by Sheila Ray
III. THE LITERARY CONTEXT OF THE CHALET SCHOOL
SHEILA RAY
IN the 1920s, when Elinor Brent-Dyer’s books began to appear, there was very little critical interest in Britain in books written specifically for young people, although some children’s books, such as A. A. Milne’s Pooh stories and collections of verse, were reviewed alongside adult books. The first professionals to take children’s literature seriously were librarians: in 1936 the Library Association established the Carnegie Medal, an annual award for an outstanding children’s book, and the Junior Bookshelf, the first British specialist reviewing journal devoted to children’s books, was launched by H. J. B. Woodfield, a librarian who became a bookseller. Librarians working with children in the 1930s were very much influenced by the views of American children’s librarians, who believed that they had a duty to promote only the best children’s books, and who, a decade earlier, had begun to put forward ideas about what constitutes a good children’s book.
Criteria for judging children’s books have changed little over the years. The plot should be convincing and well-constructed, with plenty of action. Good characterisation is essential; stereotyping should be avoided and the characters should be believable, with the ability to change and develop within the story. “If the setting is . . . geographic . . . [it] should present a healthy, fair picture and portrayal of other cultures and customs.”1 The style should be readable for the age group for which the book is intended, should show an imaginative use of vocabulary and avoid clichés. Themes and ideas should offer a challenge to the young reader. Formula fiction and long series tend to be dismissed without any consideration of their possible positive qualities.
In Britain, in the first 30 years of the 20th century, school stories were published in large quantities, as books and in annuals, miscellaneous collections and magazines. Although they were stocked in many libraries, they were, on the whole, poorly regarded by adults. Constance Stern, children’s librarian at Croydon in the 1930s, was typical in her condemnation of girls’ school stories, decrying them as a waste of “creative energy on unpractical daydreams”.2
Adult opinion, of course, did not affect their popularity with children. Up to the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Angela Brazil, who published over 50 full-length and many short school stories between 1906 and 1946, and who is generally regarded as the pioneer of the girls’ school story3, was regularly reported to be the most popular and bestselling writer for girls.4 In a survey carried out in 1947, G. A. Carter, a librarian, reported that school stories were the most popular kind of reading amongst 12- to 14-year-olds and that Angela Brazil was the second most popular writer, with 29 nominations compared to W. E. Johns’s 34. Elinor Brent-Dyer received five nominations along with R. D. Blackmore; no doubt the children who nominated Elinor were being truthful while those who mentioned R. D. Blackmore had probably just been reading Lorna Doone at school, as I did in the early 1940s.5
The School Library Review, which began in 1936, and the School Librarian, which was started the following year, were, as the titles suggest, geared to libraries in schools, and to libraries in academic secondary schools in particular; they provided book reviews and articles about authors and titles that might be enjoyed by young people, and the general impression that emerges from their pages is that, as soon as possible, children were encouraged to read John Buchan, Sir Walter Scott, H. G. Wells, Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling and Rider Haggard, having first cut their teeth on children’s classics such as Little Women (1868), Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and The Water Babies (1863). One headmistress, Miss M. G. Beard of Crofton Grange, addressing a meeting of the Association of Head Mistresses of Boarding Schools in 1937 or 1938, said, “I never allow school stories,” and then wondered why reading was a problem for the 11 to 15 age group.6 The Times Literary Supplement began to publish an occasional Children’s Books Supplement in 1949, but it was only in the 1950s that teachers generally began to take an intelligent interest in the contemporary books being published for children and young people.
There were few critical works about children’s literature, and their emphasis tended to be on its historical development; for example F. J. Harvey Darton’s Children’s Books in England (1932)7 and Roger Lancelyn Green’s Tellers of Tales (1946) both include mention of Talbot Baines Reed, the populariser of the boys’ school story, but not of Angela Brazil. Roger Lancelyn Green brought the history of children’s literature up to date in a rewritten and revised edition of Tellers of Tales in 1965, but although he has a chapter entitled “Rudyard Kipling and the World of School”, in which he mentions the Jennings books by Anthony Buckeridge, he gives no indication that girls’ school stories ever existed.8
It is only in 1949, in Geoffrey Trease’s Tales Out of School, a survey of children’s literature which broke new ground by looking at what children were actually reading at the time, that we find a mention of Elinor Brent-Dyer alongside the many other writers popular with children. In the chapter, “Midnight in the Dorm”, girls’ school stories are considered alongside those for boys; Trease points out that, for historical reasons, the girls’ school story lagged behind the school story for boys, and mentions Brent-Dyer and the Chalet books along with Angela Brazil and Elsie J. Oxenham. This was a start, although he regards the level of writing in this field as low.9
Marcus Crouch, in Treasure Seekers and Borrowers, first published in 1962, does slightly better. He includes Elinor Brent-Dyer amongst three writers, the others being Dorita Fairlie Bruce and Josephine Elder, who “explored the convention of school-life, and the minds of their heroines with greater subtlety” and suggests that the Chalet School stories show a little of “the influence not of the traditional school-story but of the ‘adult’ school novels of Hugh Walpole and others”.10
Another standard work of the period is Frank Eyre’s 20th Century Children’s Books, first published in 1952; in the revised and enlarged edition of 1971, he begins the section on school stories by saying: “The school story was always an artificial type and its decline towards the middle of the century was neither unexpected nor deplored.” He too mentions Elinor Brent-Dyer, Dorita Fairlie Bruce and Elsie J. Oxenham, each of whom “was responsible for several series of books about the same characters or school, of which Elinor Brent-Dyer’s ‘Chalet School’ series was the farthest removed from reality and Dorita Fairlie Bruce’s ‘Dimsie’ series the nearest to it”.11
Until the early 1960s literary criticism of children’s books was largely in the hands of male critics who, even if they managed to read a Chalet School book, were certainly not likely to be able to look at it from the point of view of a typical reader. Marcus Crouch and Frank Eyre were both highly regarded critics, but the former’s verdict of “subtlety” sits oddly with the latter’s accusation of lack of “reality”.
When, as a librarian, I first started working with children and books in the late 1950s, the only critical works in the field by women which were easily available in Britain were Dorothy Neal White’s About Books for Children (1946)12 and Lillian Smith’s The Unreluctant Years (1953).13 Both authors were children’s librarians, the first in New Zealand, the second in Canada, and both believed firmly in providing only the best children’s books, amongst which school stories were definitely not included. Dorothy Neal White has a brief reference to the “once popular school story”, while Lillian Smith ignores it completely; both were preoccupied by the idea that children had no time to waste on reading mediocre books. It is, of course, true that school stories are a peculiarly British genre, but this fact alone does not account for the scant attention they received from these critics, especially as we now know that school stories were read eagerly in New Zealand, Australia and Canada.14
After 1960, there was a surge of critical interest in children’s books in Britain, but by this time attitudes towards girls’ school stories were firmly fixed. John Rowe Townsend published the first edition of Written for Children in 1965. In the t
hird revised edition of 1987 he wrote, “the traditional boarding-school story has not revived and does not look likely to do so”.15 He concentrates on the boys’ school story, although Antonia Forest is described as “bravely” keeping the boarding school story alive with the occasional Marlow title.16
The first British woman to emerge as a serious critic was Margery Fisher, although even she was New Zealand-born, whose Intent Upon Reading (1961) was quickly recognised as a landmark in the criticism of children’s literature. Restricting the historical element to an account of what literary criticism had already been done in the field, she concentrated on currently available children’s fiction. Although school stories are the first group to be dealt with in the chapter called “Fossils and Formulas”, the Chalet books are described as a “clear example of fossilization”. She is critical of “ten or twelve pages of drama concerning the dire consequences of tilting your chair while working” and the “shadowy and uninteresting characters”, and describes the new generation of schoolgirls as being “untouched, apparently, by the passage of time”.17 At this point she clearly did not anticipate the survival of the Chalet books into the 1990s!
However, in her Who’s Who in Children’s Books (1975), there is an entry for Joey Bettany in which she says, “Though the episodes and the idiom of the stories now seem laboured and out of date, the character of Jo can still claim attention”.18 Her last review of Chalet books appeared in Growing Point in 1985, when she reviewed the paperback editions of A Leader in the Chalet School and The Chalet School Wins the Trick. Here she takes an even kinder view:
Elinor Brent-Dyer has developed a most entertaining series of episodes as individuals vary from one book to another . . . Jack, determined to make her mark on the school quickly, disrupts discipline with practical jokes and ill-conceived experiments, while Len . . . restores the balance through a strength of purpose that has no self-esteem in it.
Both stories are described as extending “the saga of a school which, however old-fashioned it may seem now in social terms, still faces the same dissensions and definitions of personality which are the basis of fiction in general and of school stories in particular”.19 Since the quality of the Chalet books, in my opinion, declined rather than improved as time went on, to what can one ascribe this change of attitude? The mellowing of age? Or the realisation that the Chalet books were obviously surviving despite the odds?
By 1985, the girls’ school story had received rather more attention. The first edition of You’re a Brick, Angela! by Mary Cadogan and Patricia Craig had appeared in 1976. In looking at the whole range of books and magazines published for girls between 1839 and 1975, the authors performed an invaluable service but, in covering so much ground, some of their comments were bound to be superficial and they undoubtedly trod on many people’s dreams20, when they criticised Brent-Dyer for her “religious sentimentality” and the fact that she felt that her characters’ adulthood could “best be expressed by supernatural fecundity.20 They looked at the books with an adult knowingness, and were unable to avoid poking fun at the stories in a way that is not very far removed from the mockery of Arthur Marshall.21
When Marshall reviewed Excitements at the Chalet School in 1957 he began:
Excitements at the Chalet School vary. There is an avalanche (“A whacker to judge by the sound of it”), a past headmistress (Miss Bubb), a landslide. Miss Annersley in her crimson twin set, and Margot Maynard (forget-me-not eyes), who “fell into Lucerne last March”.22
Arthur Marshall made a name for himself as a humorist on the subject of girls’ schools and girls’ school stories, both in writing and on the radio. The editor of the New Statesman would know, when inviting Arthur Marshall to review a Chalet book, exactly the sort of review he would get — certainly not one to be taken seriously. It is significant that a quotation from Marshall (“Such brilliance, energy and expertise. It’s all super!”), appears on the cover of the paperback edition of You’re a Brick, Angela!.
Two books which focus on the English school story, Isabel Quigly’s The Heirs of Tom Brown (1982) and Happiest Days (1988) by Jeffrey Richards, devote, respectively, one chapter and no space at all to the school story for girls. Isabel Quigly says, “Elinor M. Brent-Dyer set the enormous Chalet School series in the Austrian Tyrol, and went back there after the Second World War”,23 which piece of misinformation is typical of attitudes towards girls’ school stories prevailing into the 1980s, and probably lingering on into the 1990s: the sternest critics do not see any need to get their facts right. Jeffrey Richards contents himself with saying that “girls’ fiction is a universe of its own” and refers readers to the “perceptive analysis” of You’re a Brick, Angela!.24
In 1981, Helen McClelland’s Behind the Chalet School filled a large gap, although it did not come from a mainstream publisher.25 It was only when feminist criticism turned its attention to girls’ stories that the girls’ school story was taken seriously by critics. Judith Rowbotham’s Good Girls Make Good Wives (1989)26 and Girls Only (1990) by Kimberley Reynolds27 pointed in the right direction, but both were concerned with fiction published before the First World War. Rosemary Auchmuty’s A World of Girls, published in 1992, which dealt with the novels of Elsie J. Oxenham, Dorita Fairlie Bruce and Elinor Brent-Dyer, therefore marked an important step forward.28
I believe that girls who enjoyed school stories from 1910 onwards recognised, if only subconsciously, the fact that the world of an all-girls’ school provided a satisfying environment for their fantasies. It was a world in which the female viewpoint was important, in which females took positive decisions and could be seen as leaders, and in which they succeeded and achieved, or could do so, both physically and intellectually. And, at least, they were never required to do the washing up or undertake other mundane domestic chores, except, possibly, for fun or in an emergency.
The Chalet Books considered
It has already been said that, in the criticism of children’s books and in establishing whether a book is a good children’s book, consideration is generally given to plot, to characterisation and to style and themes. Children and young people demand a good story, an author who can tell one holds their attention and keeps them turning the pages. However, by the time girls reach the stage of reading the Chalet books, they are likely to be fluent readers and do not need the enticement of a good plot. The Chalet books are not plotted in the accepted sense of the word; they are held together by a central character or characters and by a specific time-scale, usually a school term. Where there is a unifying and recognisable plot such as the rivalry of the two schools in The Rivals of the Chalet School (1929) or the kidnapping of Elisaveta in The Princess of the Chalet School (1927), this is not an exclusive or dominant feature. Life goes on as usual, independently of the central theme, and there are many incidents which do not contribute to the unfolding of the plot.
One of the attractions of the books must be the minutiae of school life and organisation, which are seen from all points of view. During the course of a book, the viewpoint can shift from that of the older girls to that of the youngest, and the reader is also told what the staff and Head do, think and feel in certain situations. It may have been this feature of the books that Marcus Crouch had in mind when he saw in the Chalet books the influence of the writers of adult school novels.
Many of the books, particularly in the case of the later titles, are concerned with the fortunes of one particular character and the way in which she settles down at the Chalet School. In the earlier books Elisaveta, Eustacia, and Joyce Linton, for example, are all such central characters, but the books do not deal entirely with their concerns and the viewpoint from which events are seen shifts frequently. In the typical school story in which a new girl arrives at the school, meets problems but is gradually accepted and settles down, everything is usually seen from her angle, but Brent-Dyer presents a more rounded picture of school life and this may be one reason for her continuing appeal. Perhaps, to the young reader, the boo
ks seem more realistic because of it, despite their comparatively exotic settings. Young adolescent girls usually seek in their reading some guidance about what it is like to grow up and about what lies in the future. The Chalet books give 11- and 12-year-olds a foretaste of the responsibilities and challenges that lie ahead.
The characters are clearly defined but there is little real characterisation. Brent-Dyer has the advantage of being able to differentiate between her characters through nationality — English Jo, French Simone, American Cornelia — and goes even further by making a distinction between the two Austrian girls, Frieda, the North Tyrolean, and Marie, the pretty Viennese. The girls, however, develop very little through their experiences. Some settle down, some become truly reformed characters as the result of some incident, such as Eustacia through her accident or Joyce Linton because of her unfortunate involvement with Thekla, but, on the whole, the characters remain very much as they are when we first meet them — Simone is a rare exception.
Each emerges on to the Chalet scene with her physical appearance, nationality and main characteristics already established. Sometimes these are reinforced in more detail; for example, a distinction is frequently made between Grizel’s good but mechanical playing of the piano and the way in which Margia Stevens plays with real feeling and expression. Characters can be relied upon to behave or react in a certain way; their characteristics are often used to develop the plot. In The New House at the Chalet School (1935), the campaign against the new matron is carried a stage further when Margia is “longing to get” at her new Brahms and meets a disbelieving Matron (p.183). Later in the same book, Jo’s fear of the dentist, when she finally succumbs to the pain and confesses to Matron, leads to a major expedition to the dentist in Innsbruck and the subsequent meeting with Jem’s long lost sister, Margot Venables.29
