Themes: Men in the Chalet School
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#1: Themes: Men in the Chalet School Author: RóisínLocation: Ireland PostPosted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 3:08 pm
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There are relatively few men who show up in the Chalet series – mainly doctors and family friends. How does the portrayal of men and masculine traits compare with the nearly all female environment of the school? Are the men shown as One Manly Block of humanity, or are there shades of character examination within the males of the chalet-species, as there are with the women?

Some men you may like to talk about are:
Doctors: Jem, Jack, Reg, Gottfried
Teachers: Herr Anserl, Mr Denny, Herr Laubach
Domestic Servants: Gaudenz, Eigen, Jockel
Brothers/Cousins: David, Rix, Roger & Roddy, Steve, Charles, Dick Bettany
Others: Stephen Venables, Capt Humphries, Herr Braun

I'm sure I've left out lots of men in that list - if you can add to it, please do! And please bring up any discussion point about the portrayal of men by EBD, that you would like to Very Happy

#2:  Author: JayBLocation: SE England PostPosted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 4:20 pm
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I think EBD is quite successful at writing men as secondary characters. Messrs Braun, Mensch, Marani, Anserl, Laubach, Denny, Barras, Christie, all have quite distinctive personalities. If I was to meet them, I'd have no trouble telling who was who, except, possibly, for Anserl and Laubach.

Where I think she is less successful is where she introduces a male character whose sole function is to be a romantic interest or SLOC. Faced with a lineup of Graves, Rosomon, Courvoisier, Sheppard, Entwistle, the only distinguishing feature is that Reg is younger than the others.

EBD's best male characters seem to fall in the early years, when the School was more a part of the local community, and it was easier to include men in the storyline without having a dramatic accident requiring a doctor to come to the rescue. (Except of course that that is how Jem is introduced!)

Of the central family, I like Dick Bettany the best. Agian I think it's because he's never portrayed as being any kind of ideal man. We're shown from the start that Madge is the stronger character.

I also rather like Michael Christie. Of all the men in the series, he's the one I could most easily see Hilda paring up with, if he wasn't already married.

I think EBD's schoolboys are somewhat generic. They're all somewhere on the spectrum between 'responsible' and 'mischievous'; other than that they're not really developed in the way the schoolgirls are.

#3:  Author: Alison HLocation: Manchester PostPosted: Wed Dec 12, 2007 5:00 pm
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I agree. Michael Christy, Kester Bellever, Herr Braun, Herr Marani etc are all quite interesting and individual characters, whereas all the doctor-SLOC characters are quite similar.

A lot of the doctor-SLOCs are quite domineering/over-protective characters, which is interesting because right at the start of the series we're told that Dick pretty much does as Madge tells him Laughing ... not sure if that's significant. Maybe it just reflects what EBD thought was ideal husband material as opposed to ideal brother material.

I do think it's a shame that the male characters are largely sidelined: I appreciate that the books are about a girls' school, but we rarely get to hear the male teachers' viewpoints (unless they're having a tantrum which they all seem to do, far more so than any of the female teachers do), and we don't hear much about David, Rix etc once they're out of the nursery.

Really the girls seem to have very little contact with males outside their own families, and possibly friends' brothers/brothers' friends in the holidays. Mary-Lou - whilst discussing Joan Baker with Jack Maynard in a scene that so annoys me! - talks about having male friends, but other than Tony Barrass I can't think whom she means.

#4:  Author: Fiona McLocation: Bendigo, Australia PostPosted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 4:09 am
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Alison H wrote:
A lot of the doctor-SLOCs are quite domineering/over-protective characters, which is interesting because right at the start of the series we're told that Dick pretty much does as Madge tells him Laughing ... not sure if that's significant. Maybe it just reflects what EBD thought was ideal husband material as opposed to ideal brother material.


Maybe rather than it being her impression or thought of what SLOC's should be but rather her impression of what doctors are like especially for that time and generation, though in saying that I never get the impression about Eigen Curvoisier or Phil Graves unless its during the crisis time

Alison H wrote:
Really the girls seem to have very little contact with males outside their own families, and possibly friends' brothers/brothers' friends in the holidays. Mary-Lou - whilst discussing Joan Baker with Jack Maynard in a scene that so annoys me! - talks about having male friends, but other than Tony Barrass I can't think whom she means.


It doesn't me so much because I think Jack's comment about boys and girls being friends with each other does give a more healthier, rounded outlook on life. I tend to think it also helps them when they start becoming more romantically involved with each other. I think EBD's best example or books that illustrate this best is her Rochelle series. I love the way Julian and Janie interact with each other and how the Willoughby's, Atherton all interact with each other. They're all really good friends but you can sort of tell who will end up with whom a little.

I do tend to think the boys and men are more side characters rather than main and do like the little we see of most of them and think EBD writes about them better in her earlier years rather than when she seemed to be churning them out for the sake of it

#5:  Author: JoyceLocation: Hong Kong PostPosted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 8:44 am
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I'm sorry to be appallingly ignorant here - but what is a SLOC?

Cheers,
Joyce

#6:  Author: ElbeeLocation: Surrey PostPosted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 9:00 am
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SLOC = Solid Lump of Comfort, ie Joey's quote to Jack after the picnic in Exile!

It took me quite a while to work that one out when I first joined Embarassed Laughing

#7:  Author: MiaLocation: London PostPosted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 10:42 am
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There's a list of acronyms here for future reference:

http://www.the-cbb.co.uk/board/viewtopic.php?t=2353

#8:  Author: RóisínLocation: Ireland PostPosted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 12:08 pm
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Can't believe I forgot all the men from the La Rochelle series - thank you Fiona! Very Happy

So that adds

Lawyers: Julian Lucy, Paul Ozanne
Doctors: Peter Chester

plus various schoolboys and landed gentry Very Happy

#9:  Author: JoyceLocation: Hong Kong PostPosted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 3:36 pm
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thanks! it's so easy when someone explains.

Of the men I prefer the ones in the La Rochelle series. They seem less controlling than the guys in the CS series who are forever giving out 'doses' and demanding instant obedience from their families.

Though I was rereading Reunion the other day and it struck me that poor ol' Jack is treated as the family driver.

In one day he has to drop off a group of Joey's chattering friends to Aldersnest, then go home and pick up about 8 kids and drive them down to Montreaux, drive home and THEN put in a full days' work at the San.

In the meantime Joey is off gallivanting round the mountains.

Cheers,
Joyce

#10:  Author: PadoLocation: Connecticut, USA PostPosted: Thu Dec 13, 2007 3:54 pm
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Did EBD base Kester Bellever off a real person? He seems much more 3D than so many of her male characters.

#11:  Author: leahbelleLocation: Kilmarnock PostPosted: Fri Dec 14, 2007 5:18 pm
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Most of the men in the CS series really annoy me. They are all so one dimensional and the "head of the family" thing really grates on me. I know that that's because of the period the books are set in and men were the breadwinners but I've always found it hard to relate to the men in the books.

I liked the early scenes of Dick and thought he was very supportive of Madge, when he could easily have been disapproving of her venture to start the school. Early Jem and Jack are lovely too, but as soon as they're married to Madge and Jo, they lose their appeal for me because they become very controlling of both their wives and their familes.

#12:  Author: PatLocation: Doncaster PostPosted: Fri Dec 14, 2007 9:51 pm
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Part of the problem is that we don't really see them in a family setting. Mostly they're away at the San. They are far more distant than I'm sure a lot of fathers were - I can remember playing games with my Grandpa when I was about 4, and he was in his 40s when Mum was born I think. so he's have been that generation.

#13:  Author: miss_maeveLocation: Buckinghamshire, UK PostPosted: Fri Dec 14, 2007 10:20 pm
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Alison H wrote:

Really the girls seem to have very little contact with males outside their own families, and possibly friends' brothers/brothers' friends in the holidays. Mary-Lou - whilst discussing Joan Baker with Jack Maynard in a scene that so annoys me! - talks about having male friends, but other than Tony Barrass I can't think whom she means.

Ah, but then take Joan Baker as an example of what can happen when a young girl does have a lot of male friends......it's all so idealistic.
A good Chalet Girl never has a lot to do with males apart from those in her own family LOL

#14:  Author: SunglassLocation: Usually London PostPosted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 2:23 pm
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I was about to begin by saying that I've always liked in EBD's writing the complete absence of the kind of continual discomfort one gets in the work of Dorothy L Sayers about what is constructed as the frustration/spite/Unnatural Desires of communities of unmarried women whose lives focus on their work, but I suppose it's hardly likely that that kind of discomfort would find its way into a school story in any case.

However, I do think that in constructing the CS as what is, much of the time, an attractively utopian all-female, well-rounded community, EBD finds herself wondering what to do with her male characters, who appear in very stock roles, as vestigially-there male servants/teachers/hotel owners/parents of CS girls, as doctors and authority figures (roles which largely overlap) and husbands (a role which, slightly alarmingly, usually overlaps with the previous two...) In some ways, I find the sheer tokenism of her male characters comical - they draw on stereotypes almost as much as 'male' genre fiction form the same period does for its female love interests. What's different, obviously, is the authority vested in these stereotypes, and their total lack of sexuality, despite the astonishing amount of babies produced over the course of the series.

I read Jo to the Rescue about two decades after The CS in Exile but remembered immediately that Joey uses exactly the same phrase to/of Jack in both books - what a SLOC he is - despite the first context being war, the Anschluss and Nazi persecution, and the second, several years on, being Jack teasing Joey about having always declared she would never marry. (Wonderful acronym, incidentally!) I think this is EBD trying to 'code' what she portrays as her version of a genuinely strong, loving relationship, but she seems unable to do it without casting it in terms of male strength and comfort and female dependence - this despite the fact that Joey is one of her spikiest and most resilient women, well capable of repelling burglars with a pan of sausages, and foiling madmen and kidnappers on a regular basis.

Plus it's hard to ignore the fact that in Jo to the Rescue there's also the slightly queasiness-inducing instance of Dr Graves falling for his seriously-ill patient Phoebe Witchcote, without (despite the whole affair, long before the unaware Phoebe is conscious of it, being the subject of much discussion between Joey, Jack, Simone, Marie and Frieda) so much as a whiff of a sense that this may be medically unethical...

#15:  Author: SunglassLocation: Usually London PostPosted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 2:36 pm
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Sorry - PS to my last, which I hit 'post' on too soon:

What I was trying to say in a long-winded way, is that I think EBD is entirely of her time in her tentative exploration of female career-mindedness and independence, but she tries to reconcile this with what seem to be quite 'traditional' views of gender roles by reinforcing male authority by giving it a medical backing, which, in the health-obsessed world of the CS and the San, is unanswerable. She doesn't seem to know quite what to do with male love interests, and is clearly not entirely comfortable with either portraying them as entirely equal or subordinate to her independent-minded women, but neither is she willing to replicate 19th-century gender roles, so she writes largely companionate courtships and marriages which at times become oddly Victorian, when the doctor husbands have medicine on their side in their authority over the fragile women and children in their care. There are loads of examples of this - Joey and Jack rub along nicely the vast majority of the time, in a recognisably modern marriage, but then Joey has a fainting episode/an illness/a multiple birth, and Jack turns into a mid-Victorian Paterfamilias, all edicts, medicine and enforced bedrest. Modern readers might wonder about the possibility of an egalitarian marraige between Dr Graves and Phoebe, when they met in the context of her chronic illness and isolation, and him intervening as American-trained saviour, having nursed his mother through a similar chronic illness - but it's not all that different to lots of the other courtships/marriages we see in the CS, where doctors become husbands.

#16:  Author: FrogizeLocation: Perth, Western Australia PostPosted: Sun Jan 13, 2008 9:31 am
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I always wonder how much EBD's own experience of male family members colours her writing. Her father seems to have been very much in the "authoritarian/absent parent" role and she barely knew her brother and half-brother! (Crumbs! that sounds very EBD already!)

I always assume she desperately wanted a close, loving relationship with them but had no idea how to go about creating it - either in her writing or in real life.



The CBB -> Formal Discussions


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