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Books: The Wrong Chalet School
http://www.the-cbb.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=4527
Author:  Róisín [ Tue May 13, 2008 11:10 am ]
Post subject:  Books: The Wrong Chalet School
There is a synopsis here. Published in 1952. This is the book that introduces 14-year-old Kat Gordon. Her guardian aunt enrols her in a 'chalet school' and packs Kat's trunk, leaving her to turn up at the school herself. It turns out that it is the wrong school, and Katherine Mary has been mixed up with a Mary Katherine. The school keeps Kat anyway, and she turns out to be an excellent swimmer and tennis player. There is some bad news about her parents during the term - they have been interned in China where they were working as missionaries.

So, do you like this book? Is Kat's story at all believeable? What do you think of the way she is being brought up - her parents have opted to work in China and they have left her with a scatterbrained aunt, who chooses her school based on the colour of the uniform? What do you think of Aunt Luce herself?

Please raise any issue you like for discussion here, to do with The Wrong Chalet School :D

Next Sunday: Shocks for the Chalet School
Author:  JS [ Tue May 13, 2008 11:32 am ]
Post subject: 
I liked Aunt Luce, although why is it that female artists tend to be presented as scatty? I also liked the fact that Kat slipped through the new security (introduced after Carola's antics) because of the coincidence of another Gordon (even if it was a bit too much of a coincidence that both were daughters of doctors in Singapore).

I thought the emotions Kat felt when told about her folks being in danger were well-handled but wasn't it one of those occasions where Joey decided not to tell her what was going on? (been a while since I read it). Not sure how I feel about that.

This was actually one of my favourite books - I like this sort of 'middle period' of the series, although (as an adult) I accept the issues of repeated motifs (girls left with aunts/going to school by mistake) etc.

I thought it was quite good to have a nasty piece of work-type girl (Jennifer Penrose) and found the whole 'hate at Blossom' thing quite convincing. It was good to see that not all Chalet girls were perfect and it has even inspired me to buy Forever Amber, though I haven't read it yet, so don't know how naughty it actually is.

Finally, I only have the paperback (I've just checked and I paid 12p for it second hand!) so I don't know if there's much missing.
Author:  Alison H [ Tue May 13, 2008 1:29 pm ]
Post subject: 
I like Kat and her friends, and I quite like Aunt Luce, but I find the opening chapters one of the silliest parts of the whole series! OK, there might have been 2 schools with the same name close together if they were called something like St Mary's or King Edward's, but why on earth would there have been another "Chalet School" in South Wales? And, on top of that, we're supposed to believe that there was a Mary Katharine Gordon who never turned up without notifying the school that she wasn't going to be coming at the same time that a Katharine Mary Gordon turned up when she wasn't meant to! Not EBD's finest hour IMHO :lol: :lol: .

The bit about the parents being abroad and leaving their daughter with a relative happens quite a lot in the series, but you'd expect that a boarding school would have a high proportion of pupils with parents working abroad. There aren't an awful lot of very sporty pupils at the CS so it's good to see someone who is really into tennis and swimming, and the Jennifer-Blossom thing's quite convincing, and also one of the nice things about this section of the series is that we see different people and don't have Joey, Mary-Lou, Len or any other individual involved with everything.

So, overall, a silly start but a good book otherwise!
Author:  Lolly [ Tue May 13, 2008 1:43 pm ]
Post subject: 
Yes, I agree with Alison H about the silly beginning. But I like the characters in the book & particularly like Aunt Luce...probably the only character in the entire series to go to a pub!

I always thought the idea of punishing a pupil for breaking out of a room she had been locked into perfectly ridiculous though, and very unlikely.
Author:  Catherine [ Tue May 13, 2008 2:01 pm ]
Post subject: 
JS wrote:
I thought the emotions Kat felt when told about her folks being in danger were well-handled but wasn't it one of those occasions where Joey decided not to tell her what was going on? (been a while since I read it). Not sure how I feel about that.


Joey was actually in Canada or en route to Canada in this book, though she may have written to advise Miss Annersley.

This was the first CS book I ever read and I loved it! I did think it was a bit ridiculous to scold Blossom for obeying a message that purported to come from a member of staff. Had she ignored it and the message turned out to be genuine, she'd have been hauled up before the Head for rudeness and all sorts!

I did think the whole Mary-Katharine/Katharine Mary thing was a bit unnecessary and I'm not convinced it was the right plot to have straight after Carola. I was amused by the way Aunt Luce chose the school but I'm surprised that at fourteen, Katharine wasn't more embarrassed.

In later books, I was always a bit puzzled by the close friendship that suddenly arises between Betsy, Carola and Katt ... Hilary, Blossom et al seem to fade into the background.

I remember thinking that Sybil sounded quite a sensible person (was she mentioned as would-have-been dorm pree and form pree?) and then I read the earlier books and found out she wasn't really!

I have the HB but I don't think there are that many differences between the two.
Author:  Caroline [ Tue May 13, 2008 2:06 pm ]
Post subject: 
Alison H wrote:
I like Kat and her friends, and I quite like Aunt Luce, but I find the opening chapters one of the silliest parts of the whole series! OK, there might have been 2 schools with the same name close together if they were called something like St Mary's or King Edward's, but why on earth would there have been another "Chalet School" in South Wales? And, on top of that, we're supposed to believe that there was a Mary Katharine Gordon who never turned up without notifying the school that she wasn't going to be coming at the same time that a Katharine Mary Gordon turned up when she wasn't meant to! Not EBD's finest hour IMHO :lol: :lol: .


And both schools have head mistresses called Miss Wilson, one of whom was at school with Katt's mother, hence the whole Chalet School thing in the first place...

I do like this book a lot, but find it a little slight next door to Carola and Shocks. Perhaps because Katt's peer group are girls we haven't met very much previously, so they aren't quite as interesting to me as some of the other ages groups in the school. I like Katt and Blossom and Hilary Wilson - if Sybil and Betsy and Lalla had featured more it might have made for a stronger group IMO, but EBD seems to mix that couple of years of girls up a bit depending on the requirements of different books.
Author:  JS [ Tue May 13, 2008 3:15 pm ]
Post subject: 
Catherine wrote
Quote:
JS wrote:
I thought the emotions Kat felt when told about her folks being in danger were well-handled but wasn't it one of those occasions where Joey decided not to tell her what was going on? (been a while since I read it). Not sure how I feel about that.


Joey was actually in Canada or en route to Canada in this book, though she may have written to advise Miss Annersley.


Sorry, I was completely confused. I'm thinking about another instance entirely but can't quite dredge up which one. Oh yes I can - Jo Scott, I think. Sorry, that's where I felt the emotions were well-handled - clearly I can't remember Katharine's... I'm hanging my head in shame!
Author:  Mrs Redboots [ Wed May 14, 2008 12:30 pm ]
Post subject: 
Not one of my favourite books, I'm afraid. I got thoroughly bored with all the tennis, the plot was unrealistic and rather silly, and I have never liked the island much as a venue for the school anyway!

I've only read the paperback, but am I right in thinking that the book Jennifer Penrose was caught reading was, in the original, "Gone with the Wind"?

But who was Jennifer, anyway? She suddenly appears out of nowhere as a rather one-dimensional baddie, and is never heard of again!
Author:  Travellers Joy [ Wed May 14, 2008 12:47 pm ]
Post subject: 
Yes, my hardback (1st ed) has Gone with the Wind.
Author:  Sunglass [ Wed May 14, 2008 2:01 pm ]
Post subject: 
The fact of there being two Chalet Schools in the same general neck of the woods cracked me up even when I read it first. I mean, I suppose I could see it if we were in some corner of the Alps full of finishing schools or something, but in the same bit of the UK, without, presumably, a chalet in sight, it comes off as a bridge too far, like some kind of Gothic novel with doubles all over the place, with two schools, two similar uniforms, two MK Gordons, two Miss Wilsons etc. Especially if you see it as a kind of twin novel to Carola, with yet another girl with a rather careless travelling aunt shows up to a school for which her name isn't down.

I always quite like this novel, though, despite being bored by the tennis - and feeling, along with everyone else, that poor Blossom is entirely blameless for having obeyed what looked to be a legitimate message from a staff member - how is she meant to be aware of staff schedules, and can you imagine the response if she didn't obey the message? I think one of the reasons I liked this when I read it first is that Kat Gordon reminded me somewhat of Rebecca Mason in the Trebizon books - in terms of her tennis gifts.

Also, as I have never read either Forever Amber or Gone With the Wind, can people enlighten me as to precisely what would have made them forbidden reading at the CS? Is it simply because they are romances, or because of actual sexual content/adultery/something else I can't think of because I only have the vaguest idea what they are about? I suppose I'm asking whether we assume the CS had a ban on all romances, or whether there are particularly objectionable things in these two from a CS POV.
Author:  Travellers Joy [ Wed May 14, 2008 2:15 pm ]
Post subject: 
You'll find a detailed synopsis of Gone with the Wind here and Forever Amber is here.
Author:  Tor [ Wed May 14, 2008 2:19 pm ]
Post subject: 
I haven't read either books, but wikipedia says this about Forever Amber:

Forever Amber (1944) is a romance novel by Kathleen Winsor that was made into a film in 1947 by 20th Century Fox. It tells the story of orphaned Amber St. Clare, who makes her way through 17th century English society by sleeping with more and more important men.

and

condemned it for its blatant sexual references.[2] Fourteen U.S. states banned the book as pornography. The first was Massachusetts, whose attorney general cited 70 references to sexual intercourse, 39 illegitimate pregnancies, 7 abortions, and "10 descriptions of women undressing in front of men" as reasons for banning the novel.[1] Winsor denied that her book was particularly daring, and said that she had no interest in explicit scenes. "I wrote only two sexy passages," she remarked, "and my publishers took both of them out. They put in ellipsis instead. In those days, you know, you could solve everything with an ellipsis."[1]

It sounds like a good read - give JMB's historical fiction a run for their money!

this link to a review in the Guardian is worth a read too. It highlights the similarities with Gone with the Wind, which is interesting given the CS connection for them both!

http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/stor ... 37,00.html

(You'd never guess thesis procrastination was occurring!)
Author:  Sunglass [ Wed May 14, 2008 2:55 pm ]
Post subject: 
I see entirely why Forever Amber was contraband at the CS, but Gone With the Wind (I had seen some of the film, but was wondering if the novel was quite different) seems a less obvious forbidden book - obviously, Scarlett is no Angel in the House, but the sex sounds quite euphemistic, there's a huge amount of historical description of the Civil War and slevery, and Scarlett appears to be usually married to the man she's lusting after, and I suppose it sounds far less like valueless trash than I was expecting.

I suppose what I'm wondering about is where the CS drew the line between forbidden books and the kind of classics of English literature that would be in any library today, which are full of content that certainly contravenes CS ideas of virtue! Scarlett O'Hara is a modern version of Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair, and Amber sounds like Defoe's Moll Flanders. The 18th and 19thc classics are crammed with adultery, prostitution, illicit affairs, rape etc etc, and what about Shakespeare or john Donne? Do you suppose something like Vanity Fair would have (a) ever been taught in one of Miss Annersley's Eng lit lectures or (b) been on a restricted/staff only shelf of the library?
Author:  JS [ Wed May 14, 2008 3:20 pm ]
Post subject: 
Even Jane Austen, which I recall was held up as a model of something or another, had its moments. Lydia living with Wickham before marriage comes to mind, although I suppose there were no actual descriptions of carnal behaviour.

In an Agatha Christie novel set in a boarding school (Cat Among the Pigeons) a French girl has smuggled in a copy of Candide (with illustrations). The head says she won't come to any harm with that as it's a classic, although 'some forms of pornography' she does confiscate. Can you imagine what Miss Annersley would have done??
Author:  Mia [ Wed May 14, 2008 4:04 pm ]
Post subject: 
Sunglass wrote:
Do you suppose something like Vanity Fair would have (a) ever been taught in one of Miss Annersley's Eng lit lectures or (b) been on a restricted/staff only shelf of the library?


Well in Trials Naomi is reading Tristam Shandy and Mary-Lou comments that they are maybe not supposed to read it...

Forever Amber is languishing in our office kitchen. I keep on seeing it, first thought is always 'How CS' and second 'I thought this was a reputable Institute... '
Author:  Sunglass [ Wed May 14, 2008 4:20 pm ]
Post subject: 
Mia wrote:
Well in Trials Naomi is reading Tristam Shandy and Mary-Lou comments that they are maybe not supposed to read it...



I thought it was Humphrey Clinker Naomi was reading...? But whichever it was, you're right, Mary-Lou seems dubious about whether they are 'supposed to have that', but she doesn't seem to see it as straightforward rule-breaking either - whereas when Eustacia is found in the library reading her forbidden book (which I always imagine as being Mary Renault's Mask of Apollo) she's immediately charged with rule-breaking and having taken it from the mistresses' shelf, and Jennifer also gets short shrift. I know Naomi is older, but it seems like a grey area. It would be very difficult to teach the English novel without coming across some whoring and adultery at the very least. Even Jane Eyre, which every adolescent girl reads at some point, has attempted bigamy, the mad wife's previous drunkenness and unchastity, an illegitimate child and the keeping of mistresses. Presumably the distinction is broadly between 'literature' and the popular novel, which would have still been seen as an actual distinction in the 1940s.
Author:  Alison H [ Wed May 14, 2008 4:45 pm ]
Post subject: 
Forever Amber - which is brilliant, by the way, although not as brilliant as Gone With The Wind! - is full of references to things that I expect the CS would deem unsuitable.

In Gone With The Wind, although there isn't much actual detail about any of it, there are references to childbirth and miscarriage, gossip about adultery, quite a bit about the "madam" of a brothel, and there's also the Scarlett/Rhett incident which can be seen as a marital rape. Maybe EBD with her sometimes rather Victorian views thought that that was unsuitable for schoolgirls.

Having said which, as other people have said, the classics contain plenty of arguably unsuitable things - Wickham and Lydia living together before marriage, Maria Bertram running off with Mr Crawford in Mansfield Park, various things in Wuthering Heights, Mr Rochester discussing his liaisons with Celine Varens and other women in Jane Eyre, etc!
Author:  joyclark [ Wed May 14, 2008 5:27 pm ]
Post subject: 
This was the very first Chalet book I read (and as a hb too, which was lucky). I still have it, very battered by now. I was really bored by the letters from Canada, because I had no Bettany/Maynard background knowledge. When I read it again many years later, knowing the background, I enjoyed reading the letters as well.

The thing I thought was very, very unfair, was when Blosson was scolded for not thinking that a teacher would be in school so would be unlikely to send her such a message. I felt that would have been a totally unacceptable excuse, had Herr Wotshisname really sent her a message. Can you see it? 'Er, yes, well, Miss Annersley, I thought it was hardly likely that a teacher would want to see me, so I decided to ignore the summons.'

Poor Blosson, between the devil and the deep blue sea there.

The thing about the books was that they liked to keep their girls as 'children' for as long as possible and reading such things would destroy their 'innocence'. We would think this off now (have we gone too much in the other direction?), but it was very true to its time.
Author:  Mia [ Wed May 14, 2008 9:47 pm ]
Post subject: 
Sunglass wrote:
Mia wrote:
Well in Trials Naomi is reading Tristam Shandy and Mary-Lou comments that they are maybe not supposed to read it...



I thought it was Humphrey Clinker Naomi was reading...?


Apologies - you're quite right!
Author:  evelyn38 [ Wed May 14, 2008 10:04 pm ]
Post subject: 
I can remember as a child getting thoroughly confused by the Katherine Mary/Mary Kate business, so I don't think it even works on a children's book level. I also found the tennis boring.

That said, I always liked the rest of the book, because I liked Katherine- it seemed to make a change to have a new girl who was "normal" - and I liked Hilary. I always felt sorry that she then faded from sight.
Author:  Miss Di [ Thu May 15, 2008 3:38 am ]
Post subject: 
I was annoyed by the Blossom incident - mainly because EBD was cannibalising her own work - the exact incident occurs in Carnation of the Upper Fourth.

I also read Forever Amber simply because it was refered to. My grandma had it from the library and I grabbed it and hid!
Author:  Mel [ Thu May 15, 2008 8:51 am ]
Post subject: 
I wonder which books Armada would have substituted over the years for Gone With the Wind? In the 1960s would it have been Lady Chatterley's Lover? It's impossible to imagine what would be a forbidden book in 2008. As an ex-teacher of English, my reaction would be tears of joy to see a child reading any book!
Author:  Alison H [ Thu May 15, 2008 10:13 am ]
Post subject: 
Mel wrote:
In the 1960s would it have been Lady Chatterley's Lover?


The girls were definitely not supposed to read that at my mum's school - although it was a day school so I don't suppose the teachers could do much about what they read at home! - but Mum reckoned that they all read it anyway (this would have been very early '60s).

IME banning things just makes people all the more keen to read them :lol: .
Author:  Kathy_S [ Thu May 15, 2008 2:15 pm ]
Post subject: 
Did anyone else wonder whether that concatenation of coincidences was meant to read like something out of Gilbert & Sullivan?

Not much to add, really. Aunt Luce definitely wins the most likable award among recent aunt-guardians, Jennifer Penrose does makes a realistic villain, and I have to agree that Blossom's treatment took blaming the victim to a new high.

I think my favorite scene in this one is the jiu-jitsu, both for the original concept and for the insight into the Bettany family, with Peggy overcorrecting so as not to show favouritism, and Bride trying to smooth things over between Peggy & Maeve.

Interesting that the book inspection that netted the poor Dawbarns' volume blatantly missed Jennifer's hat box. Perhaps Matey only looked at books handed over in all innocence? That confiscated book shelf must have been a real grab bag, anyhow, with something as inoffensive as handicrafts and games tucked next to Forever Amber/Gone With the Wind!
Author:  abbeybufo [ Thu May 15, 2008 2:18 pm ]
Post subject: 
We certainly talked about Lady Chattersley at school in the early 60s, and people would pretend to have read it - or come up with quotes that were supposed to be from it :shock:

Never got round to it myself though, even later on in life when Sons and Lovers was one of the texts for an English module towards my BA :roll:
Author:  LizzieC [ Thu May 15, 2008 3:12 pm ]
Post subject: 
The thing that always caused me to raise an eyebrow about this book was the interpretation of the CS uniform by the other CS school. I can only imagine the effect of flame colour/orange tunics :shock:
Author:  Tor [ Fri May 16, 2008 9:10 am ]
Post subject: 
Regarding forbidden books, I wonder how often an expurgated/abridged volume of a text might have been used in the school?

At my senior school, whilst I don't really remember anything being forbidden, we did have a junior library section and a senior library section for fiction. For the life of me I cannot remember when we were allowed to take books out of the senior side. Perhaps there was no restriction, and I just thought there was! I was never sure of the rules at the public library, though I think i wasn't allowed to borrow adult books until I was a certain age. The whole adult region maintained its feeling of forbidden fruit for a long time!

Of course, books like Forever by Judy Blume did the rounds in year 8 or so. WE all felt like it was a book we shouldn't let the teachers/our parents see we were reading! If was definitely literary contraband. Also, I took a significant risk in year nine putting "the Mammoth Hunters" by Jean Auel down as my form prize book. I hoped the teachers would think it was a non-fiction title, and maybe they did (until they saw the cover!!!). Still, I got it, albeit with some rather askance looks from the prize giver! The great thing about such trash is that to say you think it is unsuitable you first have to admit to reading it!!!!
Author:  Alison H [ Fri May 16, 2008 9:17 am ]
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:lol: :lol: Oh, that brings back memories! We all read Forever, and it felt like we were doing something very naughty :lol: . The other ones were the Sweet Valley High books, but I never read many of those because quite honestly I thought they were a load of rubbish!

I remember reading "grown-up" books like A Woman of Substance when I was only about 11 or 12, and no-one seemed to mind ... but then it wasn't as if the school kept tabs on our reading. Although we did have "recommended reading lists" which I always meant to stick to and never did.

Edited after Sunglass's post, to avoid spreeing - yes, I remember the dreadful Flowers in the Attic series doing the rounds as well!
Author:  Sunglass [ Fri May 16, 2008 10:12 am ]
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My school was so rough the teachers were grateful for virtually any proof we could actually read, but the book I remember secretly circulating around the class when we were twelve or so was Virginia Andrews' Flowers in the Attic, an astonishingly bad novel that seemed to be mostly about uncle/niece and brother/sister incest, being locked up in the attic, starved and tortured by your sadistic grandmother, while your mother lived it up downstairs pretending not to have had four blonde children with her uncle. Or something. It was fairly unsavoury, looking back, particularly as regards what women 'were like' and compulsory prettiness for all. As far as I can remember, it spawned a long line of sequels also involving incest, blondeness and family misery!

Although Forever was doing the rounds around the same time - which I remember only because I didn't know exactly what a 'den' was, and I was moritifed at the idea of someone naming his own genitalia 'Ralph'.

The CS authorities would have had heart failure. One wonders what they would have done, as it would have involved expelling an entire year group or admitting that a desire among adolescent girls to read books with sexual content does not actually make them sexually-overheated Joan Bakers. (Though Joan is only ever said to have read the 'silly schoolgirl weeklies', rather than the forbidden novel type of thing, as far as I can remember.
Author:  kramerkaren [ Fri May 16, 2008 1:51 pm ]
Post subject: 
Quote:
Do you suppose something like Vanity Fair would have (a) ever been taught in one of Miss Annersley's Eng lit lectures or (b) been on a restricted/staff only shelf of the library?


I'm sure that in one of the book the prefects did some kind of charade and there was a scene from Vanity Fair (maybe in "prefects", I reember Len being involved), so it was taught or available and expected to be read by younger kids as well as the older ones.
Author:  Travellers Joy [ Fri May 16, 2008 3:44 pm ]
Post subject: 
Sunglass wrote:
... and Scarlett appears to be usually married to the man she's lusting after, and I suppose it sounds far less like valueless trash than I was expecting.


No, Scarlett spent her days lusting after Ashley Wilkes, who was married to Melanie. She married all the other men out of spite - or financial need/greed. Rhett states that he would have preferred to simply have his way with her, but knows the only way he can bed her is if he marries her, so he does - when he finally manages to catch her between husbands!! And she only marries him for his money. And when Melanie is seriously ill during pregnancy, Scarlett almost hopes she'll die so that Ashley would be free to marry her at last. It's only later when Melanie finally does die that Scarlett realises how much she has come to admire and depend upon her.

Certainly nothing sexually explicit - except the insinuation of marital rape, as someone else mentioned - but Scarlett is definitely viewed as a fallen woman, for all that she's legally married etc. She was a 'tramp' in her outlook, if not her behaviours. I can see that EBD would have seen that as poor taste for her girls to be reading, although I think the popularity and success of the movie would have romanticised the story somewhat by the time EBD was writing Wrong, so it might have been a more realistic example in one of the later Tyrol books rather than at this stage of the series.
.
Author:  Billie [ Fri May 16, 2008 3:45 pm ]
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I always liked this one because I liked Katherine - she seemed a remarkably normal new girl compared to some. However even as a kid I thought there were way too many coincidences - Two Chalet Schools, 2 Miss Wilsons and 2 Gordon girls with the names Katherine and Mary in one order or the other. However, that aside, I liked the storyline with Jennifer Penrose; I thought it brought the series a little into the "real world" somehow.

I remember my Grandmother bought me a Judy Blume book when I was about 12 and mentioned that the shop assistant had told her they were all suitable for someone my age "except one." Of course I was very curious to know what that one was.
Author:  Lolly [ Fri May 16, 2008 3:56 pm ]
Post subject: 
Tor wrote:
Also, I took a significant risk in year nine putting "the Mammoth Hunters" by Jean Auel down as my form prize book. I hoped the teachers would think it was a non-fiction title, and maybe they did (until they saw the cover!!!). Still, I got it, albeit with some rather askance looks from the prize giver! The great thing about such trash is that to say you think it is unsuitable you first have to admit to reading it!!!!


I don't know what year nine is, but my mother found this on my reading list when I was in the Lower Fourth (11) and complained to the school about it.
She also got 'Forever' banned from the junior school library when I brought it home aged 10....I was furious at the time, but looking back I can see why she did ....imagine my mortification though :oops:
Author:  JustJen [ Fri May 16, 2008 4:19 pm ]
Post subject: 
I remember a girl getting caught wi th one of the "Flowers" books at summer camp and the entire cabin lost their privilges for two days.
The next year we got a list of books that were deemed unacceptable.
I always found it funny the camp was more worried about books than cigarretes!
Author:  Tor [ Fri May 16, 2008 4:27 pm ]
Post subject: 
Quote:
I don't know what year nine is, but my mother found this on my reading list when I was in the Lower Fourth (11) and complained to the school about it.


Year nine is roughly age 14 or so, and the Mammoth Hunters has some *cough* rather explicit scenes in it..... if you mean lower fourth is year 11, then really I think by that age you should be able to read all you like about sex, considering you are round about the legal age on consent in this country. Whether it should be on a recommended reading list I don't know... mostly because it isn't exactly a great work of art!!! If you meant you were aged 11.... well, no wonder she complained. Though I think most 11 year olds would be bored to tears by both the sex and the 20 page descriptive paragraphs about ice age flora and fauna

In my defence, I only loved them because I was (am) obsessed with the Ice Age. And a whole series of books about that period was just amazing. Also, I didn't know how naughty they would be when I started reading, as the first books weren't that bad.

Still... I had an inkling, and I can't say it put me off :oops: :oops: :oops:

Didn't do me any harm that I can see, especially as the juicy bits got so repetitive that I used to skip over them (quite good training, one might say!!). I still have a soft spot for the Jean Auel books, but can't say I'd defend them as great works or recommend to someone. Flowers in the Attic, on the other hand, was nasty. Didn't like that at all (yes it went around at the same time as Forever... was everyone else recollecting this born around 1980???)
Author:  Lulie [ Fri May 16, 2008 7:27 pm ]
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I was born in 1976 and I remember Forever doing the rounds when I was 13 or so. I've always been able to read more or less what I pleased, and when my mother caught me reading it she simply remarked that in her day it had been Lady Chatterley's Lover which was the "forbidden book" and she'd managed to completely miss the "naughty bits". Luckily for me she didn't want to read Forever to see what it was all about, as i suspect JB's "naughty bits" were a bit more explicit that DH Lawrence's (I've never read Lady Chatterley so I'm happy to be corrected by somebody who has!). I do remember wondering if it really did sting if a man (boy?) put aftershave on his balls and also I still want to smirk childishly whenever I hear of anybody named Ralph :lol:

I read the first of Jean M. Auel's books around the same age and the sex-scenes rather passed me by until I had managed to track down book number 4, I think it was, when I was about 16 and suddenly noticed them :lol: My friend, who was borrowing them from me, and I decided that there wasn't really much to do in the Stone/Ice Age once you'd invented clothing, cookery, hunting, gathering and the tools to do all that with - and there were all those long, cold winter nights.....

Do come and join me in the gutter, it's rather fun down here :twisted:
Author:  Karry [ Sat May 17, 2008 8:12 am ]
Post subject: 
Quote:
I was never sure of the rules at the public library, though I think i wasn't allowed to borrow adult books until I was a certain age. The whole adult region maintained its feeling of forbidden fruit for a long time!
I had to get permission from my parents to use the adult library, as I had more or less exhausted the children's books at the age of 11 ( nthe normal age was 13)! This was in 1971, when Virginia Andrews was not writing, but there were the Angelique series (anyone remember those?)
Author:  jennifer [ Sat May 17, 2008 9:17 am ]
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I rather liked this book, even with all its flaws. The coincidences required for the plot are a bit much - two Chalet Schools with similarly described uniforms leaving from the same train station at the same time, two heads named Miss Wilson, the death of a mistress at the other Chalet school (if I remember correctly) so they couldn't get the information from them, a flood at the real CS which destroyed all correspondence to Mary Katherine, both fathers being Dr Gordons who worked abroad in missionary work, both trunks being sent late, and the fact that Mary-Katherine's people didn't seem to notify the school that their daughter wasn't going to be at the pickup point, and Miss Gordon being unreachable for an extended period of time!

The other downsides are the close proximity to Carola, which has a very similar plot (parents abroad, guardian aunt, mix-up at the start of term). Katherine's parents seem much more on the ball than the other recent cases of parents abroad - they've got her with someone who takes good care of her, even if she's a bit ditzy, and they are making age appropriate, reasonable decisions about her education - unlike the Wintertons, Lovells and Johnstones.

Blossom's dressing down is kind of silly. As others have said, could they really expected her to have ignored a summons by a teacher, guessing that is was an attempt to sabotage her? In Blossom's place, I'd've been inclined to refuse to accept any summons passed on from a teacher, without checking with the head first.

I rather liked the illicit book/form slackers story line and the jiu-jitsu.

When I was a kid, it was Flowers in the Attic and the Clan of the Cave Bear for illicit reading. I read Flowers in the Attic and wasn't all that impressed - but I also read the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant at age 12, which has some pretty age inappropriate stuff in it. I think I read Forever Amber at about the same age, in the book stacks in my grandparents' basement, and Gone With the Wind at age 13, along with 1984 by George Orwell.
Author:  Pat [ Sat May 17, 2008 9:26 pm ]
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Karry wrote:
Quote:
I was never sure of the rules at the public library, though I think i wasn't allowed to borrow adult books until I was a certain age. The whole adult region maintained its feeling of forbidden fruit for a long time!
I had to get permission from my parents to use the adult library, as I had more or less exhausted the children's books at the age of 11 ( nthe normal age was 13)! This was in 1971, when Virginia Andrews was not writing, but there were the Angelique series (anyone remember those?)


I used to love the Angelique books!
Author:  patmac [ Sat May 17, 2008 11:15 pm ]
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Karry wrote:
but there were the Angelique series (anyone remember those?)


Yes, and some of them are now quite rare (like some CS hard backs :wink: )

I don't recall my parents ever censoring my reading and I was getting books from the adult library on my father's ticket (he didn't read as fast as my mother) well before I was eligible for one in my own right. As I recall, the sexual scenes passed me by in favour of the action! I do remember my mother advising, when my own children were in their teens, that if they didn't understand it would do no harm and if they did, it was too late :shock:

The school was another matter and our books were certainly checked for suitability. With hindsight, I suppose schools had to be careful to keep in line with what 'conservative' (that's with a small 'c') parents would approve - it was a boarding school. Having witnessed my own children's concerns about what their teenagers are viewing on the web, I suppose things haven't changed that much except in the level of explicitness (if that is a real word, my spell checker passes it :lol: )
Author:  Mia [ Sun May 18, 2008 12:01 am ]
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Lulie wrote:
Luckily for me she didn't want to read Forever to see what it was all about, as i suspect JB's "naughty bits" were a bit more explicit that DH Lawrence's (I've never read Lady Chatterley so I'm happy to be corrected by somebody who has!).


IIRC - and it's a while since I read it, there's a reference to intercourse in the less conventional way, so to speak.

I imagine that would be what caused the controversy, as it was illegal (still could be? - don't really want to google!).
Author:  Chelsea [ Mon May 19, 2008 10:06 pm ]
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What I never understood is how Katherine didn't notice that the uniform she bought was nothing like that worn by the other's on the train. And shouldn't she have been traveling in her uniform?
Author:  jennifer [ Tue May 20, 2008 2:39 am ]
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It didn't sound like she even had a uniform when she arrived - if she hadn't actually registered for the school, and they had forgotten about it until shortly before the deadline, then she probably wouldn't have had time to get the uniform before the pickup date, and she wouldn't have the information to get it in the first place.

Carola's start of school was much more realistic, as the staff figures out something fishy is going on by the time she arrives at school. With Katherine, it's weeks before they notice that she's not really supposed to be there.
Author:  Chelsea [ Tue May 20, 2008 2:05 pm ]
Post subject: 
Quote:
It didn't sound like she even had a uniform when she arrived - if she hadn't actually registered for the school, and they had forgotten about it until shortly before the deadline, then she probably wouldn't have had time to get the uniform before the pickup date, and she wouldn't have the information to get it in the first place.


But, when her trunk arrives she is happy because it means that she can now wear her uniform, rather than the non-uniform stuff she had been wearing. So, presumably, some sort of uniform was in her trunk.
Author:  april [ Tue May 20, 2008 2:27 pm ]
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But then would she have packed her own trunk?

I haven't read this one, though I can't wait to, but has anyone else read The right St. Johns by Christine Chaundler? ( I have the GGBP edition and it's lovely!) The plot seems essentially the same. Except the school the heroine attends is almost the opposite of CS. It's well worth a read.

It was written in 1920. Is this a case of the same idea hitting different people or is it possible EBD may have read this one?
Author:  Kate [ Tue May 20, 2008 2:30 pm ]
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They did (presumably) buy a uniform, it says:

Quote:
The flurry that followed had been monumental. All Katharine’s possessions and some of her aunt’s had been tossed pell-mell into cases. They had headed for the nearest airport and, luckily, succeeded in booking the last two vacant seats on next day’s plane for England. Since then they had sped from shop to shop, buying Katharine’s outfit.


and on the platform Aunt Luce decides against the Tanswick Chalet School because of their uniform:

Quote:
Standing in a little group at the nearer end of the platform were about a dozen schoolgirls wearing long brown coats and brown felt hats.
‘Do you think those are them?’ she asked Aunt Luce eagerly. ‘They’re the first brown uniforms we’ve seen here.’
Miss Gordon gazed earnestly at them. ‘We might stroll along in that direction,’ she said. ‘Then we can see if they have any orange about them.’
They strolled—and a swirling movement of one of the girls showed them such orange as was literally dazzling. Under the brown coat her tunic was bright reddish orange!
‘That’s not the school!’ Aunt Luce said decidedly. ‘It couldn’t possibly be! I may have lost the letter and the prospectus, but I know the Head said brown tunics. This must be the flame-coloured school.’


So even if Aunt Luce meant for her to go to the Tanswick school, she'd gotten our Chalet School uniform. Katherine wasn't actually enrolled in either, was she? So they hadn't had any definitive uniform advice from Tanswick. She'd just got it off her own bat.
Author:  Mrs Redboots [ Wed May 21, 2008 6:45 pm ]
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My generation all read the Angélique books at school, and very dull they were, too!

One of the girls taking Oxbridge entrance exams, which in those days were done in an extra term after you finished Upper Sixth, was discussing literature with our Head Mistress, who apparently enquired whether said young woman had read Lady Chatterley's Lover.

"Parts of it," said the student. "Have you, Miss *****?"

"Parts of it!" replied the Headmistress, and then realised what she'd said....

I can't quite see Miss Annersley having a similar conversation with a student, can you?
Author:  KB [ Wed May 21, 2008 11:43 pm ]
Post subject: 
Kate wrote:
They did (presumably) buy a uniform, it says:

Quote:
The flurry that followed had been monumental. All Katharine’s possessions and some of her aunt’s had been tossed pell-mell into cases. They had headed for the nearest airport and, luckily, succeeded in booking the last two vacant seats on next day’s plane for England. Since then they had sped from shop to shop, buying Katharine’s outfit.


I don't know, I'd always assumed that, by outfit, they meant all of the other bits and pieces that Katharine would need - sporting and art equipment, underwear, etc. The fact that she doesn't seem to have a uniform suggested to me that they assumed she would be able to get one at school, as Carola does.
Author:  Sunglass [ Thu May 22, 2008 9:21 am ]
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I've often vaguely wondered about uniform purchase at the CS in general - we know that at the start of the school, obviously, the tunics with tussore or shantung silk tops need to be made, presumably by a seamstress, and people seem to get theirs piecemeal. Clearly the brown and flame uniform of the early days grows gradually from there. But what I wondered - and people who read GO books in general might know a lot about this - was how exactly uniforms (by which I suppose I really mean the basic tunic) would be got by Carola Storms and Wrong? My own schools, both very large, in the 1970s and 80s in Ireland had a relationship with a local shop, which sold the ties and gymslips, but would the CS (at least in the earlier years) be more likely to have simply specified 'brown tunic' and possibly supplied a pattern for people to have their own made up, or just supplied tunics itself, given that its students came from all over Europe? I've certainly always imagined the early tunics as obviously home-made and - by our mass-produced standards - slightly mismatched. Possibly made in slightly different hard-wearing fabrics, and not with standard finishings.

It sounds unlikely to me that, even after the Tyrol years, what with moving to wartime Britain with clothes rationing etc, it would have been easy to sell CS tunics via, say a distant London department store - but might they have been able to assume that girls' families would come up with something roughly suitable, or that, brown tunics presumably being fairly standard wear for schools, that department stores would stock suitable brown tunics? Like KB, I assumed that 'outfit' meant sports equipment and warm underwear and house slippers etc, and the references in 'Carola' or 'Wrong' (can't remember) to beret badges being posted on to potential pupils by the school suggest that at this point, at least elements of the uniform are supplied by the school..?

I know that by Problem, there is a reference to Mrs Gay taking Rosamund to a department store, at which she specifically says the entire uniform including the tunic, is available, but by the time the CS has turned into a Swiss school with a finishing branch and an English branch, things are much bigger, and slicker and more corporate.
Author:  abbeybufo [ Thu May 22, 2008 1:58 pm ]
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In the 1960s my school in Bournemouth had two 'official' suppliers for our 'crossovers' - a sort of tunic - blazers and hats, school jumpers with thin stripes of the colors round the 'V' & sports kit. Although the basic colour was navy blue, it was immediatley apparent which had come from which store, since both the shade of navy and the weight of the material were different [the greys of the sports 'shorts' - a sort of split skirt - and the type of material used in them were even more different]. So we could see whether our classmates' parents had been to the department store or the 'posh' shop on the other side of the square to get the uniform! [Don't think the prices were actually any different, but the perception was definitely there . . ]
Hat badges had to be bought from the school, but the blazers with the pocket with the emboidered badge were sold by the two shops - as well as a 'secondhand uniform shop' at the school, which operated twice a term.
Author:  Jenefer [ Thu May 22, 2008 4:36 pm ]
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How did Aunt Luce and Katherine know on which day the school started and which train to get. I would have thought this information was not given out until someone was enrolled at the school, along with the uniform list.
Author:  Katherine [ Tue Jul 15, 2008 9:09 pm ]
Post subject: 
Jenefer wrote:
How did Aunt Luce and Katherine know on which day the school started and which train to get. I would have thought this information was not given out until someone was enrolled at the school, along with the uniform list.

That's a very good question! And the two schools are getting trains from the same station at the same time. Yet another cooincidence.

And another cooincidence is that Joyce Lemon, who is playing the CS in
the tennis match, just happens to have a father in Japan who just happens to know Kat's parents are safe and writes this in a letter to his daughter. Why would he have done that? And what really gets me is that Joyce and Peggy then decide not to tell Kat that her father is safe because she collapsed when she found out her mother was safe. Why would you not want to know that??

Oh and Mary-Kate and Katherine Mary are distant cousins. Of course they are, they share a surname. :roll:

I find the tennis matched in this book hard to read. I can handle Rebecca's Trebizon ones, though they do go on a bit, but these leave me cold.

Is it me or is Jennifer almost having a nervous breakdown over locking Blossom in the art room a bit much. Seems like a device to get her to confess as she wouldn't before.
Author:  Theresa [ Wed Jul 16, 2008 1:04 am ]
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Oh dear, those Jean M. Auel books... my father has always had a huge collection of fantasy novels with variously primitive landscapes on the covers. I was looking for something to read one day when I was 9 and he pulled down the first of the Auels and gave me that, obviously not realising what was in it. Mind you, this is a man who also gave me a stack of Michael Moorcock novels from his university days, at least three of which had naked ladies on the front. I generally used to just read whatever my parents were reading at the time, as I'd gone through the whole school library already.

I didn't realise Lady Chatterley was considered so risqué! I read it in high school, as it was 'literature', and then it was one of our studies in my first year at university.
Author:  JennieP [ Fri Jul 25, 2008 7:09 pm ]
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What I find interesting on the banned book front is that in 'Peggy', the wicked Eilunedd suggests that Blossom, Sybil et al should try Georgette Heyer to learn to speak Regency English, and that later on in 'New Mistress', there turn out to be various volumes by Angela Thirkell in the library. Thinking of various references to 'children of shame' in Angela Thirkell - her phrase not mine - and drunkeness, wenching and other shenanigans in Georgette Heyer, I wouldn't have thought that they would be included in the canon of reputable books to have in the CS library especially given the way the girls are encouraged to not think about boyfriends/marriage etc.
Author:  arky72 [ Mon Aug 04, 2008 9:40 am ]
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This was one of the first CS books I read, and has remained a favourite. It made me think that somehow I could perhaps go to somewhere like the CS if mistakes could be made!! I have just re-read it, one of just a few I picked out, and then it inspired me to re-read Carola.

I certainly remember reading Forever and the Flowers books - although I "hid" Forever, I am fairly sure Mum gave me the Flowers books, and I think I was just oblivious to some of the content! My paperback copy says Forever Amber, and I was aware enough that there were probably books which weren't suitable for school children, even if I wasn't entirely sure why. What innocence!
Author:  moiser30 [ Mon Aug 04, 2008 8:34 pm ]
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Just ordered this book so I can't say anything about it as I haven't read it.
Author:  Maeve [ Tue Aug 05, 2008 6:41 pm ]
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This has all the flaws that everyone's mentioned, but still remains a firm favorite. I really like both Katherine and Aunt Luce - in fact, Aunt Luce may be my favorite guardian from all the books. Scatty, but charming, and Katherine clearly likes her and is proud of her - I enjoy how they interact and their comments about each other.
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