| 1 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/chalet_school.png]] |
| 2 | A series of books by British novelist Elinor Brent-Dyer. Set in a {{boarding school}} for girls in Austria, Guernsey, Wales and finally Switzerland, as the Nazis spread across Europe. |
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| 4 | Features a cast of thousands by virtue of having over sixty books and spanning almost three generations of the family. |
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| 6 | Madge Bettany and her ill sister, Joey, are faced with poverty when their brother Dick takes a new job in India. Madge decides that a finishing school for girls, in Austria, will be the best cure for their money woes and for Joey's health. Starting with a small number of students in the eponymous Chalet, the school teaches in English, French and German. Could very well be a {{trope codifier}} for the {{boarding school}} series. |
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| 8 | A character sheet is currently in progress. |
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| 12 | ---- |
| 13 | !!The Chalet School and the Tropes: |
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| 15 | [[foldercontrol]] |
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| 17 | [[folder: Tropes A-I]] |
| 18 | * AHouseDivided: ''The Feud in the Chalet School'', in which girls and staff from another local school, St Hilda's, are forced to temporarily move in with the Chalet School after their school is destroyed by a fire. Although the older girls and most of the staff try to make the best of a bad situation, the younger girls are at odds with each other. The Chalet contingent, led by Jack Lambert, resent having to share their space with the St Hilda's girls, while the St Hilda's contingent, led by Gillie Garstin, are equally unhappy and find some of the Chalet School practices, such as the language days, annoying or weird. It's not helped by the arrogant attitude of Miriam Ashley, one of the St Hilda's teachers, who doesn't agree with the way the Chalet School does things, and is desperate to move out. The girls later bond over rescuing the school cat and painting walls with golden syrup. ItMakesSenseInContext. |
| 19 | * AbsurdlyPowerfulStudentCouncil: The prefects have their moments. On top of their schoolwork, they are also expected to supervise the younger girls in prep sessions, clubs and games practices. They are also able to dole out punishments and often take matters into their own hands when younger girls are behaving badly or fighting amongst themselves. TruthInTelevision as at many schools at the time, prefects were given a lot of power. |
| 20 | * AbusiveParents: Rikki Fry's dad beats her hands with a cane for touching one of his prized vases. |
| 21 | ** Several characters are also victims of emotional abuse, including Grizel Cochrane (who is also on the receiving end of financial abuse from her parents) and Theodora / Ted Grantley, who has a ''very'' strained relationship with her mother. And Juliet Carrick's parents just plain ''dump'' her on Madge (see ParentalAbandonment below). |
| 22 | * AdultsAreUseless: Zigzagged. Sometimes the staff do step in when needed, but other times - ''Theodora'' being one of the more extreme examples - they leave matters in the hands of the girls and/or Joey. |
| 23 | * AerithAndBob: On the one hand, there are girls with pretty conventional names, such as Gillian Culver, Beth Chester, Margaret Twiss, Mary Woodley and Amy Stevens. On the other, there's the likes of Verity-Ann Carey, Yseult Pertwee, Loveday Perowne, Viola Lucy, Josette Russell, Zephyr Burthill, Evadne Lannis, and many other girls with equally weird names. Invoked in ''Lintons'' when Jem asks Joey and her friends to suggest names for his new baby daughter and they come up with names like Esmeralda, Ottillie and Malvina. Cornelia Flower's suggestion? ''Jane.'' |
| 24 | * AgonyOfTheFeet: Mary Candlish is on the receiving end of this in ''Triplets'' when she treads on a sharp object during the Middles' walk and it goes through her shoe. To make matters worse, because the girls are lost in the woods for ages, the wound becomes infected and makes her ill, and Jack Maynard has to give her an antibiotic shot. |
| 25 | * AintTooProudToBeg: When Miss Browne informs [[spoiler:Vera]] that she is to be expelled in ''Rivals'', [[spoiler: Vera]] throws herself down on the floor and begs the headmistress not to expel her. Miss Browne isn't interested and tells her she must 'never kneel to another human being'. |
| 26 | ** Zephyr Burthill tries the same trick in ''Jo to the Rescue'' with Simone de Bersac, kneeling down and begging her to give her Phoebe's cello. Simone isn't having any of it. |
| 27 | * AmbitionIsEvil: Or misguided, anyway. Which is the reaction Miss Slater gets from Miss Dene and younger mistresses when she announces in ''Changes'' that she won't be joining the school in Switzerland as she's got a job in another high school as Head of Maths, and she's had enough of being a junior mistress and wants to advance up the career ladder. Miss O'Ryan, Miss Derwent and Miss Burnett all make fun of her and accuse her of thinking she's better than them. |
| 28 | * AnachronismStew: The Armada covers are terrible for this. The Jerry Haylock covers from the '70s and the Gwyneth Jones covers from the '80s both feature characters with hairstyles and clothes that would not have been around in the era of the books. Averted with Piers Sanford's cover art from the '90s reprints, which is more appropriate for the period (although some eagle-eyed fans would argue that he got Joey's hair wrong on the cover of ''Exile'', as she had grown it out by that point, while Sanford drew her with a bob). |
| 29 | * ApronMatron: Matey, Karen the stern Tyrolean school cook, and to a lesser extent, Anna, the Maynards' loyal maid. |
| 30 | * ArtisticLicenseEducation: Let's just say that the trilingual policy wouldn't have worked too well in real life. Imagine the difficulties of writing one part of an essay in French, another in German and another in English, for instance, not to mention that not everyone can achieve the level of fluency your average Chalet School girl does. The school also has a habit of cancelling lessons in good weather, though they make up the time when the weather is bad and the girls are unable to go out. |
| 31 | * AsTheGoodBookSays: Characters often quote from the Bible or make Biblical references, such as Len using the phrase 'leaky cistern' or Mary-Lou quoting Psalm 121 ("I lift mine eyes to the hills...") on seeing the beautiful Swiss mountains. Given the Christian ethos of the school, and the fact that [=EBD=] herself was deeply religious, it makes sense. |
| 32 | * AssholeVictim: [[spoiler:Captain and Mrs Carrick, who die in a car crash soon after abandoning Juliet.]] |
| 33 | * AuthorAppeal: Several of [=EBD=]'s interests feature throughout the series, such as folk songs in general, folk dancing in the Tyrol years, and cellos ([=EBD=] played the cello) in the war years, with two books (''Gay from China'' and ''Jo to the Rescue'') even featuring plots involving cellos. Mr Denny is also friends with [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Farrar Ernest Farrar]], a young organist and composer who [=EBD=] knew in real life and who was killed in the First World War; the girls even sing some of his pieces, such as 'Brittany'. |
| 34 | * AuthorTract: Throughout the series, [=EBD=] is not shy about using characters as mouthpieces for expressing her views on everything from beatniks (dirty, untrustworthy) and Protestant Reformers to jazz, how to raise children correctly, and the importance of taking care of one's looks and being dainty and 'trig'. This is especially evident in the Swiss books, which were written after her conversion to Catholicism (she also wrote three religious books). Sometimes it works for the character (e.g. Jem's views on obedience, which would not have been unusual for a man of his age at that time, or Marie von Eschenau and Frieda Mensch - girls from very conservative Tyrolean backgrounds - talking about how much they want to marry and keep their husband happy), and sometimes it's rather jarring (such as Joey's rant about beatniks in ''Summer Term'', or Mary-Lou, a Protestant, talking about what a monster John Knox was). |
| 35 | * BetaBitch: Florence 'Floppy Bill' Williams is this to Betty Wynne-Davies in 'Highland Twins', though [[EvenEvilHasStandards even she]] and fellow BetaBitch Hilda are disgusted by [[spoiler:Betty talking to a Nazi spy about the Chart of Erisay.]] |
| 36 | * BigFun: Sophie Hamel, a cheerful fat Tyrolean girl who gets dragged into the film crew incident in ''The School at the Chalet'' and comes in for some stick from Thekla von Stift in ''Exploits'' because her dad, a self-made man, owns a drapery and therefore, in Thekla's snobby eyes, is 'trade' and beneath her. After she leaves school, she goes to work for her dad and provides the school with loads of clothes in ''Althea'', to replace the costumers destroyed in the fire at St Mildred's. [=EBD=] tends to describe her as 'big' or 'sonsy'. |
| 37 | * BitchAlert: If a character is evil or just generally unpleasant, [=EBD=] lets the reader know straight away. They often have harsh voices, dislike and/or get into an argument with the heroine of the book, Joey or one of her relatives, and are either ugly, plain, 'sharp-featured' (such as [[SpoiledBrat Emerence Hope]]) or pretty in a 'cheap' or 'showy' way (such as [[RichBitch Zephyr Burthill]]). |
| 38 | * {{Blackmail}}: Used by Margot against Ted Grantley in ''Theodora''. [[spoiler: Margot finds out that Ted has been expelled from various schools, and threatens to make it public if she doesn't stay away from Len.]] |
| 39 | * BratsWithSlingshots: The Balbini twins in ''The New Chalet School''. They have a catapult, which Mario Balbini uses to shoot stones at Joey while she's having lunch with Robin and Madge. Joey responds by confiscating and breaking the catapult, and the Balbinis get their own back by playing a series of pranks on the school with their gang, the Mystic M. |
| 40 | * BrattyHalfPint: multiple characters start off as this before growing up, such as Sybil Russell. One of the worst examples in the series is Win Everett in ''Wins the Trick'', who gets lost ''three times'' in one book after wandering away from either her sisters or Rösli when she's babysitting Win, and continuous to hate the Chalet School long after her big sister Audrey gets over her grudge. This has dire consequences (see ForWantOfANail below for why). |
| 41 | * BunnyEarsLawyer: Mr Denny. He speaks in YeOldeButcheredeEnglishe, has long hair and eccentric dress sense and waxes lyrical about Greek myth (hence his nickname of 'Plato'), but he's a fantastic teacher and a talented musician who clearly loves his subject and is popular among the students. |
| 42 | * CantGetAwayWithNuthin: Any girl who tries to run away from school, misbehaves on an expedition or has a midnight feast ''will'' end up ill or injured. Joyce Linton even gets a severe attack of food poisoning in ''The Chalet School and the Lintons'' after eating Thekla von Stift's uncooked bacon. |
| 43 | * CassandraTruth: Nancy Chester and Elfie Woodward both warn Bride in ''Bride Leads'' that Diana Skelton was visibly furious and will be out for revenge after Bride made her apologise in front of the school. Bride laughs it off and tells them they're being silly...[[spoiler: and a few chapters later, Diana vandalises her study.]] |
| 44 | * CatholicSchoolGirlsRule: OK, so the school is multi-denominational rather than strictly Catholic, but it does have a large Catholic contingent in the Tyrol years (understandable as Tyrol is a very Catholic area) and the Maynard triplets are Catholics. The Catholic pupils have Prayers separate from the school at large. |
| 45 | * CharacterizationMarchesOn: Verity-Ann Carey is on the receiving end of this. She starts off as an old-fashioned and rather pig-headed little girl in ''Three Go to the Chalet School'', who refuses to join in with the other girls' 'hoydenish' games or sing in German. In the Swiss series, she becomes increasingly dependent on Mary-Lou to the point of helplessness, and is later described by Joey as a 'broken reed' or a 'clinging vine' who's holding Mary-Lou back (until she conveniently gets married off), characteristics that were not at all evident in the war / Island years. |
| 46 | * CharacterOverlap: Loads, with other books by Elinor M. Brent-Dyer. These include: |
| 47 | ** The Chester, Lucy and Ozanne families from the ''La Rochelle'' books, who first appear in ''The Chalet School in Exile''. Beth Chester and Julie and Betsy Lucy become Head Girls, while Barbara Chester stars in one book. |
| 48 | ** Gerry Challoner from ''Gerry Goes to School'' turns up in ''The Rivals of the Chalet School'' accompanied by Grizel Cochrane, who she has met while studying music in Italy. |
| 49 | ** Monica Marilliar and her cousins, Vicky and Alixe [=McNab=] - all of whom were originally featured in ''Monica Turns Up Trumps'' - are pupils at the Chalet School during the wartime era. |
| 50 | ** Nigel Willoughby, the uncle of the Willoughby children in ''Seven Scamps'', marries Rosamund Atherton, and they have two daughters, Blossom and Judy. Blossom is a [=CS=] pupil during the wartime and St Briavel's eras, with Judy appearing later in the Swiss era. |
| 51 | ** Gillian Culver, the heroine of the ''Chudleigh Hold'' series, is a [=CS=] pupil during the war years and later becomes Miss Wilson's secretary. |
| 52 | ** Jesanne Gellibrand, the heroine of ''The Hidden Staircase'', and her friend Lois Bennett both appear in ''Lavender Laughs in the Chalet School''. |
| 53 | * ChristianityIsCatholic: Several prominent characters, such as the Maynards (after Joey converts in order to marry Jack), Frieda, Marie and Miss Wilson, are Catholics, and Luigia di Ferrara, the Robin and [[spoiler: Margot]] all become nuns. [[spoiler:Jack's rosary is what enables Fiona to discover that he is alive in ''Highland Twins''.]] TruthInTelevision as the Tyrol was a very Catholic area at the time of writing. See RealLifeWritesThePlot too. |
| 54 | * ClingyJealousGirl: Simone Lecoutier gets ''very'' jealous when Joey makes other friends besides her. Joey calls her on it when Simone cuts her hair to get Joey's attention. |
| 55 | ** Mélanie Lucas begins to act this way in ''A Future Chalet School Girl'' after Ruey Richardson arrives and, from Mélanie's viewpoint, hogs the Maynards' time. Of course, she doesn't know about Ruey's DisappearedDad and the Maynards subsequently taking her and her brothers under their wing, until Ruey puts her straight during an argument. And she isn't the first one Ruey's had to deal with, either - one major plot point of ''Ruey Richardson, Chaletian'' is Francie Wilford's dislike towards Ruey because she sees her as getting in the way of a potential friendship with Margot (who isn't remotely interested in Francie anyway). |
| 56 | * {{Cloudcuckoolander}}: Con Maynard is the poster girl for this trope. Verity-Ann Carey becomes one in the later books and is often described as 'moony'. |
| 57 | * CommonalityConnection: A few occur throughout the series: |
| 58 | ** Deira O'Hagan and Maureen Donovan, a girl from St Scholastika's (who later dies of a long-term illness as a result of falling in an icy lake in ''Rivals''), are both upper-class Anglo-Irish girls from County Cork who find they share a love of horses and hunting. |
| 59 | ** Cornelia Flower and Evadne Lannis are both rich American girls with [[ThePrankster prankster]] tendencies, and they pair up during the Tyrol years. |
| 60 | ** Gay Lambert and Jacynth Hardy make friends after Gay gets talking to Jacynth on a train, but the two also bond over playing the cello, as Gay is a talented cellist and teaches Jacynth the basics (and Jacynth later goes professional once she has lessons from a qualified teacher). |
| 61 | ** Carola Johnstone and Kat Gordon bond over being sporty girls who came to the school in an unorthodox manner (Carola ran away to school, while Kat went to [[TitleDrop the wrong Chalet School]] by accident). |
| 62 | ** Despite being a few years apart, Emerence Hope and Margot Maynard immediately click over their love of mischief, much to Joey's disapproval. |
| 63 | ** José Helston and Jane Carew both have famous parents (royalty and actors respectively) and both want to make their own way in life rather than depending on their parents. They also both downplay their parents' fame as they don't want people only making friends with them because of it. |
| 64 | ** Samaris Davies and Samantha van der Byl bond over...er...having names with 'Sam' in them. And they then turn out to be distant relatives (see ContrivedCoincidence below). |
| 65 | * CompetenceZone: Once a girl becomes a Senior and/or turns 15, expect her to become a lot more mature and dignified, stop misbehaving, and refer to Middles and Juniors as though they're small children. There are a few aversions, such as Emerence Hope and Betty Wynne-Davies, but most Chalet School girls grow up a ''lot'' once they enter the Fifth Form, and even more so when they enter the Sixth. |
| 66 | * ComicallyMissingThePoint: In ''Changes'', the Dawbarn twins, Primrose Trevoase, Peggy Harper and Carol Soames have a clandestine picnic in the orchard. Their 'tuck' is stashed in a cupboard, and Priscilla Dawbarn manages to open it by squeezing her arm through a gap and unlocking it. Carol suggests they take some sweets from the sweet cupboard, which is unlocked, but Priscilla refuses, stating that Matron trusts them not to steal from an unlocked cupboard. The irony of this is pointed out to them later. |
| 67 | * ContrivedCoincidence: Loads throughout the series. One particular glaring example is ''Two Sams'', in which Samaris Davies and Samantha van der Byl discover at the end of the book that they're long-lost cousins. Other new girls, such as Adrienne Desmoines and Melanie Lucas, turn out to be related to Old Girls ([[spoiler:the Robin]] and [[spoiler: Jeanne le Cadoulec]] respectively). ''The Wrong Chalet School'' is full of them. As one fan said: |
| 68 | --> The coincidences required for the plot are a bit much - two Chalet Schools with similarly described uniforms leaving from the same train station at the same time, two heads named Miss Wilson, the death of a mistress at the other Chalet school (if I remember correctly) so they couldn't get the information from them, a flood at the real CS which destroyed all correspondence to Mary Katherine, both fathers being Dr Gordons who worked abroad in missionary work, both trunks being sent late, and the fact that Mary-Katherine's people didn't seem to notify the school that their daughter wasn't going to be at the pickup point, and Miss Gordon being unreachable for an extended period of time! |
| 69 | ** In Adrienne's case, it's particularly glaring because after she has to have her hair cut following a fire, Mary-Lou notices that she looks a lot like the Robin. Firstly, Mary-Lou is someone who barely would have known the Robin, as she would have been at university during Mary-Lou's time at school in the Armishire/St Briavel's years. Secondly, Robin resembles her ''mother'', but Adrienne is related to her on her ''father's'' side. |
| 70 | * CoolAndUnusualPunishment: in ''Trials'', Ailie Russell and her friends prank the older girls by shoving various people's things in the Lost Property cupboard, regardless of whether they were lost or not. Mary-Lou, Naomi and the other seniors get their revenge by making the perpetrators return ''every single item, in turn, to every single girl they stole it from''. And naturally, a lot of the girls are very pissed off, including Ailie and Janice Chester's older sisters, and do not mince their words. |
| 71 | * CoolBigSis: Dickie Christy is a literal example, helping raise her younger sister Cherry and becoming a well-liked figure during her time at the Chalet School. Likewise, there's Len Maynard, who acts as the leader of the other Maynard kids, being the most responsible triplet. And Joey acts as one to the Robin, who in turn becomes a CoolBigSis to Daisy Venables during the Armishire era. Bear in mind, this being the Chalet School, none of these girls are particularly jaded or cynical. |
| 72 | * CoolOldLady: Matron, more commonly known as 'Matey' (generally held to be Matron Lloyd), one of the longest-serving members of staff, and Rebecca Learoyd, the grandmother who Jacynth and Gay encounter in ''Gay from China at the Chalet School''. |
| 73 | * CorporalPunishment: The school itself doesn't use it - although various prefects and teachers occasionally yearn for a cane with which to punish those pesky Middles - but Jem dishes it out to Mario Balbini for shooting at him with a slingshot, Jack gives Hermann Eisen a beating for throwing stones at a kitten, and the Maynards do smack their naughtier children on occasion. Including Felicity when she's a ''baby''. |
| 74 | * CreepyDoll: Baby Voodoo, which a group of junior Middles make in ''New House'' in order to frighten Cornelia by dangling it in front of our bedroom window. Unfortunately, it doesn't work as Cornelia is a heavy sleeper, and Joey catches them at it and dumps Baby Voodoo on a piano - and when a superstitious maid finds it, all hell breaks loose. |
| 75 | * CurlyHairIsUgly: ''Massively averted''. Several of the characters who are described as beautiful or attractive, such as Marie von Eschenau, Madge and Sybil Russell and Len Maynard, have curly hair, and Mary-Lou is delighted when her hair grows back curly after having been shaved off. |
| 76 | * CuteClumsyGirl: Erica Standish in ''Summer Term'' is the poster girl for this trope, as well as something of a ButtMonkey, and seems to be a magnet for accidents. Within the space of one book, she's squirted cream out of her eclair while out with Joey (as pictured in the book art), broken her ankle on a walk, been attacked by bees after having perfume spilled on her, hurt her ankle ''again'' while sliding down stairs on a tray, and fallen into a hole in a cricket pitch. Not to mention that she and Joey also survive a ''train crash'' on the way to Switzerland. |
| 77 | * DarkerAndEdgier: The UsefulNotes/WorldWarII stories are darker in tone than the other books, the most notable example being ''The Chalet School In Exile''. [[spoiler: Starts off with the school being forced to leave the Tirol due to the Anschluss, and losing German and Austrian pupils, who are recalled to their own countries. Joey, Robin, Cornelia, Miss Wilson and a load of others wind up having to escape from the Nazis after Joey gets into an argument with some men who are attacking an old Jewish man, during which Miss Wilson's hair turns white. Mlle Lepattre, one of the original heads of the school and Cornelia's guardian, dies after a long illness, while Maria Marani's father is killed in a concentration camp, and Frieda's husband has a narrow escape from one. A Nazi spy infiltrates the school, although luckily, she has a HeelFaceTurn. Finally, Maria and Cornelia are seriously injured after trying to save a man from being burned to death.]] |
| 78 | ** ''The Chalet Girls Grow Up'' by Merryn Williams, a sequel to the original series, was much DarkerAndEdgier than any of the original ''Chalet School'' stories. Among many other things [[spoiler:Len suffers domestic violence, is raped and then abandoned by her husband, who cheats on her. Her young daughter dies of meningitis and another daughter goes through a TeenPregnancy. Con has several affairs with men who don't love her, suffers a miscarriage, and has setbacks in her writing career. Margot becomes a peace protester who is banned from South Africa and eventually finds she has left it too late to have a child. Jo develops Alzheimer's Disease, Jack is DrivenToSuicide, Madge has a fatal stroke, Mary-Lou is a man-eating temptress, and the Chalet School closes (and is eventually bulldozed) when it runs into financial trouble.]] What a cheery little tale! |
| 79 | * DarkestHour: In ''Rivals'', when Joey is seriously ill after falling into an icy lake, and Jem is worried that she might not survive the afternoon. Both staff and girls, St Scholastika's pupils included, fear for Joey's life. [[spoiler:She gets better.]] |
| 80 | * DeadGuyJunior: Many, many times. Joey's daughter Margot, for example, was named after her brother-in-law's dead sister, and Gisela Mensch names her daughter Natalie after her grandmother's dead baby daughter. |
| 81 | * DefrostingIceQueen: Some new girls go through this, such as Prunella Davidson in ''The Chalet School Does It Again'' and Edna Purdom in ''The Chalet School in the Oberland''. Though they get off to a bad start and their jerkiness alienates and annoys other girls, they soon make friends and/or encounter Joey, and gradually start to thaw out and fit in. |
| 82 | * DelicateAndSickly: Joey Bettany, often. The Robin is one - EBD likes to describe her as 'delicate' - and Stacie Benson becomes one after a nasty accident on an excursion, although she gets better. As the Chalet School has close links with the sanatorium, several of its sickly pupils are sent there. |
| 83 | * {{Determinator}}: Joey and Mary-Lou are both poster girls for this trope but special mention also goes to Verity-Ann Carey in ''Three Go'', when she refuses to sing German carols and is almost kicked out of the school carol concert, despite being an extremely talented singer. The girls and staff both try to reason with her, to no avail. Even ''Joey'' can't make her give way, and it's only when her father turns up at school alive and well (he's one of the two survivors of the expedition that Mary-Lou's dad was also on) that she finally changes her mind. |
| 84 | * DidntThinkThisThrough: Miss Browne in ''Rivals'' should have had more of a clue about starting a school in the Tiernsee area. Firstly, the area is mountainous, with heavy snow in winter and a risk of floods, but the St Scholastika's girls are not equipped properly for the area (for instance, they don't have nailed boots like the Chalet School girls). Secondly, they're up against a more established school with strong ties to the local community. Unlike Madge in ''The School at the Chalet'', Miss Browne makes no efforts to integrate into the local community and get to know people beforehand - a tactic which enables Madge to get pupils from local families - or learn about local customs. Thirdly, she's so xenophobic (with her comments about Mlle Lepattre being French and 'we know what ''their'' ideas of education are', and foreigners being dishonourable) that you wonder why she came to a foreign country in the first place. And badmouthing the Chalet School to Dick, Jem, Joey and Captain Humphries after learning Joey was a pupil there? EpicFail. Small wonder St Scholastika's later merges with the Chalet School in ''The New Chalet School''. |
| 85 | ** Carola Johnstone, generally. Her motto is 'I didn't think!' See LeeroyJenkins below. |
| 86 | ** In ''Jo to the Rescue'', Zephyr Burthill's father promises to get her Phoebe Wychcote's cello by any means necessary. He pays some thugs to firstly poison Rufus, and and then to break into the Witchens, the holiday home where Joey and friends are staying, and where the cello is being kept. Joey intervenes both times. If Mr Burthill had succeeded, he would have given Phoebe the money for it...except that would be tantamount to admitting he'd been involved in the theft, as Phoebe already had several letters from both him and Zephyr nagging her to sell Zephyr the cello, and Zephyr had approached Joey about it in person. Joey and Phoebe would definitely have a case and the paper trail to go with it. Overlaps with VillainBall in this case. |
| 87 | ** Jennifer Penrose is genuinely surprised that Blossom Willoughby - who is one of the school's more impulsive girls - smashes her way out of the art room instead of waiting to be rescued. Blossom points out that Jennifer surely can't have expected her to just sit there and wait, especially when she was supposed to be playing in an inter-school tennis match. |
| 88 | ** Arguably, Naomi Elton's aunt sending her to the Chalet School in ''Trials'' counts as this. Firstly, Naomi is an agnostic and the Chalet School has a Christian ethos, and girls are divided into Protestant and Catholic prayers. Mary-Lou is stumped when Naomi says she doesn't have a fixed religion and would just attend any service. Secondly, Naomi is disabled and walks with a stick, and the Chalet School is, at this point, in a mountainous area of Switzerland where there's lots of ice and snow; Naomi even slips and bangs her head when she brings the wrong stick. The school does make allowances for her limited mobility and other girls pull her along on a sledge on walks, but it's still not ideal. |
| 89 | * DirtyCoward: Margaret Twiss in ''A Leader in the Chalet School''. She willingly lets Jack take the blame for a toy snake being placed in a drawer, which causes Miss Bertram to have a fainting fit, partly out of spite because she's jealous of Jack's friendship with Wanda von Eschenau, and partly out of cowardice. [[spoiler:Margaret later confesses to Miss Annersley that she saw Miss Andrews put the snake in the drawer, but kept quiet because she wanted to get Jack into trouble.]] Because of Margaret keeping quiet, the entire form are punished and Jack is blamed for something she didn't do, with only Wanda and Barbara Hewlett believing her. |
| 90 | * DisabilityAsAnExcuseForJerkassery / DontYouDarePityMe: Looking at ''you'', Naomi Elton in ''Trials''. She does, however, have a very good reason to be bitter. See the YMMV section for details. |
| 91 | * DisneyVillainDeath: [[spoiler:Prince Cosimo in ''Princess'', who falls down a ravine and breaks his neck.]] |
| 92 | * DisproportionateRetribution: OK, so Betty Wynne-Davies had a bit of a grudge against Robin, Daisy and the [=McDonald=] twins, but was [[spoiler: Potentially selling the isle of Erisay out to the Nazis]] really necessary? |
| 93 | ** In ''Head Girl'', Grizel insists that Deira O'Hagan be Hobbies Club prefect, even though Deira really doesn't want the job. Deira responds by burning Grizel's music theory book. Made even worse by the fact that it had the final letter from Grizel's beloved grandmother in it. |
| 94 | ** In ''Three Go to the Chalet School'', when Verity-Ann Carey refuses to sing in German, a couple of girls splutter involuntarily and Miss Burnett goes overboard in her punishment. Not only are they told off, but they're also made to apologise to Mr. Denny, have conduct marks deducted ''and'' spend their evening hemming dusters. |
| 95 | ** Jack Lambert goes all {{Yandere}} on Jane Carew and beats her up for washing Miss Ferrars and Miss Wilmot's car in ''Jane'', because it is usually 'her' job, ''even though Jane was asked to do it''. As Jane points out to Maeve when the prefects haul her and Jack up for fighting, she had no way of knowing that it was Jack's special job, and she couldn't have exactly said no to a teacher's request. |
| 96 | ** More generally, one way to guarantee getting punished in the Chalet School, usually by fines and a heavy ticking off, is...''talking slang''. Yeah. For some of the mistresses, it's a huge BerserkButton. |
| 97 | * DoNotDoThisCoolThing: Invoked in universe in ''Jo Returns'' when Joey has to get rid of the pranks in the draft for her first book, after Polly Heriot rings the school bell and wakes up the entire valley after reading one school story too many. Joey doesn't want her readers getting bad ideas. |
| 98 | * DontYouDarePityMe: Naomi Elton has a huge case of this in ''Trials'', and reacts badly to any behaviour she sees as patronising her because of her disability. |
| 99 | * DudeNotFunny: Juliet's reaction in ''Camp'' when she forgets to pack cocoa powder, and Joey teases her about being too preoccupied with her fiancé to remember. |
| 100 | * DumbBlonde: The Ozanne twins, Diana Skelton (who's also an AlphaBitch) and Yseult Pertwee definitely qualify. Played with with Marie von Eschenau - she's the least academic of the Quartette and is more known for her looks than her academics, but she certainly isn't thick. And Daisy Venables, Stacie Benson and Frieda Mensch are all ''major'' aversions. |
| 101 | * ElegantClassicalMusician: piano prodigy Nina Rutherford and cellist Jacynth Hardy. Played with with Margia Stevens, who is an extremely talented pianist for her age, but is just as happy to join in with mischief as the rest of her peers. |
| 102 | * EvenEvilHasStandards: A rather odd example in ''Redheads'', where a criminal gang plan to kidnap policeman's stepdaughter Flavia Ansell/Letton (one of the titular redheads) and drug her by giving her milk spiked with sedatives. When they discover they've got the wrong girl, Val Pertwee, they put her on a train...and make sure she has the correct ticket. So kidnapping and drugging teenage girls is [=OK=], but travelling with the wrong ticket isn't? |
| 103 | ** For a more minor example, Thekla von Stift is a total {{Jerkass}}, but she refuses to join in the bullying of Miss Norman, albeit because she thinks it's beneath her. She skips class instead. |
| 104 | * [[EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep Everyone Calls Her Matron]]: Very rarely is Matey addressed by her first name (it's [[spoiler:Gwynneth]], and that isn't revealed until later in the series). |
| 105 | * EveryoneHasStandards: Betty Wynne-Davies' BetaBitch Florence 'Floppy Bill' Williams is shallow and a bit of an idiot, but drops Betty like a hot potato after her FaceHeelTurn in ''Highland Twins''. |
| 106 | * EverythingTryingToKillYou: The Austrian and Swiss books verge on this, what with girls continually getting caught in floods, getting trapped on mountains, having skiing or tobogganing accidents, nearly drowning in icy rivers, being kidnapped by madmen, or caught in fires. |
| 107 | * EyeScream: Poor Rikki Fry gets ammonia sprayed in her eyes by a horrible American child in ''The Chalet School and Richenda''. She doesn't go blind, but does have to wear glasses for several years. |
| 108 | * FaceOfAnAngelMindOfADemon: Joyce Linton, Betty Wynne-Davies and Diana Skelton, all of whom are described as being very beautiful, but all of whom also have really nasty personalities and are considered to be bad influences within the school. Joyce does get better eventually, but Betty [[TookALevelInJerkass takes several levels in Jerkass]] until she's expelled in ''Highland Twins'', and Diana [[spoiler:trashes Bride's study and then leaves the school after getting caught pawning her mother's jewellery to pay gambling debts.]] |
| 109 | * FailedFutureForecast: In ''The Chalet School in Exile'', one of the wartime books, the school relocates to Guernsey. As [[http://lampandbook.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/chalet-school-in-exile-2.html this article]] points out, Brent-Dyer had no way of knowing that, just after the book was published, the Nazis would invade Guernsey. |
| 110 | * {{Fainting}}: Happens to a lot of characters, particularly Joey and the more delicate girls. It's usually the emotional or exhaustion kind (for instance, when Joey is so overwhelmed by the Passion Play in ''Jo of the Chalet School'' that she faints). |
| 111 | * FatIdiot: Hilda Jukes, a nice but dim fat girl who is also somewhat of a ButtMonkey, and [[TheHyena a notorious giggler]] who gets kicked out of class a couple of times because of it. She gets into a lot of trouble in ''Genius'' when she pushes down too hard on Nina's back during a game of leapfrog and accidentally injures her wrist. |
| 112 | * FearOfThunder: Several girls in the Tyrol and Swiss books, particularly the Italian and French girls, panic at the sight of thunderstorms - and there are a lot of them. Very early on in the series, the school is flooded and Simone is so terrified that Madge has to shake her. |
| 113 | * FeudEpisode: Not just between girls, but between ''entire schools''. First, there's ''Rivals of the Chalet School'', in which a rivalry flares up between the Chalet School pupils and the girls from the nearby St Scholastika's (which eventually merges with the Chalet School a few books later), which only takes British girls. Much later on, there's ''The Feud in the Chalet School'' (see AHouseDivided above). |
| 114 | * FieryRedhead: Margot and Sybil both have red hair - though Margot's is described more as 'red-gold' - and the temper to go with it. |
| 115 | * FoodPorn: Don't read the Tyrol and Swiss books when you're hungry. [=EBD=] goes into great detail regarding the delicious food in the CS world. There's Anna's heavenly bread twists, featherbeds of whipped cream, potato balls that are crunchy on the outside and meltingly soft on the inside, goats' milk with a slight taste of onions, milky coffee for breakfast…the list goes on. Less so in the wartime books, because of the rationing that was going on at the time. |
| 116 | * ForWantOfANail: The beginning of ''Feud'': |
| 117 | --> If Miss Holroyd had never decided to move her school; if some careless idiot had not tossed a smouldering cigarette-end onto the grass that was dry as tinder; if Miriam Ashley had been a person of humbler mind and less obstinacy; if above all, the Middles hadn't been like most Middles, young demons when roused; if, in fact, most things had been different, this story would not have been written. |
| 118 | ** If Audrey Everett hadn't declared war on the Chalet School and continued to hold a grudge against it in ''The Chalet School Wins the Trick'' after Miss Dene caught her, her sisters and their friends trying to light a campfire on the cricket pitch and ordered them off it, and if she'd set a better example to her impressionable little sister Win, Win wouldn't have run away from Freudesheim out of spite while Rösli was looking after her. Win throws stink bombs at a class of girls but when she hears them coming for her, and Rösli calling, she hides in a bush, falls down a sinkhole and gets knocked out. Both Miss Annersley and Jack Maynard make it very clear that Audrey is partly to blame for this. |
| 119 | * FourGirlEnsemble: The Quartette in the early books. Joey is the tomboy and the leader, Simone is the temperamental ClingyJealousGirl, Frieda is the TeamMom and the best-behaved, and Marie is the pretty one. |
| 120 | * ForegoneConclusion: Anyone who's started the series after ''Rivals'' will know that Joey survives falling into the lake. Especially as her name appears in a few book titles later in the series (''The Chalet School and Jo'', ''Jo Returns to the Chalet School'', ''Jo to the Rescue'' and ''Joey Goes to the Oberland''). |
| 121 | * {{Foreshadowing}}: Of sorts in ''Carola Storms''. Before the Sale, Miss Annersley worries about the Inuit-themed lucky dip using cotton wool snowballs to hide the trinkets, as cotton wool is very flammable. Miss Wilson thinks she's worrying too much but asks Miss Dene to put up 'no smoking' signs. She and Miss Annersley then go off for a quick cig break. While something does end up being set on fire, it's not the cotton wool - [[spoiler:it's Len Maynard's outfit after Grizel throws the match she lit her cigarette with away and it sets both Len and the basket she's holding alight.]] |
| 122 | ** Miss Annersley reading the story of Lazarus to Joey in ''Highland Twins'' after she receives a telegram notifying her of Jack's death. [[spoiler:In a sense, Jack did come back from the dead.]] |
| 123 | * FriendToAllChildren: Frieda Mensch and Carla von Flügen in the Tyrol years, and Anne Webster in the St Briavels years, who is described as a 'motherly young person'. All three have a reputation for being great with the younger children. |
| 124 | * FriendToAllLivingThings: Kester Bellever, the bird sanctuary owner and naturalist in the St Briavel's books, is this where birds are concerned. He's also something of a celebrity in naturalist circles. |
| 125 | * FunetikAksent: Flora, Fiona and Shiena all speak in one in ''Highland Twins'', to emphasise their FunnyForeigner status. This was edited out of the paperback version. Working-class characters with strong accents also tend to speak this way. |
| 126 | * FunnyForeigner: Achille Dupleix, the Inspector Closeau-esque detective in ''Triplets'' who threatens to arrest Len for shoplifting, and 'Frau Berlin', the rude fat Prussian woman who Joey, Madge and Grizel keep bumping into in the early Tyrol years. |
| 127 | * GossipyHens: Sylvia 'leaky cistern' Vane in ''Bride Leads'', and some of the younger girls in ''Althea'', who spread a rumour about Len Maynard and the other prefects having a paint fight. Con is ''not'' happy when she hears it from her little sister Felicity. |
| 128 | * GenderBlenderName: [=EBD=] seemed to be fond of masculine-sounding shortened forms of names. Notable examples throughout the series include Dickie (Christy, short for Delicia), Phil (Craven, short for Phyllida) and Tom (Gay, though it's [[OnlyKnownByTheirNickname not short for Thomasina]]) in the St Briavels period; Ted (Grantley, short for Theodora), Rikki (Fry, short for Richenda) and Jack (Lambert, short for Jacynth) in the Swiss period; and let's not forget Joey's daughters, Len and Phil (short for Helena and Philippa). All of them are, unsurprisingly, tomboys, except Rikki, Len and the two Phils. |
| 129 | ** A couple of mistresses also have masculine nicknames: 'Bill' for Miss Wilson, and 'Charlie' for Miss Stewart (after Bonny Prince Charlie). |
| 130 | * GratuitousFrench / GratuitousGerman: as expected from a series set in a school where, at the beginning, several pupils are native speakers of French and/or German, and where there is a policy of alternating languages throughout the weekend (except on Sunday, when the pupils can speak whatever language they want). French characters will often drop French words or phrases such as 'la pauvre petite' into their sentences. Eagle-eyed French and German-speaking fans have pointed out that not all of the French and German in the books is correct. |
| 131 | * HappilyAdopted: Several characters throughout the series are adopted by either the Maynard and Russell families - such as the Richardsons in ''Joey & Co in Tyrol'', Juliet Carrick in ''The School at the Chalet'', and Erica Standish and Marie-Claire de Mabillon in ''Summer Term at the Chalet School'' - or other families. |
| 132 | * HateSink: Most of the antagonistic girls in the books either have a FreudianExcuse, become nicer, or both. Several of them, such as Francie Wilford or Eustacia Benson, get sympathetic or humanising moments (such as Francie losing both her parents and Eustacia's love of music). Thekla von Stift, however, seems to exist purely to be hated and has practically no sympathetic moments in either of the books in which she appears. |
| 133 | ** Matron Webb is the nastiest member of staff and does not have any redeeming features or sympathetic/humanising moments. Matron Besley has the excuse of being young and inexperienced (and see JerkassHasAPoint below), and Miss Bubb becomes a TragicVillain in the Swiss years, but Matron Webb is absolutely vile, scolding the girls over the slightest trivial thing, picking on Joey because she thinks Madge gives her special treatment (which isn't true), and locking the Robin in her room. Thankfully, she only lasts a term until Madge has enough and sends her packing. |
| 134 | * HaveAGayOldTime: Two characters have 'Gay' as a first name (Gay Lambert and Gay Spencer - it's short for Gabrielle) and [=EBD=] regularly uses 'gay' in its original sense, but there's also rather a lot of occasions where a character declares she's going to 'work like a nigger'. Not to mention Joey's [[SarcasmMode oh-so-charming]] nickname of 'Nigger Baby' for Carlotta von Ahlen, who has olive skin and black hair (as opposed to being blonde and pale like her mum Frieda), and Josette Russell saying that Cecil, her new baby cousin, is 'going to be a little nigger' when she hears that Cecil has black hair. |
| 135 | ** When Matey tells Jane Carew off for her untidiness, Jane calls herself a 'regular slut'. |
| 136 | ** Characters often talk about someone getting a good 'screw'. In this context, 'screw' means ''salary''. |
| 137 | * HeelFaceTurn: [[spoiler: [[TheMole Gertrude Beck]], aka Gertrud Becker.]] Most characters who start off 'bad' will also go through one - see TookALevelInKindness below. |
| 138 | * HeroicBSOD: Joey has a major one in ''The Highland Twins at the Chalet School'' when [[spoiler: she gets a telegram saying Jack has drowned.]] It's so out of character that it unnerves Madge, who can't understand why Joey isn't crying. Joey eventually breaks down and has to be given sleeping drugs. [[spoiler: Luckily, as she finds out via Fiona [=McDonald=], Jack is alive after all.]] |
| 139 | ** Maria Marani goes through a major one in ''Exile'' through the stress of worrying about her father's disappearance, combined with being badly burned after rescuing a pilot from a burning plane. [[spoiler:Herr Marani later turns out to have been killed in a concentration camp.]] |
| 140 | * HiddenDepths: A big part of Prunella Davidson's plotline in ''Does it Again''. She talks and acts in a very old-fashioned manner and comes across as an arrogant {{Jerkass}}, but she reveals her true colours when Margot falls into Lake Lucerne and Prunella immediately dives in to rescue her. |
| 141 | * [[HoistByHisOwnPetard Hoist By Her Own Petard]]: Yseult Pertwee in ''New Mistress'', when she plans to cause Mary-Lou to have an accident so that she can take Mary-Lou's part in the school Christmas play. She tries to crash into Mary-Lou during a skiing session, but Mary-Lou dodges and [[LaserGuidedKarma Yseult has a bad fall, breaking her collarbone and having to lose her part in the play.]] The chapter where this happens even references this trope. |
| 142 | * HotBlooded: Although a good few of the girls qualify, such as Simone Lecoutier, Jack Lambert and Betty Wynne-Davies, Joey is the most prominent example and can be pretty temperamental, though she (for the most part) calms down as she gets older. Margot takes after her in that respect, although her temper is even ''worse'', and she refers to it as 'my demon'. Joey attributes this to her and Jack having spoiled Margot as a child. Margot does try to control it, but it gets her into trouble on several occasions. |
| 143 | * {{Hunk}}: Roger Richardson, Ruey's older brother, described as 'six feet of manhood'. |
| 144 | * IAteWhat: The school's horrified reaction in ''Carola Storms'', when it's revealed that Carola and her fellow classmates accidentally fried the doughnuts which have been served for the school tea in ''cod liver oil''. |
| 145 | * IdiotBall: |
| 146 | ** Carried by the prefects in ''Bride Leads''. When faced with the problem of Diana Skelton, instead of going to Miss Annersley - as Gisela and her group did in the Tyrol when they were having trouble with Juliet and Grizel - they decide to write to Joey, who is in Canada, and ask her for advice despite the fact that Miss Annersley knows Diana and Joey doesn't. Their rationale is that going to the Head would make them look weak, but they only end up pissing Diana off to the point where she [[spoiler:wrecks Bride's study in revenge.]] |
| 147 | ** Someone should have told Miss Ashley in ''A Feud in the Chalet School'' that when a much-loved art teacher dies, and you're with two members of staff who are clearly very upset about his death, the appropriate response is ''not'' something along the lines of "Oh, he's finally dead, that means St Hilda's can have his house." |
| 148 | * InelegantBlubbering: Played for laughs with Margaret Twiss, in ''A Leader in the Chalet School'': |
| 149 | --> “B-but it was me!-hurp-hurp!-it was!" Margaret wept loudly, her words so mixed up with her sobs that none of the girls could make head or tail of what she was saying and even the Head, with all her experience, could gather only a little here and there. “I-I s-saw Miss A-andrews-hurp!-p-put the snake-hurp-hurp!-snake into the d-drawer and I never-hurp!-said anything-hurp-hurp!-even when the rest b-blamed Jack-hurp!-for it!-hurp-hurp-hurp! Wah-hah-hah!” |
| 150 | * ImportantHaircut: Or rather, important hair''do''. You know a girl has officially reached adulthood when she starts putting her hair up. Madge bemoans in ''Exploits'' how her former students are getting older when she sees Vanna di Ricci and Frieda Mensch wearing their hair up. |
| 151 | ** Mary-Lou has to have her hair chopped off after the accident in ''Mary-Lou'', and it grows back curly. Note that this is around the same time when she becomes a senior, a responsible figure, and a mentor to the triplets. |
| 152 | * InstantIllness: Any exposure to chills, rain, drafts, mud or cold water is fairly certain to leave the victim in the grip of a life-threatening disease if they're not immediately put into a hot bath and then into bed with two hot water bottles. In one book, Jo spends three days unconscious and is bedridden for over a week after standing for literally a few minutes by an open door on a snowy day. |
| 153 | [[/folder]] |
| 154 | |
| 155 | [[folder: Tropes J-R]] |
| 156 | * {{Jerkass}}: Even in the Chalet School, there are bullies, the worst being [[UpperClassTwit Thekla von Stift]], [[KickTheDog Betty Wynne-Davies]] and [[GadgeteerGenius Jack Lambert]]. The first two are the only girls to be expelled, although Jack does get better later on in the series. |
| 157 | * JerkassHasAPoint: Matron Besley's nastiness and pettiness towards Joey is uncalled for, but she is right to point out that she wasn't to know Joey was ill with toothache, as she doesn't know Joey as well as Matey and Joey is naturally pale anyway. She also has a point that Matey is biased towards Joey and that Joey does get away with a lot (although it has nothing to do with Madge being her sister, as Madge goes out of her way to ensure Joey is treated equally). |
| 158 | ** Eilunedd Vaughan comes across as this in hindsight when you consider that all three of the Bettany girls were made Head Girl, as well as their cousins Josette and Len. She wasn't wrong to accuse the [=MBR=] girls of being favoured. |
| 159 | * KarmaHoudini: There are a few in the series who do get away with bad behaviour, such as Mary Woodley in ''Barbara'', but the biggest example has to be Margot. Despite almost killing Betty Landon in ''Triplets'' with a bookend and bullying girls in her charge in ''Challenge'', the most she gets is a telling-off from Miss Annersley. |
| 160 | ** Celia Everett and Val Gardiner get away with ruining dinner for the school by sprinkling pepper over the food and lemonade (though the girls manage to salvage some of the salad vegetables, cobble together their own lemonade and get some fruit for pudding from Freudesheim). Despite this being arguably one of the nastiest pranks in the series, they never get punished for it. Josette does suspect they were behind it, but doesn't pursue the matter as she doesn't have any proof they did it. |
| 161 | * KickTheDog: Don't ''ever'' be mean to the Robin. [[spoiler: A sign that Betty Wynne-Davies was probably one of the nastiest characters in the Chalet School series is the fact that she was prepared to hurt the twins to get at Robin and Daisy.]] And earlier in the series, St Scholastika's Head Girl Elaine Gilling incurs the wrath of Joey in ''Rivals'' when Robin tries to pacify her during an argument about church collections, and Elaine rudely brushes her off. |
| 162 | ** Joyce Linton and her classmates' cruel treatment of Miss Norman in ''The Chalet School and the Lintons'', a rare example of a Chalet School teacher being bullied by pupils. It only stops when Miss Norman finally has enough and fetches Mlle Lepattre, who punishes the girls severely (including Thekla von Stift, who was skiving class). |
| 163 | * KilledOffForReal: [[spoiler:Mademoiselle Lepattre]] and [[spoiler:Herr Laubach]] both die after a long period of illness, while [[spoiler:Luigia di Ferrara]] and [[spoiler:Florian Marani, Maria and Gisela's dad,]] both die in concentration camps, and according to WordOfGod, [[spoiler:Thekla von Stift]] 'vanished' during the war. It's also implied in one of the Swiss books that [[spoiler:Miss Bubb]] is terminally ill. |
| 164 | * KnittingPregnancyAnnouncement: Joey does this in ''Mary-Lou'', in order to explain to Mary-Lou why she can't deal with Jessica Wayne herself. She shows Mary-Lou some baby clothes she's been knitting. (A few books later, she gives birth to her ninth child, Cecil.) |
| 165 | * KnowWhenToFoldEm: Gisela and her fellow prefects try their best to deal with Grizel and Juliet in ''The School at the Chalet'', but decide to go to Madge for advice when they realise both girls are beyond them. And although girls might dare to cheek prefects or even mistresses, ''no-one'' is stupid enough to incur the wrath of Matey. |
| 166 | * LargeHam: Jane Carew, darling. She comes from an old British acting family and talks in a very 'luvvie'-ish manner, which the other girls find a bit weird. [=EBD=] was also this in real life, according to the foreword in the Girls Gone By edition of ''Jane''. |
| 167 | * LeeroyJenkins: Joey has her moments, but special mention must go to Carola Johnstone for running away ''to'' school in her eponymous book. Not only that, but she jumps into a pond to rescue a younger girl ''and'' gets her hands burned when she goes to Len's rescue after Grizel accidentally sets Len on fire. |
| 168 | * LemonyNarrator: [=EBD=] has her lemony moments, often commenting disapprovingly on the actions of some characters (especially those naughty Middles) or LampshadeHanging about the school story genre and tropes used in Victorian novels, sometimes via the characters (such as Joey mocking Carla's suggestion of training Biddy as a helper to the Robin in ''The Chalet School and Jo''). |
| 169 | * LethalChef: Played for laughs in some of the cookery classes. As well as the fishy doughnuts mentioned above, there's a bit in ''The Chalet School and the Lintons'' where Cornelia Flower uses ''garlic'' cloves as flavouring for apple pies rather than normal cloves, and Lavender and her friends make some borderline inedible waffles and fruit cake in ''Lavender Laughs''. Luckily, Anna is smart enough to guess how the attempts at baking will turn out, and bakes some buns. |
| 170 | * LongRunners: Sixty books over forty-odd years. |
| 171 | * MadArtist: If there's a character in the books who's an artist, expect them to be a bit eccentric and often temperamental with it. Examples include Kat Gordon's ditzy aunt Lucia, whose absent-mindedness causes Kat to end up going to ''The Wrong Chalet School'', Adrian/Miles Barras (father of Tony and Clem), and Herr Laubach, the [[SadistTeacher terrifying art teacher]] who scares the pants off the girls, even the ones who are good at art. |
| 172 | * MakeUpIsEvil: At least, if you're a junior, middle or fifth former. Joan Baker (in ''Problem'') and Betty Wynne-Davies and her group (in ''The Chalet School Goes To It'') are looked down on and castigated by teachers and other girls for being 'cheap' and wearing too much make-up, tarty clothes and, in Betty's case, getting a perm. However, curiously, girls at the finishing branch at St Mildred's are ''expected'' to wear make-up (albeit not too much) - in ''The Chalet School in the Oberland'', one girl, Edna, is told to wear more make-up, and there's a common belief throughout the books that if one does not look one's best, one is insulting other people by forcing them to look at one's ugly face. |
| 173 | * MamaBear: While escaping the Nazis through Innsbruck, the teachers defend their students admirably. |
| 174 | ** Joey becomes one later in the books, and is also very protective of the Robin. |
| 175 | * [[ManipulativeBastard Manipulative Bitch]]: Vera Smithers in ''Rivals'' tries to bring the Chalet School into disrepute by sending anonymous letters to Princess Elisaveta of Belsornia and her dad, the King, claiming that the Chalet girls were being disrespectful by not calling her 'Princess Elisaveta'. Unfortunately, the plan backfires, not only because the Chalet girls all swear they're innocent, and incriminating papers are found in Vera's desk, but because Elisaveta - as she points out in a letter to Jo - doesn't actually care whether people at the school call her 'Princess' or not. |
| 176 | ** Thekla von Stift wakes Joyce up after curfew in ''Lintons'', gets her out of her dormitory and warns her to stay away from Joey. Cornelia Flower hears them and goes to investigate, and she in turns wakes Miss Wilson up. Thekla lies at first, claiming she heard a noise and went to investigate, but Cornelia calls bullshit and Joyce confirms that Thekla was lying. When Mlle Lepattre asks her why she did it, Thekla freely admits that she wanted to get Joyce into trouble to get at Joey - who she hates - knowing Joey and Joyce were becoming friendly, and that she knew Joyce getting expelled would upset Joey badly. Mlle Lepattre is so disgusted that she gives Thekla TheReasonYouSuckSpeech, and Thekla has the dubious honour of being the first girl to be expelled from the Chalet School. |
| 177 | ** Margot Maynard, of all people, in ''Theodora'', when she finds out that Ted Grantley has been expelled from three school, and blackmails her by threatening to tell everyone about Ted's past. |
| 178 | ** Betty Wynne-Davies in ''Highland Twins''. See DisproportionateRetribution above. |
| 179 | * MassOhCrap: Jocelyn Marvell and her friends in ''Challenge'', when they sneak out of prep while Len has been called away by Matron, take a load of items from Upper [=IV=]a's lockers and hide them in another form room...and Miss Wilmot walks in. |
| 180 | * MeaningfulName: 'Frieden' means 'peace' in German, and it's an accurate name for Frieda, a peacemaker. Massively averted by Prudence Dawbarn, who - as [=EBD=] points out many times - is anything ''but'' prudent. While her twin sister Priscilla is also a pest, she grows out of it when the Dawbarns move to Switzerland; Prudence does not, until Miss Wilson punishes her in ''Coming of Age'' by making her spend the rest of the week doing lessons and going to bed at the same time as the Juniors. |
| 181 | * MeaningfulRename: Two examples stand out in the series, courtesy of Joey. Firstly, Eustacia Benson becomes known as 'Stacie' in ''Eustacia'' after [[BreakTheHaughty getting injured on a mountain]] and subsequently [[TookALevelInKindness taking a level in kindness]]. Secondly, in ''Theodora'', Jo gives troubled teen Theodora Grantley the nickname of 'Ted' to represent her wiping the slate clean by starting a new life at the Chalet School and putting her DarkAndTroubledPast behind her. |
| 182 | * MessyHair: Ted Grantley has very thick black hair that keeps getting in her face, as well as BigOlEyebrows. [[{{Hypocrite}} Joey]] - who herself had very messy hair as a child - charmingly calls her a 'little freak' because of it, while Miss Annersley shows her a way of keeping her hair out of her face. She later gets it cut. |
| 183 | * MissingChild: Both Jem and Madge and Joey have to deal with their young children going missing at certain points. In the former case, Sybil is kidnapped by the Mystic M in ''The New Chalet School'', while in ''The Chalet School Triplets'', Joey's daughter Cecil is kidnapped by a mentally ill woman. Luckily, no harm comes to either child. And Joey is a constant source of this for Madge in the Tyrol years. |
| 184 | * MoodWhiplash: In ''Eustacia Goes to the Chalet School'', Frieda Mensch's sister Bernhilda gets married, and Frieda, Joey, Simone and many others are invited and have a wonderful time. [[spoiler: During the wedding party, Frieda discovers via Joey and a servant girl that her grandmother is dying.]] |
| 185 | ** In ''The Chalet School and the Lintons'', the girls have a Fairy Tale Sale, with them and the St Scholastika's girls dressing up as fairy tale characters and Frieda's uncle, a bishop, thoroughly enjoying himself. [[spoiler:At the end of the Sale, Jem Russell appears to collect Gillian and Joyce Linton, as their mother has had a breakdown of sorts and he's worried she might not survive.]] |
| 186 | ** In ''Jo Returns'', the girls and staff have fun making statues in the snow, which an odd job man mistakes for devils. [[spoiler:In the next chapter, Mlle Lepattre, who has already had an episode of illness earlier in the book, is rushed to hospital and undergoes surgery, and all the school - particularly Cornelia, as Mlle Lepattre is like a mother to her - are on edge waiting for news. She survives the operation, but never really recovers, has to quit her job and dies two books later.]] |
| 187 | ** In ''Trials'', two and a half chapters are devoted to the St Mildred's pantomime, 'Puss in Boots', featuring many Old Girls and plenty of laughs. When the panto is over, the characters find out that [[spoiler:Naomi has been in a car accident, is severely injured, and is in hospital undergoing major surgery.]] |
| 188 | * MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Several times. For example, Deira in ''Head Girl'' chucks a stone at Grizel's head (mostly accidentally - mostly) and suffers violent remorse. |
| 189 | * NationalStereotypes: Loads. Italian girls are emotional and hysterical and often very musical. Prussians are complete arseholes. French girls are drippy and oversensitive, but great at arranging their clothes and doing fiddly work. Austrian girls have mad embroidering skills and are very traditional (though the latter is TruthInTelevision, due to Tyrol being heavily Catholic). American girls are {{Eagleland}} types, use slang and are often loaded (though Louise Redfield is a notable aversion). Scottish girls have 'peppery' tempers. Irish girls are 'wild' and speak in a stage Irish manner. |
| 190 | * NoodleIncident: In ''The Chalet School Goes To It'', it's mentioned Jack Maynard's nephew Rolf was killed as a result of disobeying his parents, but it's never revealed exactly what he did. And we never find out just why Marilyn Evans was such a bad Head Girl in the Armishire years, other than prioritising schoolwork over prefect duties. |
| 191 | * NotSoDifferentRemark: A huge part of ''Richenda'' involves Joey trying to get Rikki Fry and her dad to see each other's points of view and realise that they have a lot more in common than they thought. |
| 192 | * NouveauRiche: Joan Baker in ''Problem'', whose family are able to afford to send her to the school after her father wins the pools, and Diana Skelton in ''Bride Leads'', the daughter of a self-made businessman. Both are seen as vulgar and classless by the other girls, though Joan does get better eventually. |
| 193 | %%* NunTooHoly: [[spoiler: Margot]] in ''The Chalet Girls Grow Up'', to the point where the order basically kick her out because her outspokenness and political activism make her a risk. |
| 194 | * OfficialCouple: Joey and Jack Maynard are the main one, although their actual wedding happens offscreen, and feature in all the holiday books. Madge and Jem Russell are the first in the series, however. |
| 195 | * OffToBoardingSchool: This being a boarding school series, you're bound to get plenty of examples and indeed, various girls are packed off to boarding school either because it's good for their health (Lavender Leigh and Barbara Chester), they need to learn to socialise with other girls their age and learn other skills (Nina Rutherford and Verity-Ann Carey) or their parents and/or guardians are sick of their bad behaviour and hope boarding school will reform them (Francie Wilford, Emerence Hope, Richenda Fry, Jocelyn Marvell and many more). |
| 196 | * {{Oireland}}: Irish characters tend to speak in a very stereotypical way, using phrases like 'tis yourself, acushla!' and 'to be sure'. Biddy O'Ryan is particularly bad for this - barely a mention of her goes by without EBD bringing up how Irish she is, and she speaks in a 'thick Kerry brogue' that's nigh-on incomprehensible at times. And yes, she is GenreSavvy about fairy tales and gets punished by Miss Wilson after she tells a story about a banshee that gives another girl nightmares. |
| 197 | * OnceDoneNeverForgotten: Joey will never let Con forget her remark about Daniel biting the lions in one of her CloudCuckoolander moments in ''The Chalet School Does It Again''. |
| 198 | * OneGenderSchool: For most of the series the Chalet School is an all-girls' school, though it does take boys in the kindergarten in Guernsey and Switzerland (such as Felix Maynard). |
| 199 | * OneSteveLimit: Averted. There are ten billion Margarets (with varying nicknames) floating round, not to mention three different Mateys (not including other matrons who don't last very long). |
| 200 | * OnlyKnownByTheirNickname: The Robin's real name is Cecilia Marya Humphries, but she's generally referred to by her childhood nickname. There's also Polly Heriot (real name Hildegard), Jack Lambert (real name Jacynth) and Tom Gay (real name Lucinda Muriel, and given that Tom is a huge tomboy, it's unsurprising she hates her name). |
| 201 | * ParentalAbandonment: Juliet Carrick is on the receiving end of this. Her useless parents basically dump her on the Chalet School and expect Madge to take her in while they go travelling around Europe. They both die later in a car crash, but Captain Carrick's bad reputation lives on and this causes some major problems for Juliet in ''Jo of the Chalet School'', when her boyfriend's snobby sister finds out and drops her like a hot potato. |
| 202 | * ThePatriarch: Jack and Jem. Particularly Jem and his insistence on training the kids to instant obedience. |
| 203 | * PeopleFallOffChairs: In ''The Chalet School and Jo'', Joey (in her much-hated position of Head Girl) has to take prep, in which the troublesome Middles get into one spot of bother after another, including "chair tilting", with the predictable result of falling over. |
| 204 | * PetTheDog: ''[[SadistTeacher Herr Laubach]]'' of all people has a moment of this in ''Jo Returns'' when Polly Heriot borrows a particularly costly art book of his to copy a floral design on a mirror she's painting for Hobbies Club, and accidentally crushes the pages. He is furious with Polly and orders her to show him her work as proof of why she borrowed the book. When he sees her mirror, he is impressed with the quality of the painting and asks her why she can't do that sort of thing in art class. The bad-tempered art master then comes to see the Hobbies Club in action, causing several girls to almost ruin their work in shock, and asks Joey to make some jigsaws for his wife, who is ill. Joey does not want to take payment, but he insists, and she offers to throw in a free one as a little extra. |
| 205 | * PhraseCatcher: Joey and Mary-Lou both get this a lot. In the former's case, it's "Joey always does things wholesale!" (especially referring to her army of children) and "that is so like Joey". For the latter, there's "it isn't cheek, it's just Mary-Lou." |
| 206 | ** The Dawbarn twins are, according to many characters, 'born to be hanged'. |
| 207 | * ThePollyanna: Joey and Robin. Despite the countless horrible things that happen to them - war, being forced to flee from Nazis, illness, parental death - they both manage to remain cheerful and optimistic throughout. |
| 208 | * PluckyGirl: Again, there are loads of them, Joey being a notable example. |
| 209 | * ThePrankster: Jack Lambert is probably the biggest example, and Cornelia Flower, Elsie Carr, the Dawbarn twins, Emerence Hope, Heather Clayton, Betty Wynne-Davies and Elizabeth Arnett, and Jocelyn Marvell also all have their moments. In the Tyrol years, Joey is one and sometimes encourages the others to play pranks too, to Madge's irritation. |
| 210 | * PricelessMingVase: Rikki Fry's father collects these in ''The Chalet School and Richenda'', and her habit of touching them, despite repeatedly being told not to, gets her sent to the Chalet School as punishment. Unlike other examples of the trope, it is not played for laughs. As mentioned under AbusiveParents above, Professor Fry beats her with a cane for breaking one of said vases. |
| 211 | * PromotionToParent: Several examples, most notably Madge and her twin brother Dick, who are responsible for Joey after their parents die, and Gillian Linton, who takes care of her BrattyHalfPint sister Joyce while their mother is ill. |
| 212 | * ProperLady: Many of the German, French and Tyrolean girls, particularly in the Tyrol years. And [[SpoiledBrat Lavender Leigh]] would like to think she is one. |
| 213 | * PutOnABus: With so many characters, it's bound to happen. Some characters are prominent for a couple of books and then disappear. One of the more notable examples is the Robin, who is a major character in the Tirol / Armishire eras, but is almost never heard from after becoming a nun and moving to Canada. Madge and Jem's role in the series is also greatly reduced once they stay in England while the School moves to Switzerland, despite Madge being the founder of the School - probably because [=EBD=] could not see any more use for them once Jack became head of the Swiss Sanatorium and he and Joey effectively filled Madge and Jem's original role. |
| 214 | * QuicksandSucks: Exaggerated in ''Shocks for the Chalet School'' -- Julie gets stuck in mud that's hardly more than ankle-deep, but all the characters and the narration treat this as if she's being sucked to inescapable doom. |
| 215 | * QuittingToGetMarried: Happens to several mistresses, including Hilary Burn, Mollie Maynard, Biddy O'Ryan, Simone Lecoutier (though she does return to teach during the war) and, of course, Madge. Miss Annersley and Miss Wilson are notable exceptions. Julie Lucy also has to give up her future career as a barrister when she gets engaged as, according to Joey, 'she won't have time as the wife of a housemaster'. Bear in mind that married women giving up their jobs happened a lot during the period the books were written. |
| 216 | * TheReasonYouSuckSpeech: Non-villainous example. Miss Annersley gives a lot of these to misbehaving or careless students, often resulting in them feeling mentally reduced to fragments. |
| 217 | ** Joey delivers a particularly scathing one to Kitty Burnett: |
| 218 | --> "I'm too disgusted with your behaviour. You make me feel sick! Please go away, and don't let us see anything more of you this week as can be helped. You are a disgrace to the School, and the sooner you realise it the better for you. Now go!" |
| 219 | ** And to Joyce Linton: |
| 220 | --> "Joyce, you seem to be somewhat above yourself, and the only thing I can suggest is that you should try to realise that you are only a Middle -- and a very new Middle at that. It's rather too early for you to have assimilated our ideals, I suppose, though your sister doesn't seem to have had such trouble. Just get it into your head that all such things as passing notes are despised here, and the people who do them are considered despicable. And remember that you are really a very insignificant person, as well." |
| 221 | * RescueRomance: Several, usually involving doctors who either help a female character and end up marrying her, or help one of the students and end up marrying one of the teachers who was present at the time. There's Jem Russell and Madge in ''Jo of the Chalet School'', [[spoiler:Frank Peters and Phoebe Wychcote]] in ''Jo to the Rescue'', [[spoiler:Hilary Burn and Phil Graves]] in ''Carola Storms the Chalet School'', and [[spoiler:Biddy O'Ryan and Eugene Courvoisier]] in ''The Chalet School Does it Again''. |
| 222 | * RichBitch: Two particular examples spring to mind: |
| 223 | ** Thekla von Stift, Marie von Eschenau's cousin and one of the main characters in ''Exploits of the Chalet Girls''. As a member of the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junker Junker]] class, she expresses horror at having to be educated alongside 'the daughters of shopkeepers', and looks down on most of the other students, such as Sophie Hamel, whose father is a self-made businessman. Her arrogant and childish behaviour makes her greatly unpopular amongst the other kids, and although she does thaw out a tiny bit - this being the Chalet School - after her petticoat catches fire, she still has a cruel streak and is eventually expelled in ''A Rebel at the Chalet School''. |
| 224 | ** In ''Jo To The Rescue'', we meet Zephyr Burthill, a spoiled brat who covets Phoebe Wychcote's cello, since Phoebe can't play it due to illness and Zephyr is a talented musician herself. She's so desperate to get her hands on it, her father sends some thugs to the house where Joey and co are staying to try and steal it. She's used to getting everything she wants and resorts to begging Simone on her knees to get it for her. Joey overhears and tells her where to get off. Of course, after she's introduced to [[MoralityPet the Robin]], she sees the error of her ways and [[TookALevelInKindness takes a level in kindness]]. |
| 225 | * RousingSpeech: Emmie Linders gives a particularly memorable one in ''Highland Twins'', after she and her family escape from the Nazis. Miss Annersley also gives a few over the course of the war books, reminding the girls to be brave. |
| 226 | * {{Ruritania}}: Belsornia, Princess Elisaveta's homeland. |
| 227 | [[/folder]] |
| 228 | |
| 229 | [[folder: Tropes S-Z]] |
| 230 | * SadistTeacher: Woe betide any pupil who gets on the wrong side of Miss Cochrane or Herr Laubach, the temperamental art master (who's surprisingly popular, despite having made several pupils cry and having thrown art things at Joey after she was messing around in one of his classes). Miss Cochrane does have reasons for being difficult, though - see her entry on the character sheet for why. |
| 231 | * SamaritanSyndrome: Joey and Mary Lou Trelawney have a mild case of it in the Swiss books, with their insistence on 'butting in' whenever a new girl has problems. Justified to an extent as characters such as Phoebe Wychcote genuinely need and appreciate their help. |
| 232 | * SceneryPorn: One of the many features of the Tyrol books which makes them so popular with the fandom. [=EBD=] based the Tiern See on the real life Achensee, and if her descriptions of the rivers and mountains and winter landscapes are anything to go by, she clearly loved the place ([[https://www.achensee.com/en/ and it really is beautiful).]] |
| 233 | * ScholarshipStudent: How Ros Lilley ends up at the Chalet School in ''Problem''. The scholarship is granted by Tom Gay's mother. |
| 234 | * SchoolFestival: Although the Chalet School is based in Europe and not Japan, the Sale of Work is a school festival of sorts, as it's a chance for the girls to show off their talents and raise money for the Sanatorium. Different forms run different stalls, although sometimes the age groups are mixed up, and the sales always have a theme, from fairy tales in ''Lintons'' and ''Literature/AlicesAdventuresInWonderland'' in ''Tom Tackles'' to a Spanish sale in ''Jane'' and a sale based around the seasons in ''Prefects''. As well as textiles, bric-a-brac, produce, baked goods and toys, the sales often have competitions, including one involving the pièce de resistance, a dolls' house created by Tom Gay (from ''Tom Tackles'' onwards), and other attractions such as games (clock golf is a popular one for the dads), a flower show in ''Kenya'', or the Peri's Cave in the Fairy Tale Sale in ''Lintons''. |
| 235 | * SchoolPlay: As it's a school series, this trope is to be expected. Several books feature a [[ChristmasEpisode Christmas play]] or pantomime, which often serves as a conclusion (such as in ''Highland Twins'') or a plot device (''Adrienne at the Chalet School'', where Janet Henderson's dress catches fire during the play and Adrienne saves her, ending the tensions between them). |
| 236 | * SchoolgirlSeries: Naturally. It's notably longer than most Girls' Own series such as ''Literature/MaloryTowers'', and also has some 'holiday' books featuring Joey and her family. |
| 237 | * ScoutOut: ''Massively'' averted, especially in the Tyrol books, when the school gets its own Guides group (and later has a Brownie pack as well) after Joey and her friends ask Madge for one. St Scholastika's also starts having Guides in ''Rivals'' after Miss Browne finally gives in, and ''The Chalet Girls in Camp'' is entirely about a Guide camp. The school continues to have Brownies and Guides in Armishire and St Briavel's, but oddly, they seem to have dropped it in Switzerland. |
| 238 | * SheIsAllGrownUp: The series follows the lives of numerous characters as they go through the school, some of them returning as teachers, and we get to see them maturing into adults. Some of whom become noticeably attractive. |
| 239 | * ShellShockedVeteran: As one of the side stories reveals, [[spoiler:Mr Denny]] is a World War I veteran and has PTSD as a result. |
| 240 | * ShoutOut: Joey bears more than a few similarities to Jo March of ''Literature/LittleWomen'' fame, what with the dark hair, being a bit tomboyish and a wannabe writer, and not wanting to grow up. She even quotes Jo at one point. There's also a Margaret (Bettany, and several other characters), an Amy (Stevens) who starts off as a blonde-haired BrattyHalfPint, and later a Beth (Chester). |
| 241 | ** Joey orders Polly Heriot to read ''Literature/StalkyAndCo'' as punishment for ringing the alarm bell and waking up the entire school (and the locals) in ''Jo Returns'', and to pay particular attention to what Stalky and his friends think of 'Popularity' Prout. |
| 242 | ** In ''Goes to It'', Gwensi Howell is revealed to be a fan of several real-life Girls' Own fiction writers, including Winifred Darch and Elise Jeanette Oxenham (who wrote the ''Abbey'' series, and was considered one of the 'Big Three' of Girls' Own fiction along with [=EBD=] and Dorita Fairlie Bruce). |
| 243 | ** The themed school sale in ''Bride Leads'' is one big ShoutOut to ''The Crown of Success'' by [=ALOE=], a somewhat obscure Victorian children's book about morals and learning. |
| 244 | ** Jennifer Penrose and her friends get into trouble in ''The Wrong Chalet School'' for reading ''Literature/GoneWithTheWind''. |
| 245 | ** In ''New House'', Joey is reading ''Literature/TheForsyteSaga''. |
| 246 | * ShrinkingViolet: There's a few throughout the series: the [[MeaningfulName appropriately named Violet Allison]], Michelle Cabrán, nicknamed Chuchundra by Jack Lambert after the shy little muskrat in ''Literature/TheJungleBook'', and Odette Mercier, who has severe problems with homesickness. Simone starts off as one, but grows out of it. |
| 247 | * SiblingYinYang / FoolishSiblingResponsibleSibling: Several examples. As well as Joey and Madge, and Jack and Anne Lambert, there's also the Linton sisters; Gillian is the older, more responsible sister who has a PromotionToParent and later becomes a mistress at the school, while Joyce, the younger one, is a lazy, selfish SpoiledBrat. |
| 248 | * SkiResortEpisode: As many of the books are in the Alps, skiing happens in many of these books, along with falls and injuries. |
| 249 | * SlippingAMickey: Matron, Jack and Jem all have a habit of putting sedatives in milk or other drinks to help ill or anxious girls (and Joey) sleep. |
| 250 | * SmallNameBigEgo: Yseult Pertwee in ''New Mistress'', who assumes that her talent for verse-speaking and her acting history will automatically get her a big role in the school Christmas play. It doesn't, as new girls generally get small parts until the teachers know what they're capable of, while the big roles go to established pupils - in this case, it's Mary-Lou. Yseult is not happy and even plots to injure Mary-Lou and take her part. See HoistByHisOwnPetard above for how that turns out. In ''Excitements'', she pushes for her form to do [=WB=] Yeats' ''The Land of Heart's Desire'', with her as the star, but Miss Ferrars vetos this as she thinks the play is too complex for schoolgirls. |
| 251 | * SmokingIsCool: Joey, Jack and the staff smoke like chimneys throughout the series ([=EBD=] herself was a very heavy smoker, and smoking was much more common, and not considered to be dangerous, at the time the books were written), although Joey won't allow her daughters to smoke until they're adults. The amateur dramatics group set up by Betty and Elizabeth in ''New'' have also been enjoying a cheeky cig, as Joey and the prefects find butts on the St Clare's House roof, and smoking in a school bathroom is one of Ted Grantley's past vices. |
| 252 | ** Elma Conroy and her friends smoke cigarettes while playing cards on a Sunday in ''The Chalet School in the Oberland''. Miss Norton, who catches them, is more upset about the cards than the smoking. |
| 253 | * SpoiledBrat: Several examples throughout the series, such as Lavender Leigh (in ''Lavender Laughs''), who has spent most of her life being spoiled rotten by her ditzy aunt, and Emerence Hope (in ''Shocks for the Chalet School''), whose rich parents let her do whatever she wanted, culminating in her setting fire to the summer house. Most tend to grow out of it, usually with some help from Joey, their peers, and the occasional accident. |
| 254 | * SternTeacher: Madge tries to be this, and later teachers do well, especially Miss Wilson, Miss Annersley and most of the male teachers. |
| 255 | * StockShoujoBullyingTactics: Yes, even in the Chalet School these occur, but not very often. Lavender, Emerence, Eustacia and a few other girls are sent to Coventry by their classmates. Some characters also hide other characters' things as a prank, such as the lost property prank in ''Trials''. |
| 256 | * SupremeChef: Anna, the Maynard family maid, and Karen, the school cook (who also has ChefOfIron tendencies). The school go nuts in ''A Feud in the Chalet School'' for Anna's greengage jam (but she's not giving the recipe to anyone), and the narrative waxes lyrical about Karen's 'heavenly' bread twists and cakes. |
| 257 | * TamperingWithFoodAndDrink: as mentioned above, one particularly nasty example happens in ''Wins the Trick'' when Val Gardiner and Celia Everett sprinkle pepper all over the food the school were supposed to have after the tennis match. The girls do manage to salvage some of it, and Anna and the Maynards are able to provide fruit for pudding, but a large amount is inedible and has to be thrown away, and both girls and staff are furious at the waste. |
| 258 | * TeenGenius: Nina Rutherford, the titular genius of ''A Genius at the Chalet School''. She's a child prodigy when it comes to playing the piano, and has her own special timetable at school, but on the downside she has little to no social skills and is sent to the Chalet School in the hope of making her more rounded as a person. When she leaves, she becomes a concert pianist. |
| 259 | * TextileWorkIsFeminine: The Tyrolean and German girls are big on sewing, periods are set aside for mending clothes, and being able to sew and mend is considered an important ability for a potential wife and homemaker. More tomboyish or rebellious girls, such as Cornelia and Joey, hate sewing, and Joey's efforts drive Gisela to distraction in the early books. Several girls in the Hobbies Club do various crafts as their hobbies. |
| 260 | * ThisCannotBe: Thekla von Stift's reaction in ''Lintons'' when Mlle Lepattre finally has enough of her horrible behaviour and expels her, following her attempt to get Joyce into trouble to get at Joey. Thekla is normally TheStoic, but realising that she is the first pupil to be expelled from the school, and Mlle pointing out that the stress caused by Joyce being expelled ''could have killed Mrs Linton'', causes her to have a VillainousBreakdown. |
| 261 | * TitleDrop: At the end of many of the books, the last three words are "The Chalet School", often with an exclamation mark. |
| 262 | * TookALevelInBadass: Joey in her rescue of Princess Elisaveta in ''A Princess at the Chalet School'', as if her previous attempt to save Grizel from being stuck on the Tiernjoch in ''Jo of the Chalet School'' wasn't already a sign that she's pretty damn tough. And Miss Wilson, Joey (again), Robin, Cornelia Flower, Violet Allison and Maria Marani all take several levels in ''The Chalet School in Exile''. Miss Wilson leads a group of girls to safety through a hidden passageway (see BadassTeacher above) after Joey and Cornelia put them all at risk by yelling at a bunch of Nazis who are terrorising an old Jewish man, while Robin rushes to help him. Later on, Cornelia, Violet and Maria rescue a pilot from a burning plane, with Cornelia's eyesight being severely damaged and all three of them ending up in hospital. |
| 263 | ** [[spoiler: Margot]] takes several in ''The Chalet Girls Grow Up'', joining the Black Sash, becoming an anti-apartheid activist and getting thrown in prison after protesting at Greenham. |
| 264 | * TookALevelInKindness: Girls who start off as bitchy, sulky or standoffish will often come to learn the error of their ways and become nicer people after being introduced to the ways of the Chalet School, or getting a good ticking-off from one of the mistresses. And if that doesn't work, there's always a handy accident (see BreakTheHaughty above for what happens to Eustacia Benson). |
| 265 | * TotallyRadical: Or whatever the '20s version is. If you are an American Chalet Girl, especially if your name is Cornelia Flower or Evvy Lannis, you will use ridiculous amounts of slang. |
| 266 | * TragicDropout: Elfie Woodward. After her stepmother dies, she drops out of school in order to take care of her brothers and father, who is an emotional wreck and can barely take care of himself. However, she is able to go back after other relatives take over caring for the family. |
| 267 | * TraumaticHaircut: Rosalie Way in ''Rosalie'', courtesy of Tom Gay. After an argument with the rest of her form, Rosalie bursts into tears and runs off, and neither teachers nor her own form can find her. Daisy Venables figures out that Rosalie must have found the secret passageway in the hedges that she, Beth and Gwensi used in ''Goes to It'', and with her help, Tom goes in to find Rosalie. Unfortunately, Rosalie's hair is caught in the bushes and Tom has to cut Rosalie's hair with her Guide knife in order to free her. Matron later takes her into town to get her hair tidied up, but Rosalie is gutted because her parents loved her long curls. |
| 268 | * TroubledButCute: several pupils who have various issues at home, causing them to act out at school. Francie Wilford (an orphan whose stepmother remarried after her father's death) and Annis Lovell (her mother is dead, her father is missing and her aunt drags her from pillar to post, refuses to let her leave school at sixteen, and is embezzling her money on the side) are two major examples in ''Ruey'' and ''Island'' respectively. |
| 269 | * TyrantTakesTheHelm: The plot of ''Gay from China at the Chalet School'' revolves around this trope. When Miss Bubb, the tyrant in question, takes over as temporary headmistress after Miss Wilson, Miss Annersley and others are injured in a car crash, her fixation on exam results and crackdowns on the girls' free time and privileges makes her very unpopular, to the point where Joey writes a letter begging Miss Wilson to come back. Things comes to a head when she forbids Gay Lambert - who has broken rules on more than one occasion - to see her older brother before he is stationed in Asia, which leads to Gay running away and culminates in Miss Bubb having to resign, to everyone's relief. |
| 270 | * VillainousBreakdown / FreakOut: [[spoiler:Jennifer Penrose]] in ''The Wrong Chalet School'' has a pretty major one, possibly triggered by [[spoiler:Miss Annersley's comments that Blossom Willoughby could have seriously injured herself after smashing a window to get herself out of the art room (thanks to Jennifer locking her in). Jennifer has screaming nightmares about Blossom bleeding to death, and confesses everything when Blossom is brought in to show Jennifer that she got out unscathed.]] |
| 271 | * VitriolicBestBuds: Joey and Grizel in the Tyrol years. Although they do bicker a lot, they're still very close, even as adults, and Joey still risks her life to save Grizel when Grizel runs off to climb the Tiernjoch. |
| 272 | * WackyParentSeriousChild: Maisie Scott née Gomme, who is described as 'feather-headed', has this relationship with her daughter Jo, who is far more sensible and often worries about her useless mum. To a lesser extent, there's also Clem and Tony Barras' MadArtist parents, who are constantly travelling around the world and often leave Clem and Tony to fend for themselves (much to the disapproval of Mary-Lou's gran). Mr Barras is also violent and abusive towards Tony and Clem has to mediate between them, and she later becomes a CoolBigSis for Mary-Lou in ''Three Go''. |
| 273 | * WhenYouComingHomeDad: Loads of examples for girls who barely see their fathers, and often their mothers as well, due to them working abroad. Carola Johnstone, for instance, has spent so long away from her father (who is working in Africa) that when he meets up with her in ''Carola'', he's shocked to find she's a teenage girl. Both Mary-Lou Trelawney and Verity-Anne Carey have fathers who are away for long periods on expeditions [[spoiler:(and Mary-Lou's father is killed on one of them, though Verity-Anne's father survives).]] The four older Bettany children - Rix, Peggy, Bride and Jackie - live with the Russell family due to their parents being in India, and being unable to get back to Britain because of the war. |
| 274 | * WorkingClassPeopleAreMorons: Averted by Rosamund Lilley, a girl from a working-class background who wins a scholarship to the Chalet School. She's academic, but worries the girls will look down on her because of her background. |
| 275 | ** Also, there's Biddy O'Ryan, a maid's daughter; it's thought that she's going to become a lady's maid herself until a local priest discovers how bright she is, and she ends up going to Oxford and becoming a history teacher at the Chalet School. |
| 276 | * UsefulNotes/WorldWarII: Interrupts the girls' schooling when [[ThoseWackyNazis the Nazis]] start sweeping across Europe. Also a major plot point in ''The Chalet School in Exile'', ''The Chalet School Goes to It'' (aka ''The Chalet School at War'') and ''The Highland Twins at the Chalet School''. |
| 277 | * WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes?: Literally in Miss Bertram's case, as she has a phobia of snakes and faints when she finds a toy snake in her desk in ''Leader''. [[spoiler:Miss Andrews confiscated it from another girl and left it there and forgot about it, and is embarrassed when she finds out.]] |
| 278 | * WouldHurtAChild: Matron Webb shakes the Robin and locks her in her room after (wrongly) accusing her of lying in ''Princess''. This is the final straw for Madge, who gives her the boot. |
| 279 | * WritingLines: A punishment often inflicted by prefects - for example, in ''Rosalie'', Daisy Venables orders both Rosalie and Tom to write lines as punishment for being clumsy and forgetting to wear her gardening overall, respectively - along with being made to learn and repeat poetry. |
| 280 | * WrongGenreSavvy: Polly Heriot in ''Jo Returns to the Chalet School'', who has never been to school before and learned most of what she knows about school life from Girls' Own school stories. She thinks ringing the school alarm bell will be a fun prank that will make her popular and/or make the teachers laugh. Instead, several girls - including Eustacia, who's still recovering from an injury - are worn out due to lack of sleep and are furious with Polly, the mistresses and Joey are not happy, and the local people are angry at the false alarm. What Polly doesn't realise is that the bell is not just for warning the school about floods, it's for warning the ''entire valley''. |
| 281 | ** Joan Baker blackmails Ros by threatening to tell the other girls that Ros comes from a working-class background, thinking that it'll turn the genteel young ladies of the Chalet School against her, because that's what happens in the school stories she reads. She's dead wrong, as Ros becomes part of a large friendship group that includes Len Maynard and various other middle-class girls. |
| 282 | * YeOldeButcheredeEnglishe: When the prefects begin an anti-slang crusade in ''Jo of the Chalet School'', Joey and her classmates troll them by only speaking in Shakespearean English. It confuses the hell out of the foreign girls. Madge eventually cottons on and stops the prank. |
| 283 | * YodelLand: How Switzerland can come across in the later books, and the Tyrol in the earlier ones: mountains, snow, skiing, delicious food, inclement weather, avalanches, evergreen pastures, herdsmen with goats' milk tasting of onions, etc. However, unlike the Tyrol, [=EBD=] had spent very little time in Switzerland, if any, and was mainly relying on tourist guides in order to get more information about the setting. This may probably explain why some of the teachers, when acting as [[MisterExposition Miss Exposition]] on class trips, sound like they're reciting passages from a guidebook. |
| 284 | [[/folder]] |
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