St Clare's reread

[Anita Bensoussane]

One trick I played as twelve year old was something I got from 'What Katy did at school.' One of the characters said that they had inserted something ridiculous into their work to see if the teacher noticed and apparently it was just marked 'good' anyway. So one day when I had to write something about Jesus and the disciples for RE I wrote (in the middle) 'Jesus and his disciples had cold custard for breakfast.' It came back ticked . It was sometime later that it occurred to me to wonder what would have happened had the teacher actually read it .. I assume she would not have been pleased.

Good trick!

I remember looking at a display of poems on the wall of a classroom when I was about 16. They'd been written by pupils in the first year (aged 11-12) - except for one. That had a pupil's name in the corner like all the others, but I recognised it as a poem by William Blake! I was reminded of the trick played on Miss Willcox in Fifth Formers of St. Clare's!

Incidentally, for some reason my 1972 Dragon edition of the book has the title as Fifth Formers at St. Clare's. The same applies to the 1982 Dragon edition and the 1988 Armada edition.

[Hannah]

I'm looking forward to reading your thoughts on some of the comments, Yak, even if I have to wait for them for some time .

There are several girls who are there in the first book but disappear later - Kathleen, Sheila, Joan and Vera. I thought it would be interesting to see where they're mentioned and when they disappear.

Kathleen is important for several scenes in the first book, especially the stealing and the dog.
She's mentioned several times in the second, third and fourth book but doesn't bear any importance to the plot. She's last mentioned in Claudine at St. Clare's - only in one sentence at the beginning of the book saying that she is back.

Sheila is in the first book with some importance but only mentioned in passing in the second and third book. She's not even mentioned once in the fourth book. The last mention of Sheila is in Claudine at St. Clare's - Pat says that she isn't coming back.

Joan is in the first book but never mentioned after.
Vera is in the first book. In the second book she's mentioned only once - she has gone into the other dormitory. At the beginning of the third book we learn that she's been moved up to the second form.

[Irene Malory Towers]

For me that is one of the main downsides of St Clare's as opposed to Malory Towers - the vanishing characters. Even the twins and Hilary only get mentioned almost in passing. She focuses on the new characters for each form per book and the others fade away. Nevertheless books 5 and 6 are very good. I like the way Alison stands up more to Angela in those books and Gladys to Mirabel. I also think EB's names are clever. Prudence is such a goody goody name, Angela is a typical princess name and Elsie sounds to be like a real bitchy name. I may be offending people here if these are your names, so apologies. Digressing a bit here - do names affect people or the other way round. I have often wondered.

[Hannah]

Digressing a bit here - do names affect people or the other way round. I have often wondered.

I can't imagine there's much influencing either way. But of course there are names that tend to be preferred (on average) by certain type of parents - who will then influence their children.

[Yak]

I have sometimes thought that many of the names that I don't like are actually from EB characters that I disliked as a child (I loathe the name Alma, for instance).

As I mentioned on another thread, my name is Josephine (Jo) and I was mortified by Jo Jones. Though I liked Jo from the FF

[Yak]

I have started Claudine at St Clare's - this is my second favourite in the series (Fifth Form is my favourite). I like the new characters (even the ones who are NOT likeable add something new). I do regret, though, that so much of the series was focused on the first form (and one book in the second). I know that there are some non Blyton books that address the other forms but, whilst I recognised that the author obviously knew and loved the series herself I just can't see them as canon.

[Hannah]

I've continued my read of Summer Term.

I'm always impressed when people can tell that someone is wearing a dress from an especially good material (like Sadie) or made exclusively for a that person by a tailor - I'd never notice .

One thing I don't like in the books is if the look of someone is criticized or associated with a bad character if it is something the person can't help. Prudence's eyes are "set too close together" and I seem to remember that this is usually associated with a not too nice person in Enid Blyton's books. You might be able to loose or gain weight (even if it is not always easy) but there's nothing you can do about the distance of your eyes.

Something I've only noticed when I saw the illustrations in the older editions is how short most of the girls wear their hair. In my naive mind it was "some decades ago all girls and women had really long hair" . In the illustrations from the first editions almost no girl has hair that goes beyond the shoulders though a few plaits are mentioned (e. g. Pamela and Gwendolyne). I've done a quick google search regarding hair styles in the 1940s and maybe the rate of girls/women with longer hair was higher than some illustrations in Blyton books imply but there were certainly much more people with shorter hair than I expected. So I've learned something .

Chimney tennis sounds fun too . It somehow reminds me of a scene in another - non Blyton - book where a ball gets (accidentally) stuck up a roof. While everyone tries to retrieve it a naughty pony gets into the kitchen and eats part of the shopping.

I don't like that Miss Roberts doesn't believe Janet that it was an accident that the water landed on Prudence. After several terms she should know Janet well enough to realise that she wouldn't lie to her.
Edit: And I'm pretty sure that Miss Walker would have agreed that the cupboard could be tidied a day or two later had Janet asked her...

[Debbie]

I've continued my read of Summer Term.

I'm always impressed when people can tell that someone is wearing a dress from an especially good material (like Sadie) or made exclusively for a that person by a tailor - I'd never notice .

One thing I don't like in the books is if the look of someone is criticized or associated with a bad character if it is something the person can't help. Prudence's eyes are "set too close together" and I seem to remember that this is usually associated with a not too nice person in Enid Blyton's books. You might be able to loose or gain weight (even if it is not always easy) but there's nothing you can do about the distance of your eyes.

Something I've only noticed when I saw the illustrations in the older editions is how short most of the girls wear their hair. In my naïve mind it was "some decades ago all girls and women had really long hair" . In the illustrations from the first editions almost no girl has hair that goes beyond the shoulders though a few plaits are mentioned (e. g. Pamela and Gwendoline). I've done a quick google search regarding hair styles in the 1940s and maybe the rate of girls/women with longer hair was higher than some illustrations in Blyton books imply but there were certainly much more people with shorter hair than I expected. So I've learned something .

Chimney tennis sounds fun too . It somehow reminds me of a scene in another - non Blyton - book where a ball gets (accidentally) stuck up a roof. While everyone tries to retrieve it a naughty pony gets into the kitchen and eats part of the shopping.

I think with tailoring a good fit is something you wouldn't necessarily notice as such but more notice that they looked neat/nice in what they wore. It's a sort of smartness with an ease of dressing. And good fabric will help the hang too. Having done some (very amateur) dressmaking, having the right weight of fabric can make the difference between it hanging well or looking like it's just "worn". I know that when I've made things, they've looked fine, but lacked that finish that I am not talented/experienced enough to get, especially close to.

In the war years, then women were often working in factories, so had to have their hair "up" and I think having it short for ease was quite popular. I think long hair only came back in really in the 70s. It was curled and max shoulder length really for a lot of that time.

I used to play tennis against the wall of the house. And then one of the games was to send the ball up the roof, the idea being that you sent it up to the ridge but not ideally over the top (partially because the fence behind it was close to the house, so you'd normally lose the ball into another garden). It wouldn't have gone down the chimney, nor would there have been any danger of it for several reasons including that there was a cover to prevent birds from nesting in there, but we did sometimes get a ball stuck in the gutter. Luckily the gutter was relatively low and could be reached with the step ladder.

[Hannah]

Yes, short hair can be easier to manage.
I know in theory the differences between cheap and expensive clothes but I still doubt that I could spot them. The evening dress of some celebrity doesn't look much different to me compared with mine (bought for less than 100€ at C&A) .

There are some obvious changes again - Bobby would love to spank Prudence with a hairbrush in the original book. Spank has become "teach a lesson".

Some more words have been changed in this example:

Carlotta was a really fierce little monkey when she was in a temper, and had actually given Alison a hard slap the day before, because Alison had pointed out that Carlotta’s two hair-ribbons did not match, were very dirty, and needed their frayed edges cutting.

Carlotta was a really fierce little creature when she was in a temper, and had berated Alison fiercely the day before, because Alison had pointed out that Carlotta’s uniform was not tidy.

There's a really unnecessary change in the German translation - Bobby being at the other end of the pool becomes "Bobby is not even in the water" .
(Fun fact: I checked in my most recent German edition from 2013. They still have Pfennig and Mark instead of Euro and Cent . If they do modernize books they should at least be consistent.)

[Anita Bensoussane]

I dislike the changes. Alterations of that kind dilute/distort the historical content and can spoil the rhythm and flow of the prose.

One thing I don't like in the books is if the look of someone is criticized or associated with a bad character if it is something the person can't help. Prudence's eyes are "set too close together" and I seem to remember that this is usually associated with a not too nice person in Enid Blyton's books. You might be able to loose or gain weight (even if it is not always easy) but there's nothing you can do about the distance of your eyes.

I've read the same thing in books by other authors, regarding unlikeable characters/criminals having eyes "set too close together". Another stereotype is thin lips denoting meanness/criminality. Physiognomy (assessing a person's character from physical features) was once popular, so it's possible that these associations are remnants of that. Phrenology (relating bumps on the skull to particular character traits) is another practice that was once in vogue. When Enid was about eight, her father asked a phrenologist to read the bumps on her head and was told that her great gift would be teaching.

Chimney tennis sounds fun too .

I used to play tennis against the wall of the house. And then one of the games was to send the ball up the roof, the idea being that you sent it up to the ridge but not ideally over the top (partially because the fence behind it was close to the house, so you'd normally lose the ball into another garden). It wouldn't have gone down the chimney, nor would there have been any danger of it for several reasons including that there was a cover to prevent birds from nesting in there, but we did sometimes get a ball stuck in the gutter. Luckily the gutter was relatively low and could be reached with the step ladder.

My sister and I used to play a similar game. Our bungalow had a small garden in front and a large garden behind, so one of us would be at the front of the bungalow and one at the back, and we'd play tennis by sending the ball to one another over the roof. We also had a cover over the chimney, and could easily reach the gutter if a ball got stuck there.

[Yak]

References to spanking seem to have been removed from all of the books - in MT for instance it's usually changed to 'scolding' (and at one point Miss Potts saying that she'd like to spank June really hard becomes 'would like to see the back of).

Yes, I have often felt a bit irritated about the way in which EB - and other authors - use physical descriptions to denote character. Look at Clarissa Carter, for instance - At first she is described as being plain, undersized and 'almost ugly' and then voila! She becomes a 'good' character and so with the disappearance of a brace and a pair of glasses she is all of a sudden a beauty. Doesn't quite ring true.

[timv]

I've also found that this phenomenon of using a character's appearance to denote character, and the associated habit of making 'good' characters look attractive, was a common one in Enid's time. It may have arisen from the books that the authors read as children; in the Chalet School series , Elinor Brent Dyer (born 1894 so three years older than Enid, and also from a financially precarious home and 'broken' marriage) has a similar failing. Was it common in Edwardian children's literature, or even in morally improving books for younger readers in the era which I have found were often published by religious societies and Church offshoots ?

'Good' characters, especially the more thoughtful and helpful - and those who are shown as 'good' by keeping themselves tidy and well-turned-out and working hard - are frequently slim, blonde, and 'ladylike' in appearance in EBD's books, and she makes approving references to them as being 'dainty' or 'fairy-like'; you can almost guarantee what words she will use to introduce such a favourite character as they meet the heroine of another Chalet School book for the first time. Peggy Bettany niece of the lead character Joey Bettany/ Maynard, and major character Mary-Lou Trelawney's step-sister Verity Anne Carey spring to mind, and it is clearly a 'hint' for the readers to admire such a character if they are first seen and described as dressed nicely and with neat hair and a ladylike manner.

By contrast, characters about whom the author is ambivalent or who have 'sloppy' attitudes are more likely to be large, clumsy, sloppily dressed, or awkward - especially if they come from the 'wrong' background or class. The EBD equivalent of Josephine Jones, the working-class Joan Baker who is only at the early 1950s Chalet School as her parents have won some money by gambling (?the football pools), is almost always introduced as 'big' and/or ungainly - as if this symbolises her background of not fitting in. She does have a better side, does not get expelled despite running away like Jo does, and occasionally performs the obligatory CS heroics in Alpine weather disasters, but you can sense the author does not really like that physical type of girl as implied that they are 'not feminine enough and Setting a Bad Example'. There is also a hint of this for adults in Miss Grayling's comments to Mr Rivers about Jo Jones' 'nouveau riche' father and the latter's typically bad driving in the final Malory Towers book, though this would be normal for a 1940s 'expensive private school' Head . Enid is much more relaxed about different social standards, though still critical to a degree of lazy/ untidy behaviour, with the Taggertys in Those Dreadful Children, where she is even-handed in mildly laughing at the over-prim Carltons.


At the time they wrote their 1940s and 1950s books, of course the publishers wouldn't have seen anything wrong with this habit, or linked it to the danger of making more impressionable readers judge people by appearances. The senior publishers of the era, almost all male, would also have been brought up in the Edwardian era/ 1910s.

[Anita Bensoussane]

There's a long tradition of that kind of thinking in storytelling/literature as a whole - Greek myths, Chaucer, fairy tales, Dickens and many others.

Yes, I have often felt a bit irritated about the way in which EB - and other authors - use physical descriptions to denote character. Look at Clarissa Carter, for instance - At first she is described as being plain, undersized and 'almost ugly' and then voila! She becomes a 'good' character and so with the disappearance of a brace and a pair of glasses she is all of a sudden a beauty. Doesn't quite ring true.

Neighbours had a plotline like that in the late 1980s when "Plain Jane, Superbrain" became a beauty by ditching her glasses and applying some make-up!

[Debbie]

It's definitely not an EB only fault.

My daughter was born without her hand. She complained that if there was a character without a hand in children's book it was either:
1. The villain, often used to enhance their evilness (you've all immediately thought of Captain Hook or Peter Pettigrew, haven't you?)
2. Sidekick of villain, used to show the villain had a not-quite-so-bad side because he couldn't be so bad if he liked a "Disabled Person" could he? Some authors use love of a cat/dog in the same way. Occasionally used the other way as "they even are nasty to the poor vulnerable Disabled Person" too.
3. Put in as a token disabled person with no personality nor plot like other than This Person Is Disabled. So would appear just to not be able to do something, or on way to get a hospital appointment. Anything they said had to involve reference to "of course I don't have a hand" and it's what everyone mentions about them. Constantly in case anyone might forget it.

When the reality is that she gets on, does almost everything that anyone else does, and although nearly everyone asks about it when they first meet her, in real terms it hardly gets mentioned after that.
Tbf it is hard to write a realistic story making sure your readers are aware, but not batting them over the head with the prosthesis constantly. I wrote her a set of adventure stories after she complained the above and a lot of the time it's small hints, like twisting to get something, tucking something under her arm to carry it and sleeve flapping. You don't want the reader to be jolted out of their internal picture of the character every time you have to mention it, so you do have to keep it in their consciousness because people naturally don't imagine the character with one hand unless you tell them. But a lot of the things people expect her not to be able to do because they couldn't imagine themselves doing it with only one hand, my daughter would just get on and do it, perhaps slightly differently. So in the story you need to mention that she's using her little arm to balance as she climbs the ladder (yes, Thorpe park, she is more than capable of climbing a ladder. Probably more capable than whoever decided that amputees can't climb because of the risk of them having to use the escape ladder...) but not go on about it. So you end up with something like:
"She paused, balancing herself with her little arm curled round the top rung. 'Hurry up!' she called. 'The window's open.' Her hand stretched up and felt the window ledge..."
So you've got a small reminder, and letting the reader know how she might use her little arm on the ladder. However if you're not looking for it, you can easily miss it.

And if you don't have personal experience of the disability, then it's really easy to make assumptions, and that can very quickly go into offensive. (as the assumption that looks=character is too). Even if people are trying to be careful they can make assumptions if they don't know. And add onto that the issues that different people with the same disability can find different things unacceptable. I remember an argument over the term "stump". Some of the amputees felt it was offensive; some used it themselves and didn't see a problem. So even if you have a sensitivity reader to check, you may find others disagree.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Thanks for sharing the comments from your daughter, Debbie. Great points from her and from you. Yes, I see what you mean about the writer needing to make sure readers are aware without "batting them over the head with the prosthesis constantly."