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Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland
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Author:  ChubbyMonkey [ Sun Feb 07, 2010 6:00 pm ]
Post subject:  Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

A finishing branch of the Chalet School has been opened in the Bernese Oberland with Miss Wilson as Head. This new branch is originally called the Welsen branch, but this changes in a later book. The book occupies the same term as 'Shocks for the Chalet School'.

Peggy Bettany is one of the first students along with many others of her Chalet School friends. But there are also several students from other schools who nurse an imaginary grievance that the Chalet girls are trying to impose their own traditions. As this is a finishing school, the girls are given a considerable amount of freedom and there are no prefects. This rather goes to the head of some of the girls at first and there is trouble in the offing.

Two problem pupils, in very different ways are Edna Purdon and Elma Conroy. Edna is a perfect example of the "prunes and prisms" type of girl, unable to enter into the fun of her fellows and miserable because she does not understand why she is not accepted. Peggy takes her in hand about half way during the term and manages to effect a great change, so much so that Edna is able to take a comic role in the end of term pantomime and carry it off quite well.

Elma is a much more serious case, as she has actually been send to the Oberland because her parents are worried about a relationship she has developed with a particularly unsavoury man called Stuart Rainer. She breaks the rules with impunity, indulging in card playing on Sundays, and crowns her iniquities by carrying on a clandestine correspondence with Stuart and even planning to sneak out and meet him. This causes a lot of trouble until the situation is sorted out.

After all these confusions, the term ends happily with a pantomime got up by the girls, themselves. This is to later become a settled tradition, as the pantomime is one of the most eagerly awaited events in later books. As the term comes to an end, Miss Wilson is able to reflect that the finishing branch has got off to a really promising start.

Synopsis taken from here. More detail - with spoilers! - can also be found here.

The discussion this week will be structured around the theme of changes, although you are, as ever, welcome to discuss any aspect of the book that you wish.

In this book, EBD writes about older girls, and also girls who are new to the Chalet School and its ethos. Do you feel that she does this well? Do the new girls bring changes with them, or does the finishing branch remain essentially another branch of the old Chalet School?

This is also the first book set in Switzerland, a huge change for both the school and the reader. What did you think of the new location? Do you like EBD's descriptions of Switzerland, or would you have preferred her to ignore the real life situation and taken the school back to Austria? Or would it have been better in a different country altogether? Perhaps it should have stayed in England?

Another change for the girls is the amount of freedom that they are given, and they respond in very different ways to this. Do you think their responses are realistic? Would it have been possible for Elma to be able to write letters to Stuart if in the main branch of the school, and is it realistic that she was found out in this one? Was this a change of storyline from EBD's usual themes, to something more grown up? If so, was this a good thing?

Finally, what do you think of the new characters introduced in this book?

Author:  Alison H [ Mon Feb 08, 2010 12:00 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

It must have been really exciting when this was published, 12 years after Exile: the idea of going to Switzerland is so thrilling for these girls who've grown up in wartime/post-War austerity Britain and in most cases have never been abroad before, and I'm guessing it must have been thrilling for readers too :D.

Welsen and the Platz aren't a patch on the Tiernsee for me, and from some of Joey's comments it sounds as if they weren't a patch on the Tiernsee even in EBD's eyes, and I often wonder if she'd waited until the situation in Austria was settled (3 years after this was published) and moved the school back to Tyrol instead. I'm sort of glad she didn't, though, because I don't think it would have been the same. The school'd become much more self-contained by this time, the quality of writing deteriorated later on, and had the school gone back to Tyrol then in all likelihood we'd've seen plots like someone falling through the ice into the Tiernsee or getting lost on the Tiernjoch being repeated, whereas as it is the Tiernsee days are left untarnished. Hope that makes sense!

I like this book because it's something different, although it's odd that we just get a one-off book set at the finishing branch. I'm not sure if it was meant to be a way of testing the water for moving the school back abroad, or if EBD intended to focus more on the older girls but then either she or her publishers changed her mind, but at least this way it means that we get to see storylines which are only used once in the series, especially the one with Elma's dodgy boyfriend. We see the problems with people from other schools joining the CS in other books too, so that isn't so original.

I know it was probably accepted at the time that the staff would keep an eye on the girls' correspondence, and IIRC Elma's parents had actually mentioned to Miss Wilson that they were worried about Ema's relationship with Stuart, but I still feel rather indignant about it on her behalf!

& I've never understood how both Karen and Matey managed to be at Welsen but then be at the main school later on without apparently ever leaving Welsen :roll: . & what happened to Miss Nalder's husband :? ? But never mind!

Author:  Fiona Mc [ Mon Feb 08, 2010 6:31 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

I enjoyed this book though its never been a favourite. One think that reall irks me is how much they go on about how terrible speaking German is. I really felt for Natalie Mensch, the only German speaking girl, when Dickie and co start telling how terrible her language is. It must have been really lonely for Natalie at times. It was the one incident that permenently put me off Dickie. Before that I didn't mind her and even really liked her when she was friends with Gay and Jacynth. I never felt she changed for the better when she joined Peggy's group.

I did like the way they handled Edna and was glad it didn't take an accident for her to become nicer but was allowed to retain who she was.

Author:  Sunglass [ Mon Feb 08, 2010 3:34 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

Does anyone have a transcript they are prepared to share, just as a one-off? My copy is far away in England, and it's so long since I read it, the details are hazy!

I do remember wondering why EBD, in a book that introduces a lot of new characters anyway, brings into two new girls called Elma and Edna, especially when one is extra-prim and the other is vaguely slutty in a muted CS way, with her illicit boyfriend and Sunday card-playing.

I can't remember any of the details of Edna's unsuitable primness - other than that Peggy makes her wear make-up at one point, doesn't she? - but I vaguely remember thinking that she would have fitted in much more happily in the early years at the Tyrolean CS, where quite a few of the Austrian girls of the first intake were arguably quite prim and proper, at least initially - very stilted English, good at needlework, properly chaperoned, trained to instant obedience, in absolute awe of their parents. (Isn't it Frieda of whom EBD says that she would as soon have thought of flying as of disobeying her father?)

I can see the realism of a finishing school which is a branch of an established school ending up with a clique of CS people and non-CS people, I suppose, but I would have said it would have been more of a social thing (as in the CS contingent already knowing each other, the non-CS girls not) than an institutional thing - given that the main CS is in a faraway country. It would be different if the finishing branch was next door to the main school, or something. Then you might easily feel like you were arriving late at a party...

It never feels that much like a finishing school anyway - no social skills, flower arranging or dancing lessons etc - just more ordinary lessons. The only thing I remember that felt different to the CS was that (I think) they had actual walls, rather than curtains, to give their cubicles more privacy!

Author:  Margaret [ Mon Feb 08, 2010 4:46 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

To me it doesn't sound like a finishing school, either. But for Edna and Elma, well in Highland Twins Jo mentions 'a book mainly about older girls' and 'a book with all plain names' I have assumed this was the book, or EBD was copying what she had already got Joey to write.

ETA Elma's primness was prudish rather than prim, I think?

Author:  emma t [ Mon Feb 08, 2010 9:58 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

This is certainaly an interesting book, though not one of my favourites. I would have preferred EBD to have gone back to Austria, but were there not complications mentioned in the series before this book was actually written as to why they could not move back to Austria? (I am not sure which book it was mentioned in). Did EBD put in much research to make sure that her details of the area she wrote about in the Swiss books do we know? It still was nice that she moved it to a very similar country.

As for the themes of the book being slightly more grown up; this is very true. I cannot imagine that she would have gotten away with writing letters to a young man - were the letters not solicited at all by the staff? Surely they would have noticed that the letter was addressed to a man and this would have raised some awkward questions about whom she was writing to? It's defintily something that the younger readers may not have found too interesting.

Author:  ammonite [ Mon Feb 08, 2010 10:37 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

Mmm this is was of my favourite books possibly because we still get the adult viewpoints and yet it is at a school. My favourite bit in it is the pantomime though.

I like the fact it is in a different setting rather than in England as it allows us to explore the characters we knew growing up and how they react to a more adult situation and also how they react to making new friends in a grown up way. I can see that cliques would have formed with all the groups from different schools but I do think people would make new friends after a while, which is what happened at sixth form, when all the schools suddenly came together. In some ways this is more like a sixth form than a finishing school, a place which is still academic but also gives a chance to learn how to relate to people that you haven't known since they were 11 or younger. This is probably especially important as they didn't seem to have many new seniors join the school that often and probably provides enough of a link between something like school and uni that people would adjust better.
I wonder though how much St Mildreds did remain the seperate finishing branch especially once the main school moved out and joined them - maybe they should have been set in seperate parts of switzerland to give them a distinct change of atmosphere. Also how many new pupils St Mildreds got afterwards for each year or whether it was primarily dominated by ex-CS pupils as if it was I can't imagine that completely seperate traditions would emerge. In the mentions of it afterwards, there are only a few mentions of other girls and the important positions often seem to be filled by ex-CS girls i.e. panto related.

Wasn't it politics and communism etc. that made it impossible for them to go back to Austria stright away not to mention the school buildings had been sold and the difficulty in finding somewhere right to hold the school.

Author:  Alison H [ Tue Feb 09, 2010 12:13 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

Austria, like Germany, was divided into four zones - a British zone, a French zone, an American zone and a Soviet zone. It wasn't reunified and given full independence again until 1955, and had it been a bigger and wealthier country it might well have ended up divided until 1990 as Germany was: the Soviets and the rest of the Allies fell out big-style after the end of the War. Tyrol was in the French zone, although EBD makes reference in one book to it being under "Russian" control :? . Also, I think that it would have been difficult to move the series back to Austria so soon after the horrors of the war years, whereas Switzerland was safely neutral.

Austria and Switzerland are obviously similar in terms of topography - plenty of storylines involving people getting stuck on mountains or falling in lakes, nice clean air making it a good place for Sans staffed by eligible doctors, etc :lol: - but I'd say that the Tiernsee in the 1930s and the Platz/Welsen in the 1950s were very different places. The Oberland in the 1950s, although not so much now, was very Calvinist, whereas Tyrol is very Catholic. & Switzerland's generally a very wealthy country, and in the 1950s would have seemed even more so than usual compared to post-War Britain where there was still rationing, whereas there was a lot of poverty in Tyrol in the inter-war years. We never get that community feel in the Swiss books that we do in the Tyrol books, but maybe if the school'd gone back to Tyrol it wouldn't have recaptured it anyway.

Sorry for waffling :oops: .

Author:  ivohenry [ Tue Feb 09, 2010 12:16 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

Quote:
& I've never understood how both Karen and Matey managed to be at Welsen but then be at the main school later on without apparently ever leaving Welsen :roll: . & what happened to Miss Nalder's husband :? ? But never mind!


I think the Karen thing is explained in a later Swiss book, can't remember which, but a conversation between Hilda and Nell, one of them saying "your Karen" or "our Karen" with the definite implication that each has a cook called Karen (perhaps EBD noticed the mistake and did this to correct it) Matron at Welsen was Gertude Rider I think so she shouldn't be called Matey, must be EBD's slip. Miss Nalder is a mystery! I think at one point her name changes from Grace to Phyll, then back again but haven't read this or the early Swiss ones for a long time.

Author:  Llywela [ Tue Feb 09, 2010 9:51 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

ivohenry wrote:
Matron at Welsen was Gertude Rider I think so she shouldn't be called Matey, must be EBD's slip.

But Miss Wilson definitely addresses the Welsen 'Matey' as Gwyn in this book, which definitely identifies her as Matey...yet we know from the St Briavels book that Matey is definitely still at the main school at the same time.

There is only one solution to this mystery: they had Matey cloned. :wink:

Author:  Alison H [ Tue Feb 09, 2010 10:13 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

And Karen. I'm only surprised they didn't have Joey cloned so that they could have one of her at each branch of the school. Ugh, what a horrible thought :lol: .

Author:  JB [ Tue Feb 09, 2010 10:30 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

Alison H wrote:
And Karen. I'm only surprised they didn't have Joey cloned so that they could have one of her at each branch of the school. Ugh, what a horrible thought :lol: .


It's the earphones. Incredibly hard to clone. As is the colour green. :lol: :lol: :lol:

Author:  Sunglass [ Tue Feb 09, 2010 11:31 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

Just refreshing my memories of Oberland, and what I don't remember registering before is some kind of interestingly unresolved issues around sexuality/marriage, which seem to get thrown up here because EBD is writing about older girls. There seems to be some worry about boundaries and the difference between an innocent 'young girl' and a marriagable woman who might be legitimately allowed some kind of knowledge of love/attraction etc.

The bit I never thought about before in this light was the very young contralto at the concert who sings 'Gretchen am Spinnraden', of whom Bill says:

Quote:
“Marvellous artistry, but a girl of that age should not be able to sing that particular song like that!”


The song - for non Schubert fans - is a setting of part of Goethe's Faust, and sung by a girl who is distracted from her spinning by remembering Faust's kisses. It's quite sexy, which is presumably why Bill says that - assuming the singer is 'too young' to know about sexual passion - and she says it so loudly that a total stranger leans over and explains that in fact the singer was married to a man who died on their wedding day, after which she went back to singing. This appears to make it OK because 'she sings from the heart', not from sexual precocity or teenage over-heatedness! (Though I'm not sure why Bill, who is herself unmarried and theoretically sexually inexperienced (!), should be supposed to be the judge of whether it's appropriate for a young woman to sing about sexual desire or not...?)

You get other versions of similar things at other points. You get the sophisticated Elma marking Peggy down as a girl who's likely to marry before she's 21, but Peggy herself thinking (after Elma's trouble with Stuart Raynor)
Quote:
'Thank goodness men don’t interest me that way! I hope I’ll be at least ten years older before they do. I don’t see how you can be expected to have much sense about them until you’ve been grown-up for a while.” Then she laughed to herself, for her own mother had married at nineteen and had not been twenty when she and her twin brother were born.


Not sure what EBD's going for here - that the early marriages of Mollie and Joey and co are somehow of a completely different order of being? How did Mollie and Joey somehow have the savvy to pick good men at Peggy's age? Or is it just EBD's perennial problem about the transition between 'jolly schoolgirl' and married woman?

Elma is, of course, too sexually savvy, with Stuart and her smoking and Sunday bridge, not to mention all those nights dancing at a roadhouse, but on the other hand, part of Edna Purdon's unsuitable prissiness is that she doesn't wear make-up but is

Quote:
scandalized at the idea and went about with shining nose and pale lips


which isn't seen as OK either! Clearly there's a fine line to be drawn between priggish puritanism and sluttiness!

I love the scene where Bill suddenly emerges as a font of agony aunt advice and tells Elma that because she's attractive she needs to learn to deal with male advances, but to
Quote:
Be careful how far you let men spend friendship or what may pass for friendship on you.


What I'm less clear on is what exactly she means here:

Quote:
...the next time the same sort of thing happened, you might—I don’t say you would—you might have gone into it. If that came to pass, believe me, Elma, I should send you away. I couldn’t take the risk of keeping you here with the others. It wouldn’t be just to them.... However, this man, who is certainly one of the most selfish and inconsiderate beings I have ever known, chooses to put you in a position where, if you had not had the sense to listen to Peggy and come to me, the worst might have happened so far as you are concerned.


What exactly is she afraid of for the other girls? And what is 'the worst' that might have happened to Elma, if she'd continued the correspondence - does Bill just mean expulsion, the ruin of Elma's reputation, or possible pre-marital sex with a cad? :shock:

Author:  Alison H [ Tue Feb 09, 2010 12:16 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

I think she's afraid that Elma's reputation could have been ruined. However, all Elma and Stuart have done at this point is to exchange letters, and I don't get the impression that Elma's idea of meeting up with Stuart, and even his of meeting up with her, entailed anything more than something like going for tea/coffee and a cake. So either Bill thinks that exchanging letters and meeting a man is enough to ruin a girl's reputation, in which case she's very out of date, or else she has an extremely dirty mind and assumes that Elma and Stuart are plotting to meet up in a hotel room somewhere. Or that Stuart is plotting to lure Elma off somewhere and that Elma will just give in to him even though she herself knows she shouldn't.

It might work in the context of a different era, when an unmarried girl corresponding with a man and planning to meet him unchaperoned would indeed have been very shocking and have damaged her reputation, and meant that she would've had to be kept away from other girls so that she didn't "contaminate" them, but it just doesn't work for me in the context of post-war era Britain or Switzerland.

Mollie's dad was Dick's boss so presumably he introduced them, and Jack was Jem's colleague and that's how Joey met him, so maybe it's OK to marry young so long as your partner meets with the approval of your family?

ETA - or maybe I'm just very innocent :? and everyone else read it that Elma and Stuart were indeed planning to run off for a dirty weekend somewhere :wink: ?

Author:  Tor [ Tue Feb 09, 2010 12:41 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

Quote:
What exactly is she afraid of for the other girls? And what is 'the worst' that might have happened to Elma, if she'd continued the correspondence - does Bill just mean expulsion, the ruin of Elma's reputation, or possible pre-marital sex with a cad? :shock:


I'd go for all of the above, but the threat must remain both vague and terrible. I think that was EBDs intent - to put the fear of god into any girl reading who might be considering 'going' with a boy (in any context). Just say no, girls... or something terrible will happen to you!!!!!

I think it marks the start of her more overt moral crusading in the Swiss books.

Author:  cestina [ Tue Feb 09, 2010 12:55 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

I'm not sure that Bill was so out of date when it came to the ideas still current in boarding schools. I was at one from 1953-59 and we were not allowed to exchange letters with boys outside the family, even with parental permission - I wrote for years to a boy in what was then Rhodesia, who, for the purposes of deceiving the authorities, called himself "Belinda" on the airmail letters - and we were also discouraged from having photos of older brothers on our dressing tables. Presumably the thought was not that they would corrupt their own sisters but who knew what thoughts they could invoke in the rest of the dormitory? :? :shock:

Author:  Cosimo's Jackal [ Tue Feb 09, 2010 1:07 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

I remember the first time I read this thinking the bit about the young contralto singing at the concert was going to lead somewhere - after all, we see her smiling at the CS girls in the audience, and we get this wonderfully melodramatic backstory, and Bill wants to know more about her at the end of the concert. I thought she was going to turn out to be someone's long-lost relative, as usual!

I think her singing Gretchen is definitely supposed to hammer home the moral of Elma's plotline - after all, poor Gretchen is seduced with the devil's assistance, gets pregnant, murders her baby and is only finally saved by voices from Heaven! (Which I suppose is Peggy, or Bill, in Elma's story!) I couldn't help noticing that the concert also includes music from Don Juan, in case we didn't get the message first time around! :D

I'm never sure just how old-fashioned EBD's take on the Elma story actually is - OK, so Elma's parents have forbidden any correspondence with Stuart, so the school is right to clamp down on that on their watch, but it's a bit odd that Elma's parents haven't actually told her that they found out about her trips out dancing with him, only the school! He doesn't seem that much of a Don Juan to me - if he's spent half the summer taking Elma dancing, unchaperoned and alone, at night, then either his intentions are not entirely unworthy, or Elma is well able to look after herself...? or perhaps The Worst has already taken place.... :shock:

I agree that Bill seems unduly knowledgeable in the Ways of Men for someone who, as far as we know, has never had a serious relationship, or not since before she started at the CS. Plus I have to say that conversation with Gill Culver at the start, where she rebukes Gill for 'not knowing what she is talking about' when Gill makes a flaippant remark about not wanting a husband with an ugly name, makes me giggle, especially as they they go on to discuss Joey and Madge's family planning, with particular attention to the precise spacing of Joey's children! Isn't that a bit indelicate from a woman who was a bit shocked at a young opera singer singing about kisses and longing?

Author:  cestina [ Tue Feb 09, 2010 1:13 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

Is Bill too young to be of the generation that lost their loves in the First World War? Or who later couldn't find a man because so many had perished who would have been suitable swains?

Certainly there were a number of mistresses at my school to whom this applied.

Author:  Alison H [ Tue Feb 09, 2010 1:27 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

Maybe she'd met An Unsuitable Man Who Was Only After One Thing when she was at university, and had been suspicious of men ever since. Or had been warned by her own headmistress that Men Were Only After One Thing.

Or maybe she thought it was the girls who were only after one thing and couldn't be trusted :lol: .

I do wonder how the CS girls got on at university, especially those who weren't at women-only colleges.

Nell said she was 30 in New/United, so she'd've been born c.1904-1906.

Author:  cestina [ Tue Feb 09, 2010 1:35 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

So yes, given that men were often about ten years older than women when they married, she would fall into that group, as would Hilda. Who knows what they missed out on?

Apropos of marrying age, my mother always reckoned that a man needed to be at least 13 years older than the woman in order to have attained a matching maturity! :D

Author:  Tor [ Tue Feb 09, 2010 1:37 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

Quote:
Plus I have to say that conversation with Gill Culver at the start, where she rebukes Gill for 'not knowing what she is talking about when Gill makes a flaippant remark about not wanting a husband with an ugly name'


and

Quote:
Maybe she'd met An Unsuitable Man Who Was Only After One Thing when she was at university


I think there are sufficient grounds here for assuming that she actually scorned the honest, good and chaste attentions of Humperdink Snotterspiffle, for the more glamourous, exciting and beautifully named Unsuitable Man, only to realise her error when it was too late .... :twisted: :twisted:

Author:  JackieP [ Tue Feb 09, 2010 1:39 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

Cosimo's Jackal wrote:
I think her singing Gretchen is definitely supposed to hammer home the moral of Elma's plotline - after all, poor Gretchen is seduced with the devil's assistance, gets pregnant, murders her baby and is only finally saved by voices from Heaven! (Which I suppose is Peggy, or Bill, in Elma's story!) I couldn't help noticing that the concert also includes music from Don Juan, in case we didn't get the message first time around! :D


Slightly OT, but in light of the comments on the Schubert - what do we think about this quote then, from New House?

Quote:
She glanced over her songs—what impudence to rifle her music-case!—and finally chose a favourite of her own, Schubert’s ‘Gretchen am Spinnradchen’ [‘Margaret at her Spinning-wheel’]. Then she spoke, ‘You can’t play this, Lonny. We’ll have to ask Miss Denny.’


;)

JackieP

Author:  ChubbyMonkey [ Tue Feb 09, 2010 4:05 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

I actually quite like Bill giving advice here. I imagine that she wasn't a completely sheltered individual, even if just through talking to people she must have heard stories of young girls falling from grace and the like, and the fact that she can do what Elma's parents evidently couldn't and warn her about what might be coming to her shows a real strength, I think. Of course there's never a threat of that for many of the girls - you can always trust respectable doctors! - but it is so easy, especially I would say for a relatively unguarded girl with little practical life experience, as you would expect Elma to be, to be led astray. There are questions a little later, at least for me, about Joan Baker; Bill must have been aware that there would be the temptation for Elma. In fact, apart from Matey she's one of the only characters in the series that I can imagine being able to give such a talk (possibly just me!) - I certainly can't picture, say, Hilda calling one of the girls into her study for one of her famous talks and getting on to that sort of subject!

Author:  Jenefer [ Tue Feb 09, 2010 4:12 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

Cosimo's Jackal wrote:
I'm never sure just how old-fashioned EBD's take on the Elma story actually is - OK, so Elma's parents have forbidden any correspondence with Stuart, so the school is right to clamp down on that on their watch, but it's a bit odd that Elma's parents haven't actually told her that they found out about her trips out dancing with him, only the school! He doesn't seem that much of a Don Juan to me - if he's spent half the summer taking Elma dancing, unchaperoned and alone, at night, then either his intentions are not entirely unworthy, or Elma is well able to look after herself...? or perhaps The Worst has already taken place.... :shock:


This is the fifties and parents were probably stricter than now. If Elma is living at home with her parents, then they should be taking some interest in what she is doing at night. Most parents of a girl of that age would expect to know who she is meeting, what they are doing and expect her back at a reasonable hour. If she has not been honest about her activities, got home much later than the agreed time or sneaked out the bathroom window, then they should have dealt with the situation before sending her off to school.

Author:  Alison H [ Tue Feb 09, 2010 4:26 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

ChubbyMonkey wrote:
- I certainly can't picture, say, Hilda calling one of the girls into her study for one of her famous talks and getting on to that sort of subject!


Hilda's views on men seem to differ substantially from Nell's. From what she says to Len in (IIRC) Adrienne, she seems to think that men are only after someone to make their meals and darn their socks :wink: .

Author:  emma t [ Tue Feb 09, 2010 5:35 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

Alison H wrote:
ChubbyMonkey wrote:
- I certainly can't picture, say, Hilda calling one of the girls into her study for one of her famous talks and getting on to that sort of subject!


Hilda's views on men seem to differ substantially from Nell's. From what she says to Len in (IIRC) Adrienne, she seems to think that men are only after someone to make their meals and darn their socks :wink: .


If neither Hilda or Nell had maybe never had dated men, how would they know what advice to give the girls in their care? I know that morals were different back then, but at the same time, how can they allow Len to have feelings for Reg, and not allow Elma to write to Stewart? Surely it is much the same thing, although Len never actually confesses to such feelings only at those moments when she 'Grows up entirely' to quote Joey.

I remember the other girls being quite shocked that Elma does go out to dances back at home, and they would never have dreamed of doing so,inspite the new freedom they have in Switzerland. It shows that the Chalet staff know that they can indeed, trust their pupils, which is a good thing.

But then you again get the situation with Len and Reg. The girls speculate in later books as to wether they are engaged or not, etc. But someone always squashes them when talking about such matters. It's no wonder why Elma's parents don't want her to be writing letters to Stewart. Is he older than Elma, as Reg is Len?

Sorry for waffling on :oops:

Author:  Alison H [ Tue Feb 09, 2010 5:43 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

Clearly it is because Stuart is not a doctor. If a man is a doctor, it's OK to climb up the Sonnalpe with him (Jack escorting various girls in various books), go to his house (Phil Graves in Carola), get into his car, allow him to carry you away from the scene of an accident, not ask questions as to why he is lurking about in a place where he has no obvious business (why was Jem hanging about on the banks of the Tiernsee just as Joey jumped into the lake?) and so on :wink: .

Sorry, am very bored and am not allowed to go home for another half an hour ...

Seriously, I wonder how they'd have reacted had the man been "suitable", e.g. had Peggy been receiving letters from Giles Winterton. Or would a "suitable" man just not have dreamt of compromising a girl's reputation by writing to her?

Author:  MaryR [ Tue Feb 09, 2010 6:09 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

Not sure whether to enter the fray here, or not :roll: but reverting back to page 1 of this thread, Hilda's and Nell's male contemproraries wouldn't have been fighting or killed in the war, and would have been at uni at the same time as them. I don't see either Hilda or Nell being overlooked by the male of the species when they were at uni, nor do I see them as inexperienced. :D They're both said to be good-looking, and are not behind the door when it comes to intelligence, so I should imagine they did have *boyfriends* and Hilda must have worked with male teachers at her first school.

As to Len and Elma, Hilda and Nell would have had no say in Len's relationship with Reg as Len's parents were on the scene, but Nell was in loco parentis where Elma was concerned - and at that time, 21 was the age of consent. Before that, you were classed as a child and treated as such. Letters with a strange man would have been verboten, especially when away at school. And Nell would certainly be concerned that everything be open and above board in this first year of the Finishing School. She wouldn't want it to get a bad reputation.

Author:  Rosie [ Tue Feb 09, 2010 8:01 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

I always assumed Bill's reaction to the song was just "a girl of that age shouldn't have experienced such emotion", but I didn't actually know the song, which might make the difference there!

I think the Elma-Stuart case is very different to Len and Reg, because it is more underhand. In Problem, Jack tells Mary-Lou it is ok to be interested in boys, but that 'nice' girls don't go in for the sort of interest that is giggled about/whispered/secret, and I think this is the same sort of thing.

Author:  Mel [ Tue Feb 09, 2010 11:16 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

I wonder why Jo was allowed to sing that song if it was not suitable for a young girl? I remember in one of the Drina books she is at a finishing school in Switzerland (1960s I think) which is equally fussy about young men corresponding with the girls. There they actually open the girls' mail. Mabel Esther Allan though leads us to believe that this is ridiculous, but EBD, always on the side of Authority thinks the parents and Bill are in the right. I found this book interesting as a one-off, though I found that Peggy changed personalit and became a darling little golden girl in contrast to the austere and rather chilly Head Girl of the previous year. I agree it was more of a sixth form rather than a finishing school. Peggy went there early because she had had her year as HG but EBD didn't do that again with Mary-Lou, Josette or Len disappearing early. After this one book it would be hard to think up new plots after doing the Unsuitable Man story.

Author:  Miss Di [ Wed Feb 10, 2010 2:23 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

Mel wrote:
After this one book it would be hard to think up new plots after doing the Unsuitable Man story.


We've had sex so drugs and rock and roll must be next? The Chalet Girls take diet pills and listen to Buddy Holly?

Author:  Sunglass [ Wed Feb 10, 2010 7:38 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

JackieP - had forgotten Joey sings 'Gretchen' while still at school, without anyone implying it's unsuitable! How funny! :D

Rosie wrote:
I always assumed Bill's reaction to the song was just "a girl of that age shouldn't have experienced such emotion", but I didn't actually know the song, which might make the difference there!


Well, I think that is what she's saying, but the emotion in question is more about the loss of innocence and sexual infatuation than anything as straightforward as love. This is part of the libretto in English:

Quote:
My poor head
Is crazy to me,
My poor mind
Is torn apart.

For him only, I look
Out the window
Only for him do I go
Out of the house.

His tall walk,
His noble figure,
His mouth's smile,
His eyes' power,

And his mouth's
Magic flow,
His handclasp,
and ah! his kiss!
...

My bosom urges itself
toward him.
Ah, might I grasp
And hold him!

And kiss him,
As I would wish,
At his kisses
I should die!


Bill seems to feel that to sing this particular song 'like that' (with more than just technical mastery) is inappropriate for a 'girl' of twenty two, until the woman in the row behind tells her the backstory. But it comes back again, I think, to the point she circles around when Peggy is reflecting on Elma's relationship with Stuart Traynor, and is thanking her stars she isn't interested in men in that way, and thinks she'll need a decade of 'being grown up' before she is - and then she laughs because her mother was married and had her first child at nineteen! That makes me wonder whether it would have been OK for 19-year-old Mollie, as a married woman, to sing 'Gretchen' passionately...? EBD doiesn't seem to be entirely sure whether it is age or marriage that makes it acceptable...?

It just feels to me as though EBD is, on the one hand, suggesting that Peggy's nice girl attitude is the norm - putting thinking about men on the long finger - and on the other hand, realising that a previous generation of her own characters were in fact in serious relationships with men at more or less the same age as Peggy and Elma, without it being seen as too soon, or evidence of precocity.

And of course she does it again with Reg and Len. I know the difference between Elma and Stuart and Reg and Len for EBD is that one is approved of by the girl's family and one isn't - but I can't help feeling that Reg and Stuart have more in common than EBD seems to think. Elma says, when Stuart tries to continue the correspondence, that he only ever thinks about what he wants, and Peggy describes him as a 'selfish brute' for putting her in an awkward position - but Reg is also consistently described as 'knowing what he wants' and being determined to get it, and is clearly more interested in that than in allowing Len some liberty to grow up in. I'm not sure that being a friend of the family makes that much more palatable, and I do wish the CS authorities had spoken seriously with Jack and Joey about the situation. Perhaps Bill would have been a better person to handle it than Hilda!

Author:  Josette [ Wed Feb 10, 2010 11:02 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

I think EBD felt that English girls, by the 1950s, were apt to "grow up" too fast - in the sense of superficial sophistication as opposed to actual maturity, whereas the Tyrolean girls who we see becoming betrothed at 18 or 19 are very unworldly by comparison and go straight into marriage with a respectable young man so they have no chance of being "ruined" beforehand. It's interest in "men" rather than "a man" that is the problem!

Author:  ChubbyMonkey [ Wed Feb 10, 2010 2:12 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

I'd have to agree, Josette! It's very difficult to describe, but I do see a difference in the attitudes; partly, I think, because one set of girls would have been thinking about marriage, and looking at a man as someone to marry, while people like Stuart evidently aren't about to get down on one knee, which makes him unrespectable. That is, also, the difference between Reg and Stuart, I think; Reg is prepared to do the reasonable thing and propose to Len so that she can keep her reputation.

And may I just say, having just thought of this as an argument in Reg's favour, that I know someone still in college who's living with her fiance and someone who was fully prepared to marry her last boyfriend, even though she was only nineteen at the time. (Sorry, that has nothing to do with the point, but I've never thought of it before and you know that I always try and defend Reg! :oops:)

Author:  JennieP [ Wed Feb 10, 2010 3:08 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

I do think the differences between Hilda and Bill come to the fore in the Elma situation: Bill seems to come at things from a more "worldly" perspective - or at least, with more knowledge of the world. If she was at LSE - was it a masters she did as well, or am I just making it up? - she would have been far less sheltered than Hilda at a women's college in Oxford. (CF Gaudy Night and Harriet/the don's discussions about the greater degree of licence afforded to the young women of the mid thirties to those of Harriet's day, ten or twelve years before, roughly contemporary to Hilda's.) It seems to be that she is taking a far more pragmatic tack- "you'll end up expelled, with a rotten job and probably barefoot and pregnant into the bargain" than Hilda would, who would probably have appealed to her better nature and the importance of maintaining purity of spirit. (I exaggerate, obviously, but it's the only way I can explain it. Whereas I see Matey going for the "And here's a list of diseases you will catch" route...)

Author:  Alison H [ Wed Feb 10, 2010 3:13 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

Elma says that she's only 6 months younger than her mother was when she got married, and we're also reminded that Mollie Bettany married at 19.

I can't make my mind up about Stuart. We're told that he can't hold down a job and that he gambles, which I accept makes him less than ideal SLOC material, but there's no suggestion that he goes around seducing young women. We're also told that he and Elma sneaked off to dances behind Elma's parents' backs, and whilst that's not very "honourable" behaviour there's no suggestion that he forced her into going. He isn't really getting very much out of the relationship at all: if he really had Dishonourable Intentions, surely he'd find someone at home rather than someone whom he can only keep in touch with by letter. Unless we're meant to think that he's after Elma's money, which I doubt as he seems to come from a wealthy family himself, it sounds as if he genuinely likes her, and from his point of view he's just being chased off by overprotective parents and an interfering headmistress. I feel quite sorry for the poor guy!

Author:  Sunglass [ Wed Feb 10, 2010 4:02 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

ChubbyMonkey wrote:
That is, also, the difference between Reg and Stuart, I think; Reg is prepared to do the reasonable thing and propose to Len so that she can keep her reputation.


She keeps her reputation but loses her freedom to go to university without ties and meet men other than the pushy protege of her parents who's had an eye on her since she was terribly young! Honestly, I've nothing against Reg as a character, but pushing someone so young into getting engaged when she can't possibly know what she's getting into, all so he doesn't have to worry about her at Oxford, really doesn't make me think well of his concern for the welfare of his wife to be. And unless Len and Reg have somehow managed to get up to something they shouldn't - which seems incredibly unlikely for over-responsible mother's girl Len - there's no need for Reg to propose to preserve Len's spotless reputation, surely? And, engaged or not, I can't imagine Jack and Joey letting Len go out dancing to roadhouses with Reg! I wonder where the nearest roadhouse to the Platz is!!! :D

I'd have said Elma, despite her brush with a minor-league cad, ends up in a better situation than poor Len!

Alison H - we are told, I think that Stuart was 'attracted to the handsome girl who was her father's heiress', which is slightly damning, but inconclusive - makes it seem as if money and her looks were part of the reason he liked her. I have difficulty seeing him as a major league villain, though, especially as he backs off in the end because he doesn't want trouble with his own father. Which sounds a bit wet - how old is this guy - twelve? Dependent on daddy's allowance because he can't stick to a job?

Worth remembering too that part of the reason Elma withdraws and repents is the threat of losing her allowance from her father, and having to take - oh horrors - an office job!

Which reminds me that I find some elements of Gill Culver's secretarial job highly amusing - like at one point, Bill asks her to write letters to Joey and Madge on her behalf to tell them all the news, because she hasn't had time!

Author:  Tor [ Wed Feb 10, 2010 4:43 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

on a not unrealted tack, one of the things I really like about this book is having Bill at the helm. What I don't like about it is the same thing - because it effectively relegated her to the sidelines for the rest of the series.

So seeing her reactions to the various problem girls, her opinions on unsuitable men, and hearing her comments about the sexy Schubert number all add up to the many reasons I like Bill so much. As someone above mentioned, she is very much a wordly and pragmatic advice giver! I like to think she led an interesting out-of-school life, and had a number of romantic skeletons in her closet dating from her days at university!

I do wish EBD hadn't taken the schools most prominent science fan out of the lime-light :( , but I'm glad she got this book as a kind of early swan song... :D

Author:  cal562301 [ Wed Feb 10, 2010 5:55 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

Tor wrote:
on a not unrealted tack, one of the things I really like about this book is having Bill at the helm. What I don't like about it is the same thing - because it effectively relegated her to the sidelines for the rest of the series.

So seeing her reactions to the various problem girls, her opinions on unsuitable men, and hearing her comments about the sexy Schubert number all add up to the many reasons I like Bill so much. As someone above mentioned, she is very much a wordly and pragmatic advice giver! I like to think she led an interesting out-of-school life, and had a number of romantic skeletons in her closet dating from her days at university!

I do wish EBD hadn't taken the schools most prominent science fan out of the lime-light :( , but I'm glad she got this book as a kind of early swan song... :D


Slightly off-topic, but Bill reminds me of the physics teacher we had at my grammar school in the early 70s. I think she must have been in her late forties or fifties by then, as I only remember her with grey, almost white hair.

Anyway, she had a doctorate, which was very unusual for a woman teacher in those days and was unmarried (less surprising!). Looking back now, I wish I had taken the trouble to find out her story, as I think it would have been fascinating. Unfortunately, because I'm not at all scientifically minded, I dropped science subjects as soon as I could to concentrate on languages.

It's almost certainly too late now, as I think she probably died in the intervening years.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if she had had a few skeletons in her cupboard too! :lol:

ETA It seems I am allowed to ask impertinent questions at the moment, so maybe I should take advantage of that and try to look her up! :D

Author:  claire [ Wed Feb 10, 2010 7:02 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

At one point Bill asks Elma if she is 'engaged' I took that to be a 'are you pregnant?' in disguise

Author:  andi [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 6:06 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

claire wrote:
At one point Bill asks Elma if she is 'engaged' I took that to be a 'are you pregnant?' in disguise


I always read this as Bill/EBD having a bit of a Jane Austen flashback and suggesting that Elma and Stuart had made a secret engagement pact a la Frank Churchill/Jane Fairfax in Emma.

Author:  Margaret [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 6:27 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

claire wrote:
At one point Bill asks Elma if she is 'engaged' I took that to be a 'are you pregnant?' in disguise


Or merely "Have you slept with him?" in which case of course she would have to marry him.

Author:  Kathy_S [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 10:20 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

Um, why couldn't she mean just what she said? It's clear that in EBD's world, certain behaviors were permissible to an engaged couple that would be unacceptable otherwise, particularly if one were a "nice girl." (See, for example, Len's kissing Reg as tantamount to accepting a proposal.) I figured Bill, as headmistress of a finishing school, was tacitly reminding Elma of the social conventions.

I put it in the box with the shock when, in Carney's House Party, Howard Sedgewick is allowed to stay to dinner in Isobel's women's college -- until it comes out that they were actually engaged.

Author:  Alison H [ Thu Feb 11, 2010 11:43 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Changes: The Chalet School in the Oberland

I've always just taken it literally. However, if Elma had said yes, would have been a good thing because it would have meant that Stuart's intentions were honourable and so her reputation wasn't likely to be compromised after all, or a bad thing because (in the days of breach of promise lawsuits) she would have made a formal promise to a man who wasn't considered to be suitable husband material? Presumably a bad thing, because Nell was pleased when Elma said no, but I wonder how she'd've reacted if the answer'd been yes.

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