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Friendships - Joey and Simone
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Author:  ChubbyMonkey [ Wed Jul 22, 2009 2:15 pm ]
Post subject:  Friendships - Joey and Simone

The friendship that we see develop between Joey and Simone is one of the first in the series, and continues throughout it. There are many problems between them, notably Simone's jealousy, and EBD allows us to see them overcoming them, and the relationship becoming stronger because of it. We follow Simone and Joey into the later books, and in 'Rescue' get to see a lot more of their friendship as adults.

What do you think of their friendship? Is it a likely one? Does EBD portray it well - if so, how? If not, why not? How does their friendship fit into the Quartette that they later form? Is the progression of their friendship into adulthood logical? Do you have any problems with their relationship? Would you have liked to see anything different about it?

Discuss these or any other points about Joey and Simone's friendship below :)

Idea by Ela

Author:  Sunglass [ Thu Jul 23, 2009 10:06 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Friendships - Joey and Simone

I think the Joey-Simone friendship is much the most interesting relationship of the Quartette, because there's so much going on in it - whereas you never see a great deal of the others interacting with one another. (I couldn't say a single thing about Marie and Frieda's relationship with one another, although I occasionally think that it must have galled them slightly that Simone so clearly preferred Joey to either of them. We do see them getting together on a couple of occasions to keep Simone away from Joey when Joey doesn't want her around, as when she's talking to Juliet in the train to Oberammergau, so they clearly understood the Joey-Simone dynamics.)

I think it's the classic instance of the quiet, marginal one developing a major admiration for the popular girl, and a mismatch between what either of them wants or expects from the relationship. My only problem with the way EBD writes this is that she is too wrapped up in her own authorial preference for Joey to write schoolgirl Simone as anything other than weepy and jealous, which makes everything one-sided, making Joey very attractive and powerful in the friendship, tolerating Simone's admiration, and Simone marginal and powerless and desperate for some kind of commitment from Joey that Joey doesn't want to give. This way, we're not surprised Joey doesn't want to be Simone's best friend because Simone is a clingy, weepy, bore.

Yet you could argue that Simone had the potential to be at least as interesting a character as Joey - as a schoolgirl, she's emotional and impulsive, clever and hard-working, knows she needs to have a career to help support her family etc. Plus her adult life is easily as interesting as Joey's. Though I find it a bit much that EBD continually praises the fact that adult Simone is self-controlled and unimaginative, as though those are undeniably positive character traits - it seems as though we're supposed to applaud the fact that her emotionalism no longer exists to bother Joey, when a lot of what made S interesting as a girl was this capacity for dramatic gestures and deep feeling.

I mean, it's lovely that we see their friendship continue, but it seems to me that EBD is implicitly saying, all the way through Rescue, that isn't it nice Simone can now be Joey's friend without annoying her, and implying that this is the way Simone should have been all along...

I also think one of the things that influences the portrayal of Joey and Simone's friendship at school is that Simone seems to be a character from a tradition of 'bestest friend' school stories where girls gush at one another and develop violent crushes, whereas EBD visibly prefers the Joey model of unemotional general friendship. She's using Simone as an example of what not to do...

Author:  JennieP [ Thu Jul 23, 2009 12:37 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Friendships - Joey and Simone

I think it's interesting that In (I think Jo) when the bad news about the Robin breaks, that it is Marie that Jo wants, not Simone - and that in that episode they seem to have a much closer friendship than Jo does with Simone, even though this isn't necessarily the way things are portrayed elsewhere.
I also never figured out the complete personality transplant that Simone seems to undergo from emotional and clingy to the self-controlled, competent woman that she is later praised for being. OK, so it makes her easier to get on with - but how convincing a character development do other people find it?

Author:  JB [ Thu Jul 23, 2009 4:55 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Friendships - Joey and Simone

I feel that, in the early books, it's almost a friendship of convenience, in that Simone wants to be friends with Joey, and Joey goes along with that. It doesn't feel an equal relationship - and remains so into adulthood when we're continually told how much Simone has improved.

In many ways, I would have said that Frieda was Joey's closest friend within the quartette and that she certainly understands Joey very well.

Joey does have a lot of friends and, after they leave school, the quartette takes shape. Marie and Frieda (the peacemaker as EBD says) are very understanding of Simone and try to head off trouble if they feel she might be jealous.

I think it's realistic that they remain friends into adulthood. During the war, they're all living close together and have children of a similar age. As Joey herself says later on (in Changes), even though they don't see much of each other very much, they write regularly.

The adult Joey could be described as emotional (all those doses she needs to calm her down/knock her out) and imaginative, yet these are the traits Simone has lost to become a "good" adult.

Author:  andydaly [ Thu Jul 23, 2009 5:16 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Friendships - Joey and Simone

JB wrote:
The adult Joey could be described as emotional (all those doses she needs to calm her down/knock her out) and imaginative, yet these are the traits Simone has lost to become a "good" adult.


I find that endlessly galling. Joey, with all of her persistent fainting and losing the plot and haring off after runaways and kidnappees and bouts of ill-temper is referred to as "highly-strung" and her behaviour excused or forgiven, whereas Simone, whose behaviour is nothing worse than sentimental, is seen as being self indulgent and infantile.

I would run a mile from anyone who was possessive or over-demanding, so I think Joey's reaction is understandable, but the double standard is thoroughly annoying!

Author:  Sunglass [ Thu Jul 23, 2009 5:28 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Friendships - Joey and Simone

JennieP wrote:
I also never figured out the complete personality transplant that Simone seems to undergo from emotional and clingy to the self-controlled, competent woman that she is later praised for being. OK, so it makes her easier to get on with - but how convincing a character development do other people find it?


I suppose you could argue that the self-containment isn't necessarily new, more that adult Simone has had university, a career, a love affair and a wartime marriage, and by Rescue a husband and children and an absorbing life of her own, with an inherited chateau in the near future. So she no longer pours out her emotionalism onto Joey as she used to as a schoolgirl - basically she's grown up and discarded her violent attachment to Joey the way she did (presumably!) her paper doll collection.

Maybe the weepy neediness wasn't ever general - after all, she's an excellent student and then a highly competent teacher, functioning far more in the world of work than her three friends - just specifically directed for a few years at the girl on whom she got fixated when she missed her home. And maybe she realised, after her years at the Sorbonne, that Joey wasn't, in fact, the cat's pyjamas, but an ordinary woman for whom she now feels the same kind of friendship she feels for Marie and Frieda.

Though I doubt EBD would ever consciously portray someone just getting a bit tired of Joey, which is why she writes it as Simone Finally Becoming the Kind of Undemanding Friend Joey Deserves. Whereas my (possibly perverse) reading is that adult Simone now prefers calm Marie and Frieda to Joey, probably being embarrassed by memories of her teenage crush on someone she now sees as a bit of a drama queen, whose vapours Simone is secretly a bit impatient about, because she's grown out of her own...? :evil:

I can quite imagine rational adult Simone thinking 'Oh, for god's sake, sedated because she fell into a box? What was I thinking in my teens?'

Author:  ChubbyMonkey [ Thu Jul 23, 2009 5:38 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Friendships - Joey and Simone

:lol: I would love to see Simone rebel and tell Joey exactly what she thinks of her. Sadly, I doubt EBD would ever have approved enough to write that, or even imagine it (I wonder if she ever imagined lots of horrible endings for Joey or if she thought Joey was all sweet and wonderful?)

I like the Simone/Joey friendship. It's different from other relationships in the book at the time, and is also very realistic, I think. It's also, in a way, mirrored in the friendship between Len and Jack - a younger girl with a violent crush who can become possesive at times. I do think that Joey could have dealt with it far more tactfully, especially at first, and I agree about the relationship dynamics. But then, I always like to think of Frieda and Simone being great friends behind the scenes, and by the later years maybe even just humouring Jo by pretending to like her best. :twisted:

Author:  Nightwing [ Thu Jul 23, 2009 9:52 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Friendships - Joey and Simone

I really like the Simone/Joey relationship. I think, as a schoolgirl, Joey prefers Marie and Frieda in times of need because Joey is someone who needs to lean on someone unemotional, particularly since she is so 'sensitive' herself. At the same time, she often goes out of her way to make sure that Simone isn't hurt, so she clearly still cares about her a great deal. One of my favourite moments between them is in Camp, when Simone makes Joey an omelette and Joey makes sure she knows how much she appreciates it.

I don't think that adult Simone is far removed from the Simone we see as a prefect. By then, she mostly only loses her self-control around Joey - either when their friendship is being threatened or when Joey herself is in trouble and Simone leaps to her defense. By the time they are both adults neither of these things happen any more - and maybe a lot of the emotional attachment she had for Joey has been transferred to Andre.

Author:  Tor [ Fri Jul 24, 2009 10:06 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Friendships - Joey and Simone

Joey and Simone's friendship is, to me, one of the most 'normal' teenage girl friendships portrayed in the CS book. It has the hot-housy, high-octane emotionalism that I remember from school (even if we didn't show feelings outwardly, I can still remember the feeling of devastation if my 'best-friend' was away, and I had no one specific to sit with in lessons/at lunch (though mostly it was because you had to insinuate yourself somewhere you didn't normally belong), or if the bus crowd hadn't left saved me a seat on the bus. I think I am a fairly well-adjusted (?), but, boy, was been a teenage girl hard at times. (I went to an all girls school by the way, and these things might be amplified there - still, similar things seem to occur even in adult work-places, so I don't think so).

What I find really interesting, however, is the fact that Simone is described a bit of a wet-blanket etc, when to me her behaviour is actually pretty good evidence of someone very stubbornly determined to get her own way. She wants to be Jo's friend, (or at least get to hang around with Jo), and she'll persistently ignore the school's unwritten behavioural code,and bring down a hefty amount of scorn on herself, to achieve that end! Jo general irritation over the whole thing is scant defense against such a wholesale assault on her more sympathetic side.

As for the change in Simone, it doesn't surprise me on one level, because I know a lot pf people who underwent overnight personality changes once their hormones settled a bit, or they finally found another outlet for them (i.e. boys... :roll: ). And, for all we know, Simone is a needy with Andre as she was with Jo.

Author:  Sunglass [ Mon Jul 27, 2009 1:08 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Friendships - Joey and Simone

Tor wrote:
What I find really interesting, however, is the fact that Simone is described a bit of a wet-blanket etc, when to me her behaviour is actually pretty good evidence of someone very stubbornly determined to get her own way. She wants to be Jo's friend, (or at least get to hang around with Jo), and she'll persistently ignore the school's unwritten behavioural code,and bring down a hefty amount of scorn on herself, to achieve that end! Jo general irritation over the whole thing is scant defense against such a wholesale assault on her more sympathetic side.


Yes, exactly - it's that EBD has decided in advance to construct Simone as sentimental and a bit wet, rather than using the same general characteristics to write her as stubborn and a strong, if over-emotional, character who will hang in there till she achieves her ends, ignoring the sniggers and general shock at her breaches of school etiquette. We're used to a CS girl being thrown into a relationship with another girl that she doesn't particularly want because she's been made someone's sheepdog etc, but Simone is the only other girl who succeeds in making demands on Joey that Joey really doesn't want to meet, but ends up simply having to coming to terms with. Which, in itself, given how indulged schoolgirl Joey is in lots of ways (with everyone wanting to be her friend and her opinion being sought out so much by the prefects in the early days) testifies to Simone's strength of mind! IN virtually all of her relationships, Joey is the one who dictates the terms of that relationship - this goes on well into adulthood, where she's still the one calling the shots, pretty much - but schoolgirl Simone is one of the few people to continually make schoolgirl Joey go outside her comfort zone.

Tor wrote:
And, for all we know, Simone is a needy with Andre as she was with Jo.


I suppose, but I always think not, somehow - Andre, after all, has entered into a huge commitment to her (and she always seemed to me to be looking for some kind of commitment from Joey, which Joey didn't want to give). I always see this as being one of the things that makes adult Simone so un-needy. Her self-containment may be a sign that she now has her own centre and is no longer looking for anything from other people.

Author:  Alison H [ Mon Jul 27, 2009 2:17 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Friendships - Joey and Simone

I find their friendship in the early days very realistic. A lot of schoolgirls are jealous and possessive about their best friends, and I actually don't find it realistic that so few girls have a "best friend" rather than being part of a bigger gang, although I accept that EBD doesn't seem to've approved of exclusive friendships. I do find it annoying that EBD is a) so dismissive of Simone as a wet blanket and b) seems to characterise her as a stock character soppy French girl, though.

I find their development as they grow up very interesting, and again realistic. Simone goes off to university in a big city, and then has to work to help support herself and her family, as well as coping with her grief over Mlle's death, and then has to cope with 6 years of worry about André whilst he is fighting in the War and also has to deal with the unspecified problems that led to there being a big age gap between her two eldest children. I know that Joey had to cope with the escape from Tyrol (during which she kept collapsing and was more of a hindrance than a help to the others) and thinking that Jack was dead, but when she left school she was just hanging around at Madge and Jem's, and then Jack protected her and to some extent babied her in a way that I don't suppose André did with Simone.

In Joey Goes we see how both Simone and Robin have grown into mature, responsible women, whilst Joey is still doing things like falling into boxes which might have seemed hilarious at about 13 but just seem silly when involving an adult.

Author:  Sunglass [ Mon Jul 27, 2009 3:45 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Friendships - Joey and Simone

Alison H wrote:
I actually don't find it realistic that so few girls have a "best friend" rather than being part of a bigger gang, although I accept that EBD doesn't seem to've approved of exclusive friendships. I do find it annoying that EBD is a) so dismissive of Simone as a wet blanket and b) seems to characterise her as a stock character soppy French girl, though.


I assume that the anti-exclusive friendships thing was because EBD was reacting against a perception that girls' school stories were reservoirs of extreme 'bestest friend' soppiness, or indeed that girls' schools were actually like that. It does mean that she treats Simone as a kind of poster-girl for the Wrong Kind of Sentimental Friendship, rather than acknowledging that teenage girls do have ferociously complicated and intense relationships with their peers, in which feelings can run very high! (Even Simone cutting her hair to look more like Joey seems quite realistic to me - teenage girls can be very imitative. Look at the way Mary-Lou's change of hairstyle away from her Kenwigses initiates a change of look in her entire peer group.)

It's slightly as though EBD is blaming one of her own fictional characters for a tendency she doesn't approve of in real life, although she herself created her! I agree the Simone-Joey relationship is very realistic for EBD, but I also think it's evident from the way she dismisses Simone's attempts to win Joey's friendship as 'silly', that she doesn't think real life should work like that, Clearly we should all live in - what does she say about some later trio? - a 'chummery of contented peace'!

She even brings in the New Testament at various points to justify her own preference for general group friendship over one-on-ones - that stuff about the apostles bringing their other friends to meet Jesus, rather than keeping him all to themselves, gets quoted more than once. It's like there's a moral authority on the side of sharing friends!

It would have been really interesting, I think, to see Joey, who is so secure and so sought-after, in Simone's position of wanting more from a friendship than the other person was willing to give. But of course EBD could never conceive of the tables being turned like that on her favourite character... How would school-age Joey have responded if someone kept rebuffing her attempts to be best friends?

Author:  Alison H [ Mon Jul 27, 2009 4:03 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Friendships - Joey and Simone

No-one ever does, of course. Everyone wants to be Joey's best friend. Even people with no connection to her fall at her feet - the local doctor "loves la petite" and Frau Braun "adored her and thought there was no-one like her"! The only people who dislike Joey are villains like Thekla and the two "bad" Matrons.

Not quite the same thing, but we do see Mary-Lou feeling rather upset when she realises that Kathie Ferrars (initially) dislikes her, and her friends tactfully trying to explain why that might be. The acknowledgement that Mary-Lou is not perfect in everyone's eyes ironically makes her considerably less annoying than adult Joey! I agree that it would have been very interesting to see Joey dealing with rejection by someone - maybe someone older like Juliet dismissing Joey as being a little kid, or someone serious like Mary Burnett thinking that Joey was just silly.

Author:  JayB [ Mon Jul 27, 2009 6:35 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Friendships - Joey and Simone

Quote:
I assume that the anti-exclusive friendships thing was because EBD was reacting against a perception that girls' school stories were reservoirs of extreme 'bestest friend' soppiness,


In fact, many school stories, and girls' stories generally, by writers of the generation before EBD were like that. The girls seem to exist in a continual state of emotion and sentimentality and misunderstanding. And the descriptions of broad white brows and rippling black hair make Wanda von Eschenau sound positively plain in comparison. Coming back to EBD after an extended dose of L T Meade or Mrs George de Horne Vaizey is like a breath of fresh air and definitely feels like jumping forward into a much more modern era of girls' books.

There are some of LT Meade's and Mrs G de HV's books on Gutenberg. It's worth having a look, to set EBD's writing in context - and to spot which ones she herself had read. :D

Author:  MJKB [ Tue Jul 28, 2009 5:08 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Friendships - Joey and Simone

I always loved the easy intimacy apparent between Joey and Simone in Joey Goes to the Oberland.In the very early years, especially in School atJoey is shown to be quite sensitive to Simone's feelings.

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