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Books: Changes for the Chalet School
http://www.the-cbb.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4643
Author:  Róisín [ Tue Jun 10, 2008 2:51 pm ]
Post subject:  Books: Changes for the Chalet School
Full synopsis here.

Both the School and the San are preparing for a move to Switzerland - this involves taking on extra language tuition and divvying up the school possessions between those moving and those staying in Glendower House. The triplets (plus Josette) are back from Canada, and Margot and Emerence start their friendship. Margot is warned that if she doesn't work harder, she will have to stay in England (she is already 2 forms behind Len). Other events include the regatta and the pig midnight feast.

Do you like this book? Is it a fitting end to the English/Welsh part of the series? Do you think it's too coincidental that the San, plus the finishing school, plus the school proper, and even Joey! are all going to the same place in Switzerland? Do you wish that, at this point, EBD had chosen to follow those 'left behind' in Glendower House? What about Jack and Miss Annersley's ultimatums to Margot about her studying - would they really have left her behind?

Please join in below with any issue you like to discuss, in relation to Changes for the Chalet School. :D

Next Sunday: Joey Goes to the Oberland
Author:  Alison H [ Tue Jun 10, 2008 8:58 pm ]
Post subject: 
This one just seems to be a transitional book in which not all that much happens, but that's probably inevitable because of the plans for the move.

Given that Jem owned the San and Madge owned the Chalet School, I think it's reasonable enough that the 2 institutions, and the finishing branch, should have ended up in the same place, especially as Switzerland's the "usual" place for sanatoria. I do often wonder if EBD regretted not hanging on a bit: if she'd waited until after 1955 she could have moved them back to Austria, but then she'd either have had to ignored the fact that the war books were set at a definite time or else skipped about 4 years to get the series up to 1955.

I don't think that it would've been practical to have followed Glendower House as well, but I wish that it hadn't been ignored so completely later on. No-one from there even seems to be invited to the Coming of Age celebrations! What I do regret very much is that Madge and Jem get left behind: EBD seemed to decide after Gay that they should take a back seat, presumably so that Joey didn't have to share the limelight. In the next book (Joey Goes) we also lose Robin, probably for the same reason. It's quite plausible that Jem was busy with something at the Welsh San (the official reason for them not moving), or that the Russells just didn't want to uproot themselves, but it would have been just as plausible for them to have gone with. Sorry for the rant - pet moan!
Author:  Mez [ Tue Jun 10, 2008 10:08 pm ]
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I agree with Alison H. It does seem to be a filler, explaining the move and then filling in a term around the decision.
I do enjoy the meeting between Emerence and Josette and the triplets. And I think that the actions of Margot and Emmy to try and get in the same form are quite believable (Margot working hard and Emmy slacking off).
What I find interesting about a lot of these friendships was the that the difference in ages wasn't any problem. I often found that friendships with people in different forms were very hard to have as you tended to be very conscious of the age or form difference. I know that Con (I think) was in the same class as Emmy so it wouldn't have been so significant, and the triplets themselves are accustomed to being around older girls as they are always ahead for their age, but it sometimes seems a bit forced to me. In my experience girls who were ahead for their ages often didn't settle well or become leaders of their classes.
But then, they are Joey's daughters and therefore shining lights of the CS :D

I also enjoy meeting the Dawburns.....

(I hope I make the sense in the above-I think I may have lost my point in there somewhere!)
Author:  Mel [ Tue Jun 10, 2008 10:27 pm ]
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It's an enjoyable read, fairly pedestrian, but lots of rounding off of their time on the island. The promised chapter about the old girls is the inevitable discussion of babies. I love the fact that Pam Slater doesn't want to go, hates teaching in other languages and is ambitious. Good for her! The picnic is tedious and predictable, fancy choosing a field full of pigs when they could have gone to the beach. Do CS girls ever manage a successful midnight? Lots of trivia about exams outside and a handy collapsing table with the usual flurry and scurry ( I think) and dunking people in baths and rolling in blankets. I always like the regattas though and finally Bride is pretty - hurrah!
Author:  Caroline [ Tue Jun 17, 2008 10:50 am ]
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I'm just coming up to this one in my current re-read - I decided to start with Island and try and keep up with the discussions on here, but it hasn't quiet worked - I'm always a book behind! So, this is from memory.

This is another book I didn't acquire until I was an adult and Armada finally printed it in PB in the 90s. So, I spent many years wondering what happened in this book - I grew up with a collection of jumble sale paperbacks which went: Exile, Three Go, Island, Peggy, Carola, Shocks, New Mistress. Confusing! I then remember buying Barbara, Mary-Lou and the two halves of Genius at some point in the 80s - those 2nd style covers! - but Bride and Changes, Kenya and Does It Again were all much later and much anticipated...

So. Anyway. This book doesn't have the glow of nostalgia that my childhood PBs do, but I still like it all the same. I actually think it's pretty much a given that the San and the School will follow each other back to the mountains - they've always been closely associated with one another (until the drains caused the diversion to St Briavels), after all. That they should choose somewhere near Welsen also makes sense - why would you go anywhere else but near to the portion of your school already out there? That Joey and Jack go is a bit more of a stretch, I admit...

Quote:
What I do regret very much is that Madge and Jem get left behind: EBD seemed to decide after Gay that they should take a back seat, presumably so that Joey didn't have to share the limelight. In the next book (Joey Goes) we also lose Robin, probably for the same reason. It's quite plausible that Jem was busy with something at the Welsh San (the official reason for them not moving), or that the Russells just didn't want to uproot themselves, but it would have been just as plausible for them to have gone with. Sorry for the rant - pet moan!


Pet moans perfectly allowed, but I personally don't think it would have been plausible to have them all go out there - plenty of CS fans find it highly implausible that J&J should go in the first place - to have more of the founding family located in one small part of the Oberland would, I think, be too much.

I also rather think that EBD got Madge&Jem&Robin out of the way not because she wanted Joey to have centre stage alone, but more because she couldn't think of anything for them to do, plotwise.

I do regret it, though - even if moving Madge and Jem to the Oberland would have been clunky, we still could have seen much more of them - travel being so much easier in the 1950s than it was before the war. I miss Robin, too. And I miss Jo having friends around her who are not school mistresses - she's always had chums around before, whether it be Frieda / Polly / Veta / Robin / Daisy / Simone living with her or nearby. On the Platz there is no one to bring another dimension to her life.

OK. This is way too long and way too much about the Swiss books rather than about Changes. So, I do like Changes, I like the way it links up the English and Swiss books, I like the fact the focus moves away from the Prefects a little - although they are my favourite subject in most books, we have at this point had rather a run of Prefect-and-seniors-heavy books.

The Margot thing does bother me a little - how has she been allowed to get so far behind in Canada to end up two forms below Len (although, of course, she is in the right form for her age, it is Len who is out of kilter, and their form placings are a bit wacky due to the lack of places available)? I do wonder if they would have left her behind in the end - I rather suspect not, but the truth is that none of the triplets should really have gone as they were all technically too young for the Swiss school. Now that would have been a plot line....!!
Author:  Sunglass [ Tue Jun 17, 2008 11:06 am ]
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I remember being outraged by someone (Mollie? Dick?) commenting (one hopes not in front of Bride) that they may now boast of not two, but three pretty daughters, on the one occasion that Bride looks something other than plain! It gives a slightly different take on Sybil's former vanity, if these kinds of comments are flying around publicly in the Bettany/Russell clans all the time, especially as Bride is actually Head Girl of her aunt's school at the time - isn't this more important than her looks?

The thing I found dullest, and most filler-ish about this one is the sheer amount of time the girls spend talking about dividing up the books and equipment between the English and Swiss branches. I found this really odd - why on earth would it be up to the girls, who are after all pupils not employees? Isn't this a staff issue? And, talking of staff issues, I find absolutely fascinating the passage where Pam Slater says (in my mind, quite reasonably) that she's not moving to Switzerland, doesn't really want to leave the UK, but has a headship of maths at a big school and is then hoping for a Headship in the near future. The way Biddy and the other mistresses behave towards her is outrageously unprofessional to a senior colleague leaving a job - active, very childish mockery, and no one even says congratulations on what is a very good step up for her. They appear to find it some kind of betrayal - like someone ending a marriage! - rather than someone leaving a job! Even Joey's comment, though she phrases it as surprise that someone would want to miss the fun of the new Swiss start-up for just another job in the UK, suggests a deep disapproval. Pam Slater clearly doesn't believe the CS is a family, but thinks of it as a job like any other. Which is Bad. Though she suggests herself that she feels like a CS newcomer and that it's different for those who'd been at the CS from the start.

Would have liked to see a power struggle between Joey and Hilda Annersley as to whether the triplets should be allowed to go to Switzerland at all, given their ages. I confess I would have adored to see Joey forced to obey the rules for once, but presumably EBD would never have let it come to that.

And found the writing-out of Diana Skelton v odd and interesting - presumably EBD made some kind of retrospective decision, given that she'd been 'forgiven' in 'Bride Leads'. But it reads very oddly - does anyone else ever get written out for such a reason offstage? - and melodramatically - and, given that her behaviour is WAY worse than that of anyone else who ever attends the CS, suggests that glue-maker's daughters are vandals, gamblers and thieves! I wonder if her unusual badness is 'related' to her social background for EBD, or if it's more a matter of her not having been accepted by the CS as a pupil, but accepted as part fo the Tanswick 'job lot', so she can be written as much more thoroughly nasty than someone who was vetted and accepted by the CS originally?
Author:  JayB [ Tue Jun 17, 2008 11:25 am ]
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I think once it was decided that the San was going to move too, Jack was the obvious person to run it. If Jack or Jem hadn't gone to do the job, the 'family' connection to the school would have been lost, and there wouldn't have been much point in the San being there at all. The San going to Switzerland was really a plot device to keep Jo close to the School.

It's interesting that EBD had tried writing Jo out almost entirely by sending her to Canada, and from this time on ties her to the school even more closely than before. She evidently decided that Jo was essential to the series.

From now on Jo's character development seems to stop entirely. Her storylines are all related to health and babies. And at this point that the triplets are becoming old enough to carry storylines themselves and could have taken over from Jo. So it's not easy to see what her presence adds to the books.

I suppose one could argue that Margot had missed a lot of school when she was younger due to ill-health, and she had been away from the CS for longer than Len and Con, and so perhaps had missed more of the CS curriculum. I think it's not unrealistic that she should be where she is, but that the other two should be ahead. Reasonable that Len, a good all round student, should perhaps be one form ahead, but Con, although brilliant at English, is not good at maths, and yet she's supposed to tackle work one or two years ahead of her age group.

I suppose the one advantage all three of them have is that they've spoken French and German from infancy, so they're not having to struggle to understand what's being said in class.
Author:  jennifer [ Tue Jun 17, 2008 5:00 pm ]
Post subject: 
I like this book, but I see it more as a tying up of loose ends than a stand alone story.

I found the treatment of Pam Slater childish and petty - as someone said, it's like she's leaving a marriage for another man, not simply following an advantageous career path. She's about the only person who leaves the CS staff for something other than marriage or illness.

I think this is the first book where the triplets show up as real characters in their own right, rather than just backdrops. I feel sorry for Margot, being chastized for being in the same form as other girls her age! Unlike Len, who is ten and in Upper 4, which, if she had progressed normally through the forms would have her finishing upper sixth by age fourteen. Actually, I think sending the triplets along with the school was rather unfair for them, as then end up the youngest of the school by a year and a half.

It does make sense to have Jack run the new San, given that he's second to Jem. Jem is now a 'big man on TB' and needs to be available for consultations and business visits, which would be harder to do from an isolated location in Switzerland.
Author:  Rachel [ Mon Jun 23, 2008 7:48 pm ]
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If Margot had been left behind at the English-branch-in-Wales, it could have led to some interesting plot lines for future Swis books. Margot would have had a chance to break out from her "triplet" persona once again and make her own friends, have her own life away from her sisters, which always seemed to be such a positive thing for her when she went to Canada with her aunty Madge. Imagine if she had decided that she preferred the English branch (in Wales) and didn't want to move across to the Swiss branch when she became old enough?

The rest of this book is a bit of a blur at present as I haven't read it recently enough to be sure of any facts - but I am certain that the "what ifs" that come out of it are often far more interesting than the reality that Elinor went on to write!
Author:  Lesley [ Mon Jun 23, 2008 8:00 pm ]
Post subject: 
One thing I must admit does grate - EBD making a point of stating that no one under twelve would be going - but then makes a blatent exception when it come to the Triplets who are ten and a half. She tries to cover herself by having a character mention that luckily no other girl under 12 had expressed a wish to go - but then they wouldn't as they had been told it was 12 and above only. :roll: It would have been more logical if EBD had instead said no one below a certain Form - that way the storyline whereby Margot has to work would be kept.
Author:  JayB [ Mon Jun 23, 2008 8:27 pm ]
Post subject: 
I don't think Jo and Jack handled the situation very well at all. First Jo says she won't be parted from any of the triplets again and has to backtrack.

Then all the onus is put on Margot to get into a form two years ahead of her age group. What if there'd been some perfectly legitimate reason why she couldn't do it - if she'd missed a lot of work through illness, for example? (They did all miss a large chunk of the next term due to German measles.)

Then Jo and Jack complicated the issue by moving to the Platz themselves. If they'd stayed in England, the triplets would presumably have continued at the English/Welsh branch until such time as Jo and Jack decided to send them to Switzerland.

Of course a special case could be made for the triplets in that they did live on the Platz and they had to go to school somewhere. They were actually day girls for the first term. So it's not quite the same as taking ten or eleven year olds for whom the school would have to be wholly responsible.

But it could look like favouritism - especially when you add in the fact that Josette wasn't quite twelve at the start of the first term in Switzerland, was she, although she did have her twelfth birthday during that term.
Author:  Rachel [ Mon Jun 23, 2008 8:31 pm ]
Post subject: 
JayB wrote:
But it could look like favouritism - especially when you add in the fact that Josette wasn't quite twelve at the start of the first term in Switzerland, was she, although she did have her twelfth birthday during that term.


Favouritism at the CS? Shock horror and surely not! :wink:
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