The CBB
http://www.the-cbb.co.uk/

Families: The Bettany Three
http://www.the-cbb.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4558
Author:  jennifer [ Wed May 21, 2008 2:39 pm ]
Post subject:  Families: The Bettany Three
The Original family of the Chalet School: Madge, Dick and Joey.

What do you think of the Bettany family and it's interactions? We don't see much of the three of them together, aside from the first book, but we do see Joey and Dick and Joey and Madge together. How do you think Madge managed as a mother figure to her younger sister? Who was the dominant sibling?

Any other thoughts?
Author:  Alison H [ Wed May 21, 2008 3:46 pm ]
Post subject: 
Madge very much seems like the one in charge - EBD actually says that she makes the decisions. At the start of School At Dick just seems to scratch his head and say that he wishes he knew what to do about "the girls", whilst Madge is the one with all the ideas. Madge also seems very maternal towards Joey - when Joey's young, and later on e.g. in Joey & Co.

Later on we see Madge wishing that Dick was around to advise her on expanding the school, and Dick making remarks about women being helpless, so it sounds as if Dick, as the man, was expected to be the one in charge ... he just wasn't :lol: .

I wish we saw more of Madge and Dick together, actually - it'd be interesting to see their reunion after the War, or Madge looking after him when Mollie was ill, or their letters arranging for Madge and Jem to look after Dick and Mollie's children. Or Madge telling him about Jem - she must have been upset that he (Dick) couldn't make it to the wedding, although it's never mentioned.

One of my big gripes about the series as a whole, wonderful though it is, is that Madge starts off as such a strong, caring character, and then turns into the person who's dosed by Jem, can't find time to write to tell David and Sybil about the extended stay in Canada herself, and bullies Sybil and Josette into going abroad with her when they don't want to. And that she's more or less written out as a major character after the War. It's such a shame :( . Early Madge is great.
Author:  Emma A [ Wed May 21, 2008 4:35 pm ]
Post subject: 
I often wonder whether or not Joey might actually be the dominant sibling: certainly everything that Madge does (almost) is for Joey's benefit - even starting the school is mostly due to her younger sister's poor health. Later, Joey almost holds Madge to ransom (unconsciously) by getting ill so easily, and so I think Madge tends to think first and foremost about Joey than about anyone else.

Certainly later on, in EBD's mind at least, Joey was the dominant one, who had most interaction with the School, and brought the sense of continuity to a long series.
Author:  Sunglass [ Wed May 21, 2008 6:39 pm ]
Post subject: 
I like the idea of Joey 'the Chicken' consciously or unconsciously holding Madge and/Dick hostage with her bad health. My sense of who's dominant in the very early scenes of School at the Chalet is that EBD, while she appears to believe in male dominance at least some of the time, nonetheless needs men to be weak or absent quite a lot of the time for the purposes of a female-centred plot. So Dick needs not to be able to rein in Madge's idea of starting a school (which always comes across to me as a bit feather-brained at this stage - with minimal money and no experience, to randomly choose somewhere you once went on holidays to open an Anglophone school with a sister, an unwanted neighbouring child and the niece of a partner) to go ahead - so she has to write him as a bit 'boyish' and weak, rather than the dominant dosing doctors of the later books. Jem would never have 'allowed' his sister to rush off on this hare-brained scheme, even if Margot had the desire or opportunity to do so - but by the time he appears in Madge's life, the school is already up and running and can do without her.

Which is a slightly garbled ay of saying that the entire premise of the CS books requires a weak man at the start.
Author:  JayB [ Wed May 21, 2008 8:29 pm ]
Post subject: 
I wonder why EBD gave Madge and Joey a brother at all? The plot of School At could have worked perfectly well without him. Madge could have had that opening conversation with the family solicitor, or Mdlle Lepattre, or the local vicar (Rosalie's father?). I like Dick, though, so I'm glad he's there.
Author:  abbeybufo [ Wed May 21, 2008 9:09 pm ]
Post subject: 
It may not have been a conscious decision, but having Dick as part of the family gave the opportunity for more charactes/pupils, in terms of cousins, later :D

In the mores of the 1920s, too, it is dubious whether Madge would have been allowed by the aunts/guardians/solicitor whoever to take off on her own; that Dick existed at all enabled her to be independent because he could back her up with said a/g/s - in 1925 women of Madge's age didn't even have the vote :shock:
Author:  Sunglass [ Wed May 21, 2008 9:38 pm ]
Post subject: 
I fear this is too true. Presumably the Guardian, who is newly dead at the start of the series, took precedence over Dick, at least until he came of age, but the G's demise and disastrous grasp of their finances (another instance of weak male control driving a female plot) and EBD's writing of Dick as not very masterful and off to India in ten minutes anyway, means Madge is not only at liberty to set off on her own account, but actually has to. I think it's interesting that EBD carefully sets things up so that it's not simply a matter of a woman (always referred to as a 'girl') in her early twenties haring off to start a business in Austria because she feels like it, but that the start of the novel is set up to suggest that she has no other choices, mostly because of Joey's health preventing her from staying in the UK or accompanying Dick to India to marry a Rajah/dazzle the Raj society in Delhi/start a mission school for Dalits. Joey being fragile and needing an education basically acts as a kind of naturalising factor for Madge's pretty unconventional entrepreneurial spirit!

The thing I've sometimes found slightly unlikely about the start of Chalet is that Madge, Dick and Joey had the money and leisure (and Joey good enough health) to gad around Europe to the extent that Joey already spoke such good French and German just from holidays. Are we to imagine they were quite wealthy until the Guardian messed up their finances? Do we know what their father did for a living, for example?
Author:  Alison H [ Wed May 21, 2008 10:53 pm ]
Post subject: 
I think their father's referred to as "Major Bettany" somewhere, so presumably he was in the army.

They do seem to've done a lot of travelling - they spent several weeks in Austria first time round. Incidentally, there's no mention of their guardian or anyone else having accompanied them, but I can't imagine that it would have been considered proper for Madge at around 19 to go abroad with just Dick and Joey, or for Joey at 7 to go abroad without anyone other than Madge and Dick to look after her.

I've always assumed that they had a substantial "private income" which was lost when their guardian made poor investments ... shame the book was actually written before the Wall Street Crash or that'd explain it!
Author:  Anjali [ Thu May 22, 2008 12:58 am ]
Post subject: 
Didn't Mademoiselle Lepattre travel with them? I thought she had acted as their 'chaperone' during their Tyrol holiday which is why Madge thought of her when she needed a partner....maybe it was just me filling in the gaps :roll:
Author:  jennifer [ Thu May 22, 2008 5:06 am ]
Post subject: 
I rather like the idea of Joey as the dominant sibling. The decision to go to Austria and start the school is mainly due to Joey's poor health - I figure that if Joey had been healthy all three of them would have gone to India; Madge to keep house for Dick, and Joey to a school. In later years, Joey is the most dominant figure personality wise, and Madge is still very maternal towards her, even as adults.

I agree that Dick was necessary for the plot. If it had just been Madge and Joey there would have been a solicitor who had charge of their remaining money and assets, who probably wouldn't have consented to selling the house.

I wonder what Madge would have done then? She may have tried to get a teaching job in a small school, bargaining for Joey's school fees and room and board as part of her salary, leaving their other income for the remaining expenses. She could have then rented out the house to the miners, for some additional income. Or she could have turned the house into a boarding house for the miners, with a small living area for her and Joey, and continued to send Joey to the local school. Or she and Mlle Lepattre could have tried to start their school in the existing house, keeping it to a small enough school to house there.
Author:  JayB [ Thu May 22, 2008 8:27 am ]
Post subject: 
Quote:
If it had just been Madge and Joey there would have been a solicitor who had charge of their remaining money and assets,


Not necessarily. If the parents died intestate, or left everything to their children unconditionally, Madge's share would have come to her when she was 21 with no strings. No-one could have prevented her from doing anything she liked. (Joy Shirley and Rosamund Kane come to mind as young women of the era who did as they pleased once they were 21.)

All that mattered was whether she was Joey's legal guardian and thus able to decide Joey's future and have access to Joey's share of the inheritance. And she presumably was that anyway, since Dick wouldn't have been much use as a guardian, out in India.
Author:  Sunglass [ Thu May 22, 2008 9:39 am ]
Post subject: 
Can I just say I am totally enjoying the notion of Madge and Joey running a boarding house for miners? Preferably wearing Mrs Mop headscarves and slippers. I've always assumed the mine people who actually took the Bettany house were definitely fairly senior managerial types - aren't we told that? (ETA that we are told it's managers of the Corah Mine, early on in 'Chalet'. However, I'm much more tickled by the boarding house for miners idea. Though I realise I was vaguely imagining coal miners, whereas it's presumably more likely to be tin in Cornwall, isn't it?)

The point about chaperonage on the earlier Bettany holidays is an interesting one, but it's probably unlikely EBD gave it much, if any, thought, as it's such a side-issue, however much she likes to depict continental girls and young women as never so much as venturing down the road unaccompanied. Also, Madge is definitely presented as the strong-minded and unconventional one at this stage - Dick says explicitly that he has no 'authority' to stop her plans.
Author:  JS [ Thu May 22, 2008 1:29 pm ]
Post subject: 
Quote:
They do seem to've done a lot of travelling - they spent several weeks in Austria first time round. Incidentally, there's no mention of their guardian or anyone else having accompanied them, but I can't imagine that it would have been considered proper for Madge at around 19 to go abroad with just Dick and Joey, or for Joey at 7 to go abroad without anyone other than Madge and Dick to look after her.


Guardian definitely was in Paris with them when Joey did something awful at Napoleon's grave - chucked some flowers over the fence or something, so Guardian had to hand out bribes all round. I always thought they had money until he rotted the finances up.

I also felt that Madge was painted as the most dominant early on - she makes the decisions for them all - and that she was the character with whom EBD most identified at the time. Then, of course, she spent more and more time writing from the point of view of Joey and the schoolgirls, rather than the headmistress.
Author:  claire [ Thu May 22, 2008 8:56 pm ]
Post subject: 
Or all the money went on solving problems caused by Joey
Author:  andi [ Fri May 23, 2008 10:33 am ]
Post subject: 
Emma A wrote:
I often wonder whether or not Joey might actually be the dominant sibling


Am I remembering correctly that in Princess, Madge consults Joey (who must be all of thirteen or so at that stage) as to whether the school should take Elizaveta?
Author:  Alison H [ Fri May 23, 2008 10:41 am ]
Post subject: 
Yes - apparently because she and Dick never kept secrets from Joey. I think the same reason was given for Madge telling Joey that Juliet had been abandoned by her parents :roll: .

It's rather paradoxical how Madge is like that with her younger sister, yet not with her own children.
Author:  Sunglass [ Fri May 23, 2008 10:43 am ]
Post subject: 
Indeed. There are all those references to Joey having always been included in family decisions from a young age - which is entirely at odds with the 'training to instant obedience' thing EBD so evidently admires in continental children. Then again, if Joey had been trained to instant obedience, or even occasional obedience, most of the life-or-death plots of the pre-war CS would never have taken place... No rescuing the Robin from the madman, or Elisaveta from Cosimo, or the Saints from the thin ice, Grizel from the Tiernjoch, or Rufus from the lake etc etc. Actually, from Madge's perspective, I can now slightly see the point of instant obedience training! I think I would have bought Joey a leash.
Author:  Billie [ Fri May 23, 2008 11:02 am ]
Post subject: 
On my most recent read of School At I realised that Joey never had a chance but to get involved in every aspect of CS life, because Madge includes her in much of the decision-making right from the start. Doesn't it say she'd be hurt if she was left out? Even though things to do with the school and other pupils isn't Bettany family business. Perhaps she never grew out of that, thinking that CS business is indeed family business.

I think it's a shame you don't see much of Dick, because he is much more interesting than the other men in the series. Chalet girls tend to marry much older men, don't they? Whereas Dick is described as "boyish" and a lot more fun than Jack or Jem. The other two don't have much of a sense of humour - and even when they are written as laughing or teasing it reads false to me. Most of the male characters read as a bit aloof and stand-offish. I never feel I can get to know them very well, and I can't tell much difference between Jem as Joey's brother-in-law and father figure, and Jack as her husband.
Author:  Katherine [ Fri May 23, 2008 11:12 am ]
Post subject: 
Billie wrote:
On my most recent read of School At I realised that Joey never had a chance but to get involved in every aspect of CS life, because Madge includes her in much of the decision-making right from the start. Doesn't it say she'd be hurt if she was left out? Even though things to do with the school and other pupils isn't Bettany family business. Perhaps she never grew out of that, thinking that CS business is indeed family business.

I think there was probably less of a home-work divide for Madge and Joey in the early days of the school. After all the school was Madge’s (in a way my workplace isn’t mine) and it was the only home they had. So I think in a way school business was family business, at least in those early days.
Author:  Mia [ Fri May 23, 2008 11:30 am ]
Post subject: 
Billie wrote:
On my most recent read of School At I realised that Joey never had a chance but to get involved in every aspect of CS life, because Madge includes her in much of the decision-making right from the start. Doesn't it say she'd be hurt if she was left out? Even though things to do with the school and other pupils isn't Bettany family business. Perhaps she never grew out of that, thinking that CS business is indeed family business.


But frankly, CS business is Joey's business, financially at least. It's her money being used to invest in the school, just as much as it is Madge's, or Dick's, so I never really see why people would object to her knowing what goes on or having her daughters educated for 'free'.
Author:  Billie [ Fri May 23, 2008 11:33 am ]
Post subject: 
I was thinking more about the pupils' issues, rather than the school itself. Juliet and Elizaveta in particular.
Author:  Mia [ Fri May 23, 2008 11:38 am ]
Post subject: 
Billie wrote:
I was thinking more about the pupils' issues, rather than the school itself. Juliet and Elizaveta in particular.


I still think it's the same principle though, tbh. Juliet (or her parents) is a dubious asset, other parents might withdraw their girls, the value of the CS brand is diminished, the school folds, Joey loses her inheritance and so on...

*has drabble idea :idea:*

ETA: Elisaveta would be more like a gilt-edged stock.
Author:  jennifer [ Fri May 23, 2008 11:44 am ]
Post subject: 
Well, in the earlier books, Joey is a child and a fellow student, so even though it's her inheritance being used to fund the school, she shouldn't really be told about private details of the other students' lives, for her own sake, and for her classmates sakes.

Even later, there is a difference between being informed/consulted about the financial details of the school and decisions about its general operation, and being told details about the students' personal backgrounds, particularly given her approach to confidentiality.
Author:  Alison H [ Fri May 23, 2008 11:49 am ]
Post subject: 
It must have been difficult for Madge being Joey's headmistress and her sister/guardian as well. The headmaster's son was in my class at primary school and it got a bit awkward sometimes; and it must be even worse at a boarding school. With an "ordinary" teacher you can try to make sure that they just don't teach the form that their relative's in, but it's different when the teacher concerned is the head. Matron Besly (or is it Matron Webb?) tries to make out that Joey gets away with things because she's Madge's sister - although we never see any of the girls being reluctant to involve Joey in things for that reason.

Other than Mlle Lepattre and Simone, and Mary Burnett briefly being a teacher whilst Kitty was in the VIth form, I can't think of another case where the sister/niece/other relative/close family friend of a current mistress was a pupil at the school (excluding the odd times when Joey helps out temporarily). Maybe they didn't recommend the school to their own relations and friends :lol: .
Author:  Mia [ Fri May 23, 2008 11:58 am ]
Post subject: 
jennifer wrote:
Well, in the earlier books, Joey is a child and a fellow student, so even though it's her inheritance being used to fund the school, she shouldn't really be told about private details of the other students' lives, for her own sake, and for her classmates sakes. Even later, there is a difference between being informed/consulted about the financial details of the school and decisions about its general operation, and being told details about the students' personal backgrounds, particularly given her approach to confidentiality.


Leaving aside the fact it's merely exposition and plot device, why shouldn't she? I think if my money was in a family company, I'd want to know what was happening in that company, especially if a lot of money had been lost through previous mismanagement. A business like a school is very open to reputational damage, if a girl comes with a history that could affect the school, I would think that shareholders like Joey should technically be made aware. I'm sure even though it was the 1920s Madge and Dick would have ethical and legal obligations to Jo with money involved.
Author:  JayB [ Fri May 23, 2008 12:32 pm ]
Post subject: 
Schoolgirl Joey was far more discreet than adult Joey. I don't think she ever repeated anything Madge told her in confidence while she was at school. (And I don't think Madge told her things as a matter of course, only when she thought Joey could help in dealing with whatever the issue was among the girls.) It's only as an adult Jo gossips about the girls' family affairs, or takes it upon herself to tell them things their parents don't want them to know.
Author:  Sunglass [ Fri May 23, 2008 12:40 pm ]
Post subject: 
Graham Greene was a boarding school headmaster's son, and credited his lifelong fictional obsession with divided loyalties and betrayal to the green baize door that shut off the headmaster's private house from the rest of the school, which ended up being a kind of symbol of strained allegiance. And he ended up in MI6! So I suppose we can consider the adult Joey's indiscreet gossiping in context - though as someone suggested on a recent 'Exile' thread, careless talk cost lives etc in wartime...

Maybe Joey's novels are also full of betrayals and studies of girls torn between family and other loyalties? Maybe 'Cecily Holds the Fort' is really a tormented examination of growing up with only a school for a home...? :wink:
Author:  Alison H [ Fri May 23, 2008 12:51 pm ]
Post subject: 
One of the best things about the early books is that the Mensches and the Maranis invite Madge and Joey to stay with them in the holidays, so that they don't have to spend their holiday time at the School - especially that wonderful first Christmas when they presumably didn't have time to/couldn't afford/possibly weren't invited to go and visit their aunts in England.

The Madge-Joey relationship early on is lovely. I love the bit at the end of Jo of where Joey starts slagging Jem off and calling him names because she wants him and Madge to get together and is upset when she thinks he's got another girlfriend. It's a pity that we don't get to see more of the Russells and Maynards together later on (although perhaps from Sybil's point of view it was as well!). I always think that Madge would have been a good person to help Len cope with all the responsibility and expectations that were dumped on her because she was the eldest.
Author:  KB [ Sat May 24, 2008 9:25 am ]
Post subject: 
Sunglass wrote:
No rescuing the Robin from the madman, or Elisaveta from Cosimo


Ah, but if we believe that continental children are always obedient then the Robin would never have gone with the madman in the first place and Elisaveta would surely not have gone with Cosimo, at least supposing that children were taught the same 'don't talk to strangers' mantra that is currently drummed into children.

As for the Saints into the lake and Grizel up the Tiernjoch, what do you expect from these untrained English girls? :lol: :wink:
Author:  Sunglass [ Sat May 24, 2008 12:30 pm ]
Post subject: 
So we'd have had a probably very short CS series (would it even have stretched to one novel?) with Gisela, Bette and Bernhilda and co. always behaving terribly well and obeying their parents and the mistresses.

Poor EBD - she keeps getting caught in the cleft stick of wanting to show the good rewarded and the bad punished and brought back to the path of righteousness BUT needing disobedience, impulsiveness and pathological indifference to the rules to make a story...
Author:  Tara [ Sat May 24, 2008 10:21 pm ]
Post subject: 
Sunglass wrote:
Maybe Joey's novels are also full of betrayals and studies of girls torn between family and other loyalties? Maybe 'Cecily Holds the Fort' is really a tormented examination of growing up with only a school for a home...?
I like that so much :D ! Please, somebody, write it!
All times are UTC
Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group
http://www.phpbb.com/