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Girls of the Chalet School: The Middles http://www.the-cbb.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=7765 |
Author: | ChubbyMonkey [ Wed Apr 28, 2010 10:24 am ] |
Post subject: | Girls of the Chalet School: The Middles |
The Middles of the Chalet School are frequently commented on by their peers, and often not in a favourable light. Through the books, we get such comments as: Quote: "Why is it that that age is always the outside of enough?" Nancy Wilmot wanted to know. "I remember when I was a prefect, it was always that age that nearly drove us crackers. And," she added cheerfully, "I seem to remember being a fearful pest myself about then." Miss Wilson laughed. "It's always the same. The fact of the matter is they've outgrown the small-girl stage and aren't quite old enough to have developed sense." - 'Problem' It is not uncommon for the Middles to be responsible for most, if not all, of the pranks seen in the books, and they appear to be commonly portrayed as 'at an age' where mischief is inevitable. Within the books, we see events not only from the point of the Middles, but also of what their seniors think of them - both prefects and staff. The first Middles in the books are Joey & co., who are followed through the first few books and grow during that time. They are followed in the later Tirol books by Evadne, Margia, Corney & co. When the books move to England there is no shortage of Middles, especially as the second generation of the MBR clan start to move up the school, though the most notable of all these is, perhaps, the Gang. This prestigious bunch follow the school to Switzerland, where they are joined by the Middles of the triplets' days, with the trips and also Emerence Hope prominent among them. The final large group of Middles in the books are Jack Lambert & co., who we see start to grow up at the end of the series, possibly to take over from the triplets as leading characters. What do you think of Middles within the series? Do you think that EBD's portrayal of them, and the views of those around them, realistic? Who are the most memorable Middles in your opinion? (I hoped to cover most in the brief summary above, but please also discuss others!) Which Middles would you like to have seen more or less of? Which is your favourite prank by a Middle or Middles? Please discuss these and any other points related to the Chalet School Middles below! |
Author: | KathrynW [ Wed Apr 28, 2010 10:30 am ] |
Post subject: | Re: Girls of the Chalet School: The Middles |
I have to say that I find the portrayal of the Middles completely realistic - I know when I was at school that it was that age when we were worst behaved and there was an endless succession of tricks that we played on our teachers. I remember fondly the day that our form teacher got so enraged with us aged about 13 that he started throwing chairs around the classroom. We also had a system at my school whereby a couple of sixth formers would have an assigned class and would look after that class on a Tuesday morning while there was a staff meeting and absolutely nobody wanted the Middle-aged girls because they were an absolutel nightmare. Most of the mischief they get up to seems quite fun (as was ours) but EBD probably didn't quite capture the bitchy side of girls that age. |
Author: | JB [ Wed Apr 28, 2010 10:33 am ] |
Post subject: | Re: Girls of the Chalet School: The Middles |
The thing that jumped out at me from that summary is how well behaved The Gang are as middles, compared to other girls when they're the same age. There's the fight during Impertinent Questions in Island but they're mostly seen as being a good influence on their peers eg Emerence and the Dawbarns (who are sometimes the same age as The Gang ). Hope to reply more fully later on but I wanted to say that before I forgot! |
Author: | Alison H [ Wed Apr 28, 2010 10:52 am ] |
Post subject: | Re: Girls of the Chalet School: The Middles |
I find it realistic too. OK, you can't say that everyone automatically starts playing up once they stop being a Junior and stops playing up once they become a Senior, but IME 12 to 14ish are the years at which you're at your naughtiest . At 11 we were still too overwhelmed by being at big school, and by 15 we were starting to think seriously about public exams, university entrance and career prospects. We thought we were incredibly mature - doesn't one of the mistresses say something about there being nothing as elderly as a mid teenager? - by the time we were 14/15, but we ... er, weren't. As Kathryn said, the bitchiness you often find amongst girls at that age is missing from the CS books, but I rather like that! I like the Quintette as Middles, and Joey & co, and I really like Ailie Russell's group as well. Mary-Lou's gang, as Janice said, are pretty quiet (boring!) at that age, and Jack Lambert's gang do nothing for me. The best pranks are the ones which are funny and original but don't cause anyone any actual harm. The reactions to the pranks seem to vary: the prefects seem to come down very hard on fairly harmless mischief on some occasions, whereas on others people get away scot free. |
Author: | jmc [ Wed Apr 28, 2010 11:17 am ] |
Post subject: | Re: Girls of the Chalet School: The Middles |
I also find it completely realistic although they are more harmless than Years 9 and 10 now. If you ask people who they have after lunch at my school it is always the people that have year 9 or 10 that get the most sympathy and if it's a Friday you get even more. One of my friends today was actually cheering because she realised that she will lose her Year 9 double next Wednesday afternoon because we have the cross country race that afternoon. You can still bluff many of the younger students and the older ones in general tend to settle down and work. Although as our school leaving age is creeping up there are some classes, like some of the technical or basic literacy and numeracy classes, that are not as pleasant at senior level. I agree that the bitchy side of the girls wasn't really conveyed. I don't find the gang being good an issue because amongst the bad ones there are many really lovely kids who never do much wrong. I'm lucky because as my class it considered a difficult elective I generally get the best kids. |
Author: | bonnie [ Wed Apr 28, 2010 4:44 pm ] |
Post subject: | Re: Girls of the Chalet School: The Middles |
I agree that it's entirely realistic - at my school, the girls had mostly settled down by 16 (the boys, however, went on making mischief right through school!) but were pretty lively up til then. It's all in the name "Middle" - between babyishness, which might be expected of a junior, and the responsible seniority of prefects. I observed girls at my school suddenly acquire seriousness and a certain amount of import the moment they were made prefects. They became a little pompous, but the responsibility had a strong effect on their attitude towards work and their behaviour around their juniors - and that goes for the boys, too, to an extent. At 14, though, there was nothing to worry about and so there was plenty of mucking about. Myself, I was always too dreamy, weird and obsessed with music to be trusted to be a prefect at secondary school, but I was one at junior school and oh the Power! It was terrific to be so lordly over the little people! I reckon hormones had a lot to do with it, too. Definite increase in grumpiness at that age. Reading the books, I also missed the prevalence of bitchiness and bullying which I experienced at school, so that seems odd - not so much in the earlier books, when the school is smaller and people manage to rub along, but later on, surely, there would be some! Perhaps the lack of GCSEs also accounts for the mischief - some of us at school were busy with mocks and Actual Exams from 14, which focuses the mind, but there was never that sort of pressure at the CS. |
Author: | Cosimo's Jackal [ Wed Apr 28, 2010 9:16 pm ] |
Post subject: | Re: Girls of the Chalet School: The Middles |
I like the CS Middles and their harmless pranks, though I sometimes wonder whether EBD needed to have the staff and prefects wonder quite so often - often in almost exactly the same words, across several decades - about why that age-group is so troublesome! I do think EBD is talking indirectly about puberty and adolescence, with her repeated stress on the temporary nature of the phenomenon - and I like some of the plots where friends or sisters grow up at different rates, and one feels left behind. One thing that does strike me, though, is how harmless the pranks actually almost all are. Sometimes they seem like the kind of things a much younger age group would do - the pranks don't mount any real challenge to authority in the way you often get with teenagers, who are trying to figure out where the limits are, and how far they can push things. The nasty 'rag' Joyce Linton and the remedial class pull on Miss Norman is one of the relatively few I can think of that constituted a genuine strike at the authority of a staff member, and maybe the sticking of Stacie Benson's desk drawer with cobbler's wax, as an experiment to see how far she could be pushed. But mostly it's boiling clocks and speaking Regency slang, and real rebellion is almost always individual, rather than group. Even if we assume that the Middles stand in awe of the mistresses, it would have been interesting to see a bit more of Middles rebelling against the prefects, who are, after all, only a couple of years older. Who is it that says the prefects are just schoolgirls like her, only a bit older and uglier? That to me strikes an entirely authentic note of fourteen-year-old cheek at a seventeen-year-old with a prefect's badge, only it doesn't come up that much, because EBD keeps telling us the Middles are more scared of the prefects than the mistresses! |
Author: | Mel [ Wed Apr 28, 2010 9:41 pm ] |
Post subject: | Re: Girls of the Chalet School: The Middles |
The pranks are harmless and the Middles are invariably found out which waspresumably EBD with her teacher's hat on. In fact some are ridiculously thought out, such as the midnight in the orchard inhabited by snuffling and excitable pigs! A couple of Joey's stunts are never found out such as the snails on the window. |
Author: | macyrose [ Thu Apr 29, 2010 3:15 am ] |
Post subject: | Re: Girls of the Chalet School: The Middles |
Ju Gosling wrote about Middles at the Chalet School here on her Virtual World of Girls site. It's a very interesting read. |
Author: | Nightwing [ Thu Apr 29, 2010 10:06 pm ] |
Post subject: | Re: Girls of the Chalet School: The Middles |
I actually think that the Middles - whenever they are - are EBD's best characters. Juniors she never seems to know what to do with, and her Seniors are frequently (IMO) far too mature and perfect and fairly boring, but the Middles she seems to get right. They behave badly but they mean well, they have faults and they don't always conquer them, they have fights with their friends and they rebel and they admire older girls and they really live. |
Author: | MJKB [ Wed May 05, 2010 11:44 am ] |
Post subject: | Re: Girls of the Chalet School: The Middles |
My favourite age group used to be the 9-12 year old girls I taught in my early years as a teacher. They looked and behaved exactly like middle aged biddies, and most of them were at their very plainest and most awkward. Up until fairly recently, the photograph of the Confirmation girls always showed a group of sensible, flat chested matrons in suits, staw hats, and clutching their plastic handbags. Gorgeous! Unfortunately, you are more likely to see the same age group in belly tops and spray tans now. In my present school, the most difficult group are the second and third years, not sure what it corresponds with in the UK, but the age range is 13 - 15. The twelve and thirteen year old first years are usually pretty nice, for the first half of the year, anyway. |
Author: | Emsnan [ Thu May 06, 2010 11:59 pm ] |
Post subject: | Re: Girls of the Chalet School: The Middles |
One of the things I loved about the CS Middles was that they were rarely really nasty, spiteful or bullying. Most of their antics were what someone once called "nice mischief". You always knew that the real misdeeds would be found out and suitably punished, and that any unkind or unsporting behaviour would be squashed by the more sensible element or the prefects. Coming from a school where bullying went on, the authorities rarely seemed to see a fraction of the things we got up to and many quite awful and serious breaches of rules and decent behaviour were ignored, the CS was a very 'safe' place to live in, when I was young. I now work in a girls' school and can't help thinking the CS Middles probably equate to our Juniors as I can't imagine our Middle School behaving as they did. Girls seemed to have aged since EBD's day, not necessarily in maturity, but in sophistication. I did hear a crowd of girls screaming and shouting at each other in a classroom the other day and imagined Miss Annersely walking in on them! |
Author: | MJKB [ Fri May 07, 2010 11:53 am ] |
Post subject: | Re: Girls of the Chalet School: The Middles |
Emsnan wrote: Girls seemed to have aged since EBD's day, not necessarily in maturity, but in sophistication. I did hear a crowd of girls screaming and shouting at each other in a classroom the other day and imagined Miss Annersely walking in on them! That sometimes varies from year to year. We have a love-ly first year group and they tend to be still quite unsophisticated. Our present second years, however, are a different kettle of fish althogether. But I agree in general with what you say regarding sophistication. I blame the marketing people who target the 8-12 year olds because they know there are rich pickings. I do wish children were allowed to be children for an emotionally healthy period of time. I also agree with what you say about the CS being a safe environment. Thankfully I encountered very little bullying in my years as a school girl, apart, that is, from people thinking they had an authomatic right to comment on my lack of inches. But that was mainly adults! |
Author: | Fiona Mc [ Sun May 09, 2010 11:24 pm ] |
Post subject: | Re: Girls of the Chalet School: The Middles |
I am much more relieved when the middles are naughty when they are middles. I tend to worry more when middles act far too responsible for their ages. I think the triplets are a prime example. Margot is always portrayed as being naughty, when to me she is a normal 12-13 year old, who should have been allowed to be a normal 12-13 year old. And Len is never allowed to be naughty or do anything wrong. Even ML and co are in Impertinent Questions and we do see ML clash with Phil in her youth. I think it would be better to see that side of Len or at least be shown that although Len is good and well behaved, but she is slightly less mature than say a Margot because she hasn't had that time where she seperates herself from her mother's or the school's ideas as say Margot does. Con is well behaved too, but we do see her being able to do that more than Len does. I guess the fear is, if the kids rebel, they'll never come back to being sensible adults later. I do think the better Senoirs/Prefects are the ones who have gone through the rebellion years and make better leaders such as Bride and co or the quinette or Joey and co. I think Len struggles to handle Jack and Jack does dictate the relationship to the point Len won't become friends to any other younger girl as Jack will bully them. Len doesn't, as the older girl, stand up to Jack and say she can be friendly to whom she wants and as a Prefect has to be, and that Jack needs to accept it. When Margot says and does the same, it takes ML to say it. Len hasn't really grown or matured, as she has never really gone through the selfish, I want my own way, most teenagers go through. |
Author: | MJKB [ Mon May 10, 2010 11:47 am ] |
Post subject: | Re: Girls of the Chalet School: The Middles |
I agree with you on that. Len is treated like a mini adult from the time she is a tiny baby. She is designated 'eldest' of family although she is barely a half hour older than the other two. We never see her act like a child with no real responsibilites. In Joey Goes to the Oberland, she is about ten or eleven, and Joey thinks it's wonderful that she has sufficient 'good sense' to tick off a perfectly innocent adult for commenting on her appearance. Some one like Len is bound to regress at some stage of her life because she's been largely denied a childhood. Perhaps she becomes a flower plower hippy in her twenties, leaves boring Reg and heads east! |
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