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Themes: EBD's portrayal of war
http://www.the-cbb.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4837
Author:  Róisín [ Thu Jul 31, 2008 6:46 pm ]
Post subject:  Themes: EBD's portrayal of war
In the books from Exile through to Jo to the Rescue the war plays a major part. Was the portrayal a good one? Do you think that EBD was accurate, or were there any war plotlines which she exaggerated for plot reasons? Any opinions on her treatment of different nationalities during the war? What about her portrayal of war compared to other authors?

Please raise any issue in relation to this discussion topic below :D
Author:  Miss Di [ Fri Aug 01, 2008 3:38 am ]
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Gosh 1/2 my honours disertation was pretty much on this topic.
Trying to remember what I actually wrote (well it was a long time ago).

She was pretty amazing in Exile - she was one of, it not the earliest to mention the concentration camps and the violence towards the Jews. Funny then she didn't pick up that Joey probably shouldn't have pretented to be a Gypsy when the were stopped by the Gestapo...

Boring as they were, the chapters on growing your own food and so on in At War also were an important reflection of what was happening in 'the real world'.

Of course she ignored the bits she didn't like (Joey and No Evacuees?) and exagerated others (dropping messages on the school en route to bomb London) but I think the war books are some of her best. And she emphasises the Germans are not the enemy, the Nazis are.
Author:  Abi [ Fri Aug 01, 2008 2:21 pm ]
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I think EBD's portrayal of war is really interesting - she treats it seriously and usually sensitively, whereas some GO authors tended to use it just for the exciting plotlines it brought.

I like the way she emphasises that it's an ideology that is the evil and the specific people who follow it, rather than simply a nation. I also found the part where Herr Goldmann is being attacked and Robin and the others go out to save him quite realistic and surely it's quite unusual for a GO author to have used a really violent incident like this, especially as they didn't actually save him in the end. And of course the girls wouldn't have understood what it was they were going into and the effect it would have.
Author:  JayB [ Fri Aug 01, 2008 3:55 pm ]
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Quote:
I think EBD's portrayal of war is really interesting - she treats it seriously and usually sensitively, whereas some GO authors tended to use it just for the exciting plotlines it brought.


Agree - the Gertrud Becker storyline is also handled sensitively, and isn't there just to provide an exciting spy story. The spy story in Highland Twins was much less realistic, but even then, EBD tied it in with Betty W-D's story, which had been ongoing since the Tyrol books.

I think she also writes very well about the day to day business of wartime life. Digging for Victory, the blackout, air raids, the difficulty of travel in wartime, etc. They don't obtrude, but she makes good use of them when they serve the story. Of course she was living it at the time, and I think it's another example of EBD being at her best when she wrote about what she knew.

She didn't have firsthand knowledge of life in Austria after the Anschluss, of course, and I wonder if she knew any refugees who gave her the inspiration for the story and the background information for Exile. It does all have a ring of truth about it - not so much the actual events in the book as the atmosphere and the different characters' reactions.

(I also think that if it hadn't been for the Anschluss and the War, the series might have ended at New. EBD had probably gone as far as she could with the Tiernsee setting, it was becoming more and more difficult to find ways of keeping Jo connected to the school, and when she tried to take Jo away from the school, in India, it was turned down.)
Author:  Alison H [ Sun Aug 03, 2008 4:07 pm ]
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Really she was in a unique position in that she had an ongoing series set in Austria, in which many of the main characters were Austrian, at the time of the Anschluss: I'd love to read her thoughts on how she made the decision about how to deal with the situation in the books. Although there are odd references to world events, e.g. the Spanish Civil War, the war books are the only time that the books are really set in a specific time (with the arguable exception of the Mau Mau uprising which is only mentioned in passing): events such as the Abdication and Indian independence just don't get mentioned. Although it quite probably saved the series, at the time it possibly totally upset her apple cart in terms of story planning (that was a very GO-ish sentence :roll: !).

I'm not sure that all the main Austrian characters leaving Tyrol is realistic - especially the bizarre reference to Anna somehow getting smuggled across Europe in the middle of the War :? - but I think that EBD did very well in tackling issues such as the attack on Herr Goldmann, the death of Herr Marani in a concentration camp and the internment of people like Frieda, as well as the more usual war storylines such as spy stories, coping with the blackout, and "digging for victory" which she also did well.

On the down side, the idea of Karl Linders dropping a message on the school in the middle of an air raid was just silly, and I'm always disappointed that neither Madge nor Joey really involve themselves in war work. I know that they both had young children at the time, and that in a rural area there wouldn't have been the demand for people to do firewatching or to help during air raids as there was in places more severely affected by bombing; but the Madge of the early books would have been out there doing everything she could to help, or at the very least taking in evacuees.

Exile topped the "favourite CS book" poll we had a while ago by quite a big margin, IIRC.
Author:  moiser30 [ Sun Aug 03, 2008 4:58 pm ]
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I just love how she captures the war spirit in Exile that's the only one I have that is set during the war though I have order the chalet school at war but that's not part of this topic, As I was saying it is portraying the resistance The Chalet school help a Jewish man to escape which many people did in the war and when they were found out like most other they had to flee for there lifes.
Author:  JayB [ Sun Aug 03, 2008 5:03 pm ]
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Quote:
Exile topped the "favourite CS book" poll we had a while ago by quite a big margin, IIRC.


I think Exile rather stands apart from the series as a whole. The other war books are first and foremost school stories with the war in the background. The first half of Exile isn't really school story. It's about the Anschluss and how it affects the characters, and the setting just happens to involve a school.

I think we're fortunate that the war came along just as EBD was reaching her peak as a writer - or maybe the war just brought out the best in her as a writer.
Author:  Sunglass [ Wed Aug 06, 2008 2:04 pm ]
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I'm trying to remember more than a vague sense of how evacuees were represented in War - am I right in thinking Joey actively didn't want them, and took in the Highland twins in part as a way of filling up her large house so she wouldn't have anyone billeted on her, and that it's presented as a perfectly reasonable stance? Also, there are (from what I remember at least) some fairly stereotypical portrayals of evacuee children.

It's a pity, really, because most of EBD's representations of war are very sensitive, and open to all perspectives in an international sense - I agree with whoever said it was a shame we didn't see Madge and Joey doing war work even in the fairly small way that might have been necessary or possible at Howells village. They are both energetic, capable, broad-minded women with experience of children from all kinds of very different backgrounds (with a lot of domestic help, relatively speaking, given the war setting, when a lot of domestics went into war work) - and in some ways would have been ideal people to host confused, dislocated children from the cities. Especially given the extremely sympathetic treatment given slightly later to Tom Gay's home missionary activities.


One thing just occurred to me as I was writing - we know Frieda was interned. Why wasn't Joey's Anna, or the Pfeiffens? Or am I just not remembering that they were? I don't remember the reference to Anna being smuggled across Europe either - what does it actually say?
Author:  Mel [ Wed Aug 06, 2008 2:55 pm ]
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There is some mention in Goes to it, I think, about Robin and her friends wanting to do something for the evacuees, but nothing came of it. I seem to remember that the authorites were afraid of the girls catching measles. I agree that it is rather awful that Joey had no evacuees, but could she really have coped?
Author:  Ray [ Wed Aug 06, 2008 2:57 pm ]
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My understanding of internment is that it was slightly random - some people were interned, others weren't.

Plus, you have to wonder whether the Pfeiffens and Anna perhaps applied for British citizenship to avoid being sent back to Austria, which Frieda might well not have done.

Lastly, the line about Anna is in Exile and it's something along the lines of "by means known only to herself Anna had joined them in Guernsey". This could mean she took the same sort of path that Joey et al did to get out of Austria, or it could mean that Mr Flower helped her as he did Jockel, or it could just simply be that EBD couldn't figure out how she could have escaped and so left it vague!

Ray *:)*
Author:  Alison H [ Wed Aug 06, 2008 3:57 pm ]
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"Aliens" were categorised according to how high-risk they were deemed to be and only the higher-risk people were interned, but the way it was worked out seems to've been rather random: I've heard of all sorts of cases where people who were of German, Austrian or Italian origin but'd lived in the UK for years and years and even had children in the British Armed Forces were interned.

There's a reference in either Lavender or Gay - I think it's Gay - to Marie and Andreas applying for British citizenship but there being a problem with the paperwork, but it's never mentioned again and it's not made clear at what point the application was made.

I think EBD just wanted Karen (who is not named between leaving Tyrol and Carola but according to some of the later Swiss books was with the School all along), Marie, Andreas and Anna there for continuity, and just conveniently ignored the issues about them leaving Austria. There's no detail given about how Herr Laubach "escaped" either, and Frau Mieders also turns up in Britain after earlier saying that she wouldn't be able to leave Austria because the Nazis would insist that her young unmarried sister stay to work there (which presumably would also have applied to Anna and Karen, and probably Frieda, who didn't marry Bruno until she got to Italy, and Maria Marani as well).

I don't suppose she meant us to think about it all in so much detail!
Author:  Lulie [ Wed Aug 06, 2008 9:37 pm ]
Post subject: 
Sunglass wrote:
I'm trying to remember more than a vague sense of how evacuees were represented in War - am I right in thinking Joey actively didn't want them, and took in the Highland twins in part as a way of filling up her large house so she wouldn't have anyone billeted on her, and that it's presented as a perfectly reasonable stance?


Totally from memory I think that this was a common view at the time - or at least a view that was portrayed by the media of the time as common. A lot of the evacuees came from city slums and were seen as dirty, ill-mannered and definitely more working class than country working-class, if you see my point. A lot of them certainly wouldn't have known what we see as basic things such as where milk comes from etc. A lot of my students are surprised when they are expected to know where milk, meat and eggs come from.
Author:  JayB [ Wed Aug 06, 2008 11:26 pm ]
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Quote:
My understanding of internment is that it was slightly random - some people were interned, others weren't.


My mother has said that one of her teachers, who was of Italian origin, but had been in England for many years, was interned, but later in the war they had an Italian landlord who was a much more recent migrant who was not interned, and his brother served in the British army.
Author:  Aishwarya [ Thu Aug 07, 2008 11:33 am ]
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Sunglass wrote:
I'm trying to remember more than a vague sense of how evacuees were represented in War - am I right in thinking Joey actively didn't want them, and took in the Highland twins in part as a way of filling up her large house so she wouldn't have anyone billeted on her, and that it's presented as a perfectly reasonable stance?



I reread Highland Twins last night, and yes, this is pretty much it. It's presented as completely acceptable, because she couldn't 'risk' having the evacuees anywhere near the triplets. Nor can she do war work, because Margot is a delicate child who she can't leave at home or in someone else's care.
Author:  Kate [ Thu Aug 07, 2008 12:47 pm ]
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In fairness to Joey... I know she had lots of help but I can't imagine taking 2 or 3 evacuees as well as triplets! Even if they were lovely children, there would be inevitable trouble with homesickness and so on. I couldn't deal with three toddlers 24/7, let alone adding any more to the mix! At least F&F were 'known' to Joey and would be in school for most of the time.
Author:  Sunglass [ Thu Aug 07, 2008 1:29 pm ]
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Oh, I'm not trying to point a finger at Joey specifically, or sounding holier than thou about taking in total strangers - though huge numbers of people in more difficult circumstances and in smaller spaces than Plas Gwyn, did, at a time of national crisis. (From what I've read, I would have said that realistically, she and Madge would have been pressed into service whether or not they volunteered, by a local billeting committee or the vicar, when it was obvious they had space.)

It just seems ironic, when Jo then spends the rest of the series obsessively adopting and housing various children and girls in need. In some ways it's quite un-Joey to actively make it impossible for her to be given evacuees. Though I suppose it's fair to say that Joey at this point is Transitional Joey, neither messy schoolgirl nor Mother of Millions and Unhaloed Saint.

It's more EBD's position that interests me - look at how enlightened the Tyrol books were about rural poverty and the necessity for good medical care for poor children. She doesn't stereotype Tyrolean peasant poverty or lack of education - is it because it's more picturesque than a bunch of working-class London children who just want to go home? Or simply that they make a less good story than Highlanders with second sight and amusing accents and kilts, and a dispossessed princess?
Author:  Abi [ Thu Aug 07, 2008 5:13 pm ]
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Maybe EBD was aware that she might be unsuccessful in portraying working class city children - in the CS books the only character she tries anything like it with is Joan and she's not really comparable.

Also, it would almost certainly have had to be a fairly major part of the plot and perhaps she wanted to concentrate on a more School based plot. Also, perhaps she or her publishers felt that characters from that backround wouldn't have been popular - there are very very few GO books that have any important working class characters.
Author:  claire [ Thu Aug 07, 2008 5:18 pm ]
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Thing is with a child under 14 Jo would have been exempt from war work (she could have volunteered but wouldn't have been made to work - unless the authorities saw that Anna did the work and got the exemption)
Author:  Aishwarya [ Thu Aug 07, 2008 9:09 pm ]
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Not blaming Joey much either, but it seems rather out of character for her and Madge not to be doing more war work. EBD generally does a good job of portraying the effects of the war on daily life (and does it brilliantly in Exile particularly) so not exploring this angle seems rather a waste!
Author:  jennifer [ Fri Aug 08, 2008 2:45 am ]
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Sunglass wrote:
O
It just seems ironic, when Jo then spends the rest of the series obsessively adopting and housing various children and girls in need. In some ways it's quite un-Joey to actively make it impossible for her to be given evacuees. Though I suppose it's fair to say that Joey at this point is Transitional Joey, neither messy schoolgirl nor Mother of Millions and Unhaloed Saint.


She's very protective about who her children associate with when they're young though - her adoptees are all girls from the right sorty of families, not lower class kids from London. I can definitely see her not wanting kids who are going to teach the triplets the wrong sort of accent and ideas, given her views of village schools.

I can definitely see Madge doing war work, as once she moves to England she settles into a life of volunteerism. However, when the war starts Madge and Joey have, between them, Robin (15), Daisy (12), Peggy and Rix (8), Bride, David and Primula (7), Jackie (6), Sybil (5), Josette (1) and the triplets (newborns), and the older are day girls at school for the first few years. Add in the MacDonalds, and they are already caring for children from six different families.
Author:  KB [ Fri Aug 08, 2008 3:05 am ]
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Actually the excuse that always makes me laugh about refugees is the one in Lavender:

Quote:
‘Jesanne Gellibrand is taking everyone in the two Sixths who can’t go home. The Dragon House is a huge place, and they haven’t billeted anyone on them because it’s so far from any school or village. They offered to take old people, I know, but the old people didn’t like it. They said it was so quiet, and they hated all the creakings and rustlings at night. So it was no use, for they wouldn’t stay. We are quite as far as I like to be from the high-road, but the Dragon House drive is nearly three miles long, and then they’re six miles from the village. And they couldn’t take it over for a school, because Mr Bennett had had almost every inch of available ground ploughed up for crops as soon as ever the war began. There is no room anywhere for playing-fields. Jesanne told me that even the tennis-courts are planted with vegetables; and they have the two big lawns in front of the house for potatoes.


So they prefer the risk of being bombed to 'creakings and rustlings'? Would they really have been given the option?
Author:  Jennie [ Fri Aug 08, 2008 11:33 am ]
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Part of the problem is that EBD obviously believed that all evacuees were 'slum children' from the East End of London. They weren't. They evacuated middle-class children from London as well, and certainly, the High School I went to worked half time during the war, as a Grammar School from the fringes of London was evacuated to Nottinghamshire for the duration.

So the likelihood was that the children in the village would have been the right sort anyway. And don't forget that places such as Hampstead and St. John's Wood were very expensive places to live and bring up children, and not all parents believed in boarding school.
Author:  JayB [ Fri Aug 08, 2008 11:44 am ]
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Quote:
So they prefer the risk of being bombed to 'creakings and rustlings'? Would they really have been given the option?


Yes. Evacuation was strongly encouraged, but it wasn't compulsory. (Unless, like the Highland Twins' home, a place was requisitioned for military purposes). Lots of people came home. My mother's mother brought my mother and her two sisters home after 18 months evacuated because the two sisters weren't happy in their billet, even though there were still air raids taking place in their home town. Eventually so many children had come back the authorities had to start re-opening schools.

I can well imagine that old people who'd spent all their lives in a town with family, shops, church etc all close by would rather take their chances in their own homes than be stuck out in the country miles from anywhere in a place they couldn't get out of.

(I'd have thought the Dragon House would have been ideal for military or intelligence purposes - being so far from anywhere it would be very easy to maintain security).
Author:  Alison H [ Fri Aug 08, 2008 12:10 pm ]
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My old school was evacuated en masse from Manchester to a rural part of Cheshire - good job because the school building took a direct hit during the Blitz :( . I'd quite like to've seen a city school set up shop (so to speak) round the corner from the CS :lol: .

To get back to the issue of Madge and Joey, I know that Madge had a houseful with her own kids and her nieces and nephews, but I would've thought that the person who took on the care of both Robin and Juliet when she was a young single woman with no "help" outside term time would have been the first to volunteer to take in evacuees ...
Author:  elanortook [ Sat Aug 09, 2008 9:53 pm ]
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I only read "Exile" and "at War" recently, and didn't really pay much attention to Joey not being involved in war work...oops

The internment issue interested me as Frieda seemed to be interned for such a short time, and had no complaints. Weren't internment camps often rather awful? Also, I know the Chalet School was technically an English School with largely (at this point) English staff and students, but it seems odd to me that they were allowed to settle in Guernsey/Armishire with so little fuss. With this exception of Frieda no internments seem to have taken place, "furriners" seem to have found it easy to reach from the continent, Gertrude Becker managed to infiltrate it. PLUS the German Luftwaffer was dropping notes to them!

I have been astonished by EBD's portrayal of the war. With some exceptions (glossing over aspects of the English involvement - internment camps, treatment of foreigners in general) her balance is astonishing. The stress on the coersion placed on the average German to join, or atleast passively accept the Nazi regime, the peace league, Gwensie's defence of men accused of signalling to Nazi's. EBD was trying hard to help small girls all the facets of a complicated war.
Author:  Tor [ Mon Aug 11, 2008 10:10 am ]
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JayB wrote:

Quote:
(I'd have thought the Dragon House would have been ideal for military or intelligence purposes - being so far from anywhere it would be very easy to maintain security).


Maybe it was, and that complicated excuse was a cover story?!!
Author:  Sunglass [ Mon Aug 11, 2008 10:36 am ]
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And all that creaking and rustling the old people apparently complained about was actually a bunch of decoders and resistance organisers getting on with things surreptitiously in the basement?
Author:  JennieP [ Sat Aug 16, 2008 2:17 pm ]
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Anyone for a drabble on that?
There would be lots of stunning men in uniforms for the staff to make a change from doctors!
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