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#1: Families: The Lucys Author: Róisín, Location: Ireland

Posted: Wed Sep 26, 2007 2:54 pm
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The Lucy family comprises Janie and Julian as parents; Julian's father Mr Lucy; and their children Julie, John, Vi, Betsy Barney and Kitten.

Julie Lucy attends the Chalet School from its first term in Guernsey and thereafter all the Lucy girls attend. Julie and Betsy achieve headgirl status - Vi is pipped by Mary-Lou. Julie was kept at school an extra year because of illness - she planned on following her father into law but instead marries a housemaster at Barney's school and goes on to have two children. Her brother John is described as mischevious, but we don't really meet him as an adult. All the Lucy girls are very beautiful except Betsy, who is described as puckish and like her mother. Vi is artistic and pursues a career in textile design. Barney is fairly unknown and Kitten is the baby, quite lazy when she comes to school.

So, any opinions on how the Lucys work as a family? Janie seems to be quite a relaxed mother - is she similar to Joey in this respect? We see their early parenting methods in Janie Steps In. Do you think Betsy gets a hard time being always described as the ugly, middle one? What about how Julie, Betsy and Vi interact with each other as schoolgirls - there is a mention by Vi of how her elder sister always comes down harder on her than on anyone else, simply because they are sisters.

Anything at all you'd like to say about the Lucy family, please go ahead and join in below Very Happy

#2: Author: Rosalin, Location: Swansea

Posted: Wed Sep 26, 2007 4:38 pm
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I love Julie and John as children in Janie Steps In, especially their 'forbids'. It's by far my favourite portrayal of young children by EBD, and I think that book has some of my overall favourite family scenes in it. I felt Julian and Janie have a more equal relationship than the other major couples (although that's not really saying much). I know he's criticised for buying La Rochelle without asking her, but it seemed to me a really nice gesture. He obviously knew how much she loved the place.

The Lucy girls at the Chalet School never made that much of an impression on me, other than Julie's peritonitis. That's one of the episodes that made a definite impression on me when I read the books as a child. I don't remember the comments about Betsy's looks being made to her face very often. I think of them as usually being description by the author. They certainly don't seem to affect her.

I also really like the way Barney got his name. In Exile, Janie tells Jo that there's a story behind his name and I wondered for years what it was. When I finally got to read Janie Steps In I thought it was a lovely moment, although it's lucky that Julian and Janie appeared OK with the name as it would have been difficult if they'd felt they couldn't stand it and had to say no to Nan's idea. I don't like my middle name much, and wouldn't want a child of mine to have it.

I don't like the way Julie works hard to become a barrister and then throws it all in with not a backward glance. I can see that she might be willing to give it up for marriage, but EBD implies that it doesn't matter at all.

I'd have liked to see Vi as head girl instead of Mary-Lou, but that was never likely.

One thing I did wonder while writing this was, were Julie and Betsy consecutive headgirls? If they were then the School had Peggy and Bride Bettany (with Loveday in between for a term) followed by Julie and Betsy Lucy. Quite a monopoly.

#3: Author: Joyce, Location: Hong Kong

Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2007 6:37 am
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Yeah, Julie and Betsy are HG one after the other. Mary Lou comments to Vi about "how funny" that two of them should be HG.

Only a few books beforehand Bride was not allowed to be HG after Peggy because the teachers thought the girls would talk. But Betsy after Julie was apparently OK.

Maybe EBD forgot the previous conversation or thought that the Lucy girls would not excite as much comment about favouritism as the Bettany girls.

I think Betsy is aware of her looks compared to Julie and Vi. She comments once that since she will never have beauty she must acquire brains. But she says it jokingly and seems perfectly OK with it. I also remember vaguely that she was her father's favourite because of her resemblance to her mother.

I love the three Lucy girls. They seem to have such different personalities and yet are so close to each other. Janie seems a very relaxed mother but is not completely hands off with dozens of maids to help her.

We are told Julie marries and has a son and daughter, and Vi ends up working as an illustrator. But are we ever told what happens to Betsy?

#4: Author: Fiona Mc, Location: Bendigo, Australia

Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2007 7:57 am
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Betsy's chosen career is never discussed and speaking of that, I received my GGBP version of Three go the other day and read all the parts not put in the book and in it it describes Clem and Julie as being close friends despite their year's difference in ages and Julie is described as not being the brightest of the girls and she complains how hard it is that her sister who is two years younger is only in the form below her at school and yet up until reading that I had always read that she was an extremely clever who was with Bride and Co in most of their books and got a double remove to be a prefect with Bride at the beginning of Shocks.

Aside from that I like all the Lucy girls and in some ways thought Vi Lucy would have made a better Head Girl than Mary Lou but the powers to be would never have done that and I thought it was a shame she wasn't a Games Prefect like she said she wanted to be in Mary Lou when asked if she wanted to be Head Girl like her sisters.

Betsy, I could always see as Head Girl. She manages to help Sybil to keep her head at school when they were kids and Sybil always thought she should preferential treatment (see Lavender in HB) and generally seems most like Head Girl out of all that crowd, friendly with everyone and a leader.

I love Julie and John's forbids in Janie Steps In. Its hilarious and think Janie and Julian seem fairly good parents-no worse than everyone else. And I'm glad they see their kids as being good kids at heart and overall.
I also thought it was lovely what they called Barnabas and the meaning of the name especially all Nan had to say about it. I thought they were so genuinely lovely towards Nan and truly helped her feel like part of the family

BTW is all the mischief they get into realistic. I don't remember doing all they do nor have I met any kid that has. Throwing tantrums yes but not drawing skeletons on the wall or painting their sister red. Are kids more boring these days and less enterprising?

#5: Author: Nina, Location: Peterborough, UK

Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2007 11:23 am
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Fiona Mc wrote:

BTW is all the mischief they get into realistic. I don't remember doing all they do nor have I met any kid that has. Throwing tantrums yes but not drawing skeletons on the wall or painting their sister red. Are kids more boring these days and less enterprising?

I don't know about skeletons, but in the mid-60s my brother and I chalked double yellow lines all down our road and put "parking tickets" on everyone's windscreen. Most people took it as a joke, but we were found out when one irate neighbour came to complain to our parents about it.... Sad

And I suspect that given the paint and the opportunity, my brother may have tried Shocked

#6: Re: Families: The Lucys Author: Caroline, Location: Manchester

Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2007 1:51 pm
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Róisín wrote:

What about how Julie, Betsy and Vi interact with each other as schoolgirls - there is a mention by Vi of how her elder sister always comes down harder on her than on anyone else, simply because they are sisters.

I love the Lucys. One of the nicest families in the CS books, I think. I really like the way the three sisters interact with each other and genuinely care about each other - think of the way the Abbess tells Betsy and Vi about Julie's peritonitis (or however you spell it Very Happy

) and their reactions.

The head-girl-coming-down-harder-on-a-younger-sister-than-on-other-girls is a complete GO classic plot line / cliche and I don't actually remember seeing much evidence of it at the CS compared to other GO books (although I do remember a few comments made when Madge was Head along the lines of "Jo knew that bad behaviour was worse in her than in the other girls becuase she was the Heads sister" etc. Not that that ever stopped her!). I certainly don't think any of the Lucys particularly suffered from that, whatever Vi might say.

Both Julie and Betsy make good head girls, although Julie seems to get the post partly becuase she is the eldest prefect, effectively repeating the year. I always feel sorry for her that she is deprived of her friends - particularly her cousin Nancy - for that year. Half the fun of boarding school is the friendships you make (it seems to me), and Julie is left without most of her friends. I would have liked to see Clem as Head Girl, though - she seems as strong a candidate as Julie...

Vi is lovely, and I'm always pleased that she makes friends with her cousin Barbara, as she (Vi) is never quite as close to OOAO as Verity is. Does anyone else feel there is some exposition missing at the beginning of Barbara? EBD eventually makes it clear that Vi hadn't liked Babs much at home, but she (EBD) also implies that Vi was either unhappy Babs was coming to school or didn't want to have to look after her or something. It always reads to me as if there is a missing paragraph somewhere that EBD thinks we have read... Maybe she cut the wrong thing during editing!

#7: Re: Families: The Lucys Author: Lottie, Location: Humphrey's Corner

Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2007 3:57 pm
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Caroline wrote:

Does anyone else feel there is some exposition missing at the beginning of Barbara? EBD eventually makes it clear that Vi hadn't liked Babs much at home, but she (EBD) also implies that Vi was either unhappy Babs was coming to school or didn't want to have to look after her or something. It always reads to me as if there is a missing paragraph somewhere that EBD thinks we have read... Maybe she cut the wrong thing during editing!

Since I read the books in a very peculiar order (thanks to Armada's publishing schedule Rolling Eyes

), I assumed, when I first read it, that I was missing something from a previous book, and had never really thought about it again. Embarassed

But you're absolutely right, Caroline, there does appear to be a missing scene. Anyone care to write it?

#8: Author: Maeve, Location: Romania

Posted: Sun Sep 30, 2007 4:07 pm
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EBD does talk at the beginning about how everyone had to give in to Barbara and how that could have made her selfish, etc.,

Quote:

As the centre of attention in her family, with all the others taught to give up to her in every way, she had had every excuse for being selfish and self-centred. As Beth reflected now, it was little short of a miracle that she had grown up as sweet of nature as she was.
"It's about the only time I've ever known measles to be a blessing in disguise," the elder sister mused. "If it hadn't been for that when she was ten, she might still be lounging about at home, the pet of everyone and getting more and more egotistical every day."

So I always thought that this was suppose to be the source of Vi's reluctance. Barbara herself

Quote:

had a very good idea how most of her cousins thought of her. It had been one reason why she had wanted to come to school and, especially, to be a boarder, with no more privileges than anyone else.

But Vi eventually finds

Quote:

that Barbara at home, the petted darling of her mother; and Barbara at school, learning for the first time to stand on her own feet, were two very different people and the second one was a girl with whom she was rapidly developing a close friendship.

#9: Author: Loryat,

Posted: Sun Sep 30, 2007 6:17 pm
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I think EBD must have written it forgetting that she had put in a lot of detail about Vi and Babs' relationship in the La Rochelle series, not the CS one. Very Happy

#10: Author: Jennie, Location: Cambridgeshire

Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2007 11:08 am
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In 'Janie steps In', the Lucy family are far friendlier with the older cousins than with Barbara because they are much older than she is. And, I think it has to be said, Janie disapproves of the way that Anne treats Barbara. Janie thinks that Barbara will become a monster of selfishness, if it goes on.

Janie's the first person to thwart Barbara when she starts whinging and whining, and calmly tells her that she can't have her own way. Anne would have called Beth away from the sea and made her dance attendance on Barbara, thus spoiling the day at the beach for a child who already resented how she was treated at home.

When Julie was born, Janie danced attendance on her until Julian put a stop to it. They did discipline their children, but mostly it was lovingly, and the parents always saw the humour in a situation, and they did allow them to develop as individuals. They were always concerned for their children's safety, but gave them a lot of love.

Anne and Peter had known each other for about a year when they married, and Anne had helped to bring Janie up, so perhaps that accounts for her feeling that Janie ought not to tell her how to bring up her children, whereas Julian and Janie had known each other for years, and so were friends as well as husband and wife. Knowing the tricks they had got up to whilst they were growing up perhaps also helped them to see their children in a more humorous and tolerant light.

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