Excitements at the Chalet School was published in 1957. It tells the story of an entire class of delinquents who upon the proposal of a festival (the school is turning 21. Apparently this is important) decide to reform themselves so that their ideas get taken seriously. It is the typical story of bad girls reformed. But unlike in Blyton's The Naughtiest Girl in the School, the bad acts are swiftly described and dealt with. Blyton on the other hand delighted in the details. I can still vividly remember reading over and over about how the protagonist elizabeth would put cockroaches in her governesses bed and delighted in spilling ink all over the carpet. She likewise comes to be reformed but maintains her outspoken and witty ways. She never becomes perfect.
In Excitements however the naughtiness of the form inter v is squashed quickly. Disliked characters are bitter and shallow cutouts, their concerns are always sidelines by the homogeny. As such I am drawn to liking the characters who are basically bullied by a consistent system of exiling the non-conformists. For example, one girl called Yseult suggests they do a play and chooses the one she would like to perform: "The Land of Heart's Desire, " Yseult said promptly. "What?" Miss Ferrars exclaimed. "But my dear girl, you couldn't touch it! It's far too difficult for schoolgirls!" The teacher enfantilises and humiliates a 16 year old. The material she suggests is tainted by the sexualised promises of love. It is desire and passion. The naughtiest form in the school is made of pupils ranging from the age of 14 to 17 it is an inbetween form. The girls who are too stupid to make it into Va or Vb senior forms are placed there with exceptional middle schoolers. They are the displaced and difficult pupils treated like children because their classmates are still "girls." 70 years earlier Yseult might have already been married and enacting her hearts desires. She is cast as the bitter outcast whilst the mary-sue characters of the novels are very much reinforcing the dominant values of the schools.
This distinction is outlined by the ways in which the two different groups suggest ideas for the all-important festival. Yseult would like a new uniform which is more "artful" whilst The Maynard Triplets (children of Brent-Dyer's original characters) propose that two new chapels be built. One proposes non-conformity, the others reinforcement of the christian values so perpetuated by the school. The teachers laugh at Yseult's idea they ignore the enormous expense of the triplets' idea and instigate it. Conforming gets you taken seriously.
Shrews are tamed at the chalet school but as yet (I've not finished this novel just yet) Yseult has undergone no change and there is no hint that she will. She is not out-right naughty, she is not punished, she is just persistently mocked and ridiculed by teachers, prefects and classmates alike. The chalet school is dated and this rant about a series of books which is rarely read anymore is unimportant. But it is an interesting expression of the tensions of a 1950s Britain which tried to suppress the heart's desire only to find themselves with an angry new creation. The teenager. I am contemplating a rewrite of the chalet school books; a trashy piece of hardcore pornography in which the sexualised humiliations of the young women are made a little less subtle for the gratification of a wide and varied audience of exploitative adults.
