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Books: Bride Leads the Chalet School
http://www.the-cbb.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4608
Author:  jennifer [ Mon Jun 02, 2008 2:28 am ]
Post subject:  Books: Bride Leads the Chalet School
A synopsis can be found here

An eventful book here - what do you think of the scenes of domestic life at the Bettany house? Is Bride a good choice for head girl? What do you think of the way she handles the term's problems, particularly Diana and the other new girls and Julie's sudden illness?

We have another sudden school merging here, somewhat less smooth than previous ones. What do you think of the Tanswick girls and the way they settle in to the school (or not)?

Any other opinions or thoughts?
Author:  evelyn38 [ Mon Jun 02, 2008 7:03 pm ]
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I have only read this once, and in paperback, as I have had trouble getting it, but I liked it. I like Bride as a character, throughout the series, and her friends. I thought Julie's illness was particularly well done (although to our eyes it seems a bit elaborate, even for peritonitis, but it was very serious when the book was written)

The Bettany household seems a bit unlikely; I admit I never liked Mollie and found her propensity to farm her children out to someone else rather sad. Now the older two girls are grown up, I find it odd that they are quite so devoted to her when they have seen so little of her through their lives.

I found Diana Skelton unconvincing on the whole. She seemed absurdly malicious, and I can't really see a girl that age resorting to vandalism as she does.

Its nice to see Jo constrained to just a letter or two in this book :)
Author:  JS [ Wed Jun 04, 2008 11:51 am ]
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Not many people talking about Bride! Must say, this book took on almost mythical dimensions for me as a child as it was the only one that our school librarian didn't have in her own collection - so i remember looking out for it everywhere I went!

I have the Armada copy - eagerly bought it when it came out - and was actually quite disappointed. Unlike many on the board, I didn't really feel that drawn to Bride and she wasn't one of my favourite characters. She was probably a reasonable choice for head girl, though, and I did feel sorry for all the Bettany clan with Mollie's illness.

The Diana/study episode was particularly shocking because that sort of vandalism just didn't happen at the chalet school. It was nasty and the way Diana acted in bullying others reminded me of Thekla and the way she tried to behave.

I did quite like some of the positive messages in the book, particularly around Julie's illness - warning to us all not to neglect symptoms (I'm very bad at that). All in all, though, I felt it was a bit hurriedly written and didn't, for me, have the same 'must-go-on-reading' quality of the books before and immediately after.

Also, I do particularly like Chalet Scool in the Oberland (which I read as a child) and didn't read Bride until I was an adult so I guess these could all be factors in my feelings. My head was maybe already in Switzerland with the older girls.

Nice to get the repeated motif of 'girl has to leave school after illness/death of mother figure only to be able to go back because of handy female relative turning up', Peggy, in this case, just after Elfie.
Author:  Caroline [ Fri Jun 06, 2008 10:13 am ]
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I also admit to slightly mixed feelings about this title. I was thrilled when it came out in paperback and I stumbled across it - I rather think it was one of the first of the new-to-me-not-read-as-a-child titles I found, which does make it rather special, and it fills in some blanks nicely.

But on the other hand, it doesn't have the comfortable-familiarity-and-nostalgia about it that reading the titles from my childhood does.

That said, I really like Bride as Head Girl - I think she should have got the post in Shocks, really - and I do quite like the Tanswick amalgamation - it seems to be handled with much less angst than the other mergers. I also like the way that some of the Tanswick girls go on to be so important later in the series - Hilary Bennet joining ML's gang and Primrose Trevoase being a naughty middle and later in the Triplet's circle - rather than just vanishing.
Author:  JayB [ Fri Jun 06, 2008 11:12 am ]
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This is one I read as a child and then didn't read again for many years. I found it stood up well to adult re-reading.

I like Bride and her gang. They are all much stronger characters than Peggy and her gang, and there isn't one over-dominant personality as with Joey and her crowd or ML and hers.

I wasn't too impressed with Hilda's reason for not giving Bride the post the previous term. Being afraid of being accused of favouritism sounds a bit jellyfish-like and not very like Hilda. As to the age issue, isn't Tom, at least, older than Bride? I like Bride, but I think Tom would have been just as good as HG.

However, I do think the choice of Loveday then was probably the right one. She does take the lead on the journey back to school when the younger ones are being rowdy. And I think Bride probably grew up a lot in that term, what with being without Peggy for the first time in her life, her mother's illness, and the whole business with Elfie.

Really, they didn't handle the Diana problem. They had to ask Joey for advice, and following that advice resulted in the trashing of Bride's study. But realistically there probably was no way to 'handle' Diana - she was too old to be reformed into a good CS girl; Hilda had already recognised that. (Interesting how she and Nell colluded to keep Diana out of St Mildred's - do we hear of Nell telling an actual fib here?)

The trashing of the study and Julie's illness are the term's two big dramatic incidents. I like them for the way EBD shows the girls' reactions, Bride in the study incident and Tom especially when Julie is taken ill.

Interesting that in this book, ML is still regarded as a somewhat annoying younger girl. When a girl is wanted to take a message to Diana, Bride, or someone, specifically says 'Not Mary Lou'.

When EBD was writing this, she must have pretty much decided to move the whole school to Switzerland. Is there any sign in this book that she'd gone as far as she could with the Island setting and was running out of ideas?
Author:  jennifer [ Sat Jun 07, 2008 3:09 am ]
Post subject: 
I liked this one. Bride and her friends are probably my favourite group of girls in the series, with a nice, varied set of personalities, no dominant leader (ala Joey, ML or Jack), and we follow them from juniors all the way through. I agree that the nepotism argument was weak, given the that Julie Lucy and Betsy Lucy were the next two headgirls!

I think the prefects were given too much to handle when it came to the new girls. The Tanswick girls are older than many of the prefects, have had very little prior school discipline, and have arrived in numbers large enough to produce their own cliques. The staff is having serious difficulties keeping them in line, so it's a bit much to expect sixteen year olds to deal with the resultant problems. I sometimes wonder at the prefects independence when it comes to discipline problems - Diana seems like a problem primarily for the staff, but the prefects seem to feel that asking the staff is a sign of weakness and incompetence, which leads them to write Joey.

Actually, I wonder that the school accepted the Tanswick students. The juniors would be okay, but I don't see why they didn't say that they would only take seniors into the school if they could demonstrate that they were up to the academic standards of the CS. We have 17 year olds who are academically about where the 14 year old CS girls are, even without the extra two languages.

I am surprised Diana wasn't expelled, or at least suspended. Blackmail and vandalism are pretty extreme behaviours, even if Miss Annersley got her to break down in her office.
Author:  Alison H [ Mon Jun 09, 2008 8:02 am ]
Post subject: 
I like Bride and her gang, and it's good to see the Bettanys at home. Julie's illness was handled well - good to see Nurse alive and well for once!

I think Diana got off very lightly, and I could've done without the snotty remarks about her accent, though.
Author:  Clare [ Tue Jun 10, 2008 8:30 pm ]
Post subject: 
I think this was the first GGBP edition that I bought that I hadn't read. I think it's a lovely book (the Quadrant chapters aside), and I really like seeing Bride and her friends. I laughed out loud at the Prefect's meeting where they decide on "The Crown of Success" - the image of the Prefects armed with various objects as Bride dashes back into the room is so striking, and different!

I thought Julie's illness was well handled, and I always get a lump in my throat when Tom asks if they can pray together; a lovely hint of her future missionary work.

Diane... Well, I think she should have been expelled, or at least removed by her parents straight after the study incident. It was wanton vandalism, and she deserved more punishment than she got! I don't follow Miss Annersley's logic, Diane admits to forcing the other girl to join her, and yet that plus the vandalism is not grounds for expulsion? Now if it was set in today's schools, where it's a real struggle to expel someone, it would read quite accurately!
Author:  Lesley [ Tue Jun 10, 2008 9:56 pm ]
Post subject: 
I felt similarly about Diane EBD didn't seem to show a good enough reason for keeping her on - just having Hilda say that she would have had to expel Marion as well wasn't enough - the drabble I wrote about it was my way of showing just what happened in that 'behind closed doors' study scene - it's in the St Therese archive if anyone's interested.
Author:  Sunglass [ Tue Jun 17, 2008 10:43 am ]
Post subject: 
I just read this for the first time and liked it. It's either this one or 'Changes' that Elfie or someone makes reference to climate change - something about the run of bad weather which is making challenge matches so difficult to run being due to the atom-bombs being let off! I was gobsmacked!

I thought the depiction of Tanswick was very much of its time, and full of contemporary (or maybe more early 20thc) anxieties about how schools should be run, how strict or rule-bound they should be, etc. In having Tanswick be described as 'modern' and with veyr few rules and an 'artistic' orange uniform, EBD is clearly taking potshots at places like Bedales or other 'experimental' schools. And she makes her opinion of these quite plain by making the Tanswick girls be so far behind intellectually, and also rather lacking in manners.

The thing I found odd about this one is the handling of Diana Skelton, not so much that she wasn't expelled (but EBD then sneakily wrote her her via her doing something Really Really Awful anyway) but how her social background was handled by the staff. They (and EBD as narrative voice) call Diana a 'snob' several times, and make reference to her looking down on other people because her family has more money, although, as we hear, it's very new money, and from pretty plebeian origins in glue-making. Yet, we don't actually get to see Diana behaving snobbishly at all (yes, she's a bully and vandal, but you can't put that down to snobbery) AND the staff say on more than one occasion that they are concealing her origins from the CS girls, with the suggestion that Diana might be looked down on by them!

So who are the snobs here? We do see the CS girls noticing Diana's 'Cockney' accent and thinking there's something odd about her, but of course we never actually see her origins revealed and see how the CS girls would have reacted - we only get that in Switzerland, with Ros Lilley, who is desperate to become a real CS girl immediately, and is liked by everyone. I think it would have been very interesting to see whether, if a thoroughly unpleasant girl was known to be from a originally working-class background, CS girls would have behaved snobbishly.

Mary-Lou is absolutely insufferable in this book, I thought, continually interrupting public occasions, and unable to keep her mouth shut.
Author:  JayB [ Tue Jun 17, 2008 11:36 am ]
Post subject: 
Quote:
Mary-Lou is absolutely insufferable in this book, I thought, continually interrupting public occasions, and unable to keep her mouth shut.


Yes - but she doesn't get away with it. She's treated as an annoying Middle, the prefects not wanting to send her with a message, Miss Annersley making her stand out in the assembly called over Bride's study. It's from Barbara onwards that her bossiness and busybodiness and inappropriate manner are seen as virtues rather than flaws and she gets away with it on the grounds that 'it's just Mary Lou'.
Author:  Karry [ Tue Jun 17, 2008 12:06 pm ]
Post subject: 
Sunglass said
Quote:
It's either this one or 'Changes' that Elfie or someone makes reference to climate change - something about the run of bad weather which is making challenge matches so difficult to run being due to the atom-bombs being let off! I was gobsmacked!
I can remember that my gran used to blame the men landing on the moon for weather changes!
Author:  Kathy_S [ Tue Jun 17, 2008 3:17 pm ]
Post subject: 
Sunglass wrote:
They (and EBD as narrative voice) call Diana a 'snob' several times, and make reference to her looking down on other people because her family has more money, although, as we hear, it's very new money, and from pretty plebeian origins in glue-making. Yet, we don't actually get to see Diana behaving snobbishly at all (yes, she's a bully and vandal, but you can't put that down to snobbery) AND the staff say on more than one occasion that they are concealing her origins from the CS girls, with the suggestion that Diana might be looked down on by them!

So who are the snobs here? We do see the CS girls noticing Diana's 'Cockney' accent and thinking there's something odd about her, but of course we never actually see her origins revealed and see how the CS girls would have reacted

I think the reason the staff worries about the girls knowing Diana's father's background is not so much that they'd normally react snobbishly, but that it might be too inviting to use in retaliation when Diana put on her "supercilious expression," "cocks her little finger in the air" when drinking tea, tells them they are ill-mannered, or generally turns up her nose. I get the impression that the mistresses are also being treated in the "my father is paying your salary" mode rather than with that respect we wish were accorded teachers in RL.... (*brief mutter of experience*) It does seem as though her reputation had gone before her:
Quote:
Young Sally says that at Tanswick there was a little bunch of them, Diana being head and chief. They called themselves “Nous Autres”, if you please, and, so Sally says, looked down on everyone else.

Oddly, I hadn't really noticed the accent references until being sensitized here.

I find that most of Diana's behavior rings true, but have a hard time swallowing the jumping up and down on the cake.

As for the rest of the book, I particularly enjoy the scenes with Mollie. Bride is one of my (many) favorite characters, so I was happy to see her with her own book -- but I'm not sure this is the volume that best sets off her character. I think she might have been happier not being head girl.
Author:  Mrs Redboots [ Wed Jun 18, 2008 2:52 pm ]
Post subject: 
Karry wrote:
Sunglass said
Quote:
It's either this one or 'Changes' that Elfie or someone makes reference to climate change - something about the run of bad weather which is making challenge matches so difficult to run being due to the atom-bombs being let off! I was gobsmacked!
I can remember that my gran used to blame the men landing on the moon for weather changes!

But they did! I mean, every time - but every time - there was a moon landing, we'd have horrible weather for several weeks afterwards! There has to have been a connection.
Author:  LizzieC [ Wed Jun 18, 2008 4:45 pm ]
Post subject: 
Mrs Redboots wrote:
Karry wrote:
Sunglass wrote:
It's either this one or 'Changes' that Elfie or someone makes reference to climate change - something about the run of bad weather which is making challenge matches so difficult to run being due to the atom-bombs being let off! I was gobsmacked!
I can remember that my gran used to blame the men landing on the moon for weather changes!

But they did! I mean, every time - but every time - there was a moon landing, we'd have horrible weather for several weeks afterwards! There has to have been a connection.


By the same token could we perhaps fund some research between Wimbledon and poor weather? Or has that already been done? :lol:
Author:  Alison H [ Wed Jun 18, 2008 9:30 pm ]
Post subject: 
Oh don't - I'm stressed enough already at the thought of the whole fortnight's schedule being messed up by rain!

I think it's summer sport and weather generally: I know very well not to put the washing out if Lancashire've got a home match!

Maybe climate change is all down to Professor Richardson's disappearance into space :roll: ?
Author:  Sunglass [ Thu Jun 19, 2008 8:32 am ]
Post subject: 
Kathy_S wrote:
I think the reason the staff worries about the girls knowing Diana's father's background is not so much that they'd normally react snobbishly, but that it might be too inviting to use in retaliation when Diana put on her "supercilious expression," "cocks her little finger in the air" when drinking tea, tells them they are ill-mannered, or generally turns up her nose...


I suppose that's what I meant - that with Ros Lilley, who is likeable and eager to adapt to all the CS expectations, there's no particular merit in the CS girls not being snobbish - it's easy to behave well to someone likeable and unthreatening. But I wouldn't think well of anyone who, even when provoked by unpleasant behaviour on the part of Diana, resorted to class-based insults. To be honest, I have difficulty imagining the CS girls as written by EBD doing so, in any case, but I do find it interesting that the staff appear to have some kind of apprehension that her background, if known about, might cause problems.

I was just thinking there's a somewhat analogous situation in one of Enid Blyton's St Clare's books - a girl who turns out to have grown up very poor, before her family came into huge wealth, and betrays herself at intervals by her bad grammar and habits - but it's a slightly different affair, from what I remember, as we do see her actively boasting about her wealth and looking down on other characters. And there's also in Malory Towers, Jo, daughter of nouveau riche road hog Charlie, who has endless cash, but is disliked - at one point someone asks why her father doesn't buy himself some hs, because he doesn't pronounce them - and who gets expelled, explicitly because of her father's poor training. In both of those cases, we do see the other girls noticing and being unpleasant about their class, when provoked - presumably what the CS staff feared? But EBD appears to not to want to show CS girls in a bad light, and allows all the badness to rest with Diana. Which contradicts slightly her desire (shown via Joey's 'Malvina Wins Through' and 'Cecily Holds the Fort') not to write really bad schoolgirls, like Rosetta Fernandez, in books for children...?
Author:  Aishwarya [ Thu Jun 19, 2008 9:56 am ]
Post subject: 
Alison H wrote:
Maybe climate change is all down to Professor Richardson's disappearance into space :roll: ?


This is quite plausible. A name that size has to have considerable gravitational pull, and who knows what effects that could have?
Author:  Jools [ Thu Jun 19, 2008 10:41 am ]
Post subject: 
Sorry don't know how to do quote boxes

"A name that size has to have considerable gravitational pull, and who knows what effects that may have"

:lol:
Author:  Mrs Redboots [ Sat Jun 21, 2008 2:10 pm ]
Post subject: 
Alison H wrote:
Oh don't - I'm stressed enough already at the thought of the whole fortnight's schedule being messed up by rain!
Well, Thursday and Friday will undoubtedly be lovely - it's one of our bigger skating competitions then, and it's always lovely - you spend two days in an ice rink with no natural lighting and, of course, it's the best two days of the summer!
Author:  Loryat [ Wed Jun 25, 2008 6:12 pm ]
Post subject: 
I only read this in a transcript on a computer and can't remember much of it, but I remember being annoyed by the whole 'snobbishness' thing. It seems to me that the only characters who act like snobs in CS are the ones from lower class backgrounds, so that's snobbish in itself - those from upper class backgrounds being too 'well-bred' for anything of that sort.

Of course, there is all the snobbishness inherant to the books that EBD's clearly unaware of, which is all the more annoying.

That said, she is definitely less snobbish than EB was.

ETA Of course the exception is Thekla, but she is Foreign so that doesn't count!
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