Why can't Joey let go?
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#1: Why can't Joey let go? Author: Dreaming MarianneLocation: Second star to the right PostPosted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 3:52 pm
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Mods, is anyone allowed to start a thread here? If I'm not please do tell me!

Badly insomniac last night and I fell to wondering - why is it exactly that Joey simply can't let her schooldays be just that - schooldays. She tags along to the school on the flimsiest of excuses, butts in (very) inappropriately at times, and seems incapable of accepting the fact that she has, in fact, left.

I know that her sister started the school, and that Joey herself has retained a financial interest in it, as well as the San having associations. All of these could very understandably lead to a great affection and membership of the OGA - but why the need to centre her life around it?

Does the CS, in fact, replace her absent parents?
Does Joey self-actualise through being the acknowledged "spirit of the school"?
Or is it something deeper?

#2:  Author: LexiLocation: Liverpool PostPosted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 4:03 pm
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I think that in the beginning it might have been more of a case that she never really made the clean break that the other girls did. Most of her friends go away to university, return home or get married almost straight away whereas Joey went up to the Sonnalpe (not a great distance away) and then got drafted back to help at the school when she was needed there. Her friends and social circle largely revolve around the school and considering she never really wanted to leave in the first place, it must have been very easy just to consider herself still a CS girl.

As to why she carried on following the school from place to place, I suppose it's a combination of circumstance and habit. Or because EBD wanted her to stay in the series permanently? Very Happy

#3:  Author: CarolineLocation: Manchester PostPosted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 4:12 pm
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Isn't it actually more that EBD can't let go of Joey?

Not that I mind - I like Joey, even at her most breezy and interfere-y.

Actually, to me the only Joey-follows-school move I can't buy is the one to Carnbach. Everything else seems perfectly natural - she follows Madge (and hence the school) to both Guernsey and Howells and, having no particular ties in England, three new babies, husband at war and having just had to flee from Austria, I can't imagine that she could possibly do anything else. And then Jack being sent to set up and run the Swiss San is perfectly reasonable in my book, him being Jem's right hand man and all.

So, it's just the "oh-look-our-foundations-have-gone-rubbish-
at-the-same-time-as-the-school-has-dodgy-drains-lets-move-to-Carnbach" thing I don't buy.

Very Happy

#4:  Author: Loryat PostPosted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 4:42 pm
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I can understand Joey moving to Carnbach. After all she has three (or two) young daughters at the school and since she has to move she might as well move to a house that's nearby.

And also I haven't read any of the books the detail the move from Wales to Switzerland (there's a gap in my knowledge from Shocks to Barbara I think) she does after all have to move to Switzerland when her husband (and the San) do. It's not her fault the school happened to be moving there!

I think it's far more a case of EBD not letting go of Joey and I can understand why. Though it can be annoying I think EBD felt that it was necessary to have this strong central character running throughout the series. When she tries to do the same thing with M-L she's far less successful, using less convincing excuses for M-L's frequent appearances and M-L is (IMO) a far less sympathtic character anyway.

#5:  Author: Kathy_SLocation: midwestern US PostPosted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 4:59 pm
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I agree with Caroline on all counts. Most of the time it seems perfectly reasonable that Joey should move with the school, given her personal life and the school/san relationship. I also suspect the series would have crashed and burned as a marketable entity without her to give it continuity, although EBD does work at making characters like ML add to the "We know these people" comfort necessary to make a series work.

#6:  Author: Alison HLocation: Manchester PostPosted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 5:03 pm
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When the school moved to Switzerland most people accepted that it and the San were "interlinked" so the Russells wanted them near each other, so it seems fair enough that the Maynards ended up next door - and I suppose in a "Brits abroad" kind of way Laughing Joey was bound to spend most of her time with her fellow British "exiles", i.e. the people at the school. Even when they were in Austria and had Austrian friends, the friends were mostly pupils' parents.

Other people seemed to keep involving her in school affairs too. Why did May Carthew have to write to Joey, rather than to Hilda as the head or Madge as the majority shareholder, about Ted? And why did Con Stewart have to write to Joey as well as Hilda about Emerence? And WHY was everyone's - not only the staff's but also the prefects' - reaction to any sort of problem at the school to ask Joey?!!

If I'd been Hilda I'd've told her to stay away and stop popping in all the time, but the people at the school all seemed to take the opposite view!

I think the problem overall was that EBD just couldn't let Joey go, apart from the brief period when Joey was in Canada. Joey was back at the school within a few months of leaving it. Maybe if there'd been a strong character a couple of years younger than her to "take over" as heroine - if someone like Biddy had been given a stronger role - then EBD would've let Joey take a back seat, but as it was there wasn't a second "heroine" until Mary-Lou, and even she didn't feature that much until she was 14 or so.

#7:  Author: jenniferLocation: Taiwan PostPosted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 5:10 pm
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The move to Cartref seems contrived. The logical thing to do would have been to move to the Round House for the duration. Madge and Jem are out of the country, and Joey and Jack could look after things and be close enough to monitor work on their house.

I have this vision of Joey being totally unable to cope without Madge or the school at hand, and sneaking out at night to take a pick axe to the foundations of the house.

From a writing perspective, Joey provides a useful continuity to the series - you can place where in the chronology a book is by Joey's age and number of children. She was also popular with readers.

As a person, her obsession with the school comes across as rather sad. By the end of the series she's a forty year old woman who is living next door to her old school, and her life is firmly focussed on the current middles' pranks, chats with the mistresses, gossip about new girls, and keeping up correspondence with massive numbers of old girls. She is vocal and adamant about being a school girl at heart, and insists that she will never fully grow up - there's sort of a Peter Pan feel about that. This is a woman who will come into the school to chat with the headmistress during school hours, and then interrupt a class in session to say hi to the students, and who has a private telephone line to the headmistress's study.

#8:  Author: Loryat PostPosted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 5:33 pm
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Unlike supercool people like us who read children's books and discuss them online... Embarassed

I always get the impression that there's more going on in Joey's life than is portrayed in detail in CS world. After all she's a writer wife and mother besides all her involvement with the school, but that sort of thing obviously doesn't come much into the stories, and Joey had to be portrayed as a Peter Pan type for young readers to relate to her.

She is very involved with the school and the girls, but she's also involved with the san's patients (to the extent of knowing their prognosis when they don't etc). She's often visiting them or their relatives. (In fact with all the visiting she gets done it's a miracle she gets any writing done.) I think Joey is suppose to be a very humane person who people naturally turn to in their troubles. As for her continued involvement with the school and insider knowledge of all the goings on, it's not surprising when she writes school stories for a living and has numerous children attending it. She's the sort of person who doesn't forget how it is to be young, which is why all the others turn to her.

#9:  Author: RroseSelavyLocation: Oxford, UK PostPosted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 5:47 pm
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Loryat wrote:
She is very involved with the school and the girls, but she's also involved with the san's patients (to the extent of knowing their prognosis when they don't etc). She's often visiting them or their relatives. (In fact with all the visiting she gets done it's a miracle she gets any writing done.) I think Joey is suppose to be a very humane person who people naturally turn to in their troubles. As for her continued involvement with the school and insider knowledge of all the goings on, it's not surprising when she writes school stories for a living and has numerous children attending it. She's the sort of person who doesn't forget how it is to be young, which is why all the others turn to her.


Okay, so here's a proposition for the discussion: the school really wanted to keep Joey on hand as a counsellor/mentor. She was an adult but was not in a position of responsibility over the girls, and they could relate to her. The school didn't have anyone employed to do this kind of job (not even non-teaching housemistresses as I think many boarding schools do now) so they used Joey. So rather than hopelessly trailing after the school because she can't let go, she's actually performing a useful function. If Joey "can't let go," what of, e.g. Rosalie Dene? *sets cat among metaphorical pigeons*

#10:  Author: ClareLocation: Liverpool PostPosted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 6:32 pm
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RroseSelavy wrote:
If Joey "can't let go," what of, e.g. Rosalie Dene? *sets cat among metaphorical pigeons*


I think there's a difference between Rosalie and Joey. Rosalie leaves school, completes a course which enables her to take up a post at the San, on the secreterial side. You could hypothesise that the school offered her a higher wage than the San which is why she switched. Or was it when the school moved up to the Sonnalpe after the Anuchluss? However, Rosalie is in paid employment throughout.

Joey, as others have said, turns up at odd hours, demands instant attention and gets involved in all aspects of school life. To an extent, she is an unpaid mentor ("oh difficult new girl - send her to Joey!" or the little individual chats during tea at Joey's). She does serve a purpose, but she should not be privvy to so much information about the pupils; nor should she be spreading this information to other pupils!

I agree with Jennifer about Joey providing continuity for readers, and that in real life she does come across as a sad 'Peter Pan' character, in total denial of who she is.

What's more important to Joey? The fact she's a wife, a mother or a Chalet School girl?

#11:  Author: Alison HLocation: Manchester PostPosted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 6:56 pm
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Clare wrote:


What's more important to Joey? The fact she's a wife, a mother or a Chalet School girl?


I'd love to know what she'd've done if Jack'd been offered a brilliant job somewhere a long way from the School and announced that he wanted to take it! Or even if he'd wanted to live at Pretty Maids, which a lot of people in his position might've done.

#12:  Author: KateLocation: Ireland PostPosted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 7:08 pm
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I think Joey just really thought of the Chalet School as hers - as her home. She'd been brought up in it from the age of 12 - more so than the other girls, as it was her home and her sister/guardian owned it. Looking back, she's really had quite a traumatic life with lots of upheaval and from her preteens, Madge and the school have been the only constants throughout it all. Madge is inextricably linked to the school - she was headmistress, after all - and therefore Joey sees the school as part of the family.

Would we see it as being quite so unnatural if it was Madge who was the attached one? She started the school and was the first headmistress, so it might seem more expected. But really, Joey was just as involved and younger at the time of its beginnings so would form a deeper attachment. Aside from that, I think we're mostly in agreement that as Joey grows up, Madge fades into the background and Joey comes to the forefront. I think that in EBD's mind, the two characters almost merged. Madge was the school's creator and therefore entitled to be interested. When Madge faded away, Joey had to take the role.

This feeds into the continuity idea, which makes a lot of sense. How many of us read a Tirol book first, only to find a Swiss book later on? Would we have continued reading if we didn't recognise Joey and could follow her children? It could have appeared to be a totally unconnected story - even the school would have changed beyond all recognition from the Tirol days. But Joey - to a degree - is the same.

#13:  Author: DawnLocation: Leeds, West Yorks PostPosted: Tue Mar 13, 2007 8:09 pm
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I do wonder if EBD wanted her readers, many of whom may not have been having such a good time at school, to feel that in an ideal world, not only was there a school that cared and didn't (usually) allow bullying, but that also if things got too much there was an authority figure that you could rely on who wasn't quite at the school in the same way as the staff, so could be told how things really were, but who could then take steps to put things right.



Sorry for the long convoluted sentance - not got a clear head on today Embarassed

#14:  Author: jenniferLocation: Taiwan PostPosted: Wed Mar 14, 2007 5:29 am
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My psychological analysis of Joey's fixation on the school.

Joey hates change - she resists growing up, and likes things to remain the way they are. When she's in her last year at school this is particularly bad, with cause. She's a well liked member of a vibrant community, with a position of authority and respect. She had a full life, with academics, athletics, many social activies and some charity work, a close group of friends and lots of acquaintences. She's facing the prospect of returning home to her sister and rather authoritarian brother in law, to practice her singing, help with the children (where she isn't really needed, as they have a nurse and a mother's help), and try her hand at writing. She has no plans to marry, and is facing this as her indefinite future, as it's not really acceptable for her to move out on her own.

After leaving, she gets boosts to her ego, entertainment and excitement when she's involved with school activities - she teaches, is asked for advice by the prefects, and looked up to by the middles, as opposed to the quieter, more mundane life at the Sonnalpe.

Then the Anschluss happens, and Joey, who's still pretty young and immature, goes through a very traumatic period. She's chased by Nazis, gets suddenly engaged, has to flee Austria over the mountains, is married and has triplets, all in about two years. She's fragile emotionally to begin with, and several times during this period she collapses completely. There's the stress of the war, and then Jack goes missing and Joey has another breakdown.

The school, at this point, is a comforting distraction and a refuge for Joey. She can revert back to a more carefree period of her life and immerse herself in Middle's pranks and half term entertainment and helping troubled girls, just like when she was head girl. Subconsciously, school means comfort, safety, and happiness, and the responsiblities are carefully limited.

When the war is over, and things settle down, Joey keeps up with her old habits. I'd guess that Canada was a bit of a let down - she's in a foreign country without her usual crowd of people who have known her for years and look up to her. She's just had twins, and at that point has three nine year olds, a six year old, a five year old, a two year old and twin newborns, without much of her usual support network.

The move to Switzerland actually makes things a lot worse. She and the family move to a small expat community where their social circle consists solely of people at the San and people at the school. They live next door to the school and get a mother's help to watch the younger children, so Joey doesn't have any childcare or distance restrictions which limit her involvement with the school, so she focuses even more intently on it. In Austria she was friends with many of the local people, including former classmates and her family. In England there are other, non San/School people to socialise with, as well as former school friends who aren't returning to the school to teach.

#15:  Author: CarolineLocation: Manchester PostPosted: Wed Mar 14, 2007 8:23 am
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jennifer wrote:
As a person, her obsession with the school comes across as rather sad. By the end of the series she's a forty year old woman who is living next door to her old school, and her life is firmly focussed on the current middles' pranks, chats with the mistresses, gossip about new girls, and keeping up correspondence with massive numbers of old girls. She is vocal and adamant about being a school girl at heart, and insists that she will never fully grow up - there's sort of a Peter Pan feel about that. This is a woman who will come into the school to chat with the headmistress during school hours, and then interrupt a class in session to say hi to the students, and who has a private telephone line to the headmistress's study.


You know, I'm not sure I buy that. For a woman of her class and upbringing, a relatively small social circle of likeminded people would have been the norm (OK, maybe not so much by the 1960s, but we all know EBD was pretty Victorian in her outlook, and was definitely behind the times by the 1950s, let along the 1960s).

Really, it's just like the CS is Joey's village, the staff are her Women's Institute (of which she is chairwoman, natch) and the girls are her Good Works. She's the lady of the manor, of course, and the community revolves around her. Transport her to a country village in the home counties of England, put her in a manor house, and her world would be just as narrow, but composed of local spinsters, a couple of other decent families, the vicar, and perhaps a weekly visit to the nearby Big Town or up to London to buy her linen once a year.

I'm seeing her as a character in a Miss Marple story as we speak....

#16:  Author: KatherineLocation: London, UK PostPosted: Wed Mar 14, 2007 1:35 pm
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As a child I never got much past the War books as that was what was in the library so when as an adult I picked up Summer Term I was like ‘this is ridiculous, Joey still living next to the school!’. It does get a bit silly but I agree with the comment about transplanting her to a Manor House. People used to have tiny social circles and we forget how normal that was. Poorer people might never leave their village. For a non poor example, think of Emma Woodhouse in Emma and how limited her circle is. (She’s also an interfering busybody . . .)

I also agree with the point that it was more about EBD than Joey although I have read some very interesting analyses of Joey’s refusal to abandon the school. It’s an interesting question, just where does the character trait stop being, ‘that was done to suit the author’ and where does it become a real part of their personality? Quite often we say ‘so-and-so is like this’ and often someone else will come back with ‘that was just EBD doing what suited the plot’ and you can’t always separate out the two.

#17:  Author: ClareLocation: Liverpool PostPosted: Wed Mar 14, 2007 4:59 pm
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jennifer wrote:
My psychological analysis of Joey's fixation on the school...


Jennifer, I salute you! What a masterly summary. Thank you, it was very interesting reading, and it makes so much sense.

#18:  Author: Alison HLocation: Manchester PostPosted: Wed Mar 14, 2007 5:08 pm
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The points about people's social circles being much more limited at the time are interesting. When my grandma died a few years ago, a load of her old neighbours from the street she'd moved out of 30 years earlier turned up at the funeral, because in the '50s/'60s the closest friends of most people in the area were the people who lived in the same street. My other grandma lived in the same house all her life - when she married my grandad, he moved in with her and her widowed father - and most of her friends were people who lived in the same street.

Sorry for waffling about my relations Laughing , but it's easy to forget that things've changed a lot since then.

If Joey'd spent a lot of time involved in activities at e.g. a church or the W.I. or something, rather than a school, it probably wouldn't seem weird.

#19:  Author: LesleyLocation: Allhallows, Kent PostPosted: Wed Mar 14, 2007 5:30 pm
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Talking about character v author's plot - I think you have to divorce the two.

First you say - well, the reason Joey was there was because EBD loved the character too much and wanted a continuing thread on which to hang her series, As that is what happened that's fine.

But then you have to look again as if it were not a work of fiction but that it was real - so in that case why would this intelligent, vivacious, talented woman choose to remain beside her old School for her entire life and ensure that her entire circle of friends were connected with the same?

So I can understand why EBD wrote Joey as she did - it's always useful to have a mainstay among your characters. I think she made a mistake in not allowing Joey to grow and develop paeticularly, but she was writing for an audience of young girls. However, Joey as an actual person does need to have some reasoning behind why she choose to remain with the School and, like Clare, I think Jennifer's summary to be an extremely likely possibility.

#20:  Author: KatherineLocation: London, UK PostPosted: Wed Mar 14, 2007 6:22 pm
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Lesley wrote:
Talking about character v author's plot - I think you have to divorce the two.

But does that mean that an author always has to be consistent? e.g. if Joey went on an axe-murdering rampage of middles in one book and then went back to normal, would we have to develop an explanation for that or would we say, that was just EBD having a bit of drabble fun and almost ignore it?
Part of me likes jennifer's explanation and the other part says that it was never how EBD meant it to be. On the other hand you can read things into a character that the author never intended.

#21:  Author: jenniferLocation: Taiwan PostPosted: Thu Mar 15, 2007 3:33 am
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You can do the analysis two ways.

You can look at the author, the structure of the story, the place of the characters in the narrative and what literary purpose they serve - the kind of things you do in an English class analysis.

You can also analyse within the story, looking at the character, how they behave and what motivates them, from psychological perspective.

Good writing and storytelling has both - the character serves a purpose in the story - hero, villain, foil, side kick, etc, and has a believable internal narrative. If a character behaves inconsistently or unrealistically it detracts from the reading of the story, because we as readers need to believe what's happening while we are immersed in the story.

In the CS, as a long running series written for children, the child's interpretation of the psychology and motivations of the character are at a different level than an adult reader. I would guess that EBD's purposes were not what we read into it - for a child reader Joey is the 'spirit of the school', while as adults we need to put a more real world interpretation on her actions and behavior.

It's an interesting question of how much of the characterisation is deliberate and planned by the author, and how much just happens as the character becomes real to them.

#22:  Author: skye PostPosted: Fri Mar 16, 2007 6:11 pm
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Lesley wrote:
Talking about character v author's plot - I think you have to divorce the two.

First you say - well, the reason Joey was there was because EBD loved the character too much and wanted a continuing thread on which to hang her series, As that is what happened that's fine.

But then you have to look again as if it were not a work of fiction but that it was real - so in that case why would this intelligent, vivacious, talented woman choose to remain beside her old School for her entire life and ensure that her entire circle of friends were connected with the same?

So I can understand why EBD wrote Joey as she did - it's always useful to have a mainstay among your characters. I think she made a mistake in not allowing Joey to grow and develop paeticularly, but she was writing for an audience of young girls. However, Joey as an actual person does need to have some reasoning behind why she choose to remain with the School and, like Clare, I think Jennifer's summary to be an extremely likely possibility.

We don't see Joey's full life.

We only see her life in association with the Chalet School. How would it improve a school based series if all we heard about was all the minutiae of Joey's life outside the Chalet School. In most of the books Joey may only spend an hour or so at a time actually involved with the school.

As she isn't just sitting in a box when she isn't involved, then she must be doing something else. As the wife of a senior doctor her friends would include people he works with and their partners. Many people have social lives which revolve around people they knew at school or people they work with, or their neighbours. Why would joey be any different?

Her remaining near to the school is due mainly to the close association of the school and the sanatorium. She isn't going to remain in England if her husband is head of a sanatorium in Austria or Switzerland. Her children are also still in the school so she would be expected to take some interest in what is happening there. Her friends from school are teachers there and she also has a business interest in the school. Why would she not be involved, taking all of that into consideration?

If EBD spent most of her time describing Joey going to her publishers, Joey going to the shops, Joey supervising her staff or Joey changing nappies, how many children would remain interested in the books? And the books were written for children not adults. Don't forget that the 'holiday' books were considered by publishers as not worth publishing as paperbacks, because they didn't think that the children would be interested in them as they were not about the school.

#23:  Author: Kathy_SLocation: midwestern US PostPosted: Sat Mar 17, 2007 3:37 pm
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Thank you, Skye! That's just the way I feel. For a series of school stories, the CS does a remarkable job of fleshing out Joey the adult, but can't help showing her mostly in relation to the school. The snatches of mother, wife and author that come through always give me the impression that Jo leads a very full and busy life, even though most of it's off in the backstory. I've also never bought into the idea that, because she has help, she does no child care. We see her at it often enough, and anyone who's ever been in a sizable family knows that it could easily provide several full-time jobs, plus all kinds of pitching in by the older children, even though in RL most of us had a mother worn to a frazzle for lack of outside help. I sometimes find myself equating doubting CBBers with the disbelieving teacher in Belles on Their Toes. I don't have the book here, but small Bob (I think) has just given the teacher a litany of things his mother does. She says something like, "But dear, she couldn't do all that. Doesn't she have a career?" Bob's retort is, "Well, if she has one, she never showed it to me!" Mrs. Gilbreth, of course, has Tom and the unnamed daily woman, plus the secretary, but is unable to keep children out of the office during the work day.

#24:  Author: SquirrelLocation: St-Andrews or Dunfermline PostPosted: Sat Mar 17, 2007 6:57 pm
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I think I'd agree with that Kathy. Hmmmm - possibly I may want to read 'bells on their toes' soon. It seems to be popping up all over the place just now! Wink

#25:  Author: alicatLocation: Wiltshire PostPosted: Fri Mar 23, 2007 1:27 pm
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This has been really interesting - I think jennifer hit it on the head for me when she said the CS is a series written for children.
For those of us who first read the books as children, when we did not have the adult worldview that now enables us to see joey as a sometimes sad and manupulative character, the CS was a fantasy.
reading it in the 60s and 70s as a pre-teen and teen I was aware instantly it was set in an earlier era and that it had, for me, an unreal element about it - none of the people I knew would have had the slightest chance of going to a foreign boarding school, altho a couple did go to boarding school at secondary level.
So the adventures and descriptions of Switzerland were a STORY. An escape from reality. And in this context they were WONDERFUL and Joey really was my hero.
It was not until Exile that I got any sense of where the real life timings fitted in. And I have to say that as an introduction to what effect the war had on some people living in continental Europe it was an eyeopener. (Neville Shute's Pied Piper, which I read about the same time (I've always had catholic tastes and free access to books) was another). The rest of the wartime stories also seemed very believable.
then in the later books joey seemed the ideal mother-figure - always with time to help people solve their problems and sensible suggestions. SHE never said ' oh don't worry about it, it'll all blow over' or "does it really matter whether so-and-so doesn't like you?", she took people's worries seriously and tried to help. And to a teenager who found parents and many adults difficult to talk to and life a bit puzzling (as most of them do) that was very attractive.

I was quite sad when I first re-read the books as a later teenager - when I reverted to them as a comfort read - to find I now had a totally different way of looking at some of the characters, especially joey.
and I couldn't help feeling that if she had been my mum I'd have got completely fed up with her constantly knowing every small detail of my life, when I spent so much of my time as a midle-teen trying to keep my mumr from finding out anything at all.
(must remember that next time my own child gives me monosyllable answer)



anyway, that's my tuppence-worth!



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