The CBB
http://www.the-cbb.co.uk/

Books: Adult Matters – Adrienne and the Chalet School
http://www.the-cbb.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=7076
Author:  abbeybufo [ Sun Dec 20, 2009 5:17 pm ]
Post subject:  Books: Adult Matters – Adrienne and the Chalet School
Our next theme is Adult Matters, and the first book being considered in this light is Adrienne. Adrienne and the Chalet Schoolwas first published in 1965. There is a synopsis here. Only one other book by EBD would be published in that year, that being Summer Term, the next book in the CS series. EBD was by now in her early seventies, and since Trouble at Skelton Hall had been published in 1963, had concentrated solely on the CS, and would not revisit any other series or produce any non-Chalet books for the rest of her writing career.

The book opens with fifteen-year-old Adrienne in a distinctly dodgy situation, stranded by the death of her father in an ‘attic-atelier’ appartement in an unsavoury area of Arles, with a concierge whose designs on her are hinted to be those of the ‘madame’ of a brothel. The Robin – now Soeur Cécile – is dispatched from the convent to which she has been ‘lent’ to rescue her and bring her to La Sagesse. Through Robin’s machinations she is sent to the CS, and the rest of the book tells how she progresses there.

There is a discussion about growing up amongst Ailie Russell and her friends in the coach to school, and many events are told from a more adult point of view than EBD sometimes gives; the tone of the authorial voice is very definitely adult , and the ‘natter’ that Joey and Adrienne have at half-term also touches more seriously on death and the loss of a loved one than is often shown in children’s books.

    *How much of the ‘adult content’ we as adults see in Adrienne came through to you as a child?

    *How much, indeed, of what we read into Adrienne’s position at the start of this title do you think was intended by EBD?

    *Did you find Joey’s preoccupation with the sick Phil another ‘adult’ element that intrudes into the story?

    *How realistic did it seem to you that it was the ‘grown-up’ Mary-Lou who is the one who sees the resemblance to Robin, rather than Joey, when Mary-Lou was thirteen when she last saw Robin?

Please comment below on these and any other aspects of the book.
Author:  Abi [ Sun Dec 20, 2009 10:27 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adult Matters – Adrienne and the Chalet School
As Adrienne was one of the first CS books I ever read, I've always had a soft spot for it; I never understood complicated-relationship part of it, so pretty much ignored it except to be glad for Adrienne that she had real family at last.

And of course as a child I just assumed that Mme Boulangier would make Adrienne scrub floors or something although, thinking back, I think there was still a frightening atmosphere that made me feel very relieved when the nuns turned up to rescue her.

Again, I didn't question Joey's preoccupation with Phil's illness - that was just what happened in the book, to me. But I loved the way Joey dealt with Adrienne and could easily see why Adrienne felt so strongly that she wanted to please Joey.

I think EBD portrayed a lot of things well in this book - the atmosphere of the appartement at the beginning is genuinely scary, however much or little you read into it (and I think EBD did mean to at least suggest something a little more 'adult' than mere floor-scrubbing). The plot with Janet I never found so gripping, but the matter-of-fact way that Ailie and Janice deal with it is great! In fact they're a really appealing group altogether. It's a shame EBD didn't write more about them instead of concentrating on Jack et al towards the end of the series.
Author:  Alison H [ Mon Dec 21, 2009 2:16 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adult Matters – Adrienne and the Chalet School
I love the Ailie-Janice-Judy gang. Their conversation on the way to school is so normal! I really wish EBD'd concentrated more on them and less on Jack Lambert's gang.

It's great to see Robin back - it upsets me that she gets forgotten about, and it upsets me in this book that none of the CS crowd bothered to go and see her whilst she was in France - but the long-lost relative plot was unnecessary, repetitive, and pretty silly given that Robin was supposed to be the image of her mother and yet apparently resembled a long-lost cousin on her father's side.

It doesn't make much sense that Mary-Lou was the one who saw it, nor that Mary-Lou seemed so interested in Robin when she can't have known her that well, but I think EBD sometimes got so into the idea of there being a big CS family that she forgot that not all the main characters had had that much to do with each other, if that makes sense. It's like when you're talking to someone at work or university and start going on about a relative or a friend from home because you forget that just because two people are both important in your world doesn't mean that they know each other ... if you see what I mean!

I'd love to know whether or not EBD did intend for readers, or at least older readers, to think that the concierge was the madame of a brothel ... it certainly reads that way, but would she really have put something like that into a school story?

I wish we'd seen more about how the Maynards dealt with Phil's illness: it's interesting to see Joey's more adult and serious side.

Also, Adrienne's the first really major new character in the Swiss years, or any of the post-war years really, who isn't from an English-speaking country. Although her mother is English and it later turns out that her dad is too (and his family are from Manchester, which is very exciting because EBD normally writes as if Lancashire doesn't exist!), Adrienne is presented as being French. At around the same time we get Jack Lambert's gang, the first multinational school gang since the Quintette, and it does seem as if the school's really becoming multinational again.
Author:  Margaret [ Mon Dec 21, 2009 10:23 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adult Matters – Adrienne and the Chalet School
Alison H wrote:
I'd love to know whether or not EBD did intend for readers, or at least older readers, to think that the concierge was the madame of a brothel ... it certainly reads that way, but would she really have put something like that into a school story?


Certainly as I grew up I thought that EBD intended Adrienne to become a prostitute, because I felt that she hinted at things which one understood at a different level when one was older.

For example to Mary-Lou when her father is found to be dead. "You are partly your Mother and partly your Father..." and the fact that Joey had such a long family was pointing out that Roman Catholics didn't use birth control.

All very exciting to my adolescent mind, as I felt I was party to secrets which younger readers wouldn't understand!
Author:  Sunglass [ Mon Dec 21, 2009 10:29 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adult Matters – Adrienne and the Chalet School
I'm certain the hints that the concierge would have prostituted Adrienne are intentional on EBD's part - although they do seem out of character for her, but maybe make some sense in relation to the increased violence in some of the late books, like Redheads - but are subtle enough to go entirely over the head of a child reader. (I only read this as an adult, so have no idea how it would have gone down with my child self.)

In fact, EBD never actually says much, but I think the little hints added together are pretty plain to the adult reader. The stress on the dangers of a girl of fifteen being 'without protection' in a notorious part of town, sending a male protector with the nuns, Adrienne's own ill-defined dread of the concierge's 'calculating' looks, and her pulling furniture across her door, and the 'brothel madam-ish' way the concierge, with her police record, is described:

Quote:
they had noticed the frowsty smell of stale heavy scent that came from her. They had also seen the thin mouth slashed across the broad raddled face like a scarlet gash and the lustreless eyes with hooded lids. No more than Adrienne did they like her. Certainly they did not trust her one iota where the girl was concerned.


And prostitution seems implicitly in the air in the conversation between Robin and the concierge:

Quote:
[– And you, mes soeurs,” she went one, attacking the nuns, “you should no better than to come here and tempt a mere child away ... As for you, petite, you stay here with me and if you cannot pay me in money, well, doubtless we shall find another way.”
...
Then the nun spoke. “No; I think you will not go to the Mairie, for you dare not. What had you in mind for this child? Nothing of good.


I also think it's why EBD goes out of her way to make it plain that the Desmoines are genteel, if impoverished, by stressing Adrienne's 'pure' accent, and the quality of the family's china and linen. She doesn't want us really thinking of a new CS girl, holder of Joey's scholarship, and Robin's long-lost cousin, as a slum escapee from the vice trade!

It's an attractive escape from this melodrama to the more modern conversation about boyfriends and dances among Ailie, Janice and co, which is pretty much the first time we've seen 'normal' CS girls dispassionately discussing boys. Although EBD hasn't really changed her stance all that much from Joey's schooldays - English schoolgirls still don't really get why anyone would want a boyfriend, and all regard boys as much less interesting than school affairs. They recognise vaguely they'll 'come to it eventually', but make it sound a long way in the future, even though this is the book where Sybil and Josette marry, both in their teens (well, Josette is, not sure about Sybil?) and Len realises her future is 'settled' after that grim conversation with Hilda about sock-darning. No wonder Ailie and co think marriage sounds dull as ditchwater!

But it's funny though that, again (as in that conversation between Con and Rosamund about Joan Baker's possible engagement), someone brings up Joey's early marriage, but is howled down for even thinking for a moment that anyone could conceive of Joey's early marriage as being dull or typical:

Quote:
... but where’s the fun of getting married before you’ve had any other kind of fun? Look at Auntie Joey! She was only about four years older than us when she married and she’s done nothing but have babies and keep house and – ”She was as nearly howled down as was possible in a motor-coach with three prefects in charge, not to speak of two mistresses who had overheard a good deal of this and grinned at each other.
“Talk sense!” Janice retorted when the objectors had been more or less silenced. “She’s done a lot more than that and you know it. What about all her books? And the way she’s gone on having adventures one time and another. Look at all the places she’s gone to – Canada, and Austria, and France and – ”
“Yes; Janice is right,” Thyra put her oar in. “You can’t call Mrs Maynard an average example of married life. She’s done a lot too much of different things for that.


I always wonder, given that this is in some ways a book which has a more modern conception of teenagers and their relationship to authority (the conversation between Janet and Hilda), EBD wasn't worrying that her teenage readers would retrospectively find Joey's early marriage a dull thing to do, and is trying to make it plain that these 'modern' girls still think Joey's life is adventurous and exciting...?
Author:  Cosimo's Jackal [ Mon Dec 21, 2009 4:20 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adult Matters – Adrienne and the Chalet School
Sunglass wrote:

I always wonder, given that this is in some ways a book which has a more modern conception of teenagers and their relationship to authority (the conversation between Janet and Hilda), EBD wasn't worrying that her teenage readers would retrospectively find Joey's early marriage a dull thing to do, and is trying to make it plain that these 'modern' girls still think Joey's life is adventurous and exciting...?


I definitely think that's what's on EBD's mind in some of the late books, where people say on more than one occasion that Joey's early marriage was different to other people marrying young - she's trying to pre-empt some sophisticated young reader thinking that being married with three babies by 21/22 is by necessity dull. (Even though Joey thought the same of Gisela and co in her schooldays.)

I also think it's why she ramps up the violence and melodrama in some of the late books too. As well as the hints of prostitution, there's that quite lurid bit in this one about various criminals who lived in Adrienne's old building, who've committed a string of murders and robberies. And in response to some mistress worrying that Jane Carew's scary recitation will frighten the younger girls, Bill or someone laughs and says they see much worse on TV. I think that this new sense of her young audience as more savvy is part of what makes Adrienne more 'adult', and lets Ailie and co talk about boys and dances without being regarded as Joan Baker-ish.

Having said that, a lot of the story is more 19thc melodrama than anything else - the cruel concierge, the artist father and daughter in the garret, the beautiful nun rescuer, the mysterious locket that won't open (and then gets forgotten about) the long-lost relative etc etc.

But, even more than the relationship between Robin and Adrienne being both a wild coincidence and making no sense in terms of the likeness being from the wrong side of the family, it makes very little 'sense' in terms of the story and characters of the series to have Robin so close by for so long with anyone from Freudesheim bothering to go and see her. It feels even odder given that Hilda is flying Adrienne to Toronto at the end of the book, so she can visit a relative she hardly knows!
Author:  ChubbyMonkey [ Mon Dec 21, 2009 6:08 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adult Matters – Adrienne and the Chalet School
This is one of the ones that I only got in the last year and have read twice, I think, so forgive me if I say something wrong!

I'm another who quite like Alie and co., though I can sort of see why EBD didn't focus on them. I imagine that if she had we would all have gone "it was always OOAO or the MBR clan, why couldn't she focus on someone else like Jack Lambert?"

When I read it, I didn't pick up on the hints about Adrienne's future, I thought she would be forced into something more like an Artful Dodger (nobody tell me that he did that as well, please!) just stealing from people and things. I do find it interesting that EBD should feel the need to include it in what is otherwise a nice, gentle, middle-class series, though (otherwise being broadly speaking!); one wonders what she herself had been watching on television...
Author:  ammonite [ Wed Dec 23, 2009 11:35 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adult Matters – Adrienne and the Chalet School
When I read it as a kid, I thought it probably meant a sort of Cinderella like scenario and taking the man along with the nuns wasa also for security for the car and did he drive? I can't remember, as surely it was unlikely that the nuns would drive!

I am another who enjoyed the Ailie Janice Judy friendship and to actually have more time focusing partly on one of the Russells was different as Sybil and Josette never really were main characters in the books apart from maybe a Chalet Girl from Kenya.
Author:  violawood [ Wed Dec 23, 2009 11:52 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Books: Adult Matters – Adrienne and the Chalet School
ammonite wrote:
I can't remember, as surely it was unlikely that the nuns would drive!


It was a bit later than the timing of *Adrienne* but I knew a really lovely nun who was a demon driver :D
All times are UTC [ DST ]
Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group
http://www.phpbb.com/