel they're soulmates and as close as anyone can be to another person. It simply describes the fact that people are relating to one another.

Author:  JB [ Mon Mar 21, 2011 12:25 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Beecharmer23 wrote:
Does it? Does a relationship between people who have never slept together or can no longer sleep together (for example through illness or disability, I don't mean breakdown of desire) not qualify them as a couple?


I don't think either of these disqualifies people from being described as a couple, although I also agree with Abi's comment that:

Quote:
It's generally about a commitment that's been made between two people that they mean something special to one another that they can't share with others.


It doesn't have to be a sexual relationship IMO. I'm not sure about romantic.

Author:  Alison H [ Mon Mar 21, 2011 1:14 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I wonder if people's interpretation of Kathie and Nancy's relationship is influenced by the fact that they become so close in the much less emotional Swiss period of the series rather than the early years. Some characters in Angela Brazil novels and the early EJO novels get quite obsessive about their female friends, and in the early CS books we see Simone getting quite obsessive about Joey and getting upset that Joey doesn't kiss her as soon as she arrives back after the holidays. I can't imagine any of the girls in the Swiss years, even really close friends like Margot and Emerence, going around kissing each other, or declaring that they can understand their friend's problems because they love her, as Joey does when Juliet tells her about Donal; and everyone keeps on and on insisting that Jack's feelings for Len aren't a crush when that's exactly what they do seem to be.

& Nell's very emotional speech in Gay, in which she talks about how deeply she loves Hilda, is a lot more intense than Nancy saying "Darling" when Kathie has just collapsed and is obviously seriously ill. I personally (and it's just my view and I appreciate that it's not everyone's) tend to assume that Kathie and Nancy are a couple (as in romantic partners) but that Nell and Hilda are "just good friends", and I'm just trying to work out why that is.

Just to confuse the debate over what does and doesn't make two people (I mean in CS-land, not RL) a couple, I'd say that even if Nancy and Kathie aren't a couple they are generally recognised as being a pair, or a twosome. The girls talk about what good friends they are, we're constantly told that they're "great friends", they share a car and they go away for weekends together. We're never told all that about, for example, Peggy Burnett and Davida Armitage, or Jeanne de Lachennais and Julie Berne.

Author:  Nightwing [ Mon Mar 21, 2011 1:48 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Maybe a good modern phrase for Nancy and Kathie if you want to read their relationship as platonic is "BFFs" - best friends forever :lol: - which implies a closeness which is non-sexual and non-romantic.

(I would definitely argue on the side that says "couple" can be romantic without being sexual, incidentally! Romantic love and sexual attraction can be separate; certainly the growing number of people who identify as asexual but aren't adverse to relationships seem to think so!)

Back on subject - I've always thought of Joey as being probably somewhat more tolerant than most adults of her age, class and position, but I'll freely admit that that's based more on her as a teenager and young adult than it is in her later years. On the subject of homosexuality I could see her going either way - if Kathie and Nancy (for eg!) were old family friends living in a house together I could see her being accepting of them. Would she be quite so happy about a lesbian couple teaching her children? Parental intolerance is something that queer teachers have to deal with even today, when we live in what we like to think of as much more enlightened times...

Alison H wrote:
I wonder if people's interpretation of Kathie and Nancy's relationship is influenced by the fact that they become so close in the much less emotional Swiss period of the series rather than the early years. Some characters in Angela Brazil novels and the early EJO novels get quite obsessive about their female friends, and in the early CS books we see Simone getting quite obsessive about Joey and getting upset that Joey doesn't kiss her as soon as she arrives back after the holidays. I can't imagine any of the girls in the Swiss years, even really close friends like Margot and Emerence, going around kissing each other, or declaring that they can understand their friend's problems because they love her, as Joey does when Juliet tells her about Donal; and everyone keeps on and on insisting that Jack's feelings for Len aren't a crush when that's exactly what they do seem to be.


It amuses me to no end that the two character that EBD has running themes with "crushes" with are her most tomboyish girls - Tom and Jack. I'm not sure what that says about her, unless she was secretly intending them to be read as queer, and using the trope of a "manly" lesbian to do so... Oh, I know it's extremely unlikely, but how much fun would it be if EBD was being secretly subversive?

Author:  Tor [ Mon Mar 21, 2011 11:22 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

On the basis of very little evidence, bar a general feeling I get from the books and the odd titbit of info about EBD, my take on EBD's catholicism is that she felt her faith was very deep, but that actually it was probably quite shallow in places and hinged more on her love of the dramatic... Bells and smells, mantillas, and lots of lovely gold and paintings and statues in the churches.

I don't think she was very self-aware, or rather I doubt she spent much time examining her behaviour in much depth, but rather dashed rather enthusiastically through her life, spouting her opinions with great confidence, and not worrying two hoots whether they were consistent or mutually exclusive (logic not being one of her strong points :lol: ).

So, I can imagine her throwing herself into her conversion to Catholicism. Deciding that this was her true faith, her one path to God. Having maybe a year or two of by-the-book, dogmatic beliefs, but then.... unable to suppress herself and a general tendency to have on-the-hoof theories and half-baked opinions on child rearing/dog breeding/etc etc including faith - again, my evidence for this is scanty and it probaly reflects my own judgemental personality :wink: ), this morphed into her *believing* she was a great ambassador for Catholicism and its dogma, while actually reverting back to her own more personal, fuzzy feelings about faith.

So my point (??!!)... I don't think we can take Catholic dogma as a guide to EBDs opinions, even if she is a convert (although usually I'd agree converts are usually more predictable r.e. this than a cradle catholic; from experience, the latter are highly flexible in their beliefs :wink: ).

Author:  Emma A [ Mon Mar 21, 2011 4:16 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

This has been a really interesting discussion. I've not noticed any particular swing towards same-sex relationships being portrayed more frequently in drabbles, but I am fairly selective about the ones I follow (I do have a full-time job! :D ).

Homosexuality has always existed, but obviously attitudes towards it have changed considerably over time and over different cultures. Given that Joey, as written in the later books, is generous, kind and endlessly sympathetic to almost everyone (except to unloving or indifferent parents, and genuine criminals), I find it hard to believe that she would think ill of people who were obviously queer. However, I think she would be genuinely distressed for them (particularly if they were her friends) and find it difficult to believe that they could be truly happy in a same-sex relationship, rather in the same manner that she (and almost every other 'good' character in the CS world) can't believe that anyone can be truly happy without faith in God, whichever path they choose to take.

Author:  MJKB [ Mon Mar 21, 2011 8:41 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Nightwing wrote:
(I would definitely argue on the side that says "couple" can be romantic without being sexual, incidentally! Romantic love and sexual attraction can be separate; certainly the growing number of people who identify as asexual but aren't adverse to relationships seem to think so!)
[quote="Nightwing"]
I'm finding it hard to get my head around what exactly you mean here - my own denseness, I'm sure. I'd define a couple as two people with an inclusive - or do I mean an exclusive? - relationship, who function socially as an entity. I would presume that in the majority of cases there would be at least the expectation of a sexual dimension to the relationship, but not in all cases.

I know a nun who is retired from teaching and who has for many years had a relationship with a priest. The priest is still working as a PP and loves the pastoral side of his vocation, so has no intentions of leaving the priesthood. Now this couple, I can't think of any other way of describing them, go away together on holidays, see each other almost daily,and socialise together. She refuses to satisfy her friends curiosity as to whether there is a physical relationship or not, and, not surprisingly, there isn't a man on our staff who can imagine such a relationship existing without sex. I can, at least I think it's possible, but then I'm regarded as incredibly naive. I think I'm struggling to distinguish between a mutually supportive friendship which Clairek (I think?) describes, and a relationship such as the one I have described above, which, incidently, could be either same sex or opposite: the latter is a couple, with or without the sexual side of a relationship, the former is not.

Author:  julieanne1811 [ Mon Mar 21, 2011 9:03 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

MJKB wrote:
Nightwing wrote:
(I would definitely argue on the side that says "couple" can be romantic without being sexual, incidentally! Romantic love and sexual attraction can be separate; certainly the growing number of people who identify as asexual but aren't adverse to relationships seem to think so!)
Nightwing wrote:
I'm finding it hard to get my head around what exactly you mean here - my own denseness, I'm sure. I'd define a couple as two people with an inclusive - or do I mean an exclusive? - relationship, who function socially as an entity. I would presume that in the majority of cases there would be at least the expectation of a sexual dimension to the relationship, but not in all cases.


Ah ... there's something indefinable about all this, isn't there? Platonic SLOC (dear, dear boy) is truly platonic, and yet we are often perceived as 'a couple' by total strangers. Often there's something in a relationship that outsiders recognise, even if they don't know the people involved at all, that makes it into a 'couple' thing.

Anf I do think that romantic love and sexual attraction are two different things which, however, usually come together in terms of a 'relationship' (meaning a non-platonic relationship).

I'm 50. I'm a virgin (and, believe me, that is so not easy ... ) because I am a practising Christian and that means that, using the model given in the Bible, sex=marriage, so I can't have sex until I get married. However, being sexually continent doesn't mean that I never have very close relationhips with men.

When I was at school, at about 13-14 years old? at Chrsitmas there would be little post boxes put up and we could 'post' Christmas cards to our friends. The cards were collected, sorted and delivered by older pupils, and one year the boys delivering the cards made the 'payment' a kiss, and they were keeping scores of the number of kisses they got.

I hated it - I thought of it cheap and I hated the idea of being some kind of currency, so ... I made a very personal decision that I wouldn't kiss anyone until I got engaged. And I've kept to it - better not for me to put one foot on the road that might lead to full-blown sex.

I was speaking to a friend at Church one day about this and she said to me, 'but kissing isn't wrong!' - and of course she's completely right! I'm just telling about the decision I made, and for why, and I'm gald (for me) that I did. It's helped me keep very clear in my own mind, and the minds of others exctly where we stand in terms of 'relationship'. I don't want to give the impression that I lay down some kind of ground rules whenever I meet someone where there might be a 'relationship'! But knowing in my own mind what I will, and won't, do, has helped me a lot.

I know that this is unusual, and I fully understand that the vast majority of people don't require these kinds of decisions in order to live their lives in chaste way, and futhermore, that many, many people hold very different views than me regarding sex outside marriage, so all this might be rather academic for them.

But there you have it - my reasons for virginity and my belief that romantic love and sexual attraction can be seperate entities. And, beleive me, I know as well as anyone else, what sexual attraction is like and how strong it can be. I'm a human, too!!!!

Author:  Mia [ Mon Mar 21, 2011 9:45 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

If it's not too personal a question, would you mind defining kissing? Do you mean a kiss on the cheek or a more involved kiss?

Author:  julieanne1811 [ Mon Mar 21, 2011 9:50 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

A kiss on the cheek would be fine because it's mostly done socially across the board and has no sexual componant to it. That's me as an adult talking - I hadn't thought it out so specifically as a young person, but then cheek kissing wasn't done socially anyway.

Author:  MJKB [ Mon Mar 21, 2011 10:57 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

julieanne1811 wrote:
I know that this is unusual, and I fully understand that the vast majority of people don't require these kinds of decisions in order to live their lives in chaste way, and futhermore, that many, many people hold very different views than me regarding sex outside marriage, so all this might be rather academic for them.


The strength of your commitment is admirable, I salute you. It can't be easy in this sexualised world of ours.

Author:  whitequeen [ Mon Mar 21, 2011 11:05 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

That's interesting, Julieanne, and much respect to you for sticking to what you believe is right in spite of a lot of social pressure otherwise.

I was teasing a (Muslim) student the other day because he took out his phone in class and as I always do, I said "texting the girlfriend?" (I won't treat him differently to the others!) He took it in good form and chuckled, but then a few minutes later he said "excuse me, what does the Bible say about having girlfriends?"

Because in his culture, he can't see a girl socially until he's been introduced with a view to getting married; and he reckons the Quran and the Bible give the same advice, in other words, nobody else should be kissing or dating either. Now I don't know the Bible that well and my boss it seems would like me not to allow the students to know I'm not Christian so I couldn't even really tell him that - I haven't a clue what the Bible says on the subject! but it was interesting to hear that someone who presumably does know, says kissing isn't wrong :)

Author:  Nightwing [ Mon Mar 21, 2011 11:26 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

MJKB wrote:
Now this couple, I can't think of any other way of describing them, go away together on holidays, see each other almost daily,and socialise together. She refuses to satisfy her friends curiosity as to whether there is a physical relationship or not, and, not surprisingly, there isn't a man on our staff who can imagine such a relationship existing without sex.


Ah, yes, but boys are taught that they can't possibly control themselves sexually, while girls are taught that sexuality is full of dangers and it's up to them not to "give in"... Hence to much shock and horror (and disgusting name-calling) when men are happy in a relationship sans sex and woman are happily having sex without being in a relationship! [/gripe]

Author:  Matthew [ Mon Mar 21, 2011 11:38 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Nightwing wrote:
MJKB wrote:
Now this couple, I can't think of any other way of describing them, go away together on holidays, see each other almost daily,and socialise together. She refuses to satisfy her friends curiosity as to whether there is a physical relationship or not, and, not surprisingly, there isn't a man on our staff who can imagine such a relationship existing without sex.


Ah, yes, but boys are taught that they can't possibly control themselves sexually, while girls are taught that sexuality is full of dangers and it's up to them not to "give in"... Hence to much shock and horror (and disgusting name-calling) when men are happy in a relationship sans sex and woman are happily having sex without being in a relationship! [/gripe]

This reminds me of the time that I revealed at work that I would never consider a one night stand and everyone was really shocked. Especially when I said that I wasn't religious (religion seemed to be the one reason they would accept for such a thing!).

Author:  Beecharmer [ Mon Mar 21, 2011 11:49 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I would say that you have explained that very well. I have a lot of respect for someone with what sounds like your self control and strength of belief and character. Personally I can take the inevitable view of me as a sinner much better from people who don't pick and chose which aspects of their faith they consider important depending on what they want to do themselves.

It isn't my own personal view that people always ought to wait till marriage from a purely secular point of view, since when more people married without living together it seems there were many situations where people ended up with people they were not properly compatible with, in both sexual terms and simple terms like splitting chores and life expectations. That has contributed to the high divorce rates now, people were making decisions without all the infotmation. But it does feel today that there has been a bit too strong shift in the other direction, with teenage sex and one night stands almost expected in both straight and gay relationships. It is a pity in many ways that people seem unable to find a happy medium.

This has turned into a serious thread hasn't it ! I thought I might get a few answers with quotes from various books !!!

Author:  Mia [ Tue Mar 22, 2011 12:10 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

But some people are very happy to have one night stands. If nobody is harmed during the course of these it isn't any more deplorable than any other sexual life choice, surely? (Leaving religious views aside).

Author:  Matthew [ Tue Mar 22, 2011 12:16 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Mia wrote:
But some people are very happy to have one night stands. If nobody is harmed during the course of these it isn't any more deplorable than any other sexual life choice, surely? (Leaving religious views aside).

I would agree with that. I certainly don't think that my attitude towards one night stands makes me a better person than somebody with a more relaxed attitude towards them. I just wish that people wouldn't be so quick to judge a person based on their sexual experience, preferences etc.

Author:  Cosimo's Jackal [ Tue Mar 22, 2011 12:18 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Nightwing wrote:

Ah, yes, but boys are taught that they can't possibly control themselves sexually, while girls are taught that sexuality is full of dangers and it's up to them not to "give in"... Hence to much shock and horror (and disgusting name-calling) when men are happy in a relationship sans sex and woman are happily having sex without being in a relationship! [/gripe]


Yes, exactly. Which is why I have in the past been considered so peculiar and unfeminine for my views that sex - given adequate emotional competence and contraception - is an entirely unserious, morally-neutral affair. (I say this as someone who's been in a happily monogamous relationship for aeons, I should add, so this is looking back through the mists of time). I have often also found that the men who claimed they wanted casual sex were curiously resentful when you made no pretence of taking their number in the morning!

But this is getting us no closer to figuring out what Joey might have done had someone come out to her, in a twist more unlikely in a CS novel than Mary-Lou saying 'I was wrong, I'll just shut up now'. :D

Maybe the problem is that sexual desire of any kind is (quite understandably, given the period) absent from the world of a children's school series - people get married to people they 'can't do without' or whose quiet graciousness reminds them of their mothers etc etc. Even in the most 'normal' (if we assume that most or many non-arranged marriages begin with an element of sexual attraction, that is) with Peter Young eyeing up Gillian Linton, it's rather cast as 'there's a face I want to paint'. We only know conjugal sex is going on because of the large amounts of offspring produced.

I suppose what I'm saying is that there doesn't seem a great deal - given the general cheery, mutually-supportive sexlessness - to distinguish, say, Joey and Jack's relationship from Hilda and Nell's or Kathie and Nancy's, apart from the stream of babies. And I can never take them all that seriously, given that Joey seems to be in somewhat alarming control of her reproductive capacities and produces charmingly varying-in-colouring children of different sexes and in amusing numbers, in a way that does suggest EBD playing with her dolls! In a world without any desire - where there doesn't seem much to distinguish husband/wife relationships from close friendships - it's difficult to think about same-sex desire, if that makes sense?

I have occasionally wondered whether Hilda and Nell Wilson, having been close friends, colleagues and co-Heads for so long under the same roof, rather minded being separated when Nell goes off to head up the Millies...?

Author:  Nightwing [ Tue Mar 22, 2011 12:24 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Mia wrote:
But some people are very happy to have one night stands. If nobody is harmed during the course of these it isn't any more deplorable than any other sexual life choice, surely? (Leaving religious views aside).


I agree and (sorry!) my original point wasn't that any one attitude towards sex is wrong, but that everyone's own preferences are just that - their own, and no one else's business! I get very frustrated in the fact that no matter what choices you make, someone will make it their business to tell you why you are wrong - you're too frigid, you're too naive, you're too promiscuous...

Incidentally, sometimes I wonder whether society really is so much more sexualised than it has been in the past, and maybe our resident historians will be able to jump in here... The biggest difference seems to be that we're much more open in discussing it than we were pre-60's social revolutions, but there are plenty of literary works dating well before that where sex is discussed openly - social standards are constantly shifting, but sex is always there!

Cosimo's Jackal wrote:
I have occasionally wondered whether Hilda and Nell Wilson, having been close friends, colleagues and co-Heads for so long under the same roof, rather minded being separated when Nell goes off to head up the Millies...?


They never seem as close, to me, after Nell moves away. Messy break-up, anyone? :lol: :?

Author:  shesings [ Tue Mar 22, 2011 12:35 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Doesn't Rosalie make a comment about Hilda 'missing her Nell' in, I think, 'Shocks'?

Author:  Alison H [ Tue Mar 22, 2011 12:42 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

*With historian's hat on* - I think our society now's much more sexualised than it was in EBD's time, but certainly not more so than it's ever been. Look at Restoration England, for example (as described in Forever Amber, come to think of it :lol: ). OK, that was more at court than in the country at large, but even so. & attitudes in the Regency period were much more relaxed than they were in the mid to late Victorian period. If we look at Jane Austen's books, we get Maria Bertram leaving her husband and running off with another man, Willoughby being revealed as the father of an illegitimate child, and Lydia Bennet "living with" (OK, "living with" could mean separate bedrooms, but I think it's pretty clear that it doesn't!) Mr Wickham before he's bribed into marrying her.

& I think it's important to remember that people in the past didn't have access to reliable contraception, which would have had a significant impact on their behaviour. Imagine the gossip on the Platz if if Len and Reg had had to have a shotgun wedding!

To get back to the CS again, very few people in the CS books do anything that would have been considered unconventional by the standards of the times. The two big exceptions - Joan Baker doesn't really "do" that much - are Margot Venables née Russell (whose story I always find fascinating) and Elma Conroy. Oh, and Prof Richardson, but I don't think space travel's really very relevant to the discussion :lol: . No-one else wants to marry someone considered unsuitable, wants to work somewhere that doesn't fit in with the CS world, abandons their studies for any reason other than marriage or being "needed at home", gets in with a crowd of friends who don't meet with their family's approval, or anything else along those lines.

There isn't a very strong moral reason why we shouldn't see the MBR clan having to cope with Rix or David deciding to jack in medical school and go off and travel round the world instead, or Sybil or Bride bringing home an unsuitable boyfriend, but it never happens. So it's very hard to judge how Joey or any other character would react to a same sex relationship, which by the standards of the time would have been far more unconventional.

Author:  Beecharmer [ Tue Mar 22, 2011 12:54 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Nightwing wrote:
Mia wrote:
But some people are very happy to have one night stands. If nobody is harmed during the course of these it isn't any more deplorable than any other sexual life choice, surely? (Leaving religious views aside).


I agree and (sorry!) my original point wasn't that any one attitude towards sex is wrong, but that everyone's own preferences are just that - their own, and no one else's business! I get very frustrated in the fact that no matter what choices you make, someone will make it their business to tell you why you are wrong - you're too frigid, you're too naive, you're too promiscuous...

Incidentally, sometimes I wonder whether society really is so much it than we were pre-60's social revolutions, but there are plenty of literary works dating well before that where sex is discussed openly - social standards are constantly shifting, but sex is always there!

Cosimo's Jackal wrote:
I have occasionally wondered whether Hilda and Nell Wilson, having been close friends, colleagues and co-Heads for so long under the same roof, rather minded being separated when Nell goes off to head up the Millies...?


They never seem as close, to me, after Nell moves away. Messy break-up, anyone? :lol: :?


LOL ! I have this mental image of the Chalet School board having a meeting
" We have a problem everybody. Nell and Hilda are no longer an item and it hasn't worked out well. We don't want to lose either of them, but they cant even look at each other, let alone work together, what on earth are we going to do? "
" I know! Let's split the school in two and give them a bit each ! " ..
"Great plan ! Only Hilda is more the head most of the time, let's give her most of the school and just give Nell about a quarter. I've never forgiven Nell for always being so sarcastic to me " ..
" You know, if we are going to do that, how about we move the school to switzerland? " "
Great idea !"
" Now thats settled, how about a huge pastry filled with whipped cream anyone?

Lol, sorry the plot bunny got away with me, it had to get out somewhere. Back to serious grown up discussion :-

You have expressed that better than I have, i didnt mean there is anything specifically wrong about people sleeping with whoever they chose when they chose, although it wouldn't work for me. I personally have no issue with anyone's choice of lifestyle ( how hypocritical would I be if I did !) as long as it is consensual and equal and doesn't hurt anyone ( unless intentionally part of the thrill, again not my thing but hey it takes all kinds !)

But there is a real feeling now that to require some emotional connection and understanding before jumping into bed together is as you say naive etc. And that it is almost wrong to remain monogamous unless you have both had masses of relationships before hand.

Author:  KB [ Tue Mar 22, 2011 3:31 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

shesings wrote:
Doesn't Rosalie make a comment about Hilda 'missing her Nell' in, I think, 'Shocks'?


No, not quite. The quote is:

Quote:
'The Abbess is missing Bill,' Rosalie thought as she waved good-bye to them.


which, for me at least, doesn't suggest anything more than a mutual friendship and working relationship, since the conversations preceding this have really been about Emerence and also the situation in Canada.

Author:  cal562301 [ Tue Mar 22, 2011 8:54 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Cosimo's Jackal wrote:
Nightwing wrote:

Ah, yes, but boys are taught that they can't possibly control themselves sexually, while girls are taught that sexuality is full of dangers and it's up to them not to "give in"... Hence to much shock and horror (and disgusting name-calling) when men are happy in a relationship sans sex and woman are happily having sex without being in a relationship! [/gripe]


Yes, exactly. Which is why I have in the past been considered so peculiar and unfeminine for my views that sex - given adequate emotional competence and contraception - is an entirely unserious, morally-neutral affair. (I say this as someone who's been in a happily monogamous relationship for aeons, I should add, so this is looking back through the mists of time). I have often also found that the men who claimed they wanted casual sex were curiously resentful when you made no pretence of taking their number in the morning!

But this is getting us no closer to figuring out what Joey might have done had someone come out to her, in a twist more unlikely in a CS novel than Mary-Lou saying 'I was wrong, I'll just shut up now'. :D

Maybe the problem is that sexual desire of any kind is (quite understandably, given the period) absent from the world of a children's school series - people get married to people they 'can't do without' or whose quiet graciousness reminds them of their mothers etc etc. Even in the most 'normal' (if we assume that most or many non-arranged marriages begin with an element of sexual attraction, that is) with Peter Young eyeing up Gillian Linton, it's rather cast as 'there's a face I want to paint'. We only know conjugal sex is going on because of the large amounts of offspring produced.

I suppose what I'm saying is that there doesn't seem a great deal - given the general cheery, mutually-supportive sexlessness - to distinguish, say, Joey and Jack's relationship from Hilda and Nell's or Kathie and Nancy's, apart from the stream of babies. And I can never take them all that seriously, given that Joey seems to be in somewhat alarming control of her reproductive capacities and produces charmingly varying-in-colouring children of different sexes and in amusing numbers, in a way that does suggest EBD playing with her dolls! In a world without any desire - where there doesn't seem much to distinguish husband/wife relationships from close friendships - it's difficult to think about same-sex desire, if that makes sense?

I have occasionally wondered whether Hilda and Nell Wilson, having been close friends, colleagues and co-Heads for so long under the same roof, rather minded being separated when Nell goes off to head up the Millies...?


I think that a large part of the problem is that sex is often considered in isolation, rather than in the context of a loving, committed relationship, which is where it has always been intended to be. I don't believe in the doctrine of it being 'for the procreation of children' and nothing else. I do believe it was intended to give pleasure.

But I have friends, particularly in my student days, who leapt from one boy's bed to another on a regular basis and they clearly never found the satisfaction what they were looking for. (Please don't read anything crude into that, as it's in no way intended! :D )

And in the context of contraception, why is the simplest, safest and most reliable method of all, rarely mentioned: just say no?

I remember that being a slogan against AIDS a few years ago, but even then, abstinence was not really being advocated.

There are so many social pressures on teenagers especially. Teenagers are having sex before they are emotionally mature enough to live with the potential consequences. And often it's because they think every one but them is 'doing it', which is probably not the case.

The same pressure is on adults, too, to a greater or lesser extent, in our couple orientated society. People like Juleanne and myself are in a minority because we're honest about finding fulfillment in a single life and are often regarded as something of an oddity or even not quite normal.

I don't mean that anyone on here regards us as such, but it's an attitude I've often come across, and I'm sure Julieanne has too.

Author:  Alison H [ Tue Mar 22, 2011 9:08 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Oh, I'm always getting nasty remarks about how if you're on your own then there must be something wrong with you. On Sunday, I was on a boat in the Lake District and a complete stranger made a crack about had I got no friends. I don't understand why anyone would say that to a stranger who's just minding their own business, and it's incredibly tactless - for all they know, someone could be on their own because they've recently been widowed or their partner has walked out on them. I've even had nosy relations commiserating with my mum and dad about me. That sort of thing's why I find Joey's quizzing of Rosalie about why she's never married very annoying: it suggests that Rosalie's doing something strange.

Having said which, I think the CS staff include some very positive role models of people who are not in a relationship. No-one ever sighs or sneers about what a shame it is that Hilda/Nell/Mr Denny/Matey/anyone else has never married, or suggests that they're only teaching because they can't find a partner. & Anna turns a nice boyfriend down because she doesn't "care for him in the right way", instead of taking the view, as some people would've done, that any husband was better than none.

There's also the idea that having a partner gets in the way of other things: neither Stacie nor Margia marry, and the suggestion is that Nina won't either. That could just be because EBD assumes that marriage means children and trying to do concert tours with a young baby would be difficult, but she seems to take the view that someone who's focused on something else can't give sufficient attention to a relationship, and vice versa ... which is perhaps rather negative.

Author:  Tor [ Tue Mar 22, 2011 12:00 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Cosimo's Jackal wrote:
I suppose what I'm saying is that there doesn't seem a great deal - given the general cheery, mutually-supportive sexlessness - to distinguish, say, Joey and Jack's relationship from Hilda and Nell's or Kathie and Nancy's, apart from the stream of babies.


This hits the nail on the head for me - it leaves the door wide open for interpretations of all kinds. Whether EBD meant to do so, we will never know! Certainly, it isn't unreasonable to speculate/interpret the nature of the feelings/relationships between Simone-Joey, Kathy-Nancy, Hilda-Nell, Jane-Jack, Jack-Len and so forth.

AlisonH wrote:
*With historian's hat on* - I think our society now's much more sexualised than it was in EBD's time, but certainly not more so than it's ever been. Look at Restoration England, for example (as described in Forever Amber, come to think of it ).


I disagree, partly. Overt sexualisation (e.g. naked women, in lascivious poses, so common one doesn't blink an eyelid) is more apparent nowadays, yes. But just because something was judged as being socially unacceptable (e.g. sex before marriage, especially for women; homosexuality etc), this in no way meant it didn't happen at similar frequencies to today. Shot gun weddings were plentiful, as were back street abortions, and I'd say the 20's and 30's were pretty open and forthright in terms of sexual behaviour if the novels and letters from that period are anything to go by. Even if there was plenty of social judgement, and a lack of support, for those who got themselves in a bit of a pickle r.e. pregnancy.

Author:  julieanne1811 [ Tue Mar 22, 2011 12:00 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

MJKB wrote:
It can't be easy in this sexualised world of ours.


In the 80s (in London), the widely held view was that people who hold such similar views had problems with sex. That's now changed to thinking that the kind of behaviour that results from such thinking has its roots in beliefs that are extremely strongly held. That's a healthier view of the situation, but what do I care, anyway?

I wsa listening to a R4 programme about Churchill the other night and there was a lot of speculation about his attitude to sex and his appetite to the same, even though it wa primarily about his work as a PM during the 2WW. Then there was the porgramme about Queen Victoria on BBC2 last night too (very good, usually), absolutely full of smirks and suggestive remarks simply because they were discussing the bedroom in which she and Albert stayed.

So - yes, this annoys me. A lot. It often seems today that we can't discuss anything without bringing in a sexual element, and it's wearing ... someone once asked a Hollywood film director why he didn't have (the inevitable) 'sex scene' in his his films, because 'everyone has sex'. His reply was that 'everyone eats soup, but that doesn't mean I have to have a 'soup scene' in every film'. Nicely put, I think.

Author:  Beecharmer [ Tue Mar 22, 2011 12:02 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Alison H wrote:
Oh, I'm always getting nasty remarks about how if you're on your own then there must be something wrong with you. On Sunday, I was on a boat in the Lake District and a complete stranger made a crack about had I got no friends.


What an idiot. But he probably thought he was being funny / friendly.

I think it is like because a lot of people can't entertain themselves, are not happy in their own company.

It can almost be an extension of school, The tendancy to need to follow the herd. I get irritated by the principle that how well you are doing is counted by the number and type of friends you have and who you are in a relationship with.

We both have several facebook/collegue type friends / aquaintances and a reasonable amount of closer friends. But because we were too busy for much socialising until recently with various family matters, and because we didnt like the same people as family members did, (getting bored with the constant treating of us like an oddity because we werent married or pregnant), the perception of many, mainly family, was that we cant or dont make friends. They keep being shocked that now we have time we cant be at their beck and call because we actually have a social life.

We get the assumption that we are NOT together, so cracks about boyfriends instead of friends. Or you get people assuming we must be missing something in our mental make up or have been abused etc. Or that we have "given up" something by not being with a man. Unfortunately you cant regret or give up something that never felt natural to you in the first place ! I often feel like askung if they feel they have missed out because they have no same sex experience lol.

Author:  Alison H [ Tue Mar 22, 2011 12:29 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Beecharmer23 wrote:
. Or that we have "given up" something by not being with a man.


To get back to the CS, I think one reason why there does tend to be a lot of discussion about same sex relationships in school stories, even though the books don't mention relationships in general, is the commonly held idea that in a single sex environment some people will form relationships with people of the same sex even when that isn't necessarily their overriding natural instinct. That's horrendously badly put, but hopefully it makes sense: it's a view that's quite often expressed about single sex boarding schools, arguably the Armed Forces in the days before it was common for women to see active service, and certainly the society of the 1920s and 1930s when there were a lot more women than men of the age group directly affected by the First World War.

There may be some truth in it in individual cases or there may not - and it'd certainly be very insulting to assume that same sex couples in these circumstances wouldn't be together otherwise - but it does seem to be a view which attracts attention, and I'd think that's partly why there tends to be a lot of discussion about same sex relationships in GO books.

:shock: I know this has been mentioned in books about girls' schools, but I just idly tried Google to see if there were similar books about boys' schools and one's been written by a guy called Steven (with a v) Maynard!

Author:  MJKB [ Tue Mar 22, 2011 1:25 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Alison H wrote:
To get back to the CS, I think one reason why there does tend to be a lot of discussion about same sex relationships in school stories, even though the books don't mention relationships in general, is the commonly held idea that in a single sex environment some people will form relationships with people of the same sex even when that isn't necessarily their overriding natural instinct.


Isn't that the flaw in Masters&Johnson's research, namely that some of it was carried out in single sex institutions such as prisons? I've just a vague recollection of watching a documentary about their research some years ago.
Beecharmer23 wrote:
Alison H wrote:
Oh, I'm always getting nasty remarks about how if you're on your own then there must be something wrong with you. On Sunday, I was on a boat in the Lake District and a complete stranger made a crack about had I got no friends. [\quote]

I'm getting very annoyed with my sister from the States, (whom, incidently, I love dearly), constantly asking about our 27 year old neice's love life. Said 27 year old niece is a nurse who is working full time in a position that is not normally occupied by anyone without several years experience. She has also completed a Masters and is doing a further graduate diploma! Her younger sisters are in relationships and she is being made to feel inadequate because she isn't. She has told me that she would love to meet somebody but it just hasn't happened yet. Having been in that position myself I know how uncomfortable these 'well meaning' inquiries can make one feel.

julieanne1811 wrote:
In the 80s (in London), the widely held view was that people who hold such similar views had problems with sex. That's now changed to thinking that the kind of behaviour that results from such thinking has its roots in beliefs that are extremely strongly held.

Glad to note that. But society still seems hell bent on sexualising pre teenage children as quickly as you can say "designer gear".

Author:  Beecharmer [ Tue Mar 22, 2011 1:36 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Yes that is a common view I would say, in fact I held off coming out even to myself for some time because i had gone to a single sex school, but i was a member of a mixed sex scout group, had boyfriends and was member of mixed sex sports groups and sixth form so i realised pretty soon after leaving school that the school environmenr hadnt had any influence. Except that i think I would have had a girlfriend much earlier if i had been at a mixed school as the school situation made me doubt myself.

It is an interesting thought though - are people in single sex environments "making do" with single sx relsyionships, or are they perhaps in a situation where they feel safer exploring that aspect of themselves than in mainstream life because they have an excuse ??

Author:  shesings [ Tue Mar 22, 2011 2:59 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

KB wrote:
shesings wrote:
Doesn't Rosalie make a comment about Hilda 'missing her Nell' in, I think, 'Shocks'?


No, not quite. The quote is:

Quote:
'The Abbess is missing Bill,' Rosalie thought as she waved good-bye to them.


which, for me at least, doesn't suggest anything more than a mutual friendship and working relationship, since the conversations preceding this have really been about Emerence and also the situation in Canada.


Thanks for the quote, KB, but I really meant it showed that there hadn't been a messy break-up!

One thing that I wonder about is that Nell is quite often described as Hilda's "partner and co-head", particularly in the Swiss books. The school by this time is a limited company and so, though they are probably both shareholders and possibly board members, they are not 'partners' in the business sense.

Having said that, in the circles in which I moved in the 50s and 60s, 'partner' would not normally be used to denote any kind of sexual relationship out of wedlock! "Bidie-in" would be the norm, "kippie-up" if the relationship was particularly scandalous or "friend" where there were extenuating circumstances e.g. one or other's spouse being in a long-term mental home or in prison or there being some other compelling reason. I didn't realise a couple of friends of the family weren't married until we went to their quiet wedding the day after her youngest son's 21st birthday. She was a war widow and simply could not afford to lose her pension while she was bringing up her family.

Author:  jayj [ Tue Mar 22, 2011 3:53 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I'm coming very late to this discussion because I've been away, but as one of the gays in this village :wink: and as a guilty Kathie/Nancy drabbler, I thought I'd chip in with a couple of points.

Pages and pages ago, ClaireK said
Quote:
Over the past few years there has been an oft-heard cry in the media that those who are part of a "minority" group (whatever that may be - racial, sexuality, whatever) need to have models on TV etc with which to identify.

Why?? As a member of a minority group, I never had examples of children of Polish heritage on TV or in books.


I think it's a bit different: if you're from a Polish family, then you've presumably got Polish role models and Polish history around you at some level, even if it's not in the media. But if you're growing up gay, then it's often unlikely that you have those role models around you. Seeing representations of lesbians in the media was massively important to me - it made sense of my own life, when I was a very closeted teenager, and it validated my own experiences.

And in fact, CS books played an important role in that. There's a bit in (I think) Rivals where (details are v. hazy, but the emotional response is not) one of the St Scholastikas girls mocks one of the CS girls for following a teacher's orders, with the dig 'Keen on her, are you?' or something similar. That idea of having a crush on a female teacher was so familiar to me that it was a completely heartstopping moment when I read it. And there was another bit where (details of this are even hazier) either Nell and Con or Nancy and Kathie were described as being particularly good friends, and again, to my twelve-year-old self, that struck me as enormously significant. Possibly not quite as mindblowing as seeing the lesbians on Emmerdale, but still, landmark moments in my emerging sexuality.

The other point I wanted to make was about the relationship/non-relationship aspect of this discussion. When I wrote the drabble that I did, I did so because I wanted Kathie and Nancy to live happily ever after. But at various points in writing it, I became rather uncomfortable. I'm currently single and happily so, and it troubled me somewhat to find that what I was writing seemed to be arguing that the only path to fulfilment - whether you're straight or gay - is to be in a relationship. And in other drabbles too, I do wrestle with my own responses when I find myself wanting x and x to get together and live happily ever after, because I'm not sure that's a lifestyle I'd actually want for myself. Ho hum!

Author:  JS [ Tue Mar 22, 2011 5:57 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Quote:
I'm currently single and happily so, and it troubled me somewhat to find that what I was writing seemed to be arguing that the only path to fulfilment - whether you're straight or gay - is to be in a relationship. And in other drabbles too, I do wrestle with my own responses when I find myself wanting x and x to get together and live happily ever after, because I'm not sure that's a lifestyle I'd actually want for myself. Ho hum!



It is interesting, isn't it/ I'm thinking of David Lodge's Nice Work, where the main character lectures on the Victorian novel. It's made clear that there are several possible outcomes for a heroine, including marriage, a legacy, a move to the colonies or (possibly, can't quite remember) death. In that novel, the heroine gets the choice of several of these and I for one certainly don't want her to opt for marriage. But, as jayj says, that's unusual, however we feel about our own lives.

It's as if in art or fiction we do have a bit of a Noah complex and want to pair people off, whereas in real life that can be the less preferable option, depending on circumstances.

Back to earlier in the discussion when people were defining what 'couple' means to them, I think that the term 'significant other' (although quite cringey in its traditional sense) is actually quite descriptive for all sorts of human relationships. I think that lots of people have a human need for someone else - not necessarily a 'partner' in the traditional sense - to care about what they're doing, to know when they have a doctor's appointment and ask how they got on, to know, basically, what's going on in their lives. For some people that would be their mum, or sister, or close friend; for others, it might be a colleague or a partner in the traditional sense. But it certainly doesn't imply that there is a sexual relationship there.

(and BTW Alison, I suspect that the person who accosted you in the Lakes was - clumsily - trying to chat you up :wink: )

Author:  Alison H [ Tue Mar 22, 2011 6:11 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I doubt it! Even worse was the person who recently charged me for two tickets because they apparently couldn't believe that anyone would be weird enough to go anywhere on their own :roll: - luckily I queried the price before I paid!

In the CS books, the alternatives to marriage seem to be a vocational-type career (teaching, occasionally nursing, or becoming a nun), a "genius"-type career (Stacie, Margia, Nina) or domestic service, which I suppose are the traditional roles for single women. There aren't a lot of people who do anything else. Sophie Hamel is one - she seems to help to run her dad's business - and maybe Grizel and (widowed) Deira are two more when they run their music shop. I'm trying to think if there's anyone like Marjory in To The Manor Born, the sort of person who lives in a cottage in a village and is very involved in church flower-arranging etc - again it's a stereotype, but one which'd fit well with the CS world, but I don't think there is.

& there's also the Single Female Relation - Tant Luise, who seems to be left to look after her sister's mother-in-law whilst everyone else goes off enjoying herself, and the various single aunts and cousins who are expected to look after Carola/Althea/whoever whilst the girls' parents are abroad.

I'd like to think that Loveday Perowne, with her big inheritance, lived it up and did whatever she wanted :D !

Author:  Nightwing [ Tue Mar 22, 2011 9:28 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

jayj wrote:
Pages and pages ago, ClaireK said
Quote:
Over the past few years there has been an oft-heard cry in the media that those who are part of a "minority" group (whatever that may be - racial, sexuality, whatever) need to have models on TV etc with which to identify.

Why?? As a member of a minority group, I never had examples of children of Polish heritage on TV or in books.


I think it's a bit different: if you're from a Polish family, then you've presumably got Polish role models and Polish history around you at some level, even if it's not in the media. But if you're growing up gay, then it's often unlikely that you have those role models around you. Seeing representations of lesbians in the media was massively important to me - it made sense of my own life, when I was a very closeted teenager, and it validated my own experiences.


I'd also add that, outside of the idea of "role models", there's the question of erasure - it's not about having (for example) a lesbian character that gay girls can look up to, it's about acknowledging that there are people out there who aren't straight. Having nothing but white hetero-normative characters in a TV show sends a very strong message that that's what "normal" and "accepted" is - that if you're not white, straight, and cis-gendered there's no place for you.

jayj wrote:
I'm currently single and happily so, and it troubled me somewhat to find that what I was writing seemed to be arguing that the only path to fulfilment - whether you're straight or gay - is to be in a relationship. And in other drabbles too, I do wrestle with my own responses when I find myself wanting x and x to get together and live happily ever after, because I'm not sure that's a lifestyle I'd actually want for myself.


I have the same problem! I was super excited recently when I read author Tamora Pierce saying that one of her characters might never marry, because she thinks the character in question might be someone who prefers to be single, because how often do you come across that in stories? Singles are often shown to be lonely or bitter, whereas most of the people I know (including me!) who aren't or who have chosen not to be in relationships live perfectly happy, fulfilled lives.

But having said that, I think it comes down to the characters you're writing about. I suspect for, say, Len Maynard, having a happy life does mean being in a long-term relationship with someone, living in a nice house and having oodles of babies. Whereas I could imagine Con Maynard being in a long-term relationship but saying no to children; and Margot, even if she didn't have a vocation which meant no marriage and no children, I can see staying happily childless and single forever. I don't think you're really saying that relationships are the only way to happiness unless you're determinedly matchmaking all your characters, whether they want it or not...

Author:  Beecharmer [ Tue Mar 22, 2011 11:49 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

HELP ! You are all making far to many good points ! I am never going to get back to real life again ! But Jayj – I’M the only gay in this village !!! ;-)

Right, here goes – and again apologies for length of waffle !! Can't get the quote thing to work, so bold means quote here.

[quote]The other point I wanted to make was about the relationship/non-relationship aspect of this discussion. When I wrote the drabble that I did, I did so because I wanted Kathie and Nancy to live happily ever after. But at various points in writing it, I became rather uncomfortable. I'm currently single and happily so, and it troubled me somewhat to find that what I was writing seemed to be arguing that the only path to fulfilment - whether you're straight or gay - is to be in a relationship. And in other drabbles too, I do wrestle with my own responses when I find myself wanting x and x to get together and live happily ever after, because I'm not sure that's a lifestyle I'd actually want for myself. Ho hum! [\quote]


Yes can see that, good point - but having been addicted to your drabble recently --- NO !! If you continue please don’t cause them too much stress !! *wibbles*.

And don't suggest it to Finn either for Tea and Militancy or I may cry !

[quote] It's as if in art or fiction we do have a bit of a Noah complex and want to pair people off, whereas in real life that can be the less preferable option, depending on circumstances.[\quote]

I like that description – Noah complex.

I have often felt myself that, if I wasn’t with my partner, I possibly wouldn’t necessarily want to settle down again, so can see why it would be irritating to have people treat you like there is something wrong with you for that choice. Although I doubt I would be good at one night stands or short term physical affairs, (not assuming any of you who are single are doing either of those please note!) and I think I would have difficulty being celibate, so I have a horrible feeling I would be one who would end up eventually back in a form of relationship, though unlikely as close as my current. Pretty shallow of me, but I think likely if I am honest.

But there is certainly a suggestion of fault from a lot of people if not paired off. It must be pretty annoying for you if that is how you chose to live. We get a different type of thing generally, but one experience would I guess fit both types of situation :

My partner suddenly found masses of clothes in one shop that suited and fitted, which both of us find hard sometimes. And I mean A LOT. While queuing a man behind her said to his wife “bet her husband not going to be happy about that bill”.

Again, a throwaway comment, but it showed an assumption that there a) was a husband b) the husband earned more and paid the bill c) the husband controlled her spending. My partner actually turned round and said something like “No, I earn my own money thank you very much”. And his wife backed her up – she actually said, “good for you! I don’t know why he is even saying that, I work too, and I earn more than he does actually !”

[quote] Seeing representations of lesbians in the media was massively important to me - it made sense of my own life, when I was a very closeted teenager, and it validated my own experiences.

And in fact, CS books played an important role in that. There's a bit in (I think) Rivalswhere (details are v. hazy, but the emotional response is not) one of the St Scholastikas girls mocks one of the CS girls for following a teacher's orders, with the dig 'Keen on her, are you?' or something similar. That idea of having a crush on a female teacher was so familiar to me that it was a completely heartstopping moment when I read it. And there was another bit where (details of this are even hazier) either Nell and Con or Nancy and Kathie were described as being particularly good friends, and again, to my twelve-year-old self, that struck me as enormously significant [\quote]


Yes, agreed on both points. I couldn’t work out how to say it earlier, but it is true that it is a different thing to something like being of a particular nationality or religion, and didn’t want to upset anyone with a badly phrased reply, but you have explained it well there.

For a long time as a teenager I couldn’t reconcile the fact that the only way I perceived I could be gay was if I was really aggressive and butch, leather clad and on a motorbike, or if I wore dungarees and was hugely political or predatory on straight women. None of which felt right or like me at all. (Though OT I suddenly realise I now have very short hair, tend to mens clothes and wear leather jackets all the time ! Oops, I’ve fallen into my own stereotypes ...) ;-)

But reading things like Bill grabbing Con Stewart’s hand and running off to the science lab (I think that happened, or was that just me wanting it to ? ;-) ) or reading the way that the friendship/partnership/love (delete as appropriate to your views !) between Bill and Hilda seemed to be accepted and understood, was a great thing, let alone the descriptions of crushes / strong friendships in a pretty matter of fact way. And Tom, Dickie Christie, Jack, Ted Grantley etc all gave me a feeling of ‘I’m not totally alone in being more interested in car maintenance than sewing, or orienteering and building things and than looking at posters of film stars etc’

In books like Malory Towers, only fluffy Alison or selfish Gwen seem to have crushes. Whether someone turns out gay or not, I think the more balanced perception of it in CS makes it feel more like ‘Hey, this is part of growing up, and we don't all have to be clones of each other.’ You feel less like you are abnormal or wrong.

And for me, rather than emmerdale, (which I managed to miss as a lesbian storyline) Fried Green Tomatoes was a real boost to my confidence in the chance of lesbian relationships being positive (as is I think probably obvious to some of you from my board name :-) ) and then Ellen coming out. It made accepting myself and coming out much easier that there were attractive, positive, moderately mainstream representations of gay women.

I do agree with some of the principle of the post however, from the person who mentioned about not being represented as being Polish etc but not feeling it a problem. There is a little bit of a swing now to the point of view that all programs must have an identikit cast with all possible options available, which can get in the way of the storyline. This leads to a bit of “token gay character” situation which can be annoying in itself.

[quote] Back to earlier in the discussion when people were defining what 'couple' means to them, I think that the term 'significant other' (although quite cringey in its traditional sense) is actually quite descriptive for all sorts of human relationships. I think that lots of people have a human need for someone else - not necessarily a 'partner' in the traditional sense - to care about what they're doing, to know when they have a doctor's appointment and ask how they got on, to know, basically, what's going on in their lives. For some people that would be their mum, or sister, or close friend; for others, it might be a colleague or a partner in the traditional sense. But it certainly doesn't imply that there is a sexual relationship there. [\quote]


Yes, I like that one too, it fits a lot of situations. In general I think it is used in a nice way, and it says a lot in a short way – another person who is significant to you.

Although I agree it can be a cringeworthy when people use it in a cutesy/coy/over P.C. way – it makes me want to say “What? You mean my lover? to freak them out, despite the fact that that is another phrase I would never normally use, only because I feel like it’s more detail than necessary, and none of anyone’s business, and my SLOC is so much more than just a lover, which again implies just affair to me.

[quote] I'd also add that, outside of the idea of "role models", there's the question of erasure - it's not about having (for example) a lesbian character that gay girls can look up to, it's about acknowledging that there are people out there who aren't straight. Having nothing but white hetero-normative characters in a TV show sends a very strong message that that's what "normal" and "accepted" is - that if you're not white, straight, and cis-gendered there's no place for you.[\quote]



Yes, another good way of putting it.

Another aspect, as there are now more openly gay characters in the media, it allows people who are straight to understand that we are not the three headed monsters with a perversion. Also that we are people first and homosexual incidentally as a part of being human. It is the principle of a “character who is gay” rather than a “gay character”, if you see the distinction. If you have any involvement with “children with disabilities”, rather than “disabled children” you would get the distinction I would guess – it is the showing in your mind that you are seeing them as children first, with problems that may need help, rather than a disability attached to a child.

[quote] But having said that, I think it comes down to the characters you're writing about. I suspect for, say, Len Maynard, having a happy life does mean being in a long-term relationship with someone, living in a nice house and having oodles of babies. Whereas I could imagine Con Maynard being in a long-term relationship but saying no to children; and Margot, even if she didn't have a vocation which meant no marriage and no children, I can see staying happily childless and single forever. I don't think you're really saying that relationships are the only way to happiness unless you're determinedly matchmaking all your characters, whether they want it or not... [\quote]


Totally agree with the principle. That is the problem often with TV programs or films where studio pressure etc make the writers force the characters to do things that don’t make sense. As all those with active and stroppy plot rabbits know, good characters tell YOU what they want to do, not the other way around ! ( I think there actually is a CS quote that fits with that aswell?)

Funny though, I never felt that about Len. I always had her pegged for being gay in my head, but no idea why, other than perhaps wishful thinking! I think her close relationships with Prunella and Jack, and with Ted, and perhaps identifying myself with her from the point of view of being overly responsible and getting put upon because feel ought to try to make people happy. Again, probably different if you have read more of the later books where I am guessing Reg features more heavily.

I also totally agree with Con not having children necessarily, although I see her being happily independant and single, but again not sure why.

Unless it is the suggestion that she is “happy with her imaginary people” from one of the books that perhaps suggests it.

Right I have to stop now, although I am betting by the time I post this there will be at least 3 more posts I find interesting !

Author:  lindsabeth [ Wed Mar 23, 2011 12:40 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

This is an interesting discussion :) I don't have much to add, just wanted to say how happy I am to find that there are other people who don't think there's anything wrong with being single. I haven't been in a relationship for a while, and I'm perfectly happy being alone. I don't really see myself as ever getting married, and I used to think this meant there was something terribly wrong with me! Part of me was always a little sad about Joey getting married when she had talked about never doing so. I wonder how her character would have developed without Jack and the children.

Author:  claire [ Wed Mar 23, 2011 10:21 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Beecharmer23 wrote:
Funny though, I never felt that about Len. I always had her pegged for being gay in my head, but no idea why, other than perhaps wishful thinking! I think her close relationships with Prunella and Jack, and with Ted, and perhaps identifying myself with her from the point of view of being overly responsible and getting put upon because feel ought to try to make people happy. Again, probably different if you have read more of the later books where I am guessing Reg features more heavily.


He doesn't really feature much that's pretty much why many on here are against the engagement, he just shows up in the background then 'I take it we're engaged?'

Maybe her being a lesbian and fighting against herself to be what her parents and everyone expects is what leads her to getting engaged so early and without a proper 'courtship'

Author:  Beecharmer [ Wed Mar 23, 2011 11:28 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

claire wrote:
Beecharmer23 wrote:
Maybe her being a lesbian and fighting against herself to be what her parents and everyone expects is what leads her to getting engaged so early and without a proper 'courtship'


Well that had occurrd to me too. It would certainly be a very typical situation. I was certainly lucky that my boyfriend as a young teen didn't take advantage, as I certainly had a reasonable chance of having sex too young as a desperate, " no I must be wrong in what I am thinking / feeling " reaction. It would also explain Len perhaps not being bothered about meeting other boys before settling down. A husband who is almost like an older relative would feel a safe way to fulfil expectations.

I always somehow liked the idea of Len and Prunella ending up together after leaving school. With Jack Lambert initially being jealous, then realising she is actually meant to end up with Jane! Apologies to those who only like to see the characters in straight roles, but imagine the way you feel about them ending up as same sex couples being the equivalent to my dissapointment when they suddenly go all swoony or marry a nice doctor !

Author:  Alison H [ Wed Mar 23, 2011 12:31 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I never get the impression that Len is very romantically interested in either men or women! Getting engaged seems to be a lifestyle choice (settling her future) rather than something she's doing because she's so keen on Reg: she doesn't blush at the mention of his name as various other characters do at the mention of the men they end up with. I think the only time that we're aware of Len in that way is in Joey & Co, when she's all wound up about something and Roger Richardson is looking at her and thinking how pretty she is.

It's funny how we get some books in the later part of the series which seem quite open and relaxed about things - in Joey & Co, we get Roger shocking old ladies by wandering about in his skimpy bathing trunks, Roger admiring Len, everyone fussing about how it's important to wear pretty clothes, etc, in Adrienne we get Ailie and her friends chatting about whether or not they'd like to go out with boys and in Reunion we see Ian Hamilton eyeing up Con, and then the series ends with a courtship (if it can even be called a courtship) which is very stilted and seems to make most readers feel uncomfortable.

Author:  Beecharmer [ Wed Mar 23, 2011 4:20 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I am enjoying this conversation, and still happy to continue in this vein as ling as people want / have things to say.

But I just briefly wanted to go back to the original question. Having read some more excellent drabbles, I am getting the sense again that people see Jack and Joey as almost Victorian parents, who expect a kiss to mean engagement and would collapse at the idea of their children being alone with members of the opposite sex. And am again getting that sense that the girls in the family barely know what a boy is.

But I again can't totally see where this perception comes from. In fact I really thought there was a discussion where Joey says that she thinks it is good for boys and girls to grow up together. And I know that they are relations and adopted relations, but there ate masses of boys in the family and extended family.

I could actually understand the sentiment relating to Joey as being attached to Mary Lou in a way. Because having been brought up in part by her grandmother, there are several references to her being a bit old fashioned in her view if the world.

Another thing is the suggestion that Jack and Joey only see Len as someone to look after the younger ones. I thought in at least Triplets, or it might be Richenda, I think, they were quite worried about her having to look out for her siblings and were glad that she was beginning to show some independence.

And when the trips have to go home and look after the family for a week in one book, I remember Jack pampering them with a trip out at the end and being very thankful to them. This does suggest that it wasn't taken for granted they would help.

Another thing is the sufgestion that she is strange because she goes over to the school all the time. Now in respect of things like the sale what difference is there in her behaviour to a parent who is a very enthusiastic member of the governors or PTA for a school? As to the visiting of the prefects, did she ever do it when there wasn't either people she went to school with or a niece or daughter there ? She may have done, I can't remember. But looking in that light it is almost a way of checking in with her extended family, making sure they are ok.

Another thing she does, I guess, is the having the new girls to tea. But if you think of the fact that the school is a family business, and that they don't seem later on to have allocated housemistresses, in a way she could be seen as providing part of the ?pastoral? ( is that right word? I have images of cows ...) care. A school then might have been unlikely to have counsellors and advisors. you could say it throws her in a positive light, as it is something extra she does to make the guyks welcome.

I actually swing between agreeing Witt the Joeg portrayed in drabbles and finding her almost a different character to the one I remember in the books. I just wonder WHY people feel that way.

Author:  MJKB [ Wed Mar 23, 2011 5:27 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Alison H wrote:
I think the only time that we're aware of Len in that way is in Joey & Co, when she's all wound up about something and Roger Richardson is looking at her and thinking how pretty she is.

Yes, that comes across as very natural, the dawning of an interest on his side, if not hers. Pity in some ways it wasn't developed. I wonder why EBD draws attention to it, was she thinking at that point of a future relationship here? I like Ian Hamilton's interest in Con as well, it just seems more normal and less stilted than most of the other romamtic(?) scenes. I also agree with you Alison that Len doesn't seem to be interested in male or female in that way, she's so very robotic and dutiful.

Alison H wrote:
It's funny how we get some books in the later part of the series which seem quite open and relaxed about things - in Joey & Co, we get Roger shocking old ladies by wandering about in his skimpy bathing trunks, Roger admiring Len, everyone fussing about how it's important to wear pretty clothes, etc, in Adrienne we get Ailie and her friends chatting about whether or not they'd like to go out with boys and in Reunion we see Ian Hamilton eyeing up Con, and then the series ends with a courtship (if it can even be called a courtship) which is very stilted and seems to make most readers feel uncomfortable

I was quite shocked by the observation of Roger's skimpy bathing trunks! That whole scene featuring Joey and Roger, both attired in swim wear is quite titavating, and by offering him a cigarette Joey seems to be conferring adult status on Roger. Very unCS like althogether!

Author:  Alison H [ Wed Mar 23, 2011 5:32 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Joey does talk about wanting to keep her daughters "young", but I think that the two people with outdated attitudes are Reg and Mary-Lou, rather than Jack and Joey. I know Reg is in an awkward position because the girl he's after is his boss's daughter, but asking Jack if he could "speak" to Len sounds reserved even by Victorian standards. &, even allowing for the fact that discussing boys with your brevet uncle'd be incredibly embarrassing :lol:, the way that Mary-Lou gets in a complete panic that Joan's been discussing boys and can barely even get the word "boys" out suggests that she's got some rather major issues :roll: . Ironically, Mary-Lou does have a close boy friend (as opposed to boyfriend), Tony Barras.

We see Monica's cousin in Monica Turns Up Trumps, at 15 or 16, going to a party in which she gets to dance with various boys, who're "approved" (brothers/cousins/family friends) of the hostess, but, until Roger comes along, I'm not sure where the triplets'd get chance to do anything like that. The other kids on the Platz are younger than them, the Embury boys aren't mentioned much, and they don't get to see that much of their male cousins (and only Maurice is close to them in age anyway). With the younger Maynards, it'd be nice to imagine Geoff and Phil forming an Enid Blyton-esque boy-girl gang with Marie and Pat Courvoisier, or Felix being friendly with Lucy Peters and Jean Morris, but I'm not sure when the triplets'd've got much chance to make friends with boys their own age.

Author:  Cosimo's Jackal [ Wed Mar 23, 2011 7:36 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Beecharmer23 wrote:
I am getting the sense again that people see Jack and Joey as almost Victorian parents, who expect a kiss to mean engagement and would collapse at the idea of their children being alone with members of the opposite sex. And am again getting that sense that the girls in the family barely know what a boy is.

But I again can't totally see where this perception comes from. In fact I really thought there was a discussion where Joey says that she thinks it is good for boys and girls to grow up together. And I know that they are relations and adopted relations, but there ate masses of boys in the family and extended family.


Again, I don't know the drabbles, but I'd argue that there's a fair bit of evidence that Freudesheim is quite a Victorian home in certain ways, though modern in others. The jocular, breezy relationship Joey and Jack appear to have with one another and their children does go along with some much more 'traditional' behaviours, like Jack being the Head of Household for disciplinary purposes, seeing misbehaving children in his study, the younger children eating in the nursery and only graduating to eating downstairs, and even - at times - Joey as Invalid Mother Who Mustn't be Worried.

And while clearly the Maynard girls are used to male company in the holidays, adult Reg is treated as an entirely separate entity, after he Victorianly 'speaks to Jack'. On the other hand, given that Jack has given Reg clear instructions about not speaking to Len until she's left school, it's then slightly odd that Jack then fades out of things, leaving Joey to more or less push Len into Reg's arms, by strongly implying that any form of hesitation over becoming engaged while still a schoolgirl is 'playing fast and loose with that poor boy!'

Author:  ChubbyMonkey [ Wed Mar 23, 2011 8:41 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Alison H wrote:
J... the way that Mary-Lou gets in a complete panic that Joan's been discussing boys and can barely even get the word "boys" out suggests that she's got some rather major issues :roll: .


What happened was, she was trying to say 'sex', but linking sex and Jack in her mind was just too much for the poor girl and she panicked :wink:

Re the "playing fast and loose" quote, could that not just be Joey warning Len not to get engaged until she's absolutely certain, rather than the complete opposite?

Author:  Nightwing [ Wed Mar 23, 2011 10:06 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

ChubbyMonkey wrote:
Re the "playing fast and loose" quote, could that not just be Joey warning Len not to get engaged until she's absolutely certain, rather than the complete opposite?


That's how I've always read it, especially since (I think? Haven't read it for a while!) Joey also still wants Len to get her degree/not marry until after university. And she also makes it explicit earlier that she's not sure what Len's feelings towards Reg are, either - which is why to me it always reads like a very badly worded "don't get engaged unless you're sure you actually love him".

Jack and Joey's approach to parenting seems rather bipolar at times - Joey (and, presumable, Jack) expect a lot of Len as the Eldest and the Responsible One, but there's also that moment during the train crash where Joey thinks that she can trust Len to take charge, but also trust Jack to make sure that Len doesn't sacrifice her own future over it. It always felt, to me, like EBD knew there was a line between "taking responsibility as the eldest" and "over-burdening a child with responsibilities", she was just never sure where that line was.

I'll always wonder whether we wouldn't all like Reg a lot more if it wasn't for that last book! Oh, I know the whole asking Jack about Len is ridiculous, but there's plenty to suggest in the few moments between them that Reg has backed off and that Len is attracted to him. It's only in Prefects that he suddenly appears like a petulant child who has been hounding her to marry him for years!

Author:  julieanne1811 [ Wed Mar 23, 2011 10:13 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

It's the use of the term 'fast and loose' which comes across as strange to me. Two things Len never was in the books, and would be hard to imagine being later on after the series finished, are 'fast' and 'loose'.

Author:  Nightwing [ Wed Mar 23, 2011 10:23 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

julieanne1811 wrote:
It's the use of the term 'fast and loose' which comes across as strange to me. Two things Len never was in the books, and would be hard to imagine being later on after the series finished, are 'fast' and 'loose'.


I totally agree that it's bizarre and nothing like Len - but you could also argue that it's not like Joey to misjudge her own daughter's character so badly. Add to that that this was some of EBD's worst writing, or perhaps not her writing at all... I don't know, I just think that it's one of those moments that you absolutely have to read beyond the words on the page, because those words make no sense.

Author:  ChubbyMonkey [ Wed Mar 23, 2011 10:37 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Nightwing wrote:
...there's plenty to suggest in the few moments between them that Reg has backed off and that Len is attracted to him. It's only in Prefects that he suddenly appears like a petulant child who has been hounding her to marry him for years!


But if this was the case, wouldn't Len be playing fast and loose if she took advantage of it before going away to university to possibly meet someone else? If Joey was aware that Len might have feelings for Reg, and that he was trying to do the right thing in not leading her on, wouldn't it make it a perfectly justified warning, even for someone like Len who may not need it?

Author:  Kathy_S [ Thu Mar 24, 2011 1:10 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I find it hard to see Joey as "pushing" Len at Reg, compared to "pushing" her to earn her degree! Even after readers are informed that Len is more attracted by Reg than her parents realize, we hear that Jo and Jack want Len to stay a schoolgirl as long as possible. The infamous "fast and loose" quote is quite isolated and doesn't happen until after Len has realized that she can't imagine life without Reg.
Quote:
Joey went straight to the point. “Is it the real thing, Len?”

Len nodded. “Yes, I found that out when Reg went missing. I don't want to be married yet. I want my college course. A degree is a useful sort of thing to have, particularly in these days. Once I've got that if Reg still wants me then I'm his.”

“What do you mean exactly by that?” Jo demanded. Then she added, “Mind you, Len! You're not going on playing fast and loose with that poor boy.”

“I don't mean to,” Len said. “If nothing else will satisfy him, I'll be engaged. But I won't be married at once.”

“I should think not!” her mother exclaimed. “You don't get married until you've graduated and that's that!”

“All right, that's understood. And now, Mamma, please let me see him.”


It sounds to me as though the greater pressure is for Len to go to university rather than get married! For me, Jo's attitude is more of a parallel with that of Beany Malone's father in Tarry Awhile (1962). (Vol. 12 in the series. Beany wants to drop out and marry. Her father even writes an editorial opposing the phenomenon.)

Author:  Miss Di [ Thu Mar 24, 2011 2:29 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Kathy_S wrote:

It sounds to me as though the greater pressure is for Len to go to university rather than get married! For me, Jo's attitude is more of a parallel with that of Beany Malone's father in Tarry Awhile (1962). (Vol. 12 in the series. Beany wants to drop out and marry. Her father even writes an editorial opposing the phenomenon.)



Yes but Beany wanted to drop out and get married so she could have Sex. Or was it because all her friends were getting married :twisted: .

They all seemed to get married very young in the Beany books (and the Chalet books) - what was the average age of marriage in the 50s in the US/UK? In the early 50s in Oz it was 25 for men and 22 for women but by the early 60s was 24 for men and 21 for women (stats from http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/l ... /chap2.pdf)

Author:  Alison H [ Thu Mar 24, 2011 8:49 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Probably similar. For all the talk in the early CS books about girls marrying young, the average age of marriage was (although probably lower for the well-to-do) more towards the mid to late 20s in the 1930s, because of the financial problems caused by the Depression, and lower in the post-War years.

I'm never sure what Len's "useful sort of thing to have" comment about a degree - Joey, of course, never went on to any sort of further education herself - is meant to mean. Does she mean that she plans to teach after she gets married? Does she mean that she wants the experience of going to university? Does she mean that it'd be useful to have as a back-up option so that it'd be easier for her to get a job if she and Reg ever got into financial difficulties? Or does she just mean that she wants her time at university and describing it as "useful" sounds better than just saying that it's something she wants to do?

Author:  JB [ Thu Mar 24, 2011 9:30 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Miss Di wrote:
what was the average age of marriage in the 50s in the US/UK?


It ws 23 for women and 25 for men in 1960 and 24 and 26 respectively in 1950.

More info here.

Author:  julieanne1811 [ Thu Mar 24, 2011 9:45 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Kathy_S wrote:
Quote:
Len nodded. “Yes, I found that out when Reg went missing. I don't want to be married yet. I want my college course. A degree is a useful sort of thing to have, particularly in these days. Once I've got that if Reg still wants me then I'm his.”

“What do you mean exactly by that?” Jo demanded. Then she added, “Mind you, Len! You're not going on playing fast and loose with that poor boy.”

“I don't mean to,” Len said. “If nothing else will satisfy him, I'll be engaged. But I won't be married at once.”

“I should think not!” her mother exclaimed. “You don't get married until you've graduated and that's that!”


It's interesting ... having just read this snippet I find it reads oddly all round. First of all Len says she won't be married until she's got her degree and Joey thinks this might be 'fast and loose', and the very next minute Joey's saying that she shouldn't be married until she's got her degree.

So - should she or shouldn't she? Joey's giving a very mixed message here. And I agree that, EBDisms aside, it doesn't come across as Elinor's style at all. She might well have made all kinds of mistakes but she always seemed to know where she was going with something. In this instance it's as if the writer had no clear idea herself of what was intended for Len and Reg.

Very odd.

Author:  Llywela [ Thu Mar 24, 2011 10:14 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I think the problem was that EBD (or her friend who took over that final book after her death) was torn between wanting Len to have her happy ending, which meant pairing her off with a Suitable Doctor, but also wanting her to go to university and get her degree. So the two got squished together in that final book and the writing of it got very messy.

I do think we'd all like Reg a lot more if not for the weak writing right at the end there.

Author:  Cel [ Thu Mar 24, 2011 10:23 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

julieanne1811 wrote:
Kathy_S wrote:
Quote:
Len nodded. “Yes, I found that out when Reg went missing. I don't want to be married yet. I want my college course. A degree is a useful sort of thing to have, particularly in these days. Once I've got that if Reg still wants me then I'm his.”

“What do you mean exactly by that?” Jo demanded. Then she added, “Mind you, Len! You're not going on playing fast and loose with that poor boy.”

“I don't mean to,” Len said. “If nothing else will satisfy him, I'll be engaged. But I won't be married at once.”

“I should think not!” her mother exclaimed. “You don't get married until you've graduated and that's that!”


It's interesting ... having just read this snippet I find it reads oddly all round. First of all Len says she won't be married until she's got her degree and Joey thinks this might be 'fast and loose', and the very next minute Joey's saying that she shouldn't be married until she's got her degree.


My read of it is that they both agree Len should finish college before she gets married, but Joey wants her to make a commitment to Reg now - if she's sure about it - rather than leave things uncertain, as might be implied by Len's "Once I've got that if Reg still wants me then I'm his", which might suggest they wouldn't make any firm plans until after she'd got her degree.

(Sorry, very long and rambling sentence!)

Author:  Alison H [ Thu Mar 24, 2011 10:29 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I think the idea was that it'd be OK for Len to go off to university provided that she committed herself to Reg first - a broken engagement would've been a bigger thing in the late '50s than it is now, so by agreeing to get engaged Len was promising that she'd come back, rather than saying that she wasn't prepared to decide yet and that Reg'd have to wait three or four years for an answer. I can see that it's not very fair to expect someone to hang around for three or four years to see what you decide to do after that time (plenty of relationships fail because one person's ready to settle down and the other isn't), but Len certainly didn't encourage Reg to be in such a hurry and I get the impresion that Reg was determined to get the ring on the finger before she had chance to leave the Platz, meet new people and maybe decide that she'd rather make her life somewhere else.

I wonder what would've happened if Len had been going to a university within reasonable visiting distance, or if Reg'd been based in Armishire. Plenty of relationships survive one or both partners going to university or going to work elsewhere for a while - would Reg've been happy to be a boyfriend rather than a fiancé if he could've seen Len at weekends? (I've got a horrible feeling he wouldn't.)

I think EBD (or Phyllis!) was trying to satisfy everyone - Reg got the girl, but Len still got to have her time at university. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work, because the way it comes across (to me, anyway) is that Len isn't free to make the most of her time at university because her future's already mapped out for her.

Author:  KB [ Thu Mar 24, 2011 10:51 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Alison H wrote:
I think EBD (or Phyllis!) was trying to satisfy everyone - Reg got the girl, but Len still got to have her time at university.


Yes, I think it was an almost painfully forced attempt to give everyone a rosy future. Margot will go off, do her studies, take her degree and be the perfect 'bad girl turns good'. Con, with her poetic genius, will be the famous writer but can't possibly marry since her creative spurts would make it impossible (see Jo's remarks about genius and Nina Rutherford). That leaves Len to have the future it seems likely that EBD always wanted for herself: the dual success of a possible career (there seems to be no hint that Len should stop working after she marries) and the happy family with a loving and successful husband.

Author:  Cosimo's Jackal [ Thu Mar 24, 2011 3:06 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

julieanne1811 wrote:

It's interesting ... having just read this snippet I find it reads oddly all round. First of all Len says she won't be married until she's got her degree and Joey thinks this might be 'fast and loose', and the very next minute Joey's saying that she shouldn't be married until she's got her degree. [...]Very odd.


The way I read Joey's 'What exactly do you mean by that?' followed by the 'fast and loose' comment is much the same as Cel's way - that what Joey is reponding to is Len's statement that if Reg still wants her when she's finished her degree then she's his - I think Joey thinks at this point that Len is saying she won't become engaged till she graduates, which Joey interprets as playing 'fast and loose' with Reg's emotions by not committing as he wants. Which is why, for me, Joey does push Len into making a commitment she's clearly not ready for. With Reg pushing for an immediate commitment, Jack having faded out of the picture entirely, and now Joey adding her voice to Reg's, the battle is won... :cry:

Author:  Alison H [ Thu Mar 24, 2011 3:41 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Unfortunately, it's not very clear what's gone on. If Reg has actually asked Len to marry him and she's told him that she can't decide and he'll have to wait whilst she makes her mind up, Joey's got a reasonable point in saying that he's entitled to a straight answer - although it's unfair to suggest that an 18-year-old girl would be "playing fast and loose" if she said that she just wasn't ready to get married yet rather than that she was saying no because she didn't like the man concerned. If, as it seems, Reg has just been hanging around like a bad smell and giving Len "meaningful" looks, without Len giving him any obvious encouragement, then it's completely out of order to accuse her of messing him around.

I don't know if it's because of Len's own reticent personality or the general attitude that it's inappropriate to talk about "boys", but it's quite sad that Len doesn't feel able to talk over with anyone a big decision which she's clearly finding hard to make, unless you count one vague chat with Hilda. She doesn't discuss the situation with Joey, she doesn't discuss it with her triplets beyond the odd "Reg'll get what he wants," comment from Con, and she doesn't discuss it with close friends like Ted and Ruey. Maybe it's a shame Mary-Lou wasn't there :lol: - she'd've got Len to talk about it and told Reg to back off in the meantime!

Author:  Sarah_G-G [ Thu Mar 24, 2011 5:50 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I have to admit, I've not read Prefects in a long time but what really strikes me there is how business-like Len sounds about the whole thing, which seems to leave Joey thoroughly confused by the conversation and veering about all over the place. Reading that back, I'll be honest and say I'm not quite clear on what exactly Len means by "If he still wants me after that, then I'm his." So while I don't like the "fast and loose" comment (and it does sound a bit as though Joey thinks that Len plans on doing exactly what she wants at uni and then coming back to Reg afterwards, despite Len's character making that pretty unlikely), I can't really blame Joey (who previously apparently didn't know that Len might have feelings for Reg) for asking what exactly Len meant by her previous comment. I find the whole conversation quite bizarre, to be honest- this could have been such a touching mother-daughter scene if Joey had showed half her usual empathy and/ or Len had been able to sound a tad more like a teenage girl and less like someone who's just working out how to conclude a business deal.

I do think this is one of the scenes that makes people wonder how easily Joey would accept unexpected changes in her own family, though. The Joey we see in this scene is not the one who speaks so sympathetically to the vast numbers of troubled new girls, but a Joey who is confused, a little shocked, and apparently unable to maintain her equilibrium and tact when faced with her own daughter doing something unexpected. I don't personally see Joey as being intolerant because I think that more than anything else, she is always portrayed as being ultimately kind hearted and understanding. However I also see her as being pretty tactless (especially when surprised) and fairly sheltered from the modern world as an adult, both of which make me suspect that her intitial reaction to e.g. one of her children coming out as gay might well be similar to the one we see in Prefects.

Author:  ChubbyMonkey [ Thu Mar 24, 2011 7:46 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

See, to me, it sounds as if Len has been toying for a while with the idea of Reg - which is why she so suddenly realises that she does love him so much, because she hasn't been sure before that - and of course just because we don't see her talking to Con and Margot or her friends, that doesn't mean that those talks didn't happen. Then she seems to decide that she does like Reg but that she doesn't want him straight away; essentially, that she's trying to get the best of both worlds and just leave Reg waiting. So what Joey is trying to get at here, I think (in my sleep-addled mind) is that she doesn't want Len to say one thing to Reg, then change her mind, then change it back again - like Len seems to have been doing a little bit so far.

Author:  JB [ Thu Mar 24, 2011 7:54 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

ChubbyMonkey wrote:
Then she seems to decide that she does like Reg but that she doesn't want him straight away; essentially, that she's trying to get the best of both worlds and just leave Reg waiting.


I really don't see this as the "best of both worlds" or at all unfair to Reg. I know that in the CS universe the idea of a boyfriend isn't usual - men go from strangers to fiances in the blink of an eye - but I don't see anything wrong in Len, who hasn't yet left school, not being ready for an engagement and perhaps looking for some breathing space and an adult relationship with Reg, eg the chance to go out on a date or two with him.

Author:  Nightwing [ Thu Mar 24, 2011 8:59 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Alison H wrote:
I think EBD (or Phyllis!) was trying to satisfy everyone - Reg got the girl, but Len still got to have her time at university. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work, because the way it comes across (to me, anyway) is that Len isn't free to make the most of her time at university because her future's already mapped out for her.


Ummmm. I don't know that one really means the other. Being engaged and wanting to get married when she's done doesn't mean she can't have fun at university - she can still have lots of friends, join clubs, party. The only thing she wouldn't do is actually date other people, and if she wants to be with Reg, she may not do that even if she hadn't already made a commitment to him.

It strikes me that Joey's end of the conversation can be read in a completely different way to that which most CBB-ers want to read it. We have Len telling Joey that she'll marry Reg if that's what he wants, with no mention of what she wants outside of university. Joey insisting that Len goes off to study could easily be her way of making sure Len gets the space to consider if marriage is what she really wants - or even getting her away from Reg altogether... :twisted: :lol:

Author:  Cosimo's Jackal [ Thu Mar 24, 2011 9:32 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Nightwing wrote:
It strikes me that Joey's end of the conversation can be read in a completely different way to that which most CBB-ers want to read it.


I don't know about wanting to read it any way! Personally, I'd love nothing better than for Joey to be true to her supposed 'keep the girls young' motto, tell Len she's too young for any major commitment, and send Reg off about his business with a flea in his ear. I appreciate she insists Len takes her degree, but I can't think of any other way of reading her request for clarification of Len's intentions and her 'fast and loose' comment other than an insistence that Len commits there and then, or risk messing Reg's feelings about.

That's certainly how Len interprets it, given her answer, so presumably if Joey had intended something different, she would have clarified, given that Len reads it as an accusation, to which she says she 'doesn't mean to' play with Reg's feelings.

I have to say I have serious difficulty figuring out why Joey appears to put Reg's feelings ahead of those of her own daughter in this supremely important moment. Obviously, one wouldn't want anyone's feelings to be hurt, but why are Reg's potentially wounded feelings more important than Len's extreme youth and visible reluctance....?

And when Joey says 'Is it the real thing?' I always find myself thinking about the Pepsi Challenge... :shock:

Author:  Alison H [ Thu Mar 24, 2011 10:08 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I wish she'd told Len to hang fire and offered to arrange for her to go and stay with Simone, Frieda, Marie, Ros, the Bettanys or anyone else who lived well away from the Gornetz Platz as soon as the school term finished. During Prefects, every woman and her dog seem to be speculating about what's going on between Len and Reg and whether or not Reg'll "get what he wants", from Madge and Hilda to the two Middles who're told off by Ruey. Apart from talentless celebs :lol:, most people hate being the subject of gossip, and it can't've helped a young and inexperienced girl who was trying to make the biggest decision of her life.

To get back to the original question about being insular, whilst I don't think that EBD particularly intended all the gossip about Len to show the CS world (the school, the various Old Girls and staff associated with it, and the other people on the Platz) forming the sort of small community in which everyone minds everyone else's business, that's how it comes across to me, and I'd think that that sort of environment could be difficult to live in for anyone whose lifestyle didn't conform with that society's norms. I suppose that eventually people'd accept it, but it'd be hard work in the meantime.

Author:  julieanne1811 [ Fri Mar 25, 2011 10:32 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Alison H wrote:
I wish she'd told Len to hang fire and offered to arrange for her to go and stay with Simone, Frieda, Marie, Ros, the Bettanys or anyone else who lived well away from the Gornetz Platz as soon as the school term finished.


Now, isn't this what happened with Joey herself, or have I dreamed that one? She left school, a doctor in the San wanted to see more of her, and so she was sent to India.

Is that right?

Author:  KB [ Fri Mar 25, 2011 10:42 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

julieanne1811 wrote:
Alison H wrote:
I wish she'd told Len to hang fire and offered to arrange for her to go and stay with Simone, Frieda, Marie, Ros, the Bettanys or anyone else who lived well away from the Gornetz Platz as soon as the school term finished.


Now, isn't this what happened with Joey herself, or have I dreamed that one? She left school, a doctor in the San wanted to see more of her, and so she was sent to India.

Is that right?


Basically, yes. It's the story outlined in Summer Term:

Quote:
. "It's all such ages ago-I mean our trip to India. I'd just left school and was living up on the Sonnalpe with my sister and brother-m-law. He was head of the big sanatorium up there. There was a newish young doctor and he chased me good and hard. I couldn't bear him and he wouldn't take 'No!' for an answer from me or anyone else. Jem and Madge were my guardians and they didn't like the idea any more than I did. The only thing was to get me well out of his reach. Dick and Mollie had been asking if I couldn't go out to them for the cold weather so India seemed the answer. I was packed off together with young Robin."

Author:  Alison H [ Fri Mar 25, 2011 10:53 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

It was a different situation because Joey didn't like the guy and he apparently wasn't getting the message, whereas Len hadn't decided if she wanted to get together with Reg or not, but, yes, Joey was given the opportunity to get away from it all. Len, on the other hand, had everyone gossiping about her and no space in which to think :(, and if Reg really was hanging about like a bad smell then she must've been worried that she'd bump into him every time she went out. No-one else in the whole series came under that sort of pressure.

Author:  Kathy_S [ Fri Mar 25, 2011 9:28 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

But we're never given ANY indication that Len thinks of Reg as a 'bad smell,' or even as mildly annoying. She likes him. She likes him a lot. She's just debating whether he's definitely Mr. Right. I'm sure that if she told her parents that he was being a problem, they'd have made arrangements. After all, up until Len shows her cards after the flood, Jo's attitude is that "Reg is a dear boy, but-”. Likewise, the teasers might have backed off if Len had shown that it was seriously upsetting her. Actually, she probably got off easily in that area, by virtue of having the younger brothers of prime "torment sister about beaus" age out of the country.

Author:  julieanne1811 [ Sat Mar 26, 2011 11:33 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Kathy_S wrote:
She likes him. She likes him a lot. She's just debating whether he's definitely Mr. Right.


But how does she show 'liking him a lot'? I've just had a quick skim-through and can't locate any signs of intimacy between them. Len appears 'to all' as 'uninterested', and although she has become 'inaccessible' to her contemporaries, that (the uninterested bit) could be put down to the talk that's beginning to take place regarding her and Reg - a way to scotch it.

And I've just noticed something else (I'll come back to the original point in a minute): Reg is visiting Freudesheim, and this gives rise to gossip (but I would have thought he visited Freudesheim anyway, so I can't quite work out what the difference is. Len's at School, not there(unless she's taken to visitng home while he's there?)).

Anyway. Zita Roselli (?Swiss) suggests that his visits are because there's something betweeen Reg and Len. Ruey jumps on her and says if she's heard talking like that by the Head, she'd be in trouble. Zita responds in the CS Continental way by saying 'why? Len is eighteen and that's not too young.' Ruey does the 'we don't talk of things like that,' thing.

Back in Austria, that's exactly how they would have talked - not to gossip, and because it was entirely natural to think that at that age one might well be thinking of marriage. Especially as Zita is (?) Swiss, shouldn't it have been seen as an innocent, natural comment, rather than one of gossip?

To come back to how Len shows she likes Reg: it's only when Len realises that he's missing that we are told that

Quote:
Len ... realising with sudden shock that wahtever she may have felt yesterday , today was a different matter, and she would have given almost anything to know that Reg was safe.


nb: 'almost' doesn't sound very convincing ...

I find that Hilda Annersely's treatment for the apparently love-struck Len at this point strange, too. She tells her to go and get some of the Seniors and tell them to lay the tables for Mittagessen. Len interrupts and Miss Annersley says, 'I'm sorry, Len, that is all I have to say to you now.'

A few things: when did the Seniors ever do this before?
And why on earth wouldn't the Head Mistress - who has 'open house' to any girl, between the hours of - what is it? six and seven? - feel at this point that it's more important that Len finds Seniors to lay the tables for Mittagessen?

I think the bottom line is that all the way through Len's apparent fondness for Reg, we are told about it, not shown. And I think that it's that that makes it all so unconvincing.

The final chapter has Reg in the San and Len demanding to see him. Even here I can't see any tenderness, or softness in her talking of and about him. Her demands are exactly that, demands, and while I can understand that if it's someone one loves that one wants to see and is being kept from, one will demand to see them, there's only the harshness that comes from the 'demands'. Len goes to see Joey and there's no discussion about how she loves him, only very pragmatic comments about how it's going to fit in with University.

And then she sees Reg and this is the proposal:

Quote:
... he caught up her hands. 'Does this mean - '
Len nodded. 'I suppose so. Yes!'
... 'I take it we're engaged. Like it, darling?'
'... So much I can't think why I didn't know it before. It all seems absolutely natural and very nice! ... '


'I suppose so.' !!!!!!!!!!!

Author:  Cosimo's Jackal [ Sat Mar 26, 2011 12:12 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I agree entirely, Julianne, but Len's mutedness and what looks like mild - but definitely there in the text - reluctance. Again, I think it's behind many people's dislike and distrust of the end of the Len/Reg plot.

And Hilda's completely uncharacteristic behaviour when Reg disappears has always baffled me - this is a famously kind, wise Headmistress and family friend of the Maynards, whose door is always open to any CS girl, but especially to a girl she's known from babyhood and has a special relationship with, and all of a sudden she doesn't have time to talk to her, cuts her off abruptly and sends her off to do a task we've never seen CS girls have to do before, as if it's of crucial importance?

(This scene strikes me as a good candidate to be one EBD didn't write, as it's so out of character for Hilda, and makes her look unfeeling and rather Miss Bubb-ish...)

I know what you mean, too, about remarks that would have been seen as normal in the Tyrol books suddenly being seen as somehow gossipy and/or immodest. But this weirdly 'gossipy' atmosphere has spread into all kinds of odd places by the last few books. Not just Zita Roselli, or Len ticking off Miggi for 'gossip' when she isn't gossiping, but in Althea, when Len falls on her painting and, covered in oil paint, has to be given a lift home by Reg.

We might assume that she's anxious the Staff don't find out about this, as the Seniors have promised to stay together while out painting, so she's technically breaking her word (though with the agreement of the other prefects, who think getting a lift from Reg is the best thing to do). But no, it's the rest of the school, not the Staff, she's so anxious to keep it from:

Quote:
As Ted pointed out, it was hardly the thing to broadcast about a prefect – any prefect – let alone the Head Girl. If only Len could get back and clean up properly without any of the younger ones seeing her first, that would be all to the good. And, thank goodness, as Mélanie Lucas added, you could always rely on the staff not to give you away over a thing like that.


This makes the whole innocent incident sound like a much bigger deal than it was - after all, how many times have we seen even very senior CS girls and prefects involved in various messy accidents with ink and glue, without it being treated as a major secret? is it Reg's involvement that makes this somehow a bagger deal, though that's never mentioned (because Val and Althea don't know about it) in the gossip, and Con's reaction to it all is way over the top, and she claims this is a 'real' scandal' and could do 'real harm'....?

You really get this smalltown, nosy, curtain-twitching atmosphere in the last few books!

Author:  KB [ Sat Mar 26, 2011 1:06 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

julieanne1811 wrote:
Back in Austria, that's exactly how they would have talked - not to gossip, and because it was entirely natural to think that at that age one might well be thinking of marriage. Especially as Zita is (?) Swiss, shouldn't it have been seen as an innocent, natural comment, rather than one of gossip?


I actually don't agree that such things happened in the Austrian series at all. We hear nothing of such topics being discussed in relation to Madge and Jem. There is no mention of Gisela's engagement until Wanda is also announced as being engaged in Head Girl:

Quote:
And I've got some news for you all. Wanda is betrothed.”

“Who to?" demanded Joey as they all moved to the barrier.

“A young officer in her father's regiment."

“Gee! How priceless! Fancy Wanda engaged! That makes two of our old girls! First Gisela, and now Wanda! When’s she to be married?"


Again, it's a shock when Bernhilda gets engaged in the same book:

Quote:
"Marie! What has happened?" demanded Grizel. "Anything stung you?"

"No! But oh, Grizel! Just think! Kurt, my eldest brother, is betrothed!"

"What? Who to?" exclaimed Jo, with a great lack of grammar.

Grizel's eyes fell on Bernhilda's fair face, rosy with blushes. "Why, it's Bernhilda!" she cried.

"Bernie! You?" gasped Jo. "I say! How splendid!"

Poor shy Bernhilda scarcely knew which way to look as they all crowded round her, asking questions and discussing the latest excitement at the tops of their voices.

"So that’s what you were driving at the other night, Frieda," said Margia, when they had calmed down a little. "I say! Aren't we growing up? Three of us engaged, and two going to be married soon! When are you going to do anything like that, Bette?"

Bette laughed, and shook her pretty head. "I am too young yet. You must wait, Margia."


Marie's engagement to Eugen is kept quiet until Marie is finished at school, and although Jo has her suspicions about Frieda, she keeps them to herself until the war:

Quote:
As for Frieda Mensch, the last of the four, Jo guessed, though Frieda had said nothing, that young Dr von Ahlen asked nothing better than to carry off the pretty sister of his friend and colleague, Gottfried Mensch. And Jo had her own suspicions of Frieda’s attitude.


We hear nothing about such topics from people within the school, either servants or students. That doesn't mean it isn't happening, but unlike what happens in Prefects, the topic isn't seemingly open for everyone at all levels to discuss and debate. It seems more like something that may happen, but it is something that waits until the respective girl/woman has left school and is then at liberty to made decisions about their feelings in a very different environment from the school-room. To me, that's the difference between what happens in Austria and what happens late in the Swiss years - that Len seems likely to step out of school and into her wedding dress (“After all, Len is nearly eighteen and that is not too young.”) whereas people like Marie are encouraged to take their time (“You have not quite a month left of your school-life; and you must make the most of it. After it is over will be time enough to think of grown-up things.”)

Author:  julieanne1811 [ Sat Mar 26, 2011 1:28 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

KB wrote:
julieanne1811 wrote:
Back in Austria, that's exactly how they would have talked - not to gossip, and because it was entirely natural to think that at that age one might well be thinking of marriage. Especially as Zita is (?) Swiss, shouldn't it have been seen as an innocent, natural comment, rather than one of gossip?


I actually don't agree that such things happened in the Austrian series at all. We hear nothing of such topics being discussed in relation to Madge and Jem.


But - where have I got the idea from? I know that your knowledge of the books is encylopaedic, KB (I'm jealous!) - is there no-where that talks about how girls in Austia get married very young? I have it in my head somehwere, but have I made it all up?

I know that there's no discussion about Madge and Jem, and that's not what I'm suggesting at all. It's more about how Austrian girls think nothing of getting married at so young an age.

Any clues?

Author:  Lesley [ Sat Mar 26, 2011 1:32 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I can't think which book but there is definitely mention that Joey did not think it strange that girls would get married straight out of school as it was the norm in Austria. Also I cannot imagine the conversations detailed in KB's post being made in the Swiss years - at the time Joey is still at school and not even in her final year - yet she is quite happy to speak of betrothals. Contrast this with Mary Lou, of a similar age, almost being scared to mention the word 'boys'.

Author:  KB [ Sat Mar 26, 2011 1:51 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

julieanne1811 wrote:
But - where have I got the idea from? I know that your knowledge of the books is encylopaedic, KB (I'm jealous!) - is there no-where that talks about how girls in Austia get married very young? I have it in my head somehwere, but have I made it all up?

I know that there's no discussion about Madge and Jem, and that's not what I'm suggesting at all. It's more about how Austrian girls think nothing of getting married at so young an age.

Any clues?


*lol* I think you mean the following from Head Girl:

Quote:
“Gisela is twenty and Wanda is nineteen. Girls marry young out here, Joey.


However this is still the situation for girls who are two years out of school, rather than being engaged the moment they finish (or even beforehand, as happens with Len).

Author:  Cosimo's Jackal [ Sat Mar 26, 2011 1:54 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

The difference, of course, is that this was a generation earlier, before the second world war, and in another country - but it's difficult to 'feel' the time difference properly, because EBD has allowed so few other things to change in the CS world in the interim.

But then I think EBD has some difficulty reconciling attitudes to marrying young in the later books anyway - there's an interesting set of contradictions between Con being explicitly horrified Joan Baker looks like getting engaged shortly after she leaves school, but insisting that's an entirely different thing to her mother's own early marriage. If you ask me, EBD is trying to establish a difference between the socially-accepted, heavily chaperoned and respectable early engagements and marriages of the first generation of continental CS girls like Bernhilda and Gisela, Joey's own wartime marriage, and Joan Baker's possible engagement, whch, alone of CS engagements is greeted with dubiousness and displeasure.

I think EBD is trying to put Len's very early engagement in with Gisela, Bernhilda and Joey, rather than with the sexually-sophisticated Joan, even though Len and Joan are the same generation, and the others are a generation earlier... And of course it reads much more oddly in terms of trying to fit in a schoolgirl engagement around a much more modern desire to read for an Oxford degree. There's no suggestion Gisela or Bernhilda or Marie had any ambitions beyond marriage.

Author:  MJKB [ Sat Mar 26, 2011 3:11 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I too get the sense in the early books that engagements and marriages were quite 'ok' socially to talk about. I love the scene in [i][i]New HOuse[/i][/i], for example, when Maire tells JOey et al about Eugene; it's done very naturally, and not at all in a gossipy way. We're even made aware of the attraction between Maire and the Baron in an earlier book, and the early marriages of the first generation of Austrian girls are taken for granted. I can't help thinking that if Con passed that comment about Reg 'getting what he wants' in respect of Joan Baker's unknown fiance, eveyone would have come down on her like a ton of bricks. Actually, it is inconceivable that she would have passed such a remark about the sexually precocious Joan, a remark like that which could be construed as slightly vulgar is more likely to have come from a 'bad' CS character.
It strikes me that EBD was very disapproving of the 60's revolution and was determinded to keep her main characters unblemished. We are left with Len safely engaged to Reg, Con possibly set up to be a serious writer and therefore beyond marriage, and Margot in a convent. She may not have had the strenght to write the final chapters of the series herself but left whoever did instructions as to what was to happen. That person, probably Phylis Mathewman (?) reluctantly agreed to do it, and the result is a cast of characters acting inconsistently. Most of the principal characters in Prefects are very unlike themselves: Hilda is constantly furious, Nancy irritating and JOey lacking in empathy. Very strange indeed.

Author:  Alison H [ Sat Mar 26, 2011 9:21 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

The discussion at the beginning of Adrienne, by contrast to Ruey's prissiness in Prefects and Mary-Lou hardly being able to say the word "boys" in Problem, seems very modern. The argument is that girls in their mid-teens should be concentrating on their hobbies and having a good time with their friends (and maybe there's also the idea that lots of physical exercise diverts your energies from, ahem, other avenues) and not worrying about getting involved with boys until they're older.

Janice mentions that some of her friends have boyfriends, Judy says that she supposes "We'll come to it sooner or later," but that for the moment she'd rather concentrate on playing tennis, and Ailie even says that she doesn't want to be like Joey and settle down before she's had some fun (she's shouted down, but only for citing Joey rather than AN other person who married young). It's a conversation that could be taking place today, and, although the actual argument - that girls shouldn't rush into relationships with boys at too early an age - is the same, it's completely different to the "We don't talk about that sort of thing," approach in some of the other Swiss books.

Author:  Loryat [ Sun Mar 27, 2011 12:21 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Cosimo's Jackal wrote:
But then I think EBD has some difficulty reconciling attitudes to marrying young in the later books anyway - there's an interesting set of contradictions between Con being explicitly horrified Joan Baker looks like getting engaged shortly after she leaves school, but insisting that's an entirely different thing to her mother's own early marriage. If you ask me, EBD is trying to establish a difference between the socially-accepted, heavily chaperoned and respectable early engagements and marriages of the first generation of continental CS girls like Bernhilda and Gisela, Joey's own wartime marriage, and Joan Baker's possible engagement, whch, alone of CS engagements is greeted with dubiousness and displeasure.


I think Con's normally the triplet who has the most disapporval for early or earlyish marriages - is she not also fairly shocked when Julie, who is a promising barrister, gets married? I think whether intentionally or otherwise, EBD portrays Con as the 'career girl' triplet.

I think Joan Baker's marriage is seen negatively because people have the impression that Joan is marrying just to get out of her job. Funnily enough, boy-crazy Joan has ben working for a while before she does get married.

Alison H wrote:
Mary-Lou hardly being able to say the word "boys" in Problem

I have always actually interpreted that as ML being unwilling to bring this subject up to Jack because she is worried it will make her sound really bitchy, not because she is embarrassed by the topic itself.

Author:  Beecharmer [ Sun Mar 27, 2011 2:01 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Yes, I had actually thought along those lines about Mary Lou, although not exactly the same idea. I had taken it more in the way I
might have been at the age she was, talking to an older uncle or fruend of the family.

Mary Lou was brought up in a way described as old fashioned, with values coming a lot from her grandmother. I too used to spend a lot more time than average with adults, including my grandparents and great aunts. I was, now I think about it, much more reticent to talk about some subjects than would have been normal for my generation. I would just about manage to join in conversations with friends, though I was never quite as interested. (I realise now that that was also for a completely different reason! I could happily have talked about the girl from Beautiful South :-)) But I was certainly naturally more reserved than I might have been had I been brought up soley by my parents ( who had no compunction about such things, telling me quite early on that I was the result of a drunken haze in a tent in France ! Imagine earth opening up and swallowing teenager at this revelation :shock: )

I also think Mary Lou is trying hard not to be a snob, although her instincts tell her Joan doesnt quite fit her own experience of what is "proper" to discuss.

Edited to add - I think Con's dispproval might not just be that of a career girl, but more that of a girl presented as a few years younger than her age due to being always occupied by her characters and plot ideas.

Author:  MJKB [ Sun Mar 27, 2011 9:44 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Beecharmer wrote:
Edited to add - I think Con's dispproval might not just be that of a career girl, but more that of a girl presented as a few years younger than her age due to being always occupied by her characters and plot ideas.


Hmmmm, I can buy the idea that ML is embarrassed to be discussing things related to sex with an uncle figure, but Con's disgust at Joan's early marriage is, imo, more to do with the idea that Joan is more likely to be proactive in the matter of meeting the opposite sex than most CS girls.

Author:  Cosimo's Jackal [ Sun Mar 27, 2011 10:38 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

MJKB wrote:
Con's disgust at Joan's early marriage is, imo, more to do with the idea that Joan is more likely to be proactive in the matter of meeting the opposite sex than most CS girls.


And to me Con is a symptom of EBD trying to draw a line between Joan's potential early marriage (precocious, oversexed and Joey's (appropriate, non-sexual, nothing to do with Joey being precocious or boy-mad etc etc).

Actually, I'm always rather sad Joan looks like being married off young - she was so sensible and good-hearted about wanting a good secretarial job to put her sister through school and teacher training, and that very laudable ambition looks likely to fizzle out if she gets engaged before she even finishes her secretarial course. (Or maybe not - maybe she'll be like some CS mistresses who teach for a few years between engagement and marriage?) I wish EBD would give Joan some credit!

Author:  KB [ Sun Mar 27, 2011 10:40 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Beecharmer wrote:
Yes, I had actually thought along those lines about Mary Lou, although not exactly the same idea. I had taken it more in the way I
might have been at the age she was, talking to an older uncle or fruend of the family.


Mary Lou is also less likely to find that sort of situation awkward because she is one of the few girls we see with a close male friend who isn't a family member (Tony Barrass).

Author:  Beecharmer [ Sun Mar 27, 2011 11:44 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

KB wrote:
Beecharmer wrote:
Yes, I had actually thought along those lines about Mary Lou, although not exactly the same idea. I had taken it more in the way I
might have been at the age she was, talking to an older uncle or fruend of the family.


Mary Lou is also less likely to find that sort of situation awkward because she is one of the few girls we see with a close male friend who isn't a family member (Tony Barrass).


But would that make the situation between her and Jack less awkward? I had a close male friend, and some others less close, but it wouldn't have necessarily made talking to an adult that easy would it ?

Author:  KB [ Mon Mar 28, 2011 3:09 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Beecharmer wrote:
KB wrote:
Beecharmer wrote:
Yes, I had actually thought along those lines about Mary Lou, although not exactly the same idea. I had taken it more in the way I
might have been at the age she was, talking to an older uncle or fruend of the family.


Mary Lou is also less likely to find that sort of situation awkward because she is one of the few girls we see with a close male friend who isn't a family member (Tony Barrass).


But would that make the situation between her and Jack less awkward? I had a close male friend, and some others less close, but it wouldn't have necessarily made talking to an adult that easy would it ?


Er, that's what I was saying when I said she was "less" likely to find it awkward.

Author:  Beecharmer [ Mon Mar 28, 2011 8:02 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

???? Sorry my little brain was confused. (not an uncommon occurance)

I am guessing now you mean you were agreeing that Mary Lou was less likely to find the subject a problem than the talking to Jack? I had taken it as you meant that she would be less likely to find the conversation awkward because of Tony. Sorry to seem to be randomly reposting then, if that is the explanation. :-)

Author:  KB [ Mon Mar 28, 2011 9:09 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Sorry, I thought you were agreeing with Loryat, who said

Quote:
I have always actually interpreted that as ML being unwilling to bring this subject up to Jack because she is worried it will make her sound really bitchy, not because she is embarrassed by the topic itself.


and that you felt her problem was embarrassment about who she was talking to, rather than the topic of boys itself. My extension was that her familiarity with boys in her friendship with Tony would make 'boys' as a painful topic far less uncomfortable than the fact that she was talking about the subject in front of her adopted uncle.

I hope that's sorted out now!

Author:  Beecharmer [ Mon Mar 28, 2011 9:29 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Lol ! Yes think I have got it now! That was what I was saying, and I had misinterpreted what you were saying :-)
All is now right with the world !

Author:  MJKB [ Mon Mar 28, 2011 12:55 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

EBD is a bit of an enigma isn't she? She has that lovely scene with Ailie and her chums talking about boyfriends in a perfectly natural way, explaining their reasons for not having boyfriends at this stage of their lives, but not condemning those who do. This contrasts strangely with certain prissy comments made in later books where such talk is simply 'not done' by CS girls.

Author:  Fiona Mc [ Wed Mar 30, 2011 8:29 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

MJKB wrote:
Beecharmer wrote:
Edited to add - I think Con's dispproval might not just be that of a career girl, but more that of a girl presented as a few years younger than her age due to being always occupied by her characters and plot ideas.


Hmmmm, I can buy the idea that ML is embarrassed to be discussing things related to sex with an uncle figure, but Con's disgust at Joan's early marriage is, imo, more to do with the idea that Joan is more likely to be proactive in the matter of meeting the opposite sex than most CS girls.


I have always read it as Con not wanting to get married young in general. She's the second oldest and does have to help out with younger siblings a lot. I can see her wanting to enjoy life rather than settle down, marry and have children. The only people she defends for making those decisions is her mother and later Len. Given both are family and both are people she loves deeply I can see why she says the decisions they make are okay, even if she struggles to accept the same decision from someone else or openly disagrees with. She says she would hate to get married young and have to run a home. I felt exactly the same way as Con, despite having a number of siblings who did marry young.

My questions is would people feel Con hated the idea of marrying had she made the same comments about another character other than Joan? It seems to me that everyone is assuming that Con only said what she said in Triplets because it was Joan who was engaged.

Author:  Alison H [ Wed Mar 30, 2011 9:17 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

When Julie Lucy gets engaged, Con's the one who asks what's happening about her hopes of becoming a barrister. Joey says "Oh, that's all off," as if Julie's just scrapped her plans to go shopping at weekend, and Con seems quite shocked. So I don't think it's anything specific to Joan.

Author:  MJKB [ Wed Mar 30, 2011 11:57 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I take your point, Alison, but Con's remark about Reg 'always getting his way' strikes me as uncharacteristic. For somebody who appears to be against early engagements and marriages you would expect her to cut up rough about her own sister's extremely early engagement.

Author:  Alison H [ Wed Mar 30, 2011 12:08 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Oh, I agree. I'd expect her to be more concerned about Len's relationship than about Joan's. Joan is much more worldly-wise than Len and there's not the slightest suggestion that her boyfriend is putting any pressure on her to get engaged - if anything, the comments about expecting to be engaged soon make it sound as if it's the other way round :lol: - and, whilst Con might not like the idea of early marriage, Joan seems to be quite sure that it's what she wants. I'm not particularly keen on Ros and Con's remarks about how it's horrible to get engaged so young and the relationship might come to nothing anyway - if Joan's happy, what business is it of theirs to criticise her? With Len, though, Con talks about how "Reg is going to get what he wants," and Reg always gets his own way as if Len's feelings just don't come into it, and that, as you say, doesn't seem to be in character at all.

Ailie says that she doesn't want to marry early like her Auntie Joey and is immediately cried down because apparently Joey isn't a typical example of someone who marries young (?) and, when someone points out to Con that her mother married young, Con immediately insists that that's different (from Joan doing so) :lol: .

Author:  ClaireK [ Wed Mar 30, 2011 12:28 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

It has just occurred to me that Len may not yet be 18 and so is still a minor?

I would say there is a big difference between a 17 year old, who has led a sheltered life and never been kissed, to the 20/21 year old Joey, who had left school a few years before, gone to India, been "pursued" by a doctor etc.

Author:  janetbrown23 [ Wed Mar 30, 2011 12:33 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Len would have been a minor until she was 21 in those days. I was married at 19 in 1967 and my father had to sign to say that I might marry. Not sure what Swiss law would have been of course.

Author:  MJKB [ Wed Mar 30, 2011 5:57 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

ClaireK wrote:

Post subject: Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters) Reply with quote
It has just occurred to me that Len may not yet be 18 and so is still a minor?

The triplets are heading towards 19, surely? Is there any reference to their age in [i][i]Prefects[/i][/i] or [i]Althea[/i]?

Author:  Alison H [ Wed Mar 30, 2011 6:54 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

They were nearly 19: Prefects is set during the summer term before their 19th birthday. IIRC, Marie got engaged at 18, Mollie Bettany at 17, Wanda at 19, Gisela at 20 and Joey at 20. Josette, who was only a year older than Len, also got engaged at 18, but she was at university by then.

Author:  Cosimo's Jackal [ Wed Mar 30, 2011 9:19 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Fiona Mc wrote:
My questions is would people feel Con hated the idea of marrying had she made the same comments about another character other than Joan? It seems to me that everyone is assuming that Con only said what she said in Triplets because it was Joan who was engaged.


Well, while I agree with what other people have pointed out that Con at least asks the question about Julie's barrister training and her marriage, suggesting she's career-minded, I do think EBD only 'allows' Con to be so actively disparaging of an early engagement because it's Joan's, the girl who was never quite accepted. As Alison H pointed out, when Ailie points to Joey as an example of something she doesn't want to do (early marriage), she's cried down - and even though schoolgirl Joey herself is not keen on her friends marrying young, she doesn't express a particular negativity about any of their specific relationships. EBD does have this reverence for marriage as all-important and faintly holy, and will never allow a 'good' character to slag marriage off - I do think it's not accidental that the most unenthusiastically-portrayed engagement in the entire series (or possible engagement) is Joan's.

And I agree, it doesn't make 'sense' in terms of Con's character to have her apparently unshocked by the prospect of Len's imminent engagement to Reg - and I don't think it's in character for Margot either, really. It strikes me as a serious flaw in the end of Prefects (and perhaps another indication of EBD's failing powers/PM's involvement) that no combination of the extremely close triplets ever discusses Len's engagement, or appears to have any serious thoughts about it. Instead you get this rather middle-aged, knowing, gossipy 'Reg knows what he wants' tone, which I honestly think isn't believable in either Margot or Con. After all, one would expect them, above all people, to think that what Len wants is paramount, and it makes no sense at all for them to focus completely on Reg, as if their sister was a complete stranger!

Author:  Alison H [ Wed Mar 30, 2011 10:55 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Sort of on topic and sort of off topic.

Con doesn't plan to marry young, and it seems unlikely that she'll either return to the Gornetz Platz or take up a career like boarding school teaching or hospital nursing where accommodation might come with the job. I was trying to think of examples in CS-land of adult single women living either on their own or with a friend/sister/other relative and there seem to be very few. Grizel and Deira, and presumably Gillian and Joyce before Joyce's marriage. Then there are a couple of people - Eustacia and Phoebe - who live with a housekeeper, and the occasional person - Carla, Miss Bubb - who's fallen on hard times and is living alone in genteel-ish poverty. Not many, though. At a time when women were generally paid less than men and so it was very common for two female friends, two sisters, an aunt and a niece, two female cousins, etc, to share a home, it very rarely happens in CS-land; and very few CS women end up living alone either.

Or maybe we just don't hear about them.

Author:  MJKB [ Wed Mar 30, 2011 11:07 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Cosimo's Jackal wrote:
I do think it's not accidental that the most unenthusiastically-portrayed engagement in the entire series (or possible engagement) is Joan's.

I'd have to agree here; even the use of the word 'horrid' in relation to Joan's engagement is suggestive of slight disgust. Con doesn't use a similar expression about Julie's early marriage, only mild regret that Julie will not get to realise her career ambitions. I can't understand why EBD thought it necessary to marry Julie off the way she does,and why she has Con refer to Julie's plan to become a barrister in order to shrug it off as of little or no importance now that a man is in the offing. Usually EBD forgets little details like that: in one book Daisy is all set to become gardener, and a few books later she goes off to study medicine! In some ways it would have been less depressing had there been no mention of Julie's former ambition so that she just become another old girl who marries young.

Author:  Alison H [ Thu Mar 31, 2011 7:49 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

IIRC it was actually Beth who wanted to be a gardener - and she ended up doing a degree at Oxford and then becoming the Maynards' au pair, with the gardening plan totally forgotten :roll: .

Unless EBD just wanted to update us on the La Rochelle crowd, I'm not sure what the point of that bit about Julie is either - unless it's there to make a deliberate point about women's career plans coming to nothing, which would be horribly depressing. It could just be the La Rochelle thing, though, because we're also told when Nancy gets engaged and Vanna gets married.

Author:  Fiona Mc [ Thu Mar 31, 2011 8:21 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I had no problems with Julie giving up her career because IMO anyone who spends 2 years at finishing school after spending an extra year at the school proper isn't in a hurry to become a barrister. If it was that important she would have went to Uni sooner.

Author:  claire [ Thu Mar 31, 2011 9:02 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Alison H wrote:
IIRC it was actually Beth who wanted to be a gardener - and she ended up doing a degree at Oxford and then becoming the Maynards' au pair, with the gardening plan totally forgotten :roll: ..

maybe it was Beth who actually came up with the rose garden cabbage patch and Joey just got the credit - like Rosalie and Plato

Author:  ClaireK [ Thu Mar 31, 2011 10:45 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Alison H wrote:
They were nearly 19: Prefects is set during the summer term before their 19th birthday. IIRC, Marie got engaged at 18, Mollie Bettany at 17, Wanda at 19, Gisela at 20 and Joey at 20. Josette, who was only a year older than Len, also got engaged at 18, but she was at university by then.

Clearly a senior moment on my part!
I can't remember any reference to the triplets 18th birthday so I was using that logic.
Or am I more dotty than I previously realised and have managed to forget the celebrations for their 18?

Author:  Alison H [ Thu Mar 31, 2011 10:54 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I don't think they ever had any big birthday parties except when they were 13 and Kathie felt that she had to revoke Margot's punishment so that she could go. The age of majority then would've been 21 so I don't think anyone would've had any special celebrations for their 18th, but I can't remember any mention of anyone having a big party for their 21st either. Maybe they all had wild drunken celebrations which EBD felt it best not to mention :wink: .

Author:  ClaireK [ Thu Mar 31, 2011 12:42 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

As long as there were plenty of lemon biscuits on hand to soak up the alcohol!

Author:  MJKB [ Thu Mar 31, 2011 3:50 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

ClaireK wrote:
As long as there were plenty of lemon biscuits on hand to soak up the alcohol!
Brandy and lemon? Yes, sounds great.
Fiona Mc wrote:
I had no problems with Julie giving up her career because IMO anyone who spends 2 years at finishing school after spending an extra year at the school proper isn't in a hurry to become a barrister. If it was that important she would have went to Uni sooner.

Did she? St.Mildred's must have been coining it in! I wonder why EBD felt it necessary to send some of the girls there for two years? In fact, does Peggy Bettany have threeyears at St. M's? I can't think of any average 18/19 year olds wanting to spend more than one year at finishing school.

Author:  Alison H [ Thu Mar 31, 2011 4:04 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I can just about understand it with Peggy - she hadn't had the experience of going to school abroad before she got to Welsen, she wasn't planning on doing any sort of further education and I *think* she might only have been 17 when she left the main school (and, as Madge's niece, she wouldn't've had to pay!) - but it seems like a waste of time and money for people who'd already spent time in Switzerland and had 3 or more years of university ahead of them.

Author:  KB [ Thu Mar 31, 2011 10:26 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

MJKB wrote:
ClaireK wrote:
I wonder why EBD felt it necessary to send some of the girls there for two years? In fact, does Peggy Bettany have threeyears at St. M's? I can't think of any average 18/19 year olds wanting to spend more than one year at finishing school.


In terms of plot, I think it was almost a thank-you from her parents for the way she was willing to give up the whole St Mildred's plot to care for her mother after the operation. Of course, I don't know how much fun it would have been when all her good friends went off and on to other things.

On EBD's part, it's probably more likely that she either couldn't bear to part with them or, more likely, didn't have enough notable figures moving on to St Mildred's from the school proper and so decided to keep them there so she had people to write about.

Author:  MJKB [ Mon Apr 04, 2011 12:54 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Well, now I know her first year was messed up because of her mother's illness. She was then given a reprieve when Mollie's sister Bridie (I love the 'Oirish' tone of her letter) offers to come to the Quadrant to look after the house. At that particular point in time Peggy has just turned 18. She then goes back for another year with Bride and, as far as I'm aware, goes back for a third year which means that she will be 20 plus when she finally leaves! It just doesn't make sense.

Author:  claire [ Mon Apr 04, 2011 1:40 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Maybe they were trying to keep her away from Giles even if they did end up together in the end

Author:  MJKB [ Mon Apr 04, 2011 2:17 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Or maybe Giles insisted on a veryfinished wife! :lol:

Author:  Cosimo's Jackal [ Wed Apr 06, 2011 3:07 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

MJKB wrote:
Or maybe Giles insisted on a veryfinished wife! :lol:


:D Mind you, Peggy had tiresomely 'finished' Mummy-pleasing manners as early as Peggy, so I would have said she needed less 'finishing' than anyone else in the CS universe! Though Giles does sound an unbelievable prig, and maybe he was terrified in case his intended was secretly like his scruffy, gobby stepsisters because they were at the same school!

Author:  MJKB [ Wed Apr 06, 2011 10:38 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Do you think EBD secretly disliked Peggy's priggish airs and prim manner and wished pompous Giles on to her? I do so hope genetics won out and presented them with an even more gobby and bolshie version of Polly W!

Author:  KB [ Wed Apr 06, 2011 11:45 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I don't understand this dislike for Giles. The only time we see him is when he has decided he doesn't like his step-sisters, who have become rude and so unpleasant that nobody else in the family can bear it. I don't know why a fourteen-year-old who is generally away at school is supposed to come home and enjoy being with girls who are messy, lazy and rude, and a step-mother who doesn't do anything about it, or else is making life so stringent as to be unbearable. He has to put up with this for ten years before his father, who is his only family member, comes up to straighten things out.

I can't blame Giles for preferring a wife who is quiet, composed, has excellent self-control, has been helping to manage her mother's house with a young child and thus has the preferred skills for the 1950s housewife, but also has a good education and thus can take part in intelligent conversations. If she also has the benefit of being very pretty and petite, not to mention having associations with a good family, I think any man would be a fool not to snap her up.

That said, I wonder what Polly and Lally thought when Giles began spending much more time visiting them than before!

Author:  Beecharmer [ Thu Apr 07, 2011 7:39 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Not much to add but glad someone is defending Peggy :-)

Author:  Fiona Mc [ Thu Apr 07, 2011 1:32 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

KB wrote:
I don't understand this dislike for Giles. The only time we see him is when he has decided he doesn't like his step-sisters, who have become rude and so unpleasant that nobody else in the family can bear it. I don't know why a fourteen-year-old who is generally away at school is supposed to come home and enjoy being with girls who are messy, lazy and rude, and a step-mother who doesn't do anything about it, or else is making life so stringent as to be unbearable. He has to put up with this for ten years before his father, who is his only family member, comes up to straighten things out.


I'm with you KB, I hate being around rude children, so could always understand while Giles wouldn't want to be around Polly or Lalla

Author:  Cosimo's Jackal [ Thu Apr 07, 2011 1:53 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

KB wrote:
I don't understand this dislike for Giles. The only time we see him is when he has decided he doesn't like his step-sisters, who have become rude and so unpleasant that nobody else in the family can bear it. I don't know why a fourteen-year-old who is generally away at school is supposed to come home and enjoy being with girls who are messy, lazy and rude, and a step-mother who doesn't do anything about it, or else is making life so stringent as to be unbearable. He has to put up with this for ten years before his father, who is his only family member, comes up to straighten things out.

I can't blame Giles for preferring a wife who is quiet, composed, has excellent self-control, has been helping to manage her mother's house with a young child and thus has the preferred skills for the 1950s housewife, but also has a good education and thus can take part in intelligent conversations. If she also has the benefit of being very pretty and petite, not to mention having associations with a good family, I think any man would be a fool not to snap her up.


Giles - what very little we know of him, admittedly - comes across as a mini-me edition of his appalling father, usually somewhere else, but with lots of expectations about what he wants from the womenfolk at home when he comes back. We're told he finds Polly and Lala 'untidy, impudent and careless', which makes him sound like their Headmaster or another father-figure, rather than their stepbrother. Yes, blended families can be difficult, and he's in a difficult situation, but there's no mention of whether Polly and Lala might not have found Giles to their liking - perhaps they found him equally unpleasant, bossy and critical, when he came home from school? The difference is that EBD views Polly and Lala, not Giles, as in the wrong, and in need of reform from their mother's 'irregular discipline' - rather than their bad behaviour stemming from their father's lengthy neglect and then over-compensation.

I don't know, I just find Polly and Lala likeable, perfectly recognisable ordinary teenagers - and it's clear that the Lady Acetylene Lampe game is so important to them because some things in their life (their mother's intermittent extreme discipline and laxness in between, their father and mother's odd relationship, the dislike of their stepbrother, their father's return and extreme response to the way they turned out etc) are far from ideal. (Polly more or less says so, that LA has been important when other things weren't good.) They leap off the page as imperfect, teenage and very real in a way Peggy doesn't for me, especially when she first appears in their lives, as a Mummy-pleasing, silvery-haired icon of daughterly perfection. I find her one-dimensional and priggish, so feel she and what we know of Giles are a match made in heaven!

Author:  JS [ Thu Apr 07, 2011 2:18 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I'd rather like to see what Lorna Hill would have made of Giles. If we saw more of him as a Guy/Sebastian character, I wonder if people would feel differently.

Author:  julieanne1811 [ Thu Apr 07, 2011 2:32 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Cosimo's Jackal wrote:
Giles - what very little we know of him, admittedly - comes across as a mini-me edition of his appalling father, usually somewhere else, but with lots of expectations about what he wants from the womenfolk at home when he comes back.


This made me think about one of my per hates - all the talk of 'single mothers' and their delinquent children - 'delinquent' simply because their mother is single. In this senario surely the one at greater fault is the totally absent father? The one who's not there at all.

And the 'appalling father' in this instance is one of those. SOmeone who's not there to help bring up the children of the family (and yes, I know that he's a step, but that doens't absolve him from any responsibility at all) into which he's married. It's all very well to return and be critical that teh children aren't behaving as you expect when you haven't been there to teach them. Huh! It serves him right!

Author:  Cosimo's Jackal [ Thu Apr 07, 2011 3:29 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

julieanne1811 wrote:

And the 'appalling father' in this instance is one of those. SOmeone who's not there to help bring up the children of the family (and yes, I know that he's a step, but that doens't absolve him from any responsibility at all) into which he's married. It's all very well to return and be critical that teh children aren't behaving as you expect when you haven't been there to teach them. Huh! It serves him right!


Mr Winterton is the girls' biological father, though, isn't he? Giles is his son from his first marriage and Polly, Lala and their brother Freddie (I think?) are his children with his second wife...?

I quite agree about the demonisation of single mothers, and the extent to which a parent absent for a decade is entitled to throw his weight around about his daughters when he returns. It's Mrs Winterton who strikes me as the interestingly damaged character in that family - her schooldays were clearly desperately unhappy and she seems to have remained as someone who felt damaged by bullying well into adulthood. Interesting that she marries someone who leaves her looking after four children solo in a different country for a decade, never consults her about where they should live, and, when he returns, blames her for their daughters' behavior to the extent of requiring her to report to him, rather as if she's an army subordinate - is this a nastily realistic depiction of someone whose formative years were ruined by bullying actually seeking out a bullying/domineering husband because it's what she knows?

Author:  julieanne1811 [ Thu Apr 07, 2011 5:41 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Cosimo's Jackal wrote:
julieanne1811 wrote:

And the 'appalling father' in this instance is one of those. SOmeone who's not there to help bring up the children of the family (and yes, I know that he's a step, but that doesn't absolve him from any responsibility at all) into which he's married. It's all very well to return and be critical that the children aren't behaving as you expect when you haven't been there to teach them. Huh! It serves him right!


Mr Winterton is the girls' biological father, though, isn't he? Giles is his son from his first marriage and Polly, Lala and their brother Freddie (I think?) are his children with his second wife...?



Well. That makes it even worse!!!

Author:  Abi [ Thu Apr 07, 2011 9:17 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

JS wrote:
I'd rather like to see what Lorna Hill would have made of Giles. If we saw more of him as a Guy/Sebastian character, I wonder if people would feel differently.


Or would he be a Nigel Monkhouse and get his comeuppance? :lol:

Author:  Alison H [ Thu Apr 07, 2011 10:12 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I would love to see some of EBD's male characters get a kick up the bum like Nigel got from Mariella :lol: .

I think Peggy's really the last of the old school. She's concerned with good manners and doing the right thing, has no career plans, and after school she goes home to "help" her mother and shortly afterwards marries the son of family friends. She might seem rather boring compared to Bride or Polly, but there's not that much difference between her and some of the older girls in the early books.

Author:  Cosimo's Jackal [ Fri Apr 08, 2011 2:14 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Alison H wrote:
I think Peggy's really the last of the old school. She's concerned with good manners and doing the right thing, has no career plans, and after school she goes home to "help" her mother and shortly afterwards marries the son of family friends. She might seem rather boring compared to Bride or Polly, but there's not that much difference between her and some of the older girls in the early books.


I think that's true - she's not so different from Gisela or Bernhilda or any of the original CS nice girls. But they are presented as the products of very traditional, continental homes who have been trained to instant obedience, and we do sometimes see British CS girls teasing them for their stilted speech or behaviour - whereas there seems no equivalent reason for Peggy to be such a paragon, when the other children brought up by Madge and Jem aren't...?

Author:  MJKB [ Sat Apr 09, 2011 6:24 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

It surprises me that Peggy doesn't go on to some form of higher or further education after her first year in St.Mildred's. She has been always regarded as clever and hardworking, and at least one of her sisters, Bride, does. Bride, as far as I can remember, is not considered any cleverer than Peggy; it's Maeve who describes herself as unacademic, but she at least has some career ambition and talks about becoming a 'lady courier'. (I love the 'lady' bit!). Apart from the triplets, only one other female member of the MBR clan goes on to university.

Author:  Alison H [ Sat Apr 09, 2011 7:31 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Robin, if we count her as one of the MBR clan, gets the ball rolling :D by going to Oxford. & then Daisy becomes a doctor and wins a load of awards for her research - and I do wish EBD'd shown us Jem saying how proud he was of her! So things get off to a flying start for the girls of the clan :D . Then Peggy goes home to "help" Mollie. Bride does go to university. We're never told what Primula does between leaving school and getting married.

Then Sybil plans to go to art needlework college, but it's not clear if she does or not: she's originally 5 years older than Josette, and is again 5 years older than her by the time they both get engaged, but her age is EBDd somewhere in the middle so she still seems to be at St Mildred's when the plan to go to Australia is announced. Josette starts university in Sydney, but we aren't told whether she completes her course or drops out when she gets married. & we aren't told what Maeve does when she leaves school either, but presumably she got a job as a "lady courier" - nice to see someone using the advantage which the CS's trilingual system gave them in the jobs market.

Maybe it was something to do with the reaction in the '50s against the way in which women's roles had changed or maybe it was just that the different members of the clan had different personalities/ideas/abilities, but Daisy and to some extent Robin both seem to be ambitious and high-achieving, and then Peggy is in some ways a throwback to people like Gisela and Bernhilda who go "home" and then marry their friends' brothers.

Author:  MJKB [ Sat Apr 09, 2011 10:12 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Were'nt there a brief few years in the 50's when there was a reaction against the freedom that women experienced during the Second World War? Even the 'New Look' reflected this and put women back into longer, more restricting clothes. Perhaps EBD was influenced by this and shored up further against the first wave of youth culture after 1956.

Author:  Pado [ Sun Apr 10, 2011 2:55 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Peggy is left at the Sonnalpe as a young child (and then sees her younger siblings left by her parents, possibly reinforcing the feeling of abandonment). Doubtless, she was told by her parents to "be a good girl" for Madge and Jem. As one of the oldest children in the nursery, she may naturally try to be helpful in keeping the little ones in order, especially through the various removals to Guernsey, England etc.

Even though it seems to be a generally positive relationship - both with Madge and with her parents long-distance - one suspects that she often puts on "guest" behavior, especially if Sybil's "we belong and you don't" attitude permeates the atmosphere at times. (I know Madge attempted to stop that, but what goes on out of sight of adults can have an effect.)

What some see as "prissy", Peggy may have adopted as a survival trait.

Author:  Nightwing [ Sun Apr 10, 2011 11:39 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Out of curiosity, I was just wondering at what "point" in the series people who dislike Peggy started disliking her? I never really minded her that much - I don't find her particularly interesting, but I think her time as Head Girl is very interesting - we're shown that she's conscientious to a fault, that while not charismatic she does have the respect of her peers, and gradually gains the respect of the rest of the school, too. Anyway, I found people's dislike of her rather puzzling!

But when I recently read Oberland I definitely saw what people meant. There I find her - well, too much. She's used in the Joey or Mary-Lou role, as the Great Reformer, but not at all successfully, as she really does seem to come off as priggish and prim. Part of that is my modern sensibilities, I know, but I definitely came away liking her less.

Did other people find the same thing, or was it dislike for her from the word go?

Author:  KB [ Sun Apr 10, 2011 11:43 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Nightwing wrote:
But when I recently read Oberland I definitely saw what people meant. There I find her - well, too much. She's used in the Joey or Mary-Lou role, as the Great Reformer, but not at all successfully, as she really does seem to come off as priggish and prim.


Is part of that, though, because we haven't seen it before? We can believe it in Mary Lou because, from the beginning, it's what she does, even with Clem when she comes to school. But when Peggy is shown, we don't see her reforming people, and even when she's HG, she interacts mostly with groups rather than individuals among the Juniors. But suddenly we have her shoe-horned in as the Person Who Solves Problems and it does come as a shock.

Author:  JS [ Mon Apr 11, 2011 11:21 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I don't have a problem with Peggy - even when she's helping Elma and Edna, but then I've always been quite accepting of the characters that EBD 'expects' us to like.

I agree with what Pado said a few posts back about Peggy's 'guest' behaviour (what a lovely way to put it) because of her upbringing. poor Peggy actually got a pretty rough deal, one way or another, left by her parents (for whatever reason); then apart from them all through the war, then eventually getting them back and having to become what, in effect, was a 'melded' family with Maeve having held the place of only daughter etc etc. No wonder poor Peggy wanted to be nice to/gain the approval of her mother.

We see a bit of this in Oberland when she says that she and Bride and Rix have had 'so little of her' when Mollie is dangerously ill. Possibly she felt that her mother was 'abandoning' her yet again.

I for one hope she was happy with Giles (who, if you think about it, had also had to do without parents for much of his childhood). Maybe they actually had a sense of loss in common?

Author:  Cosimo's Jackal [ Wed Apr 13, 2011 9:24 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I think Peggy is a really interesting instance of a character EBD clearly expects us to like - extremely pretty, 'characterful' face, 'pretty manners', MBR, HG, etc - but where her intention doesn't come off at least some of the time for some readers. I'm not wild about the sugary way EBD depicts her as a small child (compared to 'masterful' Rix), but she does exactly the same thing with other male-female twin pairs like Felix and Felicity, so I think my dislike stems from the beginning of Peggy, where EBD uses her as a 'perfect' stick to beat the rough-and-ready Wintertons with.

But for me, that backfires, because the Wintertons, with all their faults, are likeable, and Peggy's 'pretty ways' with Mollie and all that 'opening her eyes' when they think Plas Howell is in Wales and leaping up when they're called for tea just makes her seem like someone showing off for the grown-ups! I agree with whoever said she had 'guest manners' - she reminds me of a particularly tiresome neighbour who played up to my mother in very Peggyish ways, so that my mother would always wish my sister and I were more like her! In fact, that's the crux of why that episode doesn't really work for me - Peggy is the ideal teenager as dreamed up by a certain kind of rather old-fashioned adult - tidy, obedient, daughterly, takes care of her skin. In a different kind of novel, Polly and Lala would have thought she was a tiresome sucker-up, rather than admiring her.

She's much less insufferable in the rest of Peggy, but it comes back full force in Oberland.

Author:  JB [ Wed Apr 13, 2011 9:32 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I think Peggy is less well drawn than Bride from the time of the Plas Howell books. We see a lot of Bride and her friends but Peggy, in the form above, isn't anything like as strong a character. She comes across very much as a people pleaser.

Author:  MJKB [ Wed Apr 13, 2011 12:39 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I know this is hardly Peggy's fault, but I always thought it a tad unfair on the old sixth year girls to have Peggy placed over them as HG. I find it surprising that Dickie Christie and a few others who had been in the sixth the previous term didn't resent Peggy coming in and assuming authority over them straight away.

Author:  Cosimo's Jackal [ Wed Apr 13, 2011 7:48 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Would schoolgirl Joey, or Grizel, or Margia, Corney or Evvy have liked schoolgirl Peggy if she'd been at the CS with them? I realise this involves a spacetime continuum fracture of major proportions, but it occurs to me that Peggy lacks the streak of mischief that is such a strong component of the most popular UK and US girls in the early part of the series, even when they're no longer madcap Middles, and that she might have seemed distinctly prim in comparison to the heroines of the early CS...?

Author:  Mia [ Wed Apr 13, 2011 7:58 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I think Peggy is redeemed a little by the episode in the storm where she and Dickie run down to the bay and are nearly killed by the tree branch*. I like the way she stands up to Miss Annersley

EBD wrote:
Miss Annersley looked at them steadily. Dickie had given up all attempts at self-control and was howling even as her small sister Gay might have done. Peggy was still very white, but she had got a grip on herself now. As she said later, someone had to keep sane!
“Sit down, girls,” the Head said gravely. “Delicia, please stop crying like that. It won’t mend matters now.”
Peggy’s head went up. She faced the angry Head fearlessly. “It isn’t because of what we did that Dickie’s crying,” she said.


*lol

Author:  Cosimo's Jackal [ Wed Apr 13, 2011 8:32 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Completely OT for discussion of Peggy (though that's entirely OT for the original topic, anyway!), but how do people imagine Dickie's crying in this scene, when she's described as 'howling' like her little sister Gay. who's about five to Dickie's seventeen? 'Howling' in a five-year-old suggests to me the kind of loud, hysterical wailing and sobbing you'd expect from a hurt or frightened small child, but I have difficulty imagining responsible, jolly Dickie wailing continuously like that in front of a classmate and an unimpressed headmistress, even if she is rather shocked?

When a CS girl says to another girl 'Stop howling', I tend to assume it's just a slangy (and slightly scornful) way of saying 'don't cry' - but when EBD herself says someone is howling - she describes Biddy O Ryan as 'howling like a lost dog' at one point! - it's hard (for me) not to imagine girls in brown and flame sort of howling with their noses in the air like wolves or coyotes! :)

Author:  MJKB [ Wed Apr 13, 2011 10:20 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

I don't remember Dickie 'howling', is it in the hb?

Author:  julieanne1811 [ Thu Apr 14, 2011 10:31 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo being intolerant/insular (potential adult matters)

Cosimo's Jackal wrote:
how do people imagine Dickie's crying in this scene, when she's described as 'howling' like her little sister Gay. who's about five to Dickie's seventeen?


I always imagined it to be hysteria, a complete loss of control which for someone like Dicky, so 'normal' and down-to-earth, would have been simply awful.

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