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Books: The Chalet School in the Oberland
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Author:  Róisín [ Sun May 25, 2008 5:08 pm ]
Post subject:  Books: The Chalet School in the Oberland

There is a lovely full synopsis here.

This is the only book that is fully set at the finishing branch of the School. Miss Wilson is the head. The girls follow a different day pattern to the School proper, and are generally treated a lot more like grown ups. There are girls from the School, who we know well, plus girls from outside, who we meet for the first time.

Main events in this book include the makeover of fun-free Edna, the reform of rebel Elma, the return of Gillian Culver and Mollie Bettany's illness.

So, what did you think of this book? Did you enjoy a break from the School books proper? Were you able to reconcile this book with Shocks (they both take place in the same term)? Was Elma really being unreasonably rebellious?

Please raise any issue you like to discuss below, in relation to The Chalet School in the Oberland. :D

Next Sunday: Bride Leads the Chalet School

Author:  JS [ Mon May 26, 2008 11:08 am ]
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I really liked this book. It was one of the first I read, so it was probably quite 'grown up' at the time but I don't seem to remember finding it shocking.

I felt it was realistic to have the different groups of girls sticking to themselves, rather than turning into a big melting pot and I also liked Elma's (ultimately doomed) assertion that this wasn't the Chalet School.

I thought the Elma/Pamela storyline was well worked out. I also felt the staff room scenes were good - new and old staff coming together.

I didn't mind particularly at the time that Peggy seems to pop up to solve things a bit like the deus ex machina (Edna, Elma) but can see in retrospect that it's a bit unrealistic. I did, however, cry when Peggy had to go home because her mother was ill.

Having read it before Shocks, I suppose I felt it was the 'official' version of events, so didn't notice the anomalies (eg Dickie and Peggy being flown home in Shocks but not in Oberland).

It was the first time I'd come across the notion that it was wicked to play cards on a Sunday. Very odd........

Author:  Alison H [ Mon May 26, 2008 1:53 pm ]
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This one, like New Mistress, has the merit of being something a bit different. I'd love to know whether EBD intended to write more books about the finishing branch and then changed her mind, or whether the publishers or maybe letters from fans persuaded her to go back to focusing on the main branch only, or whether it was only ever intended to be a one-off - does anyone know?

I wish that Elma's boyfriend had been someone respectable, then we could've seen how the school would've handled someone having a boyfriend without having the excuse of him being a "cad" to make her break off contact with him ... er, that's very badly-expressed but hopefully people'll know what I mean :lol: .

I wish we'd seen more of the finishing branch later on, if only because plotlines run very thin in the later Swiss books and writing about older girls in a different environment would have offered the opportunity for more variety. Personally speaking I'd much rather have read about Blossom & co, Mary-Lou's Gang or the triplets and their friends at St Mildred's than read about things at the main school involving some of the people who crop up in the later books with no background story and then vanish after one book.

It doesn't quite tie in with Shocks, but that's EBD :lol: .

Author:  jennifer [ Mon May 26, 2008 1:56 pm ]
Post subject: 

I also quite like this book, and found the focus on older girls interesting. I was highly amused that smoking was considered sort of okay, but playing cards on a Sunday was right out.

Elma's an interesting character. She's not irredeemably bad, but she thinks she's more grown-up than she actually is, and doesn't see the long term consequences of her behaviour (a wastrel husband and being cut off from her family). Her gradual realization that Raynor is a cad is nicely done.

Peggy is a bit cloying here, as the perfect embodiment of chalet-ness, but I like the mix of girls, and the way they don't immediately mesh into a cohesive group.

The St Nicholas's day celebration and Pantomime are fine here (it's the only pantomime description I really liked), but the former gets used again in Mary-Lou, and the latter gets boring in later books.

I found the approach towards makeup interesting. Peggy tells Edna that not wearing makeup is selfish and unkind, because other people have to look at her un-beautified self! :shock: I guess I've been very inconsiderate to all those people who have had to look at me over the years.

Author:  jennifer [ Mon May 26, 2008 1:56 pm ]
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I also quite like this book, and found the focus on older girls interesting. I was highly amused that smoking was considered sort of okay, but playing cards on a Sunday was right out.

Elma's an interesting character. She's not irredeemably bad, but she thinks she's more grown-up than she actually is, and doesn't see the long term consequences of her behaviour (a wastrel husband and being cut off from her family). Her gradual realization that Raynor is a cad is nicely done.

Peggy is a bit cloying here, as the perfect embodiment of chalet-ness, but I like the mix of girls, and the way they don't immediately mesh into a cohesive group.

The St Nicholas's day celebration and Pantomime are fine here (it's the only pantomime description I really liked), but the former gets used again in Mary-Lou, and the latter gets boring in later books.

I found the approach towards makeup interesting. Peggy tells Edna that not wearing makeup is selfish and unkind, because other people have to look at her un-beautified self! :shock: I guess I've been very inconsiderate to all those people who have had to look at me over the years.

Author:  Laura V [ Mon May 26, 2008 2:42 pm ]
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I also enjoyed this book, and its interesting to see EBD writing about more adult themes such as boyfriends and make up. I liked the contrast between the different groups of girls and seeing exactly how a finishing school worked. I always thought of Bill as a tomboy so it was interesting to see that she was chosen to be head of the establishment!

It's certainly a different read to other books in the series and maybe wasn't received well so EBD never wrote another story in St Mildreds.

Author:  Fatima [ Mon May 26, 2008 3:06 pm ]
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I really enjoyed this, too, as it's almost like the main CS was in the beginning - a small school where you get to see all the characters, instead of being lost in vast crowds in a larger establishment. It was nice to see Gillian Culver coming back and to see how she got on with Bill (especially at the beginning), having been used to being the pupil and now being a member of staff. I wish there'd been more about the Millies, too, and would also have loved to see the triplets there, or even Mary-Lou and her crowd.

Author:  JayB [ Mon May 26, 2008 5:45 pm ]
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I wonder if this book was a kind of 'toe in the water' for EBD to see how the Swiss setting was received, before she committied herself to moving the whole school there? If the feedback from readers or publisher had been unfavourable, she could have quietly forgotten St Mildred's and continued with the main school in Engand or Wales.

(Or in a few more years she could perhaps even have moved the school back to Austria. I wonder if she wished she'd waited, so that she could have done that, and how it would have worked out. Drabble, anyone?

I don't like the treatment of Edna here. She's not rude or unkind or dishonest, but she still has to change because some people find her annoying. Once again, the Chalet School way is the only right way and everyone else has to conform.

Elma I think is quite realistic; a teenage rebel who's in over her head, but fortunately realises it before she gets into serious trouble.

I'm not sure how much further EBD could have taken St Mildred's as a stand-alone series. Once she'd done the undesirable boyfriend plot I don't know what other storylines there were that would have been specific to girls of 17-19. I think she needed the Middles and the Juniors as well to add variety.

Author:  Billie [ Tue May 27, 2008 6:46 pm ]
Post subject: 

I've only read this one once, and that was a long time ago, so I can't really remember it. I was pleased to see the older girls with their own issues not touched on by stories about fourteen- or fifteen-year-olds, yet still very much in the context of a school story. Very confusing to have an Edna and an Elma in the same book, however.

Author:  Mel [ Tue May 27, 2008 7:10 pm ]
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I thought it was interesting to have a finishing school story, though I would have preferred not to have Peggy yet again as the star. The only other books I have read that feature finishing schools are one of the Lorna Hill books when Ella spends some time in Switzerland for her health and Drina Dances in Switzerland. Both these schools are far more 'finishing' school than the CS as though EBD wanted to keep hers vaguely academic. To me this doesn't work as it's neither one thing or the other. I would see a finishing school being for girls after they had completed sixth form and their Advanced Levels. A sort of very tame gap year. I found the story a bit lame and the names both confusing and appalling. Perhaps only CS girls could have pretty names?

Author:  Mrs Redboots [ Wed May 28, 2008 7:13 pm ]
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Although, Mel, back then it was very common for people who didn't want, or weren't academically able for, A levels, to do a one-year "General course" after O level and before leaving school. They might do a course of general studies, perhaps including a foreign language, or resit an O level for a better grade.... so for me, having rising-17 year-olds there seems perfectly normal!

Author:  Mel [ Wed May 28, 2008 9:06 pm ]
Post subject: 

What seems odd to me though (and I take your point Mrs Redboots) is that many of the girls move from St Mildred's to university and I don't think the curriculum was very relevant for them.

Author:  Alison H [ Wed May 28, 2008 9:55 pm ]
Post subject: 

From what some of the girls - e.g. Josette - say in the later books, they seem to regard their year at St Mildred's (as it became) as a year to be spent hanging around with your friends and enjoying yourself before going on to further education/training. Rather an expensive way of doing it, though :lol: !

Some of the curriculum seemed to be the sort of stuff I associate with finishing schools - art, music and needlework - and IIRC they were then split into an arts group and a maths/sciences group for lessons, so it didn't sound unreasonable to me, bearing in mind that you couldn't have too many specialist lessons with only a small number of people ... although I'm not sure how useful general arts/general sciences would have been after doing A-levels which would have been much more specialised.

I don't think anyone really seemed to know what the finishing branch is meant to be about at this point - some of the girls planned to go on to university/secretarial courses, people like Peggy Bettany didn't seem to have any plans at all, and a lot of the girls "didn't need" to work and so were either going to do voluntary work or presumably just hang around at home/look for husbands - so it must have been hard to plan the curriculum.

Really it opened just as we were moving from the generation (in CS terms!) who weren't going to work unless they had to to the generation in which almost everyone had some sort of career plans. It must have been a different sort of environment even 2 or 3 years later.

Sorry for long waffle - waiting for washing machine to finish!

Author:  evelyn38 [ Wed May 28, 2008 10:05 pm ]
Post subject: 

There is of course the obvious EBD ism that Elma Conroy exists somewhere else as a genuine Chalet School girl ( a middle in the Tyrol I think) and an American. Presumably she liked the name !

I liked this book because it was different, but I have only read it once and in paperback. Others' suggestions of later St Millies books seem fine material for drabbles/fill-ins to me :)

Author:  Abi [ Thu May 29, 2008 2:47 pm ]
Post subject: 

For some reason I always liked this book despite the very obvious flaws (and the annoyingness of Peggy!). I think it's partly because it was a fresh setting at that point, so all the things like toe-crossing and Swiss food seemed unusual and interesting. Also Bill is one of my favourite characters.

I was always rather disappointed that the finishing branch got kind of sucked in with the main school as the series went on, until they were practically the same. It would have been fun to keep it different and to have had more stories about older girls and their own issues.

Author:  Caroline [ Thu May 29, 2008 3:10 pm ]
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Alison H wrote:
I don't think anyone really seemed to know what the finishing branch is meant to be about at this point - some of the girls planned to go on to university/secretarial courses, people like Peggy Bettany didn't seem to have any plans at all, and a lot of the girls "didn't need" to work and so were either going to do voluntary work or presumably just hang around at home/look for husbands - so it must have been hard to plan the curriculum.


I initially took St Mildred's as being a replacement for the Special Sixth - a form for people specialising for a year before going on to university or other training (schools of nursing / art college / music college / secretarial college / whatever).

But you're right - it doesn't work like that at all in practice, as the Special Sixth was only for those who were carrying on with training and St Mildred's isn't, and the Special Sixth was for a tiny number who needed an extra year of school for some reason before starting their training (e.g. they were too young or their place at the uni wasn't ready for them yet or they needed to gain a scholarship in addition to A levels), and St Mildred's seems to be a for everyone - the academic stream and the social-skills-and-sitting-on-committees-and-helping-mother-till-I-marry stream.

I don't think EBD really thought it through!!

Author:  Alison H [ Thu May 29, 2008 3:21 pm ]
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From a logistical viewpoint, it didn't really matter how many people were in Special Sixth as they weren't employing any extra staff for it and didn't have any other additional overheads.

When they opened a separate branch at Welsen they must have needed to get as many pupils as they could get to try to make it pay, so maybe they tried to appeal to everyone and that's why they ended up with such a mixture of people ... er, although I'm never sure that EBD thought about these things in as much detail as we do :lol: .

Author:  JayB [ Thu May 29, 2008 4:19 pm ]
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Whereas Special Sixth was for specialising, I always imagined that St Mildred's was intended to broaden a girl's knowledge - so that girls who didn't learn an instrument would at least have some knowledge of music, for example, and be able to join in a conversation over dinner. In other words, it was intended to give them some social skills and prevent them from focusing on their own specialism to the exclusion of anything else, and ending up like those contestants on Mastermind who make huge scores on their specialist subjects but have no general knowledge. As it is really a gap year, girls who had spent two years studying for A levels in their own subject areas could take time out to learn about other things.

I was trying to think earlier today of anyone in the triplets' year who was going on to St Mildred's after Prefects. (Was there anyone? I have a line of dialogue in GWP II waiting for her if there was.) I thought the fact that EBD didn't follow her favourites to St Mildred's, or even send them there at all, suggests that she wasn't all that interested in that branch. Or perhaps her publishers were against it, thinking that most of her established readers wouldn't be interested in reading about girls of 17-19.

Author:  KB [ Thu May 29, 2008 11:31 pm ]
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JayB wrote:
I was trying to think earlier today of anyone in the triplets' year who was going on to St Mildred's after Prefects. (Was there anyone? I have a line of dialogue in GWP II waiting for her if there was.)


Actually, there are a few. This quote from Prefects:

Quote:
“You know,” Len said, “practically none of us will be here next term. We three will be at the university. Jeanne [Daudet] and Primrose [Trevoase] and Marie [Huber] and at least fifteen of VIb will be Millies. Ruey Richardson is going to Bedford to begin her P.T. training and Melanie Lucas is hoping to join her people in New York.”

Author:  jennifer [ Fri May 30, 2008 2:36 am ]
Post subject: 

When the CS was still in England, St Mildred's made sense - their students could go abroad for their final year of schooling to improve their language with native speakers and experience life in another country. After a year there, they could progress to university or other training, or return home. They had two classes, too, a more academically motivated one, and one that seemed to be for girls returning home.

Later, though, it doesn't make much sense for a girl who has spent her schooling abroad at a trilingual school to go to a finishing school with an emphasis on language and foreign culture. It would make more sense for someone like the triplets or Mary-Lou to have a gap year in England before starting university.

Author:  JayB [ Sat May 31, 2008 10:03 am ]
Post subject: 

KB wrote:
Actually, there are a few. This quote from Prefects:

“You know,” Len said, “practically none of us will be here next term. We three will be at the university. Jeanne [Daudet] and Primrose [Trevoase] and Marie [Huber] and at least fifteen of VIb will be Millies. Ruey Richardson is going to Bedford to begin her P.T. training and Melanie Lucas is hoping to join her people in New York.”


Thank you! At that rate, Primrose is going to be about 21 by the time she leaves school, isn't she? She's at least a year older than the triplets, and they're nearly nineteen.

Fifteen or more of VIb going to St Mildred's wouldn't leave many at the School proper to choose the Prefects from. (Actually, that fits in quite well with another story I've got on the backburner.)

And on another note, I find it odd that Len refers to Ruey, her adopted sister, as 'Ruey Richardson'. It's not as if there's more than one Ruey in the school and she needs to specify which one she's talking about.

Author:  Kathy_S [ Sun Jun 01, 2008 5:12 am ]
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I especially enjoyed seeing more of Miss Wilson in this one, everything from her interactions with Gillian to minutia such as her yodeling accomplishments. Even though Millie's turns out to be far larger than the "eighteen to twenty ... bargained for," it's not so large that she becomes a distant headmistress figure. Of course the down side is that she then largely disappears, even from many of the Swiss books.

I thought the Elma storyline was well done, and was especially interested to see the overt worries that Elma-Pamela could have some of the negative consequences of Elizabeth-Betty.

I wasn't so happy with Edna's treatment, and not just because it isn't clear what's so terrible about pale lips and shiny skin -- other than not fitting in -- though perhaps make-up is a natural part of the curriculum of a finishing school?

Particularly interesting to me was the discussion between Peggy & Edna of how one should present opinions/facts.
Quote:
“Well—and I don’t mean it unkindly, only you did ask me to help you—I think if you’d try to talk a little less as if you were certain you were right whatever you say. You see, people don’t like that sort of thing and it aggravates them and then they say, ‘Oh, better leave her alone!’ Do you see, Edna?”

Peggy was very red as she finished. Edna went even redder as she grasped the inwardness of this. “But if I am right?” she said.

“Even then, it’s better not to seem too awfully sure,” Peggy told her wisely.

On the one hand, I've given similar advice myself, even with regard to the CBB, about using "I think perhaps," "It seems to me" and similar "weasel words" when presenting an argument or opinion, since speaking with too much authority often does make others feel shut off or put down. At the same time, I'm aware that I may have bought in too thoroughly to a feminized (if pleasant) social construct. I know I've had problems with it professionally, to the extent that colleagues have had to tell me to be more forceful, lest I sound as though I doubt my own data, between an upbringing that included Peggyesque norms of polite discussion and a training that emphasized identifying even unlikely interpretations of data. So, I wonder to what extent Peggy's advice will hurt CS women thrust into a world in which men who are mostly hot air often end up far more successful than women (or men) who are supremely competent but not particularly forceful. On the other hand, it does seem still to be true that a degree of assertiveness that is praised in a man often still condemns a woman to the status of (rhymes with witch).

Author:  Tor [ Sun Jun 01, 2008 10:08 am ]
Post subject: 

Quote:
On the other hand, it does seem still to be true that a degree of assertiveness that is praised in a man often still condemns a woman to the status of (rhymes with witch).


So true....! I wish I had been given lessons on how to be assertive, and wish I didn't feel so guilty about it/care what people think of me when I am.

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