I suppose she just meant that it was a very happy school - which sounds like something you'd say in a prospectus and which isn't necessary true in practice - but it isn't really very well put. No sympathy is shown to Jessica (the reaction to her refusal to eat is to threaten to force-feed her), to Odette (who is described as a "wet blanket") or to girls like Joan and Yseult who are obviously having problems settling in.

Frau Jackson - are you thinking of Mary Lou asking to go on the half term trip with the triplets in Theodora?

Why are the staff presented like this ? Is it stemming from the idea that any intervention by an authority figure would be rejected by an unhappy girl as interference on the part of the system she feels is responsible for her unhappiness ? Or because the CS wants the girls to grow up to be 'strong and independent', 'capable of standing on their own feet' (IIRC Mary-Lou says something like this to Len in [i]Theodora[i]) ? Or is EMB just using staff passivity as a plot device so that Joey/Mary Lou/Len can be brought into the story ? Or something else ?

I suppose she just meant that it was a very happy school - which sounds like something you'd say in a prospectus and which isn't necessary true in practice

Yes, that's exactly it, it's prospectus-speak which we all recognise can't be true for everyone, all the time, in reality. I'm sure AF's Kingscote had exactly the same thing about a 'happy convivial atmosphere etc' in its prospectus, but, even though the twins are terribly proud to be going there for the first time, and Nicola is heartbroken when it looks as though she has to leave, no one pretends everyone is permanently happy there!

or Odette Mercier and Joan Baker are only two more of the more obvious Swiss-era people whose unhappiness isn't their fault.

Joan had, by the end of her first term, apologised to all those she had wronged and had promised to do better -....... yet was never considered completely 'one of us' by the rest of her classmates or by the Mistresses. Kathie Ferrars picks up on it in her first term

I'd agree about Odette - but Joan Baker is a bully and a brat when she first arrives at the Chalet School.

Not to single out Joan, particularly - but there are others like Odette, or Francie Thingy, who wants to be Margot's friend, or even very minor figures like Sue Whatshername, the withdrawn girl who's only at the CS at all because she's companion to an ill but spoilt and demanding child, who must have been in a difficult position as one of the very few Swiss-era day girls and half-in, half-out of school life, with a 'job' in the evenings and at weekends. Even the golden girl Margot Maynard is troubled quite a lot of her schooldays, but I'm not sure whether we're supposed to see her unhappiness as her 'fault'?

Sure, but I'd have said that her bullying at any rate was restricted to Rosamund, and that virtually no one else knew about it, so that can't factor into why she's generally disliked long afterwards. That would come down to her more minor public bad behaviour - wrong clothes, make-up, swearing, over-sophistication - which falls much more into the same realm as the initial behaviour of other problem new girls, who nonetheless manage to integrate eventually. Cornelia is terribly unpleasant when she first arrives, and Grizel is often awful.

With the whole passive staff thing, well, it is a girls school book, written for girls and read by girls. EBD is actually quite unusual for showing much of the staff side of things in the first place. Perhaps she just felt her readers would rather that most things were sorted out amongst the girls, rather than having the staff wade in every time things were going awry.

But presumably EBD doesn't want to show Hilda or someone actually not managing the miracle.

But Hilda is actually very encouraging and sympthetic to Nina when the latter arrives at the school - and Nina feels that the Abbess understands her perfectly and that she has said just the right things. The words might not be what we would say today, in that there is till that stiff upper lip thing, but to my mind she succeeds admirably with a pupil she doesn't yet know. And I think it reminds one that she's been through it all herself, losing her mother when she was only 13.

Yes, but Nina is very unhappy - grieving - and Hilda goes out of her way to find the right words to help, Emma. You all seem to be saying that no one helps the girls in their unhappinesses and I would agree to some extent - though there was a lot of stiff upper lip attitude in life in general at that point - but I just felt that the other side needed to be pointed out a little.

I'd see the later situations where the staff are made to look either callous or inept so as to leave a situation to be resolved by Joey or Mary-Lou as a bit different

Nancy nodded. “Excellent scheme! Joey knows girls inside out and she might be able to give us some tips about how to deal with a demon like Jocelyn. She’s had experience enough, goodness knows! Look at the time they had with young Margot when she was a Middle!”

I wonder how much of it got back to Madge, and how impressed or otherwise she was at the fact that the people she paid to run the school kept going off to ask advice from someone else . I'd quite like to've seen Joey say "Look, I've got my own job to do and a home to run - can't you sort the school's problems out yourselves for once?" .

But Joey, with her greater understanding of how narrowly-focused someone brilliantly talented can be, is able to understand and get through where Hilda can't. Which seems to me perfectly realistic and well handled on EBD's part - there's a reason that Joey the writer can understand Nina the musician, where Hilda the teacher can't, so it makes a lot of sense.

And the thing about Joey is that she has the opportunity to connect and talk to girls differently to the staff - can't think which book, though I think it's in England, but there's the time she gets someone to help her pluck a chicken to make a point. It's the sort of thing that a teacher just couldn't do for a pupil! And of course there will always be a teacher/pupil dynamic if any of the staff try to help.

can't think which book, though I think it's in England, but there's the time she gets someone to help her pluck a chicken to make a point.

It's in Peggy with Eilunedd isn't it (words being like chicken feathers and not being able to get them back once you've said them)

I've always disliked that bit - the lesson is so trite, like the modern parables you find in children's religion books. I can imagine Eilunedd being rightly ticked off once she realised that Joey had deliberately made her chase chicken feathers around the garden all afternoon

Post subject: Re: If you're not happy here it will be your own fault ... Reply with quote
Cel wrote:
I've always disliked that bit - the lesson is so trite, like the modern parables you find in children's religion books. I can imagine Eilunedd being rightly ticked off once she realised that Joey had deliberately made her chase chicken feathers around the garden all afternoon

Actually, I think when I was at high school our pastor related the same "feathers" story to us re: gossip and spreading rumours. She might have been a CS reader, of course, but I suspect that it's a parable that has been around for a while, and EBD borrowed it to teach Eilnuedd a lesson.

I've always disliked that bit - the lesson is so trite, like the modern parables you find in children's religion books. I can imagine Eilunedd being rightly ticked off once she realised that Joey had deliberately made her chase chicken feathers around the garden all afternoon

I've used it in a sermon! Only I don't know how you pronounce "Eiluned", so had to change her name to "Eileen".

The nearest I can get to how she said it was pronounced was: Ell-ee-ned, with the stress on the second syllable. But if we have a Welsh speaker on the board, (s)he could probably be more accurate.

With that pronunciation she must have been from North Wales! I pronounce the name El-in-ed, stress on the penultimate syllable. And I've always assumed EBD mis-spelled it, as I have only seen it spelt Eluned elsewhere. It's not a very common name.

With that pronunciation she must have been from North Wales! I pronounce the name El-in-ed, stress on the penultimate syllable. And I've always assumed EBD mis-spelled it, as I have only seen it spelt Eluned elsewhere. It's not a very common name.

As a first language Welsh speaker I agree with you Joey as regards the pronunciation of Eluned, however round here it is a very common name. In fact I know Eluned's from both north and south Wales not to mention mid Wales.

First post on this forum, so hello everyone.

and am fairly sure that Eluned is a real Welsh name,

'I thought she looked dreadfully unhappy,' replied Grizel... 'And how funny to have fair hair with those dark eyes!' 'Do you think so?' asked Bernhilda. 'There are a great number of people living in Wien who are like that. But as for unhappy, she did not do as she was told.'

I've used it in a sermon! Only I don't know how you pronounce "Eiluned", so had to change her name to "Eileen".