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Jo Returns- Family
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Author:  Fiona Mc [ Sun May 30, 2010 8:23 am ]
Post subject:  Jo Returns- Family
Jo Returns to the Chalet School was published in 1936, along with Monica Turns Up Trumps. It is the first book written after EBD’s main character, Joey Bettany leaves school. Jo Returns has minor, frequent cuts to the book in the latter reprintings. It has been reprinted fifteen times.

Joey Bettany to arrives on the first day of term to greet everyone. She is soon persuaded to stay. Meanwhile, all her nieces and nephews get the measles while she’s at the school and Joey needs to stay. Joey starts to write her first book, Mademoiselle becomes ill and Joey stays to teach as the school is one mistress down. The term ends well, with the acceptance of Joey’s first book: Cecily Holds the Fort.

The theme we will focus on is family. We have the oft commented quote of Madge: that Jem can be really nasty to Joey when he wants to be. Does this comment fit into how we see the relationship between Jem and Joey previously? Is this more a case that Joey is able to get around Madge, especially now she is an adult, whereas Joey can’t so much with Jem, when there’s a threat to Joey’s health.

We also have Joey’s deep love for her adopted sister Robin. Joey says, if Robin had been ill, she would not be able to stay away. Mademoiselle understands this and facilitates Robin’s visit at Half Term.

We also see a little of the relationship between Margia and Amy Stevens. Margia looks out for Amy and helps Amy make a costume. This isn’t acknowledged in the book, whereas Joey wins a prize for helping Robin and Eustacia.

It is in this book, we first see the close relationship between Cornelia and Mademoiselle. It is when Mademoiselle falls ill and the girls don’t know if she will survive, that Cornelia realizes just exactly what Mademoiselle means to her. As she says, she felt as if it were her own mother.

And finally, we have the relationship between Mollie and Dick and their children. This is the last time we see Mollie and Dick with their children for at least another ten years. The kids effectively grow up without their parents- Jem and Madge become their surrogate parents. This in turn affects the dynamics within the families as cousins are raised like siblings, when they’re not.
Author:  Alison H [ Sun May 30, 2010 9:53 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo Returns- Family
The title of this book always amuses me - it just sounds as if EBD had no idea what to do once Jo had left school, so decided to send her back there straight away!

I think there's a discussion about the relationship between Jo and Robin due for later in the year so I don't want to go on about it too much, but there's a very weird section in Jo Returns in which, when the kids at Die Rosen go down with measles, we're told that "Jo's magnificent eyes grew misty and tender" (or words to that effect) as she thought of Robin. It seems a very odd way to describe someone thinking about their sister, and Jo is so busy worrying about Robin that she doesn't even seem concerned that Peggy is seriously ill.

I wish we'd seen more of the relationship between Mlle and Cornelia: Mlle is a lovely person who gets rather overlooked.

Jem was in a difficult position with regards to Joey: he wasn't her father or even her brother, but in some ways he was expected to act like one. The "really nasty" comment is a bit creepy: Jem would have seen himself as someone who knew what was best but he had no official authority over Joey, and it must have been awkward for them both.

Sending British children away from India because of the climate wouldn't have been unusual at the time - although there's no suggestion that Madge, Dick or Juliet were sent "home" - and I'm sure Dick and Mollie thought that they were doing what was best. It starts to get very interesting in Exile when we see Sybil resenting the fact that she and David had to share their parents' attention with their cousins. Including Primula, Madge and Jem were responsible for 7 pre school age children: that's a lot! The whole set-up with them presumably trying not to show any favouritism towards their own children, Sybil being resentful, the 4 Bettanys later having to cope with going back to live with their own parents, etc, is fascinating - just wish it hadn't faded into the background later on.

After this book, Jo really does have to leave the school, so in some ways it's a watershed ... but then everything changes anyway because of the Anschluss.
Author:  Miss Di [ Sun May 30, 2010 12:06 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo Returns- Family
Sending the main character back to work at her school was also practiced by Dorita Fairlie Bruce. She sent both Dimsie and Winifred to work at their old schools.
Author:  MJKB [ Sun May 30, 2010 1:51 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo Returns- Family
Alison H wrote:
I wish we'd seen more of the relationship between Mlle and Cornelia: Mlle is a lovely person who gets rather overlooked.


So would I. It's a pity it isn't given more time.
Alison H wrote:
It starts to get very interesting in Exile when we see Sybil resenting the fact that she and David had to share their parents' attention with their cousins. Including Primula, Madge and Jem were responsible for 7 pre school age children: that's a lot! The whole set-up with them presumably trying not to show any favouritism towards their own children, Sybil being resentful, the 4 Bettanys later having to cope with going back to live with their own parents, etc, is fascinating - just wish it hadn't faded into the background later on.

This has come before on the board. It really seems that EBD dislikes Sybil, even though she reforms her. It must have been tough on Sybil to be only one of the clan not to be HG or, like Con adn Margot, not to have an important prefectship. The storyline about Sybil's resentment of the Bettany family is very interesting, and realistic. In some ways it shows a flawed Madge in that despite all the 'instant obedience' stuff she has reared a selfish and vain daughter. I'd also like to have seen some more of the tension between Madge and JOey over Sybil's behaviour towards the McDonald twins.
Author:  Cosimo's Jackal [ Sun May 30, 2010 4:50 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo Returns- Family
I think it's interesting EBD essentially sends Joey back to the CS to teach, but without putting her into the definitely adult role of mistress. In some ways she's a kind of 'Middle' (in the oft-quoted CS way of calling them neither fish, flesh or whatever the other thing was!) between her schooldays and definite school-leaver/adult career status. This way, she can keep Joey fluid, by having her sidle briefly into teaching, while also writing a novel, while also still being a kind of schoolgirl.

Family is a really interesting thing to think about in this one, because it's almost entirely defined by being absent - Joey is at school, away from the Sonnalpe, for the entire book - despite the fact that, bar the title, this is the book where you'd expect Joey to have much more sustained contact with her family than she's done since Madge left the CS! She's talked so much about how dull her life at Die Rosen helping with the children and going on with her singing is going to be, that EBD clearly decided not to write it!

I also think it works to keep Joey away from Die Rosen now because it allows EBD to show her growing up a bit without the awkwardness of being the late-teenage school-leaver at home for good. By returning her to a kind of schoolgirl status, it's much easier to show Madge strictly 'forbidding' her to come back to the Sonnalpe or to make us understand that Jem's anger is still very much a force to be reckoned with for Joey - because it's all done at a distance. I think it might have been quite uncomfortable to show, for instance, Jem being 'nasty' with a sister-in-law who is now more or less an adult, not a harum-scarum kid.

I also think that Robin has to be kept away from Joey for that relationship to function the way EBD wants it to - these very intense reunions where Robin sobs with happiness and falls into Joey's arms etc. You couldn't sustain that on an everyday basis, and it works better for EBD's plots to show Joey worrying about Robin at a distance and then having ecstatic reunions.

I do slightly resent on Joey's behalf the way she is inveigled into teaching - do people suppose she was paid for it?
Author:  Mel [ Sun May 30, 2010 5:03 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo Returns- Family
I can't think that Jo would get paid. She would be told, probably by Madge 'The school has given you so much Joey-Baba, isn't it time you repaid it by helping them out?' In fact I think she does. This is the kind of emotional blackmail that Jo uses herself later to ML re Jessica and to Margot re Melanie. I get cross with Joey wanting to go up to Die Rosen, and then going on and on about it, when she has been told that she is better where she is. Mind you, if she is supposed to be adult, she must resent the implication that she would be of no use and in the way. Isn't her job supposed to be 'helping Madge now that Sybil has come'?
Author:  Cosimo's Jackal [ Sun May 30, 2010 8:00 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo Returns- Family
Mel wrote:
Mind you, if she is supposed to be adult, she must resent the implication that she would be of no use and in the way. Isn't her job supposed to be 'helping Madge now that Sybil has come'?


Yes, that would definitely make someone feel a bit extraneous, after all that huffing and puffing about no longer going to Belsornia because Madge needs her, and now there's a scenario of actual need - an entire nursery with the measles - she's told she's surplus to requirements on health grounds, and basically sent back to boarding school to keep her out of the way! If it wasn't for the fact that Joey is so universally beloved by the staff and girls of the CS - who are all thrilled to have her back - her situation could actually be seen as a bit humiliating and infantilising! You could imagine the response in Malory Towers or Kingscote if a former HG was still hanging around the prefects' room the term after she was supposed to have left... But no one in the CS seems to think Joey might feel like an unwanted spare part.

I suppose this is the first instance of the CS preferring to hire only old girls as teachers - even when, in this case, the 'mistress' in question is only a few weeks away from her own schooldays, has no qualifications, and is rather erratic. EBD never seems to think kindly of substitute mistresses or matrons of any kind.
Author:  ChubbyMonkey [ Sun May 30, 2010 8:20 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo Returns- Family
Cosimo's Jackal wrote:
In some ways she's a kind of 'Middle' (in the oft-quoted CS way of calling them neither fish, flesh or whatever the other thing was!) between her schooldays and definite school-leaver/adult career status.


Fish nor fowl nor good red herring, I think?

I think that this is a very interesting book for family. Partly it's because, IMHO, Joey seems to treat the school as her family as much as she does Die Rosen - how many other OGs turn up to greet everyone?

Another angle of the book that I always liked was seeing Jo try to teach when she was just a pupil herself a few weeks before. (I'm starting to empathise with how difficult she must have found it - despite now being a year removed from my own school/college days, it still weirds me out when I'm in a social situation with a teacher, which does happen on a semi-regular basis, and who I know purely outside of school. I still almost want to call them 'miss'!) She must have had to walk a very fine line, and being Madge's sister could, in some ways, have made it even harder, because she would have known that there would be reports going 'home' about her too. It's interesting, I think, that EBD chose to age Jo that way, instead of straight into marriage.
Author:  Pado [ Mon May 31, 2010 12:08 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo Returns- Family
Really, it's much more difficult to come back into a school as a teacher rather than a student than it is to start fresh in an entirely new place. At least, EBD has Joey working primarily with Polly, who doesn't know her from previous years.

My third D is facing this very issue: as a first year university student next year, she hopes to be teaching violin in the very program where until this month she was a student. The plan is to have her work with the younger children, who don't know her (and whose parents don't know her) as opposed to the high schoolers (who indeed do know her Dark Side quite well!).
Author:  mohini [ Mon May 31, 2010 6:18 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo Returns- Family
I feel that to Joey, the school was more family then Madge's home.
Rereading the books, I was wondering whther MAdge had hired a cottage for herself in Tirol.
Where did they stay in holidays?Or did they keep on visiting friends?
The first home Joey and must have been the chalet of Jem and Madge.
Re Robin. Jo is shown to have all affection for Robin. The same is not seen with her nieces and nephews.
Did she resent the presence of her nephews and nieces who must have been demanding Madge's attention in holidays; the only time Jo could spend with her beloved sister?
Jem must have been like a father figure to her so it was natural for him to be nasty.
Apart from the Bettany/ MAynard/ Russell clan, very little is mentioned about the relationship between other sisters and cousins.
If Jo as a sister of MAdge found it difficult, did not the same happen to SImone?
Author:  Cosimo's Jackal [ Mon May 31, 2010 7:36 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo Returns- Family
mohini wrote:
Jem must have been like a father figure to her so it was natural for him to be nasty.


I hope I'm misreading this! :dontknow: :D

I've tended to assume Jem's 'nastiness' is just Madge's slightly odd way of talking about Jem's bossiness and Head of Household attitude towards Joey. It's an interesting period issue, really - nowadays we are very used to 'blended' families, and non-biological father-figures tending to take a gently-gently approach to teenage step-children and the like, especially in the early years of being on the scene. If Jem married Madge today, he'd anticipate resentment and adjustment difficulties from her, and would probably take a backseat to Madge in terms of discipline, house rules etc.

Only for EBD, fatherly love involves paternal strictness and medical supervision, so clearly in her view, Jem would be being negliglent if he weren't in fact paternally 'nasty' to Joey at intervals. It's the sign that he's the right type of man!
Author:  Cel [ Mon May 31, 2010 9:24 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo Returns- Family
Cosimo's Jackal wrote:
I've tended to assume Jem's 'nastiness' is just Madge's slightly odd way of talking about Jem's bossiness and Head of Household attitude towards Joey.


I agree - I really don't think we're meant to assume anything other than "Jem can be strict with her when she needs it". Madge hasn't changed so radically at this stage that she would meekly accept real 'nastiness' from her (relatively new) husband towards her beloved baby sister.
Author:  claire [ Mon May 31, 2010 7:32 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo Returns- Family
I always took Jem's 'nastyness' as being sometimes he said no or told her what to do without explaining every tiny detail
Author:  Nightwing [ Mon May 31, 2010 9:45 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo Returns- Family
I always assumed "nastiness" meant "can actually over-rule her". When Madge is Joey's headmistress as well as her guardian she can have the upper hand over Joey (although she does tend to treat her as an equal when they're alone), but as she says herself, she's only Jo's sister, not her mother, and once Jo's an adult there's not really anything she can do to stop her. Jem, on the other hand, is perfectly happy staying in the older-bother-slash-father role, and he wouldn't be afraid to tell Jo exactly what he thought of her - hence the "nastiness".
Author:  Alison H [ Mon May 31, 2010 9:58 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo Returns- Family
mohini wrote:
Rereading the books, I was wondering whther MAdge had hired a cottage for herself in Tirol.
Where did they stay in holidays?Or did they keep on visiting friends?


They weren't there for long before Madge got married, and they spent the first Christmas with the Mensches, went on holiday to South Tyrol in one holiday and went home to England for the first summer holiday, but I'd think that they stayed at the school during the holidays for some of the time. Madge wasn't very well off until she married Jem, and if she was renting the school buildings anyway it wouldn't've made sense to've rented somewhere else as well. They must've been stuck in a few rooms to avoid heating the whole building, though, and it can't've been much fun, especially if they were stuck inside because of the weather.
Author:  Cosimo's Jackal [ Tue Jun 01, 2010 7:53 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo Returns- Family
Nightwing wrote:
...but as she says herself, she's only Jo's sister, not her mother, and once Jo's an adult there's not really anything she can do to stop her. Jem, on the other hand, is perfectly happy staying in the older-bother-slash-father role, and he wouldn't be afraid to tell Jo exactly what he thought of her - hence the "nastiness".


Which I always think is telling, when you think of it, because if Madge is 'only' Jo's sister - and thus limited in her authority as Joey moves towards adulthood - then surely Jem is in the more tenuous position of being 'only' the guy who happened to marry Jo's sister! Yet he doesn't seem to suffer from any of the scruples Madge has about exerting her authority over someone who isn't actually her child. Is this simply EBD's Mark of a Manly Man, or is there some kind of legal difference? I was wondering about whether Jem was legally responsible for Joey, as a dependent within his household, before she turns 21? Obviously Madge was originally her guardian, along with Dick, but there's never any indication that Jem adopts Joey after their marriage, is there? Just wondering whether his position as HofH at Die Rosen made him responsible for her in law while she's still a minor...?

I always find some of that stuff in Exile where he does Manly Talk with Jack about marrying Joey asap a bit offensively man-to-man, rather as if he's handing over a chattel.
Author:  2nd Gen Fan [ Tue Jun 01, 2010 9:34 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo Returns- Family
But assuming that Jem is also some years older than Madge (does anyone know how much?), that also makes him much older than Jo. So if he is twenty or so years older than Jo, plus she is living in his house, I think at that time it would probably have been expected that he take a sort of quasi-paternal role towards her.
Author:  Mel [ Tue Jun 01, 2010 10:10 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Jo Returns- Family
In Rescue it says that Jem is 48 making him 24 years older than Jo and 12 years older than Madge. That is a big Madge/Jem gap but it never seems so to me, probably because M was independent when they met.
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