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#1: Books: The Rivals of the Chalet School Author: jennifer, Location: Taiwan

Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2007 1:12 pm
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A new school, St Scholastica's (aka the Saints) opens near the Chalet School and makes an initial bad impression when the headmistress attempts to poach Joey. The two schools start off on a bad footing, and a feud progresses nicely. The two schools get stranded on a walk. Joey falls through the ice rescuing the Saints from an ill advised skating expedition and nearly dies of pleuro-pneumonia. Fortunately, she is sung back to life by the Robin. Things get better for a while, but Chicken Pox and a snowball fight intervene. Finally, one of the Saints sends a nasty anonymous letter to Elisaveta, and is expelled as a result. Everyone makes up and is happy, except Vera, who is expelled. This is also the book that has the infamous Klu-Klux-Klan discussion.

So, what do you think of this one. Are the Saints and their headmistress thoroughly obnoxious, or does the Chalet school over react? How do Miss Browne and the St Scholastica's seniors compare to their counterparts in the Chalet School? Is Joey unreasonable in her defense of Elaine's treatment of the Robin? How is Joey maturing as a senior and a prefect - does she live up to her prefectly responsiblities, or does she make things worse? Is Vera's expulsion - one of only three in the series - warranted?

#2: Author: Alison H, Location: Manchester

Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2007 5:38 pm
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This was the first of the 3 "rival school" books (counting Bride and Feud as the other 2) that I read, and obviously the first chronologically too, so it seemed like a fresh, new plotline! Most schools have "rivalries" with neighbouring schools, after all, and it was nice to see another school featured. It was good to see Dick and Mollie around as well, and also Grizel and Gerry.

The Ku Klux Klan discussion, in which Margia & co seem to find the Klan's odious, horrific activities exciting, seems utterly abhorrent now, but this was written over 70 years ago and I'm sure EBD didn't mean for a minute to condone their activities. Shocking as it seems now, the Klan are presented as heroes in Gone With The Wind, which was written a few years later.

Vera probably deserved her expulsion - and I feel very sorry for Elisaveta, who is obviously missing her friends at the school and feeling lonely. Miss Browne and - apart from Gipsy and a few others - seem weak compared to their CS counterparts, but that isn't overdone.

What spoils this book for me, though, is the bit where Joey comes round because of Robin's singing. I know that it can happen, but I just find that bit rather silly. It's one of the very few times where one of the girls is actually close to death - and with Mary-Lou it was clear quite soon after her accident that she'd be OK, and we don't actually "see" Naomi after hers - and I just found the way it was resolved a bit silly.

#3: Author: Carys, Location: London

Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2007 8:50 pm
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Rival's is one of my favourites of the whole series.

The feud between the saints and the chaletians is completely believable in my opinion, each feels protective of their own. I especially like the way EBD conveys the snobbish British belief that the Saints automatically believe that they are a better school because they are "English" and not foreign.

It's also realistic in the sense that the end of the rivalry between the two schools is done very gradually and there's the emphasis that both schools were wrong in some part.

Jo's miraculous recovery is far fetched but I love this book too much to mind!

#4: Author: Mel, Location: UP NORTH

Posted: Sun Jul 08, 2007 10:40 pm
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I enjoy the winter atmosphere of the book - good to have skating mentioned again as it so often neglected. I too find the near death and recovery of Jo a little uncomfortable for modern taste. The rival school emphasises the fact that the Chalet School is not a typically English school after all in spite of what Gisela and Co wanted. The new school is there to show just how wonderful the CS is in contrast, embracing as it does the customs. food, languages of the continent. Why did Miss Brown take her to school to Tyrol anyway? She seems to be totally ill prepared even for the weather. I like the pranks of Jo and Co even as sub-prees. I can't see later prefects such as Peggy or Len doing that.

#5: Author: Rosalin, Location: Swansea

Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 10:25 am
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I think the feud is totally believable, and both sides are to blame. I think it develops in a natural manner and I find the ending convincing as well, which I don't in some of the other EBD feud situations. The Saints do look down on the Continental girls but it comes across as being a product of their time and education, so it's not something they can help. Prejudices take time to break down, after all.

I think the Chalet girls overreact quite badly to Elaine's treatment of the Robin. She may not be spoilt, but everyone certainly spoils her. Elaine shouldn't have been so rough but the response was out of proportion IMO.

My favourite part of the book is when they get stranded at the Dripping Rock. I like the variety of reactions and the way it gives the Chaletians and Saints a chance to mingle.

There are three things in this book which don't quite work for me.

Joey's recovery. It would have been quite a different series if she had died, but I think EBD let her illness go too far for her recovery to be credible.

The flour in the hair prank. I like this bit, but it seems wrong. Nowhere else IIRC do Prefects break out like this. By the time they reach the Sixth and particularly a prefectship, girls are responsible and leave that sort of behaviour to the Middles. I don't find this quite believable and the hair prank seems like something that girls of that age might do, after all they were still fairly young, but it doesn't fit with behaviour in the rest of the series.

Vera's expulsion. I think she deserved it, but the way Miss Browne talks to her is my problem. She could be Madge, Mademoiselle or Miss Annersley. I can understand the three of them having very similar styles as the first two chose to run a school together, and then appointed a like-minded successor. Miss Browne is a very different character and I think should behave a bit differently. I don't know how, but the scene jars.

#6: Author: JayB, Location: SE England

Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 10:54 am
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The flour in the hair prank comes after Joey's return following her illness, doesn't it, when everyone's in a rather silly mood in reaction to the worry. And I think the prefects in the Tyrol days tend to be younger than in the later books - there aren't many eighteen year olds at the school in the early days. Wouldn't Jo have had her sixteenth birthday in this term?

The early CS books generally feel quite quite modern for the time when they were written, but Joey's (near) deathbed scenes seem to me to be a harking back to Victorian literature - Beth in Little Women of course being the classic example - and a bit dated for the time when EBD was writing.

#7: Author: KathrynW, Location: London

Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 12:02 pm
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JayB wrote:

The early CS books generally feel quite quite modern for the time when they were written, but Joey's (near) deathbed scenes seem to me to be a harking back to Victorian literature - Beth in Little Women of course being the classic example - and a bit dated for the time when EBD was writing.

Whilst that is all very true and I agree completely with what everyone has said about it being unrealistic and silly, the scene still had me in tears when I re-read Rivals the other week Embarassed

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

Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 2:18 pm
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KathrynW wrote:

Whilst that is all very true and I agree completely with what everyone has said about it being unrealistic and silly, the scene still had me in tears when I re-read Rivals the other week Embarassed

It always has me in floods, too....

#9: Author: jennifer, Location: Taiwan

Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 1:48 am
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I will say that Miss Browne annoyed me. She seemed very unprepared for the practicalities of the move to Switzerland - down to appropriate clothing. She also hasn't seemed to really contemplate the effects of setting up a small school near a much more established one, except as a source ofstudents to steal. Her view of foreigners is distasteful, as she assumes that British girls should, of course, be more honourable than their continental counterparts. Her initial interaction with the Bettanys shows poor judgement. Even if they weren't related to Madge, insulting the Chalet school and its teaching to one of its students is hardly going to make a good impression. She also shows bad judgement with her students. She confides too much in her head girl, which stirs up trouble, and is initially and immediately confrontational in her dealings with the school.

The feud itself seems realistic - a few bad incidents in the beginning, some misunderstandings and a couple of bullheaded personalities on either side. It's also nice that Joey and Maureen's illnesses don't immediately end it.

I find the emotional protection of the Robin to get a bit silly after a while. Both here and in Eustacia and in the CS and the Lintons it's stated that 'in all her short life she had never known anything but the tenderest of love'. I'm not sure keeping a girl of eight or ten from the bare thought that people can be abrupt, or rude, or not regard her as the best thing since sliced bread is a good parenting tactic. She might be sweet tempered and angelic, but the others *do* spoil her.

#10: Author: Jennie, Location: Cambridgeshire

Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 1:29 pm
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I enjoyed this book, it was a lively diversion from getting stuck in shepherds' huts, but I think it exposed the weaknesses of the CS as much as those of the other school.

Miss Browne did get off on the wrong foot by trying to poach pupils, but I don't think it was as mcuh of a crime as Jo thought.

The episode with the walks showed that both schools were at fault, but I did find Miss Browne's over-reaction a little bit strange.

Vera Smithers, i feel, did deserve to be expelled, but only as the anonymous letter episode came as a last thing in a career of wrong-doing.

Jo's near death experience was rather overdone, and the 'Red Sarafan' as a cure has of course been the occasion for a lot of joking on the board, and simply don't find it realistic.

By this time, I'm starting to get a bit annoyed with the way Robin is treated. She's ten, not a baby any longer, and shielding her from contact with the general run of people with their various attitudes is doing her no good. It does raise the question for me as to how far sheltering goes before it becomes over-protectiveness.

As for what I put in my first paragraph, although EBd intended us to see that the CS was the role-model for schools, the girls were by no means perfect in their behaviour, and certainly did not act in the way Madge and Mamselle had tried to instil in them.

#11: Author: JayB, Location: SE England

Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 2:05 pm
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I've noticed, not just in this book, that Captain Humphries never seems to get much say in his daughter's upbringing. It always seems to be Jem and Madge who make the decisions, without much reference to him.

#12: Author: Caroline, Location: Manchester

Posted: Tue Jul 10, 2007 2:59 pm
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Jennie wrote:

I enjoyed this book, it was a lively diversion from getting stuck in shepherds' huts, but I think it exposed the weaknesses of the CS as much as those of the other school.

Miss Browne did get off on the wrong foot by trying to poach pupils, but I don't think it was as mcuh of a crime as Jo thought.

Add to this that Jo, as a prefect, should have known better than to repeat the story of Miss Browne's attempted poaching to the other girls at the CS. She effectively prejudices the girls against the newcomers before they've even met.

And if Jo didn't know better, Jem or Dick or someone should have made her promise not to say anything, rather than just making a lighthearted comment about not starting any blood fueds....

#13: Author: jennifer, Location: Taiwan

Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2007 2:50 am
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Caroline wrote:

Jennie wrote:

But it's Joey! Very Happy

Actually, it fits in well with her adult tendency to have trouble determining when it is and isn't appropriate to pass on information, and to whom.

#14: Author: Caroline, Location: Manchester

Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2007 8:51 am
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Well, I know. And she is a very young / new prefect, and it does make for a good story to tell your chums.

But I still think Jem or Dick or Madge (when the saga was repeated to her by Jo, as no doubt it would have been) should have had the fore thought to say keep this to yourself, Joey, or something along those lines.

Having said all of that, I do like the fact that EBD makes it clear that, whilst the Saints are at fault in many ways, (a) the Chaletians are also at fault quite a lot, and (b) the wrong attitude of the Saints is mostly down to Miss Browne's lack of appropriate leadership and poor decision making - confiding too much in her girls, not listening to her staff, taking her school to Austria apparently on a whim, not being properly prepared / doing her research adequately and then not seeking local advice when she got there.

After all, Madge knew Austria, the Tiernsee and the people before she decided to found a school there. And she started small, got in with the locals, was generally respectful to local cutoms and was therefore well liked. Her school added to the community. We are not even sure if Miss Browne had visited the Tiernsee before deciding to move her school - although one imagines some visit must have been made, as she has the school built, rather than buy up an existing chalet, I think.

#15: Author: Loryat,

Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 4:54 pm
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I love this book, including the infamous Red Sarafan scene. Don't have much else to say, apart from that. Very Happy

(Though I do think Miss Browne was a bit of a skunk trying to poach Joey - using what is basically racism as justification - and think Vera fully deserved to be expelled, not for the letter by itself but as a culmination of things. Vera's actually very nasty and manipulative - there's a bit where the feud might have died down and she realises it and stirs things up to her own ends (I think)).

#16: Author: Liz K, Location: Bedfordshire

Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 5:12 pm
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JayB wrote:

I've noticed, not just in this book, that Captain Humphries never seems to get much say in his daughter's upbringing. It always seems to be Jem and Madge who make the decisions, without much reference to him.

Many thanks for pointing this out - I'd NEVER thought of this!

And I'm the one who's picked out from the drabble list the one about Robin's life if Captain Humphries had never died!!!!!!!!!!!!! I could really go to town now if I wanted.

Embarassed

(still giving that one a lot of thought, please bear with me, I haven't forgotten).

#17: Author: Vick, Location: Leeds, Yorkshire

Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 8:16 pm
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This was the first book I read in the series and i loved it all. Admittedly joey's illness was quite far fetched when you look at it now, but when I first read it, I was hoping desperately that she wouldn't die. Shocked

I think the feud was quite realistic and well written. Some things take time to resolve and sometimes they will flare back up before everything is sorted out.

Joey is also portrayed as still being quite young in her outlook and as a very new prefect, probably hadn't realised all her responsibilities yet. The pranks show her impulsiveness is still there and that she sometimes thinks she is still a Middle who can do these things

#18: Author: Han, Location: Wondering what to do with herself

Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2007 9:58 pm
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This is one of the (relatively few) books that I've managed to get my hands on and read. I think the two things that really struck me on reading were the Robin's treatment and the attitude to the KKK, which was a bit of a shock on a first reading!

Robin's treatment has always grated with me slightly, I just can't believe that any child could be treated like that and not grow up a complete horror! But then it sometimes seems as though EBD throws in random moments of the Other Robin to try and balance the whole thing, like the drenching of Eigen in Eustacia and her reluctance to apologise. There's also an interesting bit around then about her father and Madge, where he tells Robin that she must always obey Madge. It made me wonder whether there was still a fairly fixed social idea that men should not get too involved in the raising of children, particularly girls, and that Capt. Humphries deliberately leaves the task to Madge as a woman.

#19: Author: Caroline, Location: Manchester

Posted: Sun Aug 05, 2007 4:49 pm
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I wonder if perhaps the Robin reminded her father a little too much of the wife he had lost...

Also, I suspect he was a rather old father - Madge suggests he was a friend of *her* father, making him likely to be aged somewhere in between Madge / Dick's age and their parents age. I could quite believe he was mid-forties when we first meet him. Maybe as such an old father, he really hadn't a clue how to look after a girl of 6, no matter how much he loved her.

#20: Author: KatS, Location: Vancouver

Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2007 7:29 pm
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I was reading Sylvia Waugh's Mennyms Under Siege, and came across Wimpey reading Rivals of the Chalet School in bed. It includes the quote from Rivals: "Her black eyes were half open and her cheeks were scarlet. A tearing, rusty sound..." A few pages later it reads "Wimpey continued to read the harrowing tale of Joey Bettany's brush with death" So obviously someone thought Rivals exciting enough to be quoted in their own book!

(I agonised over posting this, as I'm feeling very intimidated by all the comments, and think this is probably something people have brought up ages ago, but decided I have to start somewere)

#21: Author: Dawn, Location: Leeds, West Yorks

Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2007 7:32 pm
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Hi Kat and welcome

I've got some of the Mennyms books and that's prompting me to go and excavate them and see if I've got that one, cos I've never read them and most certainly didn't know about that

#22: Author: Lesley, Location: Allhallows, Kent

Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2007 7:39 pm
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Thanks Kat - that's really interesting, seeing one of EBD's books quoted in another. Please don't feel intimidated - even if it were something that had already been mentioned it wouldn't matter - we're just as likely to discuss it again! Laughing

#23: Author: Lottie, Location: Humphrey's Corner

Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2007 8:06 pm
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I'd forgotten that bit. Embarassed

And I think my daughter's got her Mennyms books with her, instead of leaving them at home for me to read! Crying or Very sad

#24: Author: Róisín, Location: Ireland

Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2007 8:11 pm
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I always think it's fascinating to see where EBD has been quoted or referred to! Thanks Kat Very Happy

#25: Author: Alison H, Location: Manchester

Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2007 8:23 pm
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Really glad you decided to post, Kat Very Happy

, and I also think it's really interesting to see where EBD books've been referred to by other authors.

#26: Author: Loryat,

Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 5:19 pm
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KatS wrote:

I was reading Sylvia Waugh's Mennyms Under Siege, and came across Wimpey reading Rivals of the Chalet School in bed. It includes the quote from Rivals: "Her black eyes were half open and her cheeks were scarlet. A tearing, rusty sound..." A few pages later it reads "Wimpey continued to read the harrowing tale of Joey Bettany's brush with death" So obviously someone thought Rivals exciting enough to be quoted in their own book!

(I agonised over posting this, as I'm feeling very intimidated by all the comments, and think this is probably something people have brought up ages ago, but decided I have to start somewere)

I noticed that too when I read that book - I got very excited Embarassed

! (I was only about eleven at the time).

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