The Chalet School Revisited

by Sheila Ray

  His cartoons were developed into a series of comedy films by Ealing Studios, beginning with The Belles of St Trinian’s in 1954. The Ealing series took certain elements of the girls’ school story — the enclosed all-female community, a uniform which made no allowances for adolescence, girls behaving like boys and the adventure elements which crept in from the mystery and crime genres — but subjected them all to merciless parody which concentrated on the girls’ physicality, with younger, pre-adolescent girls having little regard for their appearance and behaving very roughly towards their peers, while older girls and some staff members were heavily sexualised.

  More recently this has been echoed on the stage in Denise Deegan’s play Daisy Pulls It Off, which opened in the West End in 1984 and was still being produced seven years later at the 1991 Edinburgh Festival. This parody, which draws heavily on the works of Angela Brazil, features adult women playing schoolgirl roles. Significantly, whereas heterosexual sex is all but absent in the novels, it is placed at the forefront of these parodies in their representation of school life.

  It has been argued that the negative treatment given to girls’ school stories by both male and female critics owes much to the fact that the books were written by women and read by an almost exclusively female audience. We have seen how the growing social expectations of educational equality which played a part in the genre’s demise also gave rise to a feeling that novels written exclusively for girls must be inferior to those written for boys or for both sexes. Cadogan and Craig echo this when they write that “girls’ books quickly became a medium for the reinforcement of social prohibitions and expectations”15, a comment which, like those of other critics, rests on an unstated assumption that, since girls have been and still are failing to fulfil their educational potential in the 20th century, so a medium which purports to represent girls’ educational experience in that century will itself be inferior.

  Further evidence to support the view that the negative critical treatment of girls’ school stories might be directly related to the sex of their authors can be gleaned from the differential treatment accorded to comic book school stories for girls. Girls’ comics were first created in the 1920s by male writers already writing the same sorts of stories for boys, and they continued to be written, drawn and owned by men throughout this century, with male authors often assuming female pseudonyms. Despite the hostility expressed towards comics by parents, educationists and critics from the mid-20th century onwards, and the fact that girls’ school stories have not survived in comic form, critics have tended to treat them with greater respect and enthusiasm than the girls’ school stories in novel form, and give much more attention to describing plots and authors. Carpenter and Prichard, for example, in their entry on “Girls’ Stories”, allot twice as much space to comics as to novels, while Cadogan and Craig, having scorned the work of Oxenham and Brent-Dyer, write of the comics:

  the male writers were so inventive and convincing that they managed to involve readers as well as fictional girls in the vivid situations which they created. Using a wide variety of feminine pseudonyms, they transported their audience for twopence a week through endlessly successful school themes . . . 16

  A similar preference for male authors is found in Mary Cadogan’s later compilation, Chin Up, Chest Out, Jemima (1989), whose title alone is sufficient to indicate its approach. In the introductory chapter which gives a history of girls’ school stories, “Eighty Years of the Spiffing Schoolgirl”, Cadogan devotes more than half to comic stories written and published by men. Alongside girls’ school stories by both male and female authors are found articles and parodies by Cadogan, Arthur Marshall, Terence Stamp and Denise Deegan. Although parts of the book, particularly the introductory chapter, are informative and historically accurate, the title and the choice of contributors suggest strongly to the reader that girls’ school stories are not to be taken seriously.

  Tania Modleski, writing about popular genres for adult women, has pointed out that “very few critics have taken them seriously enough to study them in any detail”. She describes a double critical standard, already identified by feminists as biasing literary studies, which she claims is also operative in studies of mass culture.

  Women’s criticism of popular feminine narratives has generally adopted one of three attitudes: dismissiveness; hostility . . . ; or most frequently, a flippant kind of mockery . . . It is significantly indistinguishable from the tone men often use when they mention feminine popular art . . . In assuming this attitude, we demonstrate . . . our acceptance of the critical double standard and of the masculine contempt for sentimental (feminine) “drivel”.17

  In A World of Girls (1992), Rosemary Auchmuty argues that this masculine contempt, which women so often share because we too have been educated to accept masculine standards of “quality”, stems from men’s anxiety about and fear of things which belong to women and exclude men. In a patriarchal society, women are supposed to put their energies into men. The existence of any cultural artefact or indeed, any time or space which is designed for women alone is profoundly threatening to masculine power, for it suggests the possibility that women could have other priorities — could even, in fact, put ourselves first.

  The last two decades have seen considerable changes in the ways in which girls’ literature has been viewed. On the one hand, feminist scholarship has provided a forum within which women’s work and women’s culture have come to be valued and examined from women’s point of view. The pioneering study of girls’ school stories, Mary Cadogan and Patricia Craig’s You’re a Brick, Angela! (1976), while very much a product of its time, nevertheless established the subject as one worthy of serious study. Since then, both Victorian and 20th-century girls’ fiction have been considered in greater depth by feminist scholars in a range of fascinating studies, presenting a view which differs significantly from the earlier dismissal of the literary critics and librarians.18

  The other impetus has come from the school-story enthusiasts themselves (which is not to say that the two groups do not overlap). There have been a number of excellent biographies and critical studies of the work of notable exponents of the genre.19 Other very interesting work has come from the fanzines or newsletters devoted to individual writers — the Friends of the Chalet School Newsletter, The Chaletian, the Abbey Chronicle (Elsie J. Oxenham), Serendipity (Dorita Fairlie Bruce) and others — and to children’s literature in general, such as Folly (Friends of Light Literature for the Young20), which is distinguished by excellent biographical and bibliographical research. Finally, an increasing number of undergraduate and postgraduate students — including the authors of three of the chapters in this book — have taken girls’ school stories as the subject of their dissertations, thus continuing to add to our knowledge and ideas about the subject.

  The Chalet School Revisited

  This centenary volume represents both these approaches. The book begins fittingly with a chapter written by Helen McClelland, whose biography of Elinor Brent-Dyer gave fans our first (and so far, only) picture of the woman Behind the Chalet School, and who thus inspired so many of us to take a scholarly interest in our favourite girls’ school stories and their authors. Helen gives us an update on and an overview of her continuing research into the life of Elinor Brent-Dyer, “In search of Elinor”.

  The second chapter comes from Polly Goerres, describing the celebrations for the centenary of Elinor Brent-Dyer’s birth and discussing the reasons for the Chalet School books’ appeal. Polly not only wrote an undergraduate thesis on the books, she is in an almost unique position to know what fans think about them, since she is a member of the Committee of Friends of the Chalet School and also one of the hard-worked organisers of the hugely successful Brent-Dyer centenary celebrations in 1994.

  Sheila Ray’s The Blyton Phenomenon (André Deutsch, 1982) was one of the first serious considerations of the literary achievement of Enid Blyton, England’s most prolific and popular children’s writer, and the critic
al response to her work from librarians, educationists, and the reading public. Sheila examines here “The Literary Context of the Chalet School”, first from the point of view of its critical reception and then in terms of the literary world on which Brent-Dyer drew, and which she presented to her readers in a wealth of allusions and references to enrich our knowledge and experience.

  Juliet Gosling’s chapter on the Chalet School as an educational institution derives from research for the M.A. thesis she completed three years ago. In it she shows how the fictional world mirrored in part the real development of middle-class girls’ schools in the early 20th century and in part Elinor Brent-Dyer’s own educational philosophy and ideals. She reminds us, however, that these are works of fiction, and that the educational aspects of the school also function as settings for various plot devices and character development.

  Rosemary Auchmuty’s chapter on the Chalet School Guides and the role of girls’ organisations in school stories develops the argument put forward in her book, A World of Girls, that the appeal of girls’ school stories lies primarily in their presentation of an all-female world, and that this was also the reason why the books were critically ignored, belittled, or condemned. Here she argues that the appeal of such girls’ organisations as the Guides was because they presented an all-female world, in which a range of roles and experiences were made possible outside the usual restrictions of femininity, and that for this reason, the organisations and their fictional representations were subjected to the same criticisms and pressures as stories about girls’ schools.

  Drawing on research undertaken for her Ph.D. on girls’ fiction and her own personal interest in theological issues, Judith Humphrey analyses the presentation of religion in the work of Elinor Brent-Dyer and other school story writers. She demonstrates that the all-female world of the girls’ school endowed Headmistresses with a quasi-religious power, which not only challenged patriarchal notions of authority but combined masculine headship with a feminine maternal role. Brent-Dyer’s Miss Annersley (“the Abbess”) is a striking example of this subversive religious imagery in the work of an otherwise orthodox Christian writer.

  Co-editor of the erudite but entertaining magazine Folly, Sue Sims has one of the most extensive collections of children’s fiction in private hands, and she is eminently qualified to discuss the appeal of the series format — and particularly the Chalet School series — for readers of all ages. Both Sue and Gill Bilski, the author of the following chapter, are collectors-turned-dealers. Gill is now one of the major dealers in girls’ fiction and Guide material in Britain. One of the Friends of the Chalet School Committee, she represents the point of view of the collector and dealer in her chapter.

  Finally, Clarissa Cridland, another Friends of the Chalet School Committee member and, with Polly Goerres, co-organiser of the centenary celebrations, provides a work-in-progress report on her ongoing project to survey all the dustwrappers and illustrations of Brent-Dyer’s books. For many readers, the illustrations help to form our impressions of Chalet characters. Clarissa tells us about the artists and assesses their strengths and weaknesses.

  In commissioning the articles for this collection, the editors have tried to draw on the knowledge and experience of a wide range of “authorities” on different aspects of Brent-Dyer’s work, who approach their subject from different positions and perspectives: as fans, collectors, dealers, writers, editors, students, teachers, scholars, librarians and various combinations of these categories. We are aware that there are many others out there who are equally knowledgeable and equally competent to write about the Chalet School books, whom we could also have approached. We began, however, with the people we knew at the time; and we are aware that this collection will not be regarded as the last word on the subject. Others are making their views known through the media of the fanzines, university dissertations, articles and books published elsewhere, and we hope that The Chalet School Revisited will be followed by many more publications in the field.

  Two things all the contributors to this book do have in common: we all love the books, and we are all writing for an audience who love them too. Without this personal engagement with the Chalet School, these chapters would probably resemble so much that has been written about girls’ school stories in the past, where the books are depicted as weird specimens under a hostile microscope, or patronised and misrepresented by outsiders looking in. We are all insiders, and we hope that our enthusiasm and our love for the books shine through these pages, to meet our readers on this common ground.

  NOTES

  1. Friends of the Chalet School, which produces a newsletter, organises events and co-ordinates local groups, can be contacted through http://www.chaletschool.org.uk

  2. Antonia Forest wrote a series of books about the Marlow family, some of which are school stories and some not. Anne Digby is the author of the successful “Trebizon” series, discussed later in the Introduction. Other contemporary school story authors include Mary Hooper and Jean Ure.

  3. Mary Cadogan & Patricia Craig, You’re a Brick, Angela! A New Look at Girls’ Fiction 1839-1975 (Gollancz, 1976), p..

  4. It is sometimes argued that Oxenham was not really a school story writer, since so many of her books — in particular, most of the Abbey series which were always the most freely available of her output — are not set in schools. On the other hand, all her Rocklands, Sussex Downs, Gregory’s, Torment, Jinty, Deb, Camp Keema, and Wood End series, some of the Swiss and some of the Abbey books, and a number of single titles, are set in schools, though perhaps the focus is less school-centred (and more concerned with Guides, Camp Fire, or personal relationships) than the work of many other authors.

  5. Humphrey Carpenter and Mari Prichard, The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature (Oxford University Press, 1984), p.208.

  6. Cadogan and Craig, ibid., p.9.

  7. Robert Leeson, Children’s Books and Class Society (Writers and Readers’ Publishing Cooperative, 1976), pp.33-4.

  8. Gill Frith, “‘The Time of Your Life’: The Meaning of the Girls’ School story”. In Carolyn Steedman, Cathy Unwin and Valerie Walkerdine eds. Language, Gender and Childhood (RKP, 1985), p.115.

  9. See Sheila Ray, The Blyton Phenomenon (André Deutsch, 1982); Barbara Stoney, Enid Blyton (Hodder & Stoughton, 1974), pp.164-7.

  10. Elinor Brent-Dyer, The School at the Chalet (1925), p.15.

  11. Shocks for the Chalet School (1952), p.22.

  12. Helen McClelland, Behind the Chalet School (New Horizon, 1981), p.141.

  13. The Chalet School in Exile (1940), p.60.

  14. The New Chalet School (1938) — St Scholastika’s; Bride Leads the Chalet School (1953) — the other Chalet School; and The Feud in the Chalet School (1962) — St Hilda’s, though this is only a temporary merger.

  15. Cadogan and Craig, ibid., p.9.

  16. Carpenter and Prichard, p208; Cadogan and Craig, ibid., p.233.

  17. Tania Modleski, Loving with a Vengeance. Mass-Produced Fantasies for Women (Archon Books, 1982), pp.11,14.

  18. On Victorian girls’ fiction see, for example, Anna Davin, “Imperialism and Motherhood”, History Workshop 5 (1978), pp.9-65; Jacky Bratton, The Impact of Victorian Children’s Fiction (Croom Helm, 1981); Deborah Gorham, “The Ideology of Femininity and Reading for Girls, 1850-1914”. In Felicity Hunt, ed. Lessons for Life. The Schooling of Girls and Women 1850-1950 (Blackwell, 1987); Judith Rowbotham, Good Girls Make Good Wives. Guidance for Girls in Victorian Fiction (Blackwell, 1989); and Kimberley Reynolds, Girls Only? (Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990). The appeal of 20th century girls’ school stories has been discussed in Cammilla Nightingale, “Sex Roles in Children’s Literature”. In Sandra Allen, Lee Sanders and Jan Wallis eds. Conditions of Illusion (Feminist Books, 1974); Gill Frith, “‘The Time of Your Life’: The Meaning of the Girls’ School Story”. In Carolyn Steedman, Cathy Unwin and Valerie Walkerdine, eds. Language, Gender and Childhood (RKP, 1985); and Rosemary Auchmuty, A World of Girls (Women’s
Press ,1992).

  19. See, for example, Barbara Stoney, Enid Blyton (Hodder & Stoughton 1974); Gillian Freeman, The Schoolgirl Ethic: The Life and Works of Angela Brazil (Allen Lane 1976); Helen McClelland, Behind the Chalet School [a life of Elinor M. Brent-Dyer] (New Horizon, 1981); Eva Löfgren, Schoolmates of the Long-Ago: Motifs and Archetypes in Dorita Fairlie Bruce’s Boarding School Stories (Symposion Graduale, 1993).

  20. The Abbey Chronicle. http://sites.google.com/site/ejosociety Serendipity. Now defunct. Folly. Editors, Sue Sims & Belinda Copson. Now defunct. The New Chalet Club, established 1995: http://www.newchaletclub.co.uk

  I. IN SEARCH OF ELINOR

  Helen McClelland

  ELINOR BRENT-DYER . . . ? But what on earth makes you want to write about her? That, in the mid-1970s, was the usual reaction to my plan for a book about the author of the Chalet School series. Many of my friends appeared to think that women who wrote school stories were just a bit of a laugh. And even my husband, normally most supportive of my writing projects, failed to see why anyone wanted to devote so much time and labour to the “Shilly-Shally School” — as he called it. A gloomy pronouncement that “People who want to read well-researched, in-depth biographies, don’t want to read about Elinor Brent-Dyer; and vice versa . . . ” summed up his attitude. Nor was there any lack of Cassandras to join him in the chorus; the bottom line of their predictions being that the book would never find a publisher (which almost proved to be true).