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Books: The Chalet School and the Lintons

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#1: Books: The Chalet School and the Lintons Author: Róisín, Location: Ireland

Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007 3:14 pm
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Apologies for late posting.

There is a synopsis here. This hardback title was split into two for paperback publication - the second part was A Rebel at the Chalet School. We'll treat them as the hardback does here, ie one book.

Mrs Linton has been diagnosed with TB and must move to the San. Her two daughters, Gillian and Joyce, are to attend the Chalet School to be near her. Gillian is responsible and serious; Joyce is emptyheaded and spoilt. Major events in the first half of the book include the midnight feast, the staff's production of Mrs Jarley's Waxworks, and Sybil's birth. The second half sees the ragging of Miss Norman, the fairytale Sale of Work and the battle for Mrs Linton's life.

So how did you like this book? Should Mrs Linton have been more frank with Joyce about how ill she really was? Should Joey have taken such offence at Joyce for not kissing the Robin the first night she met her? Was there too much fuss made over the midnight feast? What do you think of the way that Joyce and the class bullied Miss Norman? How does Joey appear in the subsequent talk she has with Joyce? And what about Joey 'saving' Mrs Linton with her sharp talking at the end of the book!

Please join in and post below Very Happy

Next Sunday: The New House at the Chalet School

#2: Author: Laura V, Location: Merseyside

Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007 4:25 pm
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This is one of my favourite books and Joyce one of my favourite characters and one of EBDs best drawn pupils (along with Grizel). I find her more realistic than most of the other characters through her spoilt, childish ways and was completely right not to kiss Robin when she first met her! As for her bullying of Miss Norman, many of my teachers at high school were also victims of bullying from the pupils so I could relate to this very easily.

I thoroughly enjoy this book until the scene were Joey *talks* to Mrs Linton, The girl has no right to do such a thing! But then again it is EBD and Joey is the lead character Rolling Eyes

#3: Author: Mel, Location: UP NORTH

Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007 6:17 pm
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This is a bit of a departure for early CS as we see some of the Lintons' home life. I think the contrast between the two girls is very sharp. This is EBD on upbringing of course - Joyce has been spoilt, Gillian has not, therefore G is lovely and J isn't. I find it hard to find any instance of Joyce's pretty manners, though I agree she shouldn't kiss Robin on first meeting - or at all if she didn't want to! As for the feast, this is true EBD again; any open door, extra morsel of food, slip on the ice and it's a near-death experience leaving the sufferer much wiser. However, I loved Mrs Jarley, the first real Sale description and the name party for Sybil. I'm glad that Madge thought that Jo was thick too in not knowing, but there is never much said. In a later book Madge says something about 'an extension to the family' but perhaps she couldn't do that when Jo was still a schoolgirl. The ending and Mrs Linton's recovery? Who needs doctors when there is Jo to shout (and sing in New House)!

#4: Author: Alison H, Location: Manchester

Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007 8:25 pm
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I find the bit with Joey "talking" to Mrs Linton a bit stupid, but I like the Sale and I like the naming party (although I find it rather odd that Jo, at 17 or 18, wasn't told straight out that Madge was expecting, and didn't work it out for herself either).

Jo's reaction to Joyce not kissing Robin is way OTT, but I'm glad that EBD draws attention to that because most of the time Jo's obsessive behaviour towards Robin is presented as being normal.

I feel sorry for Miss Norman, but unfortunately an inexperienced teacher being treated badly by pupils is something that does happen, and so from a realism point of view it's an interesting storyline - and one that I don't think we see anywhere else in the series.

#5: Author: Pado, Location: Connecticut, USA

Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007 9:07 pm
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In fact, given that Joyce has been living in close proximity with a TB patient, one would have thought they'd want her as far away from the ever-so-delicate Robin as possible, n'est-ce pas?

#6: Author: Elbee, Location: Surrey

Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2007 9:23 pm
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I think this is one of my favourite books. The naming party is amusing and Mrs Jarley and the Waxworks is very entertaining and lets us see some of the staff in a more informal setting. My sympathies are very much with Joyce regarding the kissing of Robin incident. I like the fact that when Joyce is ill in the night Cornelia, who is the head of her dormitory, gets the chance to act responsibly.

#7: Author: Tara, Location: Malvern, Worcestershire

Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2007 11:10 pm
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This has always been one of my favourites. Gill is lovely, nice, responsible, mature without being 'pi', and her worries over Joyce are very realistic, I think. Joyce is a difficult character to portray, as her main positive characteristics are beauty and charm, neither of which are easy to demonstrate on the page, so there's little to balance the spoilt brat-ness!

There are some really good 'staff' bits in the book. Mrs Jarley is wonderful, and I love the informal scenes with Miss Wilson when she finds Thekla bullying Joyce in the middle of the night. The ragging of Miss Norman is very unusual for EBD, even her quietest mistresses are usually good disciplinarians. It's very realistic, makes one cringe in sympathy in fact, and makes the point that people who are gifted at dealing with one age group can be totally at a loss with another. Miss Norman's reasons for taking on the class are illuminating, too, and we see years afterwards that she hasn't forgiven Joyce and still wants nothing to do with her.
And I still laugh out loud at the 'suppression of Bill' before the Sale and love Miss Annersley resuing Bill's hairpins and making sure everything else is safe and secure - and vetoing the second chimney.

I have to admit I always accepted Jo's shocking of Mrs Linton out of her feverish distress - it seemed just what she would do, somehow!
And I'd never thought of the dangers of letting Robin anywhere near a TB contact - have to say my sympathies were with Joyce, I hate kids being made to go round and kiss everyone!
The naming party was fun, though it's very hard to imagine Jo being that clueless, even then.

#8: Author: jennifer, Location: Taiwan

Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2007 3:05 am
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In general I quite like this book - I transcribed it, so I've read it very carefully.

The incident with Miss Norman is suprisingly realistic for a CS classroom scene - usually the girls are either in awe of the mistresses, or engage in nothing more than fidgets and minor practical jokes. This sort of nastiness isn't generally shown, but is pretty common when students find a weakness.

Jo's instant condemnation of Joyce isn't particularly fair, but is typical of Joey at that stage of her life, as is her adulation of the Robin. I don't blame Joyce for either being extremely tired and out of sorts on arriving in a strange place, and being worried about her mother, or for not wanting to kiss a strange eleven year old good night. It's not like the Robin is four, or anything.

I think Mrs Linton had been remiss in her raising of both Joyce and Gillian. Joyce has been spoiled - she's coaxed and carried through her school work, she doesn't seem to be expected to manage any responsibility or trusted with any important information. Her cluelessness regarding her mother's illness is not that different from Joey's cluelessness over Madge's pregnancy, and is more expected in a fourteen year old than a seventeen year old.

Gillian, on the other hand, strikes me as old before her time. She's been dumped with her share of responsiblity, plus Joyce's, plus a good deal of what her mother would otherwise have taken - the fact that Gillian is responsible for dragging Joyce through her homework and making sure it's done correctly is a prime example. Gillian is also treated as a near adult by Mrs Linton, while Joyce is regarded more as a young child. They're only a year apart in age, but seem to be more like six or seven. It can't all be Mrs Linton's illness, as she presumably hasn't been TB like for fifteen years, and the sort of behaviour patterns the girls show must be developed over years.

I like the naming party. It's a rare example of Jem in a more friendly, non-authoritarian mode, and the suggestions are hysterical.

I don't quite get the connection between over eating on rich food and nearly dying - Joyce was probably quite miserable, but not in any danger of serious lasting harm.

#9: Author: Liz K, Location: Bedfordshire

Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2007 5:55 am
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Tara wrote:

The ragging of Miss Norman is very unusual for EBD, even her quietest mistresses are usually good disciplinarians. It's very realistic, makes one cringe in sympathy in fact, and makes the point that people who are gifted at dealing with one age group can be totally at a loss with another.

I remember one lady at a church I used to go to in Colchester; she was an infant school teacher and she said to me once "give me a classful of infants and I can match name to face in half an hour" but out of that environment - she found it more difficult.

#10: Author: Fiona Mc, Location: Bendigo, Australia

Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2007 10:48 am
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In regard to the ragging of Miss Norman, I can relate to the whole she was fantastic with the babies but not the older girls. I know when I was young, give me a bunch of toddlers to discipline and I could but not so great with the older kids.

I thought the schools reaction to the Midnight feast as a bit OTT. I grew up on a steady diet of Enid Blyton and like Joyce that would be one of the first things I would want to do. I always thought Enid Blyton's reaction of give them all disgusting medicine for upset stomachs is the best idea rather than the wholesale swinging punishments they seem to give for midnight feasts at the Chalet School.

I love the naming party and the names they all come up with and the first Sale especially with Joey landing on Bill and the teasing her friends give her over that. Also like Mrs Jarley's waxworks and the way the Mistresses tease the students in their song.

#11: Author: Sunglass, Location: Usually London

Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2007 2:03 pm
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This is also a favourite of mine, for the same kinds of reasons other people have given - the naming party, the Lintons' home life at the beginning, bits at Die Rosen, the Sale, the ill-fated midnight feast. We are inside homes fairly often, and the school is still small enough to feel domestic. Madge retains elements of the dynamic young headmistress, rather than her less interesting later incarnation as Lady Russell, and Joey is her often insufferable self, babying the almost adolescent Robin and haranguing a comatose patient in her best headgirl manner.

(Though in Joey's defence, her 'Malvina' is no odder a name than many of those EBD gives to CS girls and has people remark on how pretty they are - Loveday Perowne is one that has always cracked me up slightly...)

I have to agree that the CS response to midnight feasts is rather odd - why does it keep being said that the CS never has them because 'our food is so delicious'? Why are they different to any other forms of mischief? Is EBD afraid that midnighting implies hunger on the part of the girls, and that we'll think the CS girls (despite the astonishing amount of cakes and coffee with cream they regularly put away on trips) are like the orphans of Lowood in Jane Eyre?

I've said this here in some other context recently, but I do often laugh at the naughtiness of the CS girls - given that wrongdoers are virtually ALWAYS found out and punished within five minutes, and calls for someone to own up are again almost always obeyed in a second, it hardly seems worth their while to bother with their elaborate practical jokes, because the chances of getting away with them are nil. Why bother dressing up as a 'savage' and grunting at your teacher or having a Midnight feast, when you are always found out by a combination of it being (obviously) the Middles, because Middles are like that/a preternaturally all-seeing staff/your own sense of schoolgirl honour? Presumably the EBD answer would be that the Middles 'just didn't think!'

I suppose she's in a bit of a cleft stick - she needs mischief for plot, and so she doesn't have a bunch of prim little Eustacias, but she also regards it as her duty not to show mischief going unpunished. Judging by her thoughts in Problem on the 'cheap school girl weeklies' and in Jo Returns on copycat behaviour - if we see Jo as very much the kind of school story writer EBD saw herself as - she was terrified of inspiring real girls to real bad behaviour.

Maybe someone can help me out here, but doesn't the Miss Norman plotline also occur in one of Enid Blyton's St Clare's books - a weak teacher, possibly also called Miss Norman, is ragged by the girls but needs to try to hold on to her job to help her family financially? I wonder how the dates work out, and whether one had read the other...

#12: Author: Maeve, Location: Romania

Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2007 2:05 pm
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I quite like this one also -all of the episodes that so many others have mentioned - the names party, Mrs. Jarley, the way Corney handles the night-time incident with Joyce and Thekla. I don't find Joyce terribly likable but I totally get her not wanting to kiss the Robin and find the contrast between how Joyce and Gillian settle in to the school an interesting one.

It strikes me as a bit unlikely that Joyce would respond to Joey's advice toward the end of the book. Gillian says that

Quote:

"...Joyce does think an awful lot of you at the bottom of her heart.”

but I don't recall any evidence of that up to this point.

I also found it rather unbelievable that none of the girls involved in the apple pie catastrophe knew what a garlic clove looked like. I know none of them were accustomed to cooking, but still!

#13: Author: Sunglass, Location: Usually London

Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2007 3:13 pm
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Growing up poorish in Ireland in the 1970s, I had never knowingly encountered a garlic clove, so I vaguely assumed it looked like a apple-tart-flavouring clove, and thought the mistake a natural one! It's an interesting cultural point, though - it's unlikely the English CS girls would be familiar with garlic from home, outside of French restaurants and pre the popularisation of Elizabeth David for home cooking, but does the fact that there was garlic in the store room at the CS imply it was regularly used in the school meals - whose 'unEnglish' nature is always emphasised? I suppose it's still plausible that even girls who liked the taste of garlic in their food wouldn't know what it looked like raw and in clove form...?

And yes, Maeve re. Joyce secretly thinking a lot of Joey - this happens again and again, that we're told a recalcitrant new CS girl (Eustacia is another) is unwillingly or unconsciously attracted to Joey. I can't help finding it somewhat maddening that no one can resist her charm, apart from Matron Webb.

#14: Author: Alison H, Location: Manchester

Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2007 3:43 pm
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Sunglass wrote:

And yes, Maeve re. Joyce secretly thinking a lot of Joey - this happens again and again, that we're told a recalcitrant new CS girl (Eustacia is another) is unwillingly or unconsciously attracted to Joey. I can't help finding it somewhat maddening that no one can resist her charm, apart from Matron Webb.

I really do find that annoying! Especially when Miss Wilson gives Joey that talk in Eustacia about how she needs to remember that everyone looks up to her, and that the reason Eustacia's upset is that she (Joey) hasn't been friendly to her (losing both her parents and being sent to a school she disliked obviously being very minor issues compared to that Rolling Eyes

). Plus we're told that Frau Braun "adored her and thought there was no-one like her" and even that the doctor at Briesau (Herr Doktor Eckhardt) "loves" her!

#15: Author: Sarah_K, Location: St Albans

Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2007 5:39 pm
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Maeve wrote:

It strikes me as a bit unlikely that Joyce would respond to Joey's advice toward the end of the book. Gillian says that

Quote:

"...Joyce does think an awful lot of you at the bottom of her heart.”

but I don't recall any evidence of that up to this point.

It's been a while since I read Lintons but isn't there a passage in there somewhere quite early on about how Joyce admires Joey and that makes her crosser (similar to Tom and Daisy later on).

It is a little strange though, and I do feel bad for Joyce getting labelled bad because she doesn't immediately adore the Robin. After all Gillian was half expecting the bad news about their mother's illness where as Joyce really didn't know and a shock that big combined with th upheaval of moving countries AND schools means it's hardly surprising she acts out.

#16: Author: JayB, Location: SE England

Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2007 6:09 pm
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It was quite wrong of Nurse to tell Joyce how serious her mother's illness was. It wasn't up to her to decide to reveal information her patient wanted kept confidential. She didn't even do it for the reasons Miss Annersley wanted the Balbini twins and later Jane Carew told about their mothers' conditions - to save Joyce a shock later.

As to whether Mrs Linton should have told Joyce the truth herself, I think not before they reached the Sonnalpe. Joyce had been babied all her life; she probably would have taken it badly. Upsetting her, which would upset Mrs Linton, just as they were about to start on a journey that was going to be difficult enough, probably wasn't a good idea. When they got to the Sonnalpe, with Madge and Jem there to give support, would be time enough for her to know.

I like the book, but I like pretty much all the Tyrol era books. Gillian and Joyce are well drawn characters, although Gillian is perhaps a bit too good to be true.

There are signs of EBD growing in confidence as a writer, perhaps, as she tries some new things in this book - the ragging of Miss Norman and the expulsion of Thekla.

Usually in school stories when a mistress is shown to be ineffectual it's her fault and she ends up leaving. Showing it from the teacher's point of view is different.

The expulsion shows that not all pupils are redeemable and the School can't always solve the problems of difficult pupils. I wonder if Thekla was always destined to be expelled from the time she arrived in Exploits, or if EBD found she'd made the character so bad and dishonourable there was no way to bring her back.

I think an eleven year old girl getting a good night kiss from everyone, even virtual strangers, verges on inappropriate. What if Gillian and Joyce had been boys? What if there were adult men present (as presumably there sometimes were)?

#17: Author: Róisín, Location: Ireland

Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2007 6:20 pm
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Sarah_K wrote:

It's been a while since I read Lintons but isn't there a passage in there somewhere quite early on about how Joyce admires Joey and that makes her crosser (similar to Tom and Daisy later on).

Do you mean that she felt so strongly that she liked her that her liking and her resentment were actually the same thing? I think I'm getting into confused Freudian grounds here so I'd better step out again quickly! It's an interesting concept though, and one I wasn't aware that EBD referred to.

#18: Author: Sunglass, Location: Usually London

Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2007 6:23 pm
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JayB wrote:

It was quite wrong of Nurse to tell Joyce how serious her mother's illness was. It wasn't up to her to decide to reveal information her patient wanted kept confidential.

Indeed. Mind you, it's occurred to me more than once that if we were to think of the events of Lintons in today's terms, then having the staff singing merrily about students' past misdemeanours in front of the entire school for the purposes of mass entertainment would probably count as institutional bullying. I suppose some of it is harmess collective stuff, like the clock-boiling, but if I were Simone, I would be deeply unhappy to think of the entire school being reminded I cut off my hair in a failed bid for Joey Bettany's attention.

#19: Author: Mel, Location: UP NORTH

Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2007 8:11 pm
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Miss Kennedy is ragged in The Twins at St Clare's, very similar story-line, as she needs the money for a sick mother. It was published in 1941 so EBD is innocent!

#20: Author: Maeve, Location: Romania

Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2007 8:16 am
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Sarah_K wrote

Quote:

isn't there a passage in there somewhere quite early on about how Joyce admires Joey and that makes her crosser (similar to Tom and Daisy later on).

I'd thought there was something like this as well, but doing a quick skim through now, I can't find anything. It is only after Jo has spoken to Joyce that the latter seems to think positively of Joey. When Thekla tries to get her to break with Joey, Joyce thinks of

Quote:

Jo Bettany who had been so kind to her

and refers to her as

Quote:

a girl as jolly decent as Joey Bettany

On the whole, I quite like young Joey, even with all of EBD's understandable favoritism of her, but she does seem a bit off kilter in her attitude toward Joyce in this book, especially considering she's grown up enough to be head girl. Besides getting mad because of Joyce not kissing the Robin, she is rude about Joyce's name

Quote:

“Yes; it's a pretty name, too. But I should think you'll get a dozen Joyces to one Gillian,” said Jo bluntly.

and upset at Joyce's questioning of Eustacia, even though as EBD writes, Joyce simply

Quote:

turned to Stacie as being the most interesting there, because the nearest to her own age.

Even after Madge tries to reason with her, Joey remains stubborn. But, I suppose if she has been more willing to help rather than criticize at this point, Joyce might have reformed earlier and we would have had no book!

#21: Author: jennifer, Location: Taiwan

Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2007 10:11 am
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Maeve wrote:

I like the adolescent Joey much more than the Swiss one, largely because she has real faults. She's impulsive, she's quick to judge people, she isn't good at seeing other people's points of view, she's tactless, she loves being the centre of attention, she can be very irresponsible.

It's later when her faults, particularly her impulsiveness, tactlessness, emotional fragility and need to always be the centre of things, are shown as virtues rather than annoyances, that I get irritated with her.

#22: Author: Maeve, Location: Romania

Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2007 10:33 am
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jennifer wrote

Quote:

and I also like the realness of Joey. What I find objectionable in this book is the fact that she's the head girl and considered a grown up by Joyce and her peers, yet she can't/won't listen when Madge says

Quote:

“Jo, you simply must get over this silly dislike of everyone who doesn't fall down before the Robin,”...

Another

Quote:

week spent in the company of the Lintons had confirmed her in her opinion of both of them

and they begin the term with Joey convinced she has them both sized up in a rather unyielding way. It would be so refreshing if she had admitted, even to herself, that she was unreasonable about the Robin affair. Seems to me that this would make her even more human.

Robin is not put out by Joyce's non-kiss at all - rather a nice touch by EBD.

#23: Author: Sarah_K, Location: St Albans

Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2007 1:05 pm
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I wonder if there's a drabble idea in there somewhere, an adult Joey meeting an adult Joyce again and being forced to see how cruel her first snap judgement of Joyce was.

I'm glad I wasn't the only one who thoguht that bit was in the book even if I have made it up Very Happy

#24: Author: LizB, Location: Oxon, England

Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2007 12:36 pm
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I think there's a bit where Jo is talking to Joyce and bites her tongue rather than make an snap (angry) retort - Joyce is impressed by Jo's self-control and that contributes to the admiring/liking against her will.

#25: Author: Sunglass, Location: Usually London

Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2007 1:05 pm
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I have to say I thought that the instance of a disapproved-of new girl noting Joey's self-control and being unwillingly impressed by it was Eustacia, rather than Joyce Linton...? Haven't either novel to hand, but it would seem out of character for heedless (what a characteristically EBD word!) Joyce to notice that kind of thing.

Also, further to the minor discussion about garlic cloves some way above - in which I said I didn't think the English girls would be likely to be familiar with garlic from home - I find that garlic is listed by Mrs Beeton as a component of the contents of the Victorian store-room, so perhaps they would. Which makes the mistake betwen clove and garlic clove even more unlikely, though I think EBD may be assuming that the reader will assume that the relative privilege of the vast majority of the CS girls is likely to mean that they've had little contact with cooking.

#26: Author: Bee, Location: Canberra, Australia

Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2007 12:04 am
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I think this book is probably one of the most realistic Chalet School books there is. I like it for the reasons everyone else has given - the school still feels intimate, Madge is involved, Joey is the main character but still has faults, well-developed new girls, the Sale, and of course the naming party! (I always thought it was funny that Madge laughs until she cries over the list, even with ordinary names like "Claire", and then calls her child "Sybil", which although for the time was probably very pretty, has always been a pet hate of mine. Smile

)

Joyce is a really interesting character. She's spoiled, petted, immature and is used to being the centre of attention, although really she's like a lot of fourteen-year-old girls. She yearns to be older than she is without having to face up to any responsibility and, at the Chalet School, while she has her own following simply wants to be included and respected by the leaders of her own form. I can understand why she supposedly, "deep down", likes Joey so much as well (at least, this is my understanding!). Jo is one of those girls who is loved and respected by all and sundry, staff, students, townsfolk alike. For a girl like Joyce, who really wants nothing more than people to like and admire her, I suppose it's natural to feel both jealousy and admiration for a girl who, basically, has the school wrapped around her little finger - and everyone to do with it!

I think this book really demonstrates Joey's judgmental nature. She sizes up Gillian and Joyce within moments of meeting them (even though both were completely tired out by the long journey, so tempers would not have been at best!), and Joyce's refusal to kiss the Robin just cements what Joey had already decided about Joyce.

The ragging of Miss Norman episode always made me cringe. Like girls their age, Joyce and the others had no awareness and no regard for the teacher's feelings. They just saw an opportunity to have a bit of fun, and did! When I was that age I had no understanding of how a teacher would feel about my behaviour, and in that respect Joyce was no worse than any other teenage girl. I just suppose at the Chalet School it went against that sense of honour that was so ingrained! Very Happy

As for Miss Norman, I can only imagine how awful you would feel if you couldn't get your class under control, and the mere appearance of a student prefect (Head Girl, sure, but nonetheless just a girl!) shuts them up in a second. EBD wrote that really well... I feel embarrassed for Miss Norman just thinking about it!

I also felt that the school's reaction to the midnight feast was way OTT. How on earth could eating sweets at night end up with the girls being deathly sick? Though I suppose it fits in with EBD's usual girl has cold, girl must lie in bed for a week... lol.

And lastly (sorry, I've been rambling, I just really like this book!), I actually really felt for Thekla in this book. She never fit in at school, and she finally makes a friend with Joyce, united against their common enemy Joey Wink

But then, out of the blue, Joyce is suddenly like everyone else and singing Joey's praises! While I think Thekla behaved despicably, I can definitely understand the anger and confusion she must have felt about this. I think she received a rather raw deal from the Chalet School - but then again, it was interesting for the school to have a girl that couldn't be reformed with an accident and some wise, compassionate words from Josephine M. Bettany!

#27: Author: Mrs Redboots, Location: London, UK

Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2007 5:43 pm
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Bee wrote:

I also felt that the school's reaction to the midnight feast was way OTT. How on earth could eating sweets at night end up with the girls being deathly sick? Though I suppose it fits in with EBD's usual girl has cold, girl must lie in bed for a week... lol.

Oh, I don't know - some people always used to be sick after midnight feasts when I was at school, but they thought it worth it.

And back then - don't forget that this book was written about 80 years ago - the policy was that if you weren't well you stayed in bed until you were better - a week in bed with a cold was quite normal even when I was a child.

#28: Author: JayB, Location: SE England

Posted: Wed Sep 12, 2007 6:26 pm
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And wasn't the point also to isolate the infectious person from the rest of the school, to stop it spreading, and to make sure she wasn't incubating anything worse than a cold?

#29: Author: Mrs Redboots, Location: London, UK

Posted: Thu Sep 13, 2007 6:06 pm
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JayB wrote:

And wasn't the point also to isolate the infectious person from the rest of the school, to stop it spreading, and to make sure she wasn't incubating anything worse than a cold?

Indeed that, too. And if you were close to someone with an infectious disease - a sibling had mumps for instance - you couldn't go to school at all but had to stay at home until all danger of you coming out with the disease was over. You may remember that the plot of Winter Holiday largely depends on one of the characters having mumps, which extends the Christmas holidays by an extra month for the rest of them.

#30: Author: Loryat,

Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 4:50 pm
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I always had the impression that we're not supposed to like Joyce Linton, and I personally really dislike her, and am right on side with Joey when she doesn't like her at their first meeting. I think a lot of Joey's rudeness to Joyce stems from her dislike of the way Joyce is behaving towards Gillian and Stacie.

I always liked Lintons but have never liked Rebel - I think the partition of the books is really disjointed and can't understand why they split them, to be honest. Probably one of the reasons I don't like Rebel is because it contains a lot of very nagative storylines - the ragging of Miss Norman, which is excellent but quite sad, (and probably the main reason I don't like Joyce), for example.

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