St Clare's reread

[Yak]

I am having another run through the St Clare's series if anyone wants to join me. This always used to be my favourite school series but for some reason I am more fond of Malory Towers now for some reason. I still do love SC though! Anyone want to read with me and discuss it?

[Hannah]

I'd like to join you.

[Yak]

Hannah, please jump right in I am up to Summer Term right now. I always think that there's a huge difference between the first three books and the last three.. so many of my favourite characters are missing at first.

[Hannah]

Yes, it's a pity that several characters (like Kathleen) are missing in the later books.

I've started the first book. I had my usual thoughts regarding some mistakes like "starting 6 years of school at the age of 14 but the oldest girls are 18" or the fact that some girls spend two whole years in the first form. I also seem to remember that the size of the school has been discussed before but there is a detail I only noticed this time: Pat says that St. Clare's is "much bigger" than Redroofs. There are 16 girls in the first form, so probably no more than 100 in the whole school. Yet Mary says that at Redroofs "a hundred girls" were looking up to the twins. Sounds like another mistake.

Another thing that I've wondered about for a while is how fast you can get a place at St. Clare's. The twins are written in during the summer holidays and later Mirabel's parents make a sudden decision to send her there.
That's different at Malory Towers. At the beginning of the third book Mrs Rivers says that they hope there will be room for Felicity in September and that it is a marvel that Zerelda got a place at short notice.

I'm always annoyed how the girls treat Miss Kennedy. She might be weak but the way they treat her feels to me like kicking at someone who is already lying on the floor. Even if that person could at least try to get up that wouldn't give me the right to hurt her. But - unfortunately - it's probably realistic behavior.

[Debbie]

I think numbers in schools is always a difficult one. Because they want to give the impression that the school is a big (and hence popular) one but don't want too big a cast to deal with.
I think in the first Harry Potter, it's said there are 200 Slytherins, which would make around 28 per year group, per house. And I think it's fairly clear that there aren't that many.

You could however say that Mary's "100 girls looking up to the twins" could easily be an exaggeration. Or maybe she was counting younger sisters too?

I think the "ragging" of Miss Kennedy is quite well done. It's how a form might well behave with a teacher who struggles to control them. Children that age don't really think how the teacher would feel, and it's a game to them.

[Yak]

The Miss Kennedy thing bothered me too. These are supposedly well brought up, well mannered girls and yet they stooped to unnecessary bullying with no regard for Miss Kennedy's feelings. At fourteen and fifteen they should have been old enough to know better.

Yeah it makes no sense that some girls spend two years in the first form and then Carlotta, who spent only one term there and had presumably had very little education before arriving, was moved up immediately to the second.

Another thing that makes no sense is when girls are moved up mid year.. this happens most in Malory Towers. Surely that means that they miss an entire term of work that the rest of the higher form have done which puts them at a disadvantage? And what's the point in, for instance, Pam Boardman spending two years in the Sixth Form - she will just be doing the same work and exams twice!

[Hannah]

I think numbers in schools is always a difficult one.

There is also the issue of 10 girls per dormitory (at least in the first books ) and four towers but only 25 to 30 girls in the first form at Malory Towers.

@ Yak: I find changing class other than at the end of the school year strange too but as has been discussed elsewhere it maybe wasn't that uncommon.

I've just stumbled about this:

The lower forms did not mean to be cruel or unkind, but they loved a joke and did not stop to think about Miss Kennedy and what she must be feeling. They just thought she was silly and asked for trouble.

Probably accurate but not very nice.
I also think the other mistresses could do more to support her. Miss Roberts seems to just look down on her.

[Yak]

Yes - Miss Roberts was an adult and she could have tried to understand how Miss Kennedy was feeling, rather than 'hardly speaking to her in the mistress's common room' (my paraphrase, I don't have my copy to hand right now). Miss Theobald ought to have been more aware of what was going on too - surely Miss Roberts could have told her? (not to 'tell tales' but simply to express concern about the First Formers' behaviour).

[Yak]

It's interesting too that someone (Hilary?) tells the twins and Kathleen that they should not have listened to what Miss Kennedy was saying in the tea room because that wasn't right, but apparently their behaviour was just fine ..

[timv]

I think the whole story of the 'ragging' an obviously awkward and inexperienced mistress who would not be able to handle it is another of the examples of how Enid was still 'feeling her way' in writing a school story series with the early St. Clare's books - or she was content to show things from the girls' point of view ie 'isn't this fun' . She showed a bit more depth or subtlety in the Malory Towers series later, when characters were developed more widely and interactions gone into in a bit more depth. In the Third Year MT book Darrell and Co. do stop to think about playing a trick on Miss Peters and disrupting her class after Miss P has shown she's a 'good sort' and really generous by getting out of bed in the middle of the night to help Bill and Darrell with Bill's colic-afflicted horse by riding over to a local farm to collect the vet. The girls feel that it might seem ungrateful to play a trick on Miss Peters after she has been so kind to Bill; though I think Alicia, the tough-minded inventor of the trick, would prefer to go ahead and does not care so much.

Notably some school story writers have been prepared to put in the point of view of the embarrassment that playing tricks causes to the hapless teacher, at least if the latter can't cope - usually with a new and nervous teacher - rather than just taking the view of presenting what the girls (and the readers?) would prefer ie celebrating the ingenuity and the fun. Even the much-maligned and 'gushy' Edwardian to 1940s girls' story writer Angela Brazil did this in A Fourth Form Friendship, 1911, which Enid (then 14) may have read as a girl as one of its storylines seems to be an inspiration for an incident in the St Clares books (the fire on the stairs to the sanatorium and Margery Fenworthy's rescue action in the second book).

AB has a more thoughtful and 'moral' girl point out to the joke-enthusiast anti-heroine Aldred that her causing chaos in a nervous new teacher's class and humiliating her is not fun but thoughtless and cruel to someone who is going to be even more nervous of her pupils after this. Similarly, in the mid-1930s Elinor Brent Dyer has a hostile, authorally-approved disapproving reaction to the chaos caused in nervous young teacher Miss Norman's language class by bored, joke-mad Joyce Linton (in The Chalet School and the Lintons, second part, now published as a separate book ie A Rebel At The CS). An older girl points out that Miss Norman has taken on this extra, 'remedial' class to earn more cash to hep her ailing mother and is now too upset at being humiliated by a riot there to carry on.

So authors could take a more balanced view of the pluses and minuses of endless 'exciting' and 'daring' pranks, and Enid did later once at MT; but possibly at this stage she was just keen on seeing events from the girls' point of view. The lack of support for the unfortunate teacher from her colleagues is probably realistic in a 'sink or swim' situation at a busy school where the senior staff were too hard at work to be able to assist a new teacher with handy hints and if a teacher could not cope they were left to struggle on or give up.

As late as the early 1980s Anne Digby has a hapless new teacher who can't handle a riotous practical joke and resultant chaos told by the Head that if she can't manage she will have to give up and leave, not helped (in More Trouble At Trebizon). And when I was considering teaching as a career I was given the same advice, in 1984, by a well-known Headmaster at a top private school who I asked for advice - you're on your own!

[Debbie]

Another thing that makes no sense is when girls are moved up mid year.. this happens most in Malory Towers. Surely that means that they miss an entire term of work that the rest of the higher form have done which puts them at a disadvantage? And what's the point in, for instance, Pam Boardman spending two years in the Sixth Form - she will just be doing the same work and exams twice!

In one of the Chalet School books, someone (I think it's Theodora/Ted but I might be wrong) is told she's being put up a form shortly after arriving and is a bit worried about what people might say. She's reassured in that it's prizegiving term, and no one would be thankful to be put up then because it meant there would be no chance at a prize. Because Ted is new, she wouldn't be getting prizes anyway, so it doesn't apply to her.

[Hannah]

The girls have to do little jobs for the older girls (though strangely it's never mentioned in the third and second book - would be interesting to see how girls like Sadie, Carlotta and Mirabel do ).
I've been wondering if being on duty means you can't go out for a walk? Would there have been times where you had to be always available? I'm no fan of the whole system. Kathleen even has to leave a rehearsal for a concert which might be quite disruptive for all girls involved.

I always smile at this one:

Joan brought candles, because the girls were not allowed to put on the electric light once it was turned out except for urgent reasons, such as illness.

Surely lighting candles wouldn't be any less against the rules?

[Yak]

Am really enjoying the discussion, just can't think of anything to add right now. Please keep going though!!

[Hannah]

I've read on. Just some little things.

For one thing I've wondered which activities would have been available outside lessons. A nature club is mentioned but would there have been other clubs like maybe a choir, an orchestra or a chess club?

I'm always annoyed at the punishment of the first form for the broken window. It might have been common to punish a whole form if you can't find the culprit (luckily it's been outlawed in German schools) but why assume that it must have been someone from the first form?

[Boodi 2]

I was not aware of that Hannah, probably because I no longer have any school going children. When I was at school I remember that my whole form was punished by being kept in for an hour after school and made to write out a poem one hundred times because we refused to divulge who had deliberately placed rubbish from the wastepaper basket on the teacher's desk!! Even then I thought that the "joke/trick" was in very bad taste and not even remotely funny. In retrospect, I think that the two girls who planned and carried it out should have had the decency to own up rather than getting the whole form punished.