Elinor M. Brent-Dyer - Chalet School, etc.

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Re: Elinor M. Brent-Dyer - Chalet School, etc.

Post by Francis »

Thank you Daisy - that sounds quite a brave subject for a children's author in the 1930s.
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Re: Elinor M. Brent-Dyer - Chalet School, etc.

Post by Katharine »

Split from another topic.

Once again I've started trying to read the Chalet school series of books, and once again I'm finding them heavy going and not very easy to follow. It really makes me appreciate Enid Blyton's style.

There are just so many characters - up to 18 now and I find it hard to work out who they all are. Two main ones have similar names - Grizel and Gisela, so I have to try and remember which one is being referred to. I also struggle with the layout of the area - pity the books don't include a map and I feel the author assumes the reader knows what Innsbruck looks like and just rattles off street names and famous monuments which I've no idea what they look like.

I also can't understand why she swaps between German and English, the school is supposed to be an English school and the girls forbidden to speak anything other than English and then she constantly says they have their Mittagessen or Kaffee and Kuchen! If it was an English school, why aren't they haven't lunch, coffee and cakes?

I also feel that the plots rush along and then come to an abrupt end and suddenly it's three weeks later and I'm turning back pages to see if I've turned two at a time, for example, the girls get caught in a storm and Simone has hysterics. All through the book so far she's been a clingy, weepy child, and then suddenly, it is three weeks after the storm and a brief mention is made that she's much better these days. I thinking 'why, what happened to calm her down?' I'm sure Enid Blyton would have had some event that would have been character building for the child to account for her changing. Also there is a reference to two of the girls' rudeness the week before - but again, turning back the pages, I can find nothing that shows how they were rude!

Oh well, I'll keep plodding on, maybe after 2 or 3 books I'll find what the attraction of the books is, as I would like to enjoy them as they were so popular.
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Re: Elinor M. Brent-Dyer - Chalet School, etc.

Post by Anita Bensoussane »

I've read a couple of Chalet School books and I too found them choppy and overpopulated with characters. However, my editions were Armada paperbacks and I learnt later that they'd been abridged, which might account for the choppiness. The style seemed rather ponderous in any case. I don't know whether you're reading hardbacks or paperbacks, Katharine, but is it possible that the apparent "gaps" in the plot have been caused by sloppy editing?
Katharine wrote:I also can't understand why she swaps between German and English, the school is supposed to be an English school and the girls forbidden to speak anything other than English and then she constantly says they have their Mittagessen or Kaffee and Kuchen! If it was an English school, why aren't they haven't lunch, coffee and cakes?
Is it the author speaking or the characters, and is German the girls' native language? If so, you quite often hear people saying a few everyday words or phrases in their own tongue when they're speaking another language - e.g. a Welsh-speaker talking in English might still call a child "bach" ("little one/dear") or refer to their grandparents as "nain" and "taid" ("grandma" and "grandad").
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Re: Elinor M. Brent-Dyer - Chalet School, etc.

Post by Katharine »

Anita, good to know I'm not the only one who found them 'choppy and overpopulated'. The edition I have is a 2 in 1 combination of the first two books, printed by Harper Collins in 1995.

That's another point I have about the books, the original was published in 1926 and yet I feel it seems to have been written much earlier than that. If I didn't know the date I'd have thought it was written in the late Victorian era. I recently read an Angela Brazil book from 1904 and that felt much easier to read. For example, in the Chalet book, there's a paragraph where someone had just spoken and the next sentence starts: "Thus, Madge......" the word 'thus' is used quite a bit - it seems very dated even for the 1920s, I don't recall ever reading another book which uses it, the only writing I can think of that would use the word are Christmas carols/hymns.

Somewhere I do have a hard backed edition of one of the books - when I come across it I'll compare it with the paperback to see if it flows any easier.
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Re: Elinor M. Brent-Dyer - Chalet School, etc.

Post by timv »

Elinor Brent Dyer's Chalet School world is very hard to get into, particularly if you don't start with the first book or two and have some idea who is who - and over the course of 44 years (1925 to 1969) EBD wrote around sixty books about the school, featuring its staff and pupils over a period of around 26 or 27 years. Some girls who are 11 or 12 in the first books are still in the story at the end as mothers of current CS girls, and some of the staff are still there too - not to mention first pupil turned mother of eleven (!) and famous author Joey Bettany, later Maynard. The reverse of Enid's neatly wrapping up her Malory Towers and St Clare's stories in six books featuring one group of girls. But it can be fascinating as a 'world of its own', if confusing, and the author obviously adored it.

I've done a detailed chapter on the Chalet School world for my Literary Landscapes sequence that involved me getting to grips with most of the books - four or five of which I had read in (often heavily cut) Armada editions at the school library at my (mainly girls) school, intrigued by its exotic locales and mass of weird names. I've also used the various Girls Gone By Publishing guides to who's who and what happens when, which is VERY complicated - and full of slips by EBD who often muddled up names and ages. If you need any guidance on this I'll be pleased to help.

If you persevere you'll find that the later books, published after c 1950 and set in Switzerland, are far more formulaic and full of obscure back-references by the ever enthusiastic EBD to past characters and events which she could recall instantly and forgot her readers couldn't. The early, Austrian books pre-1938 , the wartime Herefordshire books (set around Hereford where EBD ran a school in the 1940s), and the mid-late 1940s Pembrokeshire island books are mostly more readable and less full of cliches and repeated plots, though EBD was rather fond throughout of over-dramatic and unlikely accidents, weather disasters, moralising, marrying her staff off to doctors from the school's associated sanatorium, and huge families. Her 'lead characters', Joey and her sister Madge and their families, had a habit of taking over the books - and nowadays EBD would be accused of promoting nepotism in her fictional school given how many became Head Girl.

The huge families are presumably adopted from her late Victorian and Edwardian background - she was born 1894, three years older than Enid. Ditto the serious illnesses, lurid accidents, appropriate fates for bad or nonconformist girls, references to Victorian books and plays which nobody now knows, and frequent outdated expressions (eg 'trig' for 'smart and fashionable'). I agree that Angela Brazil, who also uses unusual Christian names but never did a series, sounds less dated at times!
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Re: Elinor M. Brent-Dyer - Chalet School, etc.

Post by Debbie »

Moved from another topic.
Katharine wrote:I've just started the 4th of the Chalet School books. I have a sort of love/hate relationship with the series. There are many aspects of it I find irritating, but I can't help wanted to find out what is going to happen to them next.

One aspect that really struck me last night though was the inequality in them. I think I commented about it once before in a previous story. Last night I read a passage where 'The Robin' who is 8, was gently lifted while fast asleep at the end of a long train journey and carried to the hotel where she slept until nearly midday. When we are told how other characters look out of the window on a picturesque scene of a young boy delivering milk - he is described as being about 10 years old. The story was set in Basle and written in 1928, much of what has been written appears to be true, so I'm assuming that was also something that genuinely happened around that time. I was actually disgusted that they (and presumably the author) thought it quite acceptable for a child of that age to be working, when they themselves were so pampered. Later in the plot one of the girls attracts a lot of attention because she is travelling by train on her own - apparently for a 17 year old girl of her class it was extremely strange that she wasn't accompanied by a chaperone!

People moan about Enid Blyton being too middle class, but compared to the Chalet School books her characters are almost working class!
The Robin is treated differently anyway! She's far more babied than any 8yo would be in real life.
EBD has a strange idea of younger children at times. In one of the early books Amy Stevens is described as needing help to bathe and dress or she won't be able to get up. She's about 8yo at the time. I suspect Bets in the FO would have been dressing herself for years at that age.
And one of my favourite quotes from a later book is about Cecily. It's something along the lines of "Cecily was a determined young lady, but at the age of four months was finally learning that "no" meant "no". :D
I don't think EBD had much idea about younger children.

I think though there was an acceptance of "what's right" for their class, but also it was portrayed in a "romantic foreigners" type way. With their rosy cheeks and cheerful way they're obviously only living to supply the Chalet School with what they want. :D
If you think about Biddy, for example, who was around about 10yo and the only working class (albeit Irish in her case) school child in the early days that I can think of. When they "adopt" her there's no thought of just sending her to work. Yes, their ambitions for her are pretty snobby-she is to go to the village school etc, but there's no "oh Mme X in Tyrol is looking for a laundry assistant" or similar suggestions.
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Post by Katharine »

Interesting comments about the Chalet school books Debbie. I'm reading the 2 in 1 books which I believe have been abridged. I've been reading them in order, but think in the past I must have skipped this edition as I recall reading about Biddy, but don't recall anything about book 3 or the one I'm currently on.

A 4 month baby understanding what 'no' means - I wish! :lol: :lol:

The only thing in defence of EBD I might have is that possibly Amy may have needed more help getting washed and dressed in the 1920s than Bets did in the 1950s. I'm not an expert in clothing, but I think perhaps that the undergarments the Chalet school girls wore, would have been more complex than later items, also I think that generally speaking the weather would have been colder at the Chalet school so they would have needed more layers on.

I find myself a bit of a contradiction when it comes to reading these books. I've never warmed to George in the FF, or understood her, I was definitely more drawn to Anne's character - I liked being a girl, wearing pretty dresses and playing with dolls, but I find the girls of the Chalet school even more irritating perhaps, especially the way Robin is constantly petting, fussed and generally babied.

I agree that perhaps EBD didn't have much clue about young children - I personally wouldn't have been able to carry any of mine at the age of 8 without slipping a disc or two! :roll:
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Re: What other author are you reading at the moment?

Post by timv »

There's an interesting parallel between Elinor Brent Dyer's approach and Enid's to 'Not Our Sort however much money they have ' types of girls at boarding-school in one of EBD's later, post-War books, which I have taken a look at for my study of the period's school stories. (EBD came from a similar, though Northumbrian, background to Enid's, and another parental split-up.)This is the same era as Enid's creation of Josephine Jones and her 'vulgar' though well-meaning father for Last Term at Malory Towers in 1949-50, plus Miss Grayling's remarks about it being an 'experiment' for MT to take on a girl from a different background to the usual one . In EBD's 'A Problem For the Chalet School' , published in 1956, the CS has moved back to the Alps but to Switzerland not Austria after the Second WW but is mainly for the sort of wealthy British parents who can afford to send their daughters abroad to study and who want them to learn languages and international culture - not quite a 'finishing school' as the girls are still aged 11-18, but mostly from that sort of background, as rich as the MT parents. We have a 'respectable middle-class values vs New Money' clash , in an era of 'get rich quick' types (eg war profiteers) who were then known dismissively as 'spivs'.

English state school girl Rosamund Lilley wins a scholarship there and her parents (who run a Garden Centre and started as country house servants but are clearly meant to be the 'right sort') are glad to get her away from her bossy, 'cheap' best friend Joan Baker who wears make-up, loves the cinema, and goes around with boys despite being only around 15 (ie she is meant by genteel EBD to be 'common'). Rosamund is secretly relieved to get away from the forceful and demanding Joan, but then the latter's family win the pools (ie a 'working-class' way of financial success via gambling, and looked down on as such) and can afford the Chalet School fees so she gets them to send her there too. 'Nice' Rosamund is dismayed and tries to avoid her bumptious ex-friend but ends up 'targeted' by her, as Joan thinks she has turned into a snob. Polite and well-brought-up CS girls look down on Joan as 'cheap' , do not like her endless talk of boys and clothes, and decide to try to educate her to the right way of behaviour and be a 'Proper Chalet School Girl' - causing her to run away alienated. You can guess which side EBD is on from her editorial tone. At the CS, as at Malory Towers, the established and authorially supported values are those of the 'respectable' professional classes, as was also usual for contemporary comic stories -and EBD had been a private school teacher (Fareham, Hampshire, early-mid 1920s) and governess and then run her own school in Hereford in 1935-45.

Biddy O'Ryan, incidentally, ends up as one of the CS teachers in Switzerland , still with her stereotyped Irish accent, and is married off to a doctor at the local sanatorium as with other favoured EBD characters. Notably, whereas Enid carefully restricted most of her series to 6 books (as with MT) EBD went to the other extreme and kept on churning out Chalet School books , with rather repetitive plots, right up to her death in 1969. I wonder what would have happened had Enid decided to try the route of a longer-running school series instead of a long-running (Famous Five) adventure/ detective series - how different would her interpretation of Felicity and co at MT been from the actual series written up by Hachette-approved continuators ?
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Re: What other author are you reading at the moment?

Post by Katharine »

That's very interesting. Although I've read some of the Chalet school books previously, I don't think I got past the first 8 - 10, certainly not up to the war years.

I find the comments about inappropriate talk of boys at 15 particularly interesting. In the book I'm currently reading, two of the former chalet schools are about to be married. Jo has exclaimed something along the lines that they are so young to which her sister replies that they are 19 and 20. Presumably meaning that they are plenty old enough to be getting hitched. Assuming they had stayed in education until they were 18, that means they have only had a year or two at most to discover the opposite sex! Given the previous comment that girls of their social class wouldn't travel alone, I suspect that the marriages were almost arranged for them (one is marrying a soldier from her father's regiment), or at least I'm guessing they would only be allowed to mix with suitable males chosen by their parents.

I can't help wondering just what the point of the Chalet school education is, as very few of the girls appear to work for a living after leaving, so far they seem to go home to their parents and hopefully bag themselves a husband asap!
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Re: Elinor M. Brent-Dyer - Chalet School, etc.

Post by timv »

EBD had rather a habit of marrying her girls off young - though more of them in the pre-2nd WW books than the 1950s-60s ones , and mostly Continental girls who were almost all from reasonably wealthy (professional not aristocratic) families and at that era would be expected by their parents to stay at home with their mothers and find a respectable husband after they left school. The overseas girls were almost all Catholics from old-fashioned 'genteel' families. The post-War CS books mostly featured British girls even when the school moved back to the Alps (c. 1950), to a mountain outside Interlaken in Switzerland, from its post-War sojourn on a S Wales island; there were a reasonable number of French and German/Austrian girls but mainly daughters of pre-War pupils when the CS was in Austria.

Many of the 1940s-60s girls are shown as heading for university at 18 or 19, like Darrell and her friends at Malory Towers, and EBD 'moved with the times' to the extent of having a number of female doctors, university teachers (Eustacia / Stacie Benson from the 1930s books ends up as a don at Oxford), an archaeologist (the famous Mary-Lou Trelawney, mainstay of the 1940s-50s books), and even an engineer (Jack/ Jacynth Lambert the tomboy). Careers were seen as desirable, though having a family was still preferred - most of the CS teachers who marry then have families quickly and give up teaching permanently, normal for the 1950s (as in my family too). But unlike Enid EBD, who never married, had rather an obsession with girls preferably getting married young and having lots of children - Jo Bettany, as married to sanatorium head Dr Jack Maynard aged around 20, is a leading girls' school story author but ends up with eleven children (headed by triplets) plus several teenage adoptees. Unlike Enid, EBD regularly featured ex-pupils and their husbands and children in her series, mixing up family and school story plots.

Notably eyebrows have been raised at the way she kept on marrying off girls to older men without any idea that their behaviour might seem odd or creepy to modern eyes - in the final book in 1969 Jo's eldest daughter Helena/ Len was engaged at 18 as soon as she left school to a doctor 10 or so years older!
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Re: Elinor M. Brent-Dyer - Chalet School, etc.

Post by Daisy »

I have noticed that quite often a wife has been 10 years younger than her husband in books written in the 1950s and earlier. Monica Edwards has Tamzin's parents with that age gap and Malcolm Saville mentions in The Nettleford books that the Richardson parents have the same 10 year gap too.
I must say I always thought the Len/Helena situation was stretching it a bit - I never was much taken with Reg!
I think Madge was 12 years younger than Dr Jem and Jo was about 10 years younger than Jack Maynard.
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Re: Elinor M. Brent-Dyer - Chalet School, etc.

Post by Katharine »

I seem to recall that Agatha Christie often chose fairly big age gaps with her characters. I recently read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, and in that I think the girl was in her early 20s and she ends up with a chap of about 40.
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Re: Elinor M. Brent-Dyer - Chalet School, etc.

Post by Debbie »

I think the Len/Reg engagement was mostly about having Len engaged at the end of the series. Although I think there is quite strong evidence that EBD didn't write the last book herself.

It's not just carrying the girls at age 8yo, the older "delicate" girls are often carried. Usually by the doctors after they've found them stuck after a storm. :D

I preferred Anne/Lucy-Anne type characters to the Dinah/George type, but generally the Chalet girls who appeal to me are the Rosalind types-fairly quiet getting on with it. I think I'd have found Mary Lou or Joey much too full on and cocky appealing though they might sound in fiction, in real life I'd have been trying to avoid them as much as possible.
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Re: Elinor M. Brent-Dyer - Chalet School, etc.

Post by Daisy »

You're right about older girls being carried... wasn't Verity-Anne carried home in a snow storm and managed to stay asleep while being undressed and put to bed? I always found that hard to believe... and she wasn't a 'baby' of 8.
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Re: Elinor M. Brent-Dyer - Chalet School, etc.

Post by Debbie »

Yes,I think that's the snow storm in "Barbara" she goes to sleep, and Barbara is also carried and only keeps herself awake by rubbing her eyes vigorously. I think there's another child picked up too. I think they're about 12yo, fairly certain they're middles, because the little ones aren't allowed over to Switzerland at first.
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