The Chalet School Revisited

by Sheila Ray

  The Heads who live in the memory are Miss Annersley and Miss Wilson and Nancy Wilmot, as she and Kathy Ferrars take over the roles of the now ageing Heads in the later books. We discover in Three Go to the Chalet School (1949) that Miss Wilson has become co-Head with Miss Annersley, and are left to assume that this is because of the latter’s serious illness following the accident in Gay from China — the reason is never stated. The effect is clumsy, and in fact lasts only for five books. In The Wrong Chalet School (1952), Miss Wilson has been banished to the school’s finishing branch in Switzerland. This is a pity; it breaks the strong relationship between the two women — and one wonders whatever possessed Brent-Dyer to cast the totally no-nonsense “Bill” as the Head of a finishing school!

  The fact that Brent-Dyer was quite unconscious of the sort of woman she was creating and presenting as role model to her readers is, in fact, intriguingly illuminated by her treatment of the Annersley-Wilson duo and of Nancy Wilmot. All of these participate less in the maternal role than do many other fictional Heads because of the close connection with the school of Jo Maynard, who largely takes over the mothering function. Rosemary Auchmuty has pointed out the increasing masculinity of the originally plump and pretty Nancy Wilmot as she becomes a sturdy, lasso-throwing six-footer62, and this seems to be connected both with her growing importance and authority within the texts and with her deepening relationship with Kathy Ferrars. It is tempting to speculate, too, that the creation of the dual Headship of Miss Annersley and Miss Wilson is an attempt to strengthen the Head’s function by an injection of “manliness” in the person of Bill. The significant nickname and the fact that she is a teacher of science immediately put Miss Wilson on a masculine spectrum. She is a ferocious disciplinarian (“Best send Nell Wilson out to them . . . it needs someone like a sergeant-major”), and it is she who knows enough about electricity to cope with the failed lights in The New Chalet School (1938):

  I know there’s something wrong with the lights. . . Miss Wilson will be along presently, and will see what is wrong . . . someone has taken all the fuses out of the fuse-box, and cut some wire or other. Miss Wilson has put in new fuses, but the light is still out.63

  In Tom Tackles the Chalet School (1948) we find her coming to “stand in a manly attitude before the glowing fire”64 but, despite the fact that Nell Wilson must surely be one of Brent-Dyer’s most delightful characters, this does not work. The more obviously feminine but deeply authoritative Miss Annersley does not need shoring up in this way, and the clumsiness and ultimate failure of the attempt illustrate both the strength of Brent-Dyer’s female Head and her own unconsciousness of the significance of what she was writing.

  School itself as refuge

  For Elinor Brent-Dyer, school is home for both staff and pupils. When Matron Lloyd’s sister dies, the school staff are the only people left who know her well enough to call her by her Christian name, and they drop the nickname of years to do so, in a commitment to her akin to that of a substitute family.65 For orphaned Biddy O’Ryan, adopted by the school Guide Company and constantly connected with it, first as a pupil and later as a teacher, “it’s the school that’s really been home to her ever since she was a kid”66, and for old Herr Laubach, the lonely, irascible art master, “the school is my whole life now”.67 In terms of the books, this is a powerful tribute to the school. In terms of Brent-Dyer’s life, it is indicative of the absorption into her fantasy world which increasingly gave her the feelings of security and belonging missing in her actual life, and which gives to the books much of their addictive power.

  For Helen McClelland’s biography leaves us with the impression of a deeply lonely woman. Not only did Brent-Dyer lose her father at the age of three when he left her mother, she had to cope with the deaths of a close friend and an even closer brother within the same year when she was still only a teenager herself and, even more damagingly, all these traumas were ruthlessly repressed. It is difficult to believe that close friends in later years were unaware of the existence of either father or brother, but this seems to have been the case. Brent-Dyer did not marry and, whether or not this would have given her the emotional satisfaction she sought, she herself felt cheated. McClelland comments: “there seems little doubt that Elinor herself was never fully resigned to remaining unmarried . . . she thought of spinsterhood as second-best”.68 Ironically, the totally fulfilled spinsters in the books find their emotional fulfilment and love in other women, but Brent-Dyer herself never seems to have achieved this; friendships formed in a blaze of passion quickly died, and the deep and moving female bonding of Hilda Annersley and Nell Wilson or of Nancy Wilmot and Kathy Ferrars sadly seems to have evaded their creator.

  That she took refuge in her fantasy world is clear from the way in which she patterned her real school in Hereford on the Chalet School to the point where the actual and fictional pupils wore identical uniform. This is the Word made Flesh with a vengeance, and it is a strange reversal of the more usual process of using elements of reality in a work of fiction. It is the strength of Brent-Dyer’s own belief in her fictional characters, “this conviction that her characters were real people”69, which caused her readers, too, to believe absolutely in them and forms much of the foundation of the addictive quality of her writing.

  Conclusion

  Because of the social climate in which they were written, school stories had to deal in some way with religion. While some writers were content to pay lip-service to established beliefs, others used their books purely as vehicles for their message, and attempted to convert their readers. Perhaps coincidentally, certainly fortunately, the writers of school-story books of quality were themselves deeply committed Christians, and were able to give their readers a profound and honest analysis of faith in ways which they could understand and identify with. This was clearly their conscious intention.

  Elinor Brent-Dyer, speaking as Principal of the Margaret Roper School in Hereford on the school’s ninth speech-day, said: “We are trying to train our girls . . . to become practising Christians . . . [which is] vital to our land and indeed to the whole Empire”70; and there can be no possible doubt that the same was true of her writing. Because of her constant wish to analyse and understand (a process she continually describes in the books as “going deep”), she was able to deal with theological subjects which her fellow-writers left untouched; and because of the phenomenal length of her writing life, she was forced to adapt her work to a society which no longer accepted her beliefs as axiomatic. This she achieved by means of apologetics, but achieve it she most certainly did.

  The work of many authors, however, goes far beyond their conscious intentions to provide images of omnipotent women which were, had they been heeded, deeply subversive of traditional theology. Because school stories are “only” children’s books, and “only” girls’ books at that, they were not heeded, and were left to make their impact, however subliminal, on the consciousness of their readers. We have seen that the texts present powerful images of women who are at once the total controllers of their universe, and deeply connected in love to the inhabitants of that world.

  It has certainly been true for me that these images were imbibed at a subconscious level; it took an awareness of feminist reinterpretations of traditional male-centred theology to enable me to articulate what they had meant in my imaginative life. I suspect this is true of most readers — the unravelling of one’s own emotional and intellectual baggage is a long and tortuous process. Yet the images are there, creating a fundamental disatisfaction with the partial vision of God which is so often all we are offered as women, pointing out how skewed is a theology which separates us from a full appreciation of God’s love, and filling an emotional and spiritual void in a way not matched by any other literary genre.

  I suspect that Elinor Brent-Dyer would have been shocked at some of the readings of her work contained in this analysis — I am sure that, at her point in time, she could have had no idea of what she was creating. I am also sure, how
ever, that if she had had access to the theory which would have made sense of and allowed her to articulate her perceptions, she would herself have experienced the empowerment, the release and the fulfilment which she has offered to so many of her Christian readers in her re-vision of theology.

  NOTES

  1. Helen McClelland, Behind the Chalet School (New Horizon, 1981), p.179.

  2. Mary Cadogan and Patricia Craig, You’re a Brick, Angela! (Gollancz, 1976), p.204.

  3. Angela Brazil, The Nicest Girl in the School (Blackie, 1910), p.235.

  4. Mary Louise Parker, Dormitory Wistaria (Sampson Low, Marston, 1947), p.82.

  5. Dorita Fairlie Bruce, Dimsie Among the Prefects (Oxford University Press, 1923), p.87.

  6. Dorita Fairlie Bruce, Captain of Springdale (Oxford University Press, 1942), p.136.

  7. Elinor Brent-Dyer, Mary-Lou of the Chalet School (1954), p.131.

  8. Elinor Brent-Dyer, Leader in Spite of Herself (1956), p.45.

  9. Ibid., p.86.

  10. Dorothy Dennison, Rival Schools at Trentham (CSSM, 1923), pp.25, 27.

  11. See Louisa Gray, Nelly’s Teachers . . . and What They Learned (Nelson, 1882); Ada and Gerty or, Hand in Hand Heavenward (Nelson, 1875).

  12. Helen S. Humphries, Prudence Goes Too Far (Pickering & Inglis, 1966), p.9.

  13. Helen S. Humphries, Margaret the Rebel (Pickering & Inglis, 1957), p.110.

  14. Elinor Brent-Dyer, The Chalet School Reunion (1963), p.77.

  15. Elinor Brent-Dyer, The New House at the Chalet School (1935), p.96.

  16. Elinor Brent-Dyer, A Quintette in Queensland (1951), p.275.

  17. Dorita Fairlie Bruce, Nancy Calls the Tune (Oxford University Press, 1944), p.178.

  18. Elinor Brent-Dyer, Joey and Co. in Tirol (1960), p.64.

  19. Elinor Brent-Dyer, Bride Leads the Chalet School (1953), p.275.

  20. Elinor Brent-Dyer, The Coming of Age of the Chalet School (1958), p.199.

  21. Elsie J. Oxenham, The Abbey Girls Again (1924); The Abbey Girls in Town (1925); Queen of the Abbey Girls (1926), etc. All published by Collins.

  22. Dorita Fairlie Bruce, Nancy Calls the Tune.

  23. Elinor Brent-Dyer, The Chalet School Does It Again (1955), p.154.

  24. Elinor Brent-Dyer, Mary-Lou of the Chalet School, p.131.

  25. Dorita Fairlie Bruce, Triffeny (Oxford University Press, 1950), p.196.

  26. Elinor Brent-Dyer, The Chalet School Reunion, pp.19-20.

  27. Elinor Brent-Dyer, The Condor Crags Adventure (1954), pp.19, 27.

  28. Elinor Brent-Dyer, Two Sams at the Chalet School (1967), p.179.

  29. Kathleen M. McCleod, Julia of Sherwood School (Pickering & Inglis, 1947), p.110.

  30. Dorita Fairlie Bruce, Triffeny, p.274.

  31. Elinor Brent-Dyer, A Genius at the Chalet School (1956), pp.83-4.

  32. Elinor Brent-Dyer, The Highland Twins at the Chalet School (1942), pp.244-5.

  33. Elinor Brent-Dyer, Trials for the Chalet School (1959), p.32.

  34. Elinor Brent-Dyer, Joey and Co. in Tirol, p.65.

  35. Elinor Brent-Dyer, Trials for the Chalet School, p.104.

  36. Julia Kristeva, “About Chinese Women:”. In Toril Moi, ed. The Kristeva Reader (Blackwell, 1986), p.138.

  37. Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Fortress Press, 1978) and Texts of Terror (Fortress Press, 1984); Mary Evans, Women in the Bible (Paternoster Press, 1983).

  38. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, The Woman’s Bible (Polygon Books, 1985; first published New York: European Publishing Company, Part I, 1895, Part II, 1898); Rosemary Radford Ruether, Religion and Sexism (Simon and Schuster, 1974) and Sexism and God Talk : Toward a Feminist Theology (Beacon Press, 1983); Elisabeth Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (Crossroad, 1983) and “The Will to Choose or to Reject: Continuing Our Critical Work”. In Letty Russell, ed., Feminist Interpretation of the Bible (Blackwell, 1985), p.132.

  39. Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father (Women’s Press, 1986; first published 1973).

  40. Daphne Hampson, Theology and Feminism (Blackwell, 1990), p.85.

  41. Quoted in Hampson, ibid., p.66. Apart from any other considerations, the flaw in the argument which attaches “femaleness” to the sacrificial self-giving of which Christ must be the prime example, seems to have escaped the Bishop.

  42. Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, The Public School Phenomenon 1597-1977 (Hodder & Stoughton, 1977), p.250.

  43. May Wynne, The Honour of the School (Dean, 1926), p.28.

  44. Edith Elias, Elsie Lockhart: Third Form Girl (Religious Tract Society, 1925), p.16.

  45. Angela Brazil, The Third Class At Miss Kaye’s (Blackie, 1908).

  46. May Wynne, Kits at Clinton Court School (Warne, 1924).

  47. Winifred Darch, Alison Temple, Prefect (Oxford University Press, 1938), p.29.

  48. Dorita Fairlie Bruce, Nancy to the Rescue (Oxford University Press, 1929), p.22. Reprinted as Alison in a Fix, Spring Books, 1961.

  49. Sibyl B. Owsley, Dulcie Captains the School (Sampson Low, Marston, 1928), p.133.

  50. Elinor Brent-Dyer, The Chalet School Triplets (1963), p.93.

  51. Antonia Forest, Autumn Term (Faber & Faber, 1948).

  52. Ethel Talbot, The Girls of the Rookery School (Nelson, 1925), p.35.

  53. Angela Brazil, The New Girl at St Chad’s (Blackie, 1912), p.50.

  54. Joanna Lloyd, Jane Runs Away from School (Blackie, 1955), p.79; first published 1946.

  55. Sue Surman, Friends of the Chalet School Newsletter 13, Dec. 1991, p.12.

  56. Mary Daly, Pure Lust (Women’s Press, 1984), p.403.

  57. Elinor Brent-Dyer, Caroline the Second (1937), pp.13, 18.

  58. Elinor Brent-Dyer, Leader in Spite of Herself, p.67.

  59. Elinor Brent-Dyer, Beechy of the Harbour School (1955), p.12.

  60. Elinor Brent-Dyer, The New Chalet School (1938), pp.205-6.

  61. Elinor Brent-Dyer, The School at the Chalet (1925).

  62. Rosemary Auchmuty, A World of Girls (Women’s Press, 1992), pp.130-1.

  63. Elinor Brent-Dyer, The New Chalet School, pp.126, 135-7.

  64. Elinor Brent-Dyer, Tom Tackles the Chalet School (1955), p.168.

  65. Elinor Brent-Dyer, Excitements at the Chalet School (1957), p.86.

  66. Elinor Brent-Dyer, The New Mistress at the Chalet School (1957), p.35.

  67. Elinor Brent-Dyer, Trials for the Chalet School, p.54.

  68. McClelland, Behind the Chalet School, p.157.

  69. Ibid., p.178.

  70. Ibid., p.144.

  VII. THE SERIES FACTOR

  SUE SIMS

  LET’S begin by asking one question. In any medium which uses story as a device — literature, film, radio or television — which type of story attracts the greatest audience?

  It doesn’t take a Oxford English degree to provide the answer to that one. EastEnders and Coronation Street, The Archers — the soap opera pulls in by far the largest audiences for any regular television or radio programme. Film producers know that Back to the Future III or Rambo CCXVI will fill the cinemas far more reliably than most one-off movies.

  Most people who read this book will have experienced a precisely similar situation in the literary world. The bestselling writers of our time do not always produce series — but quite often it’s the series which first makes them bestsellers. One can look at many different genres and see this at work. Catherine Cookson tops the bestsellers league now, whatever she writes; but Tilly Trotter, Mary Ann and those unlucky Mallens helped to get her there. Terry Pratchett can now command hundreds of thousands of devoted readers for anything he produces, but he wouldn’t have reached that pinnacle without Discworld.

  And in the sphere of the thriller, I’ve just been reading an article on John Le Carré’s George Smiley books, which comments:

  Although they are all thoroughly readable, it’s fair to say that none of Le Carré’s next three books — The Looking-Glass
War, A Small Town in Germany and The Naive and Sentimental Lover — quite lived up to The Spy Who Came In From the Cold. It was the relative failure of the last of these novels that prompted him to return to his greatest inspiration, George Smiley.1

  It’s interesting to note that the writer of this article assumes that the three non-Smiley novels were not as successful as their predecessors because Le Carré needed Smiley to inspire him. I would argue, as I hope to show in this essay, that what inspired Le Carré and drew in readers was not simply Smiley but the Series Factor.

  Let’s now leave Cookson, Pratchett and Le Carr´, and become slightly more specific — and, if you will forgive me, personal. I’ve been collecting and reading girls’ school stories ever since I stopped being a girl (about 23 years ago) and know by correspondence at least a hundred other collectors in the same field. By and large, all say the same — that the writers they collect most avidly (and, often, pay the most money for) are the writers of the series. Who are the names to conjure with in our world? Elsie J. Oxenham, Dorita Fairlie Bruce and — of course — Elinor M. Brent-Dyer. Slightly lower down the list (looking only at numbers of collectors — her fans would put her at the top) comes Antonia Forest with her Marlow stories. Outside the school story field, but collected by many of the same people, come L. M. Montgomery, Violet Needham, Lorna Hill, Monica Edwards — and Captain W.E.Johns’ Biggles holds sway over many otherwise ladylike readers. Enid Blyton, who comes into almost every category, must also be on the list.