History YMMV / ChaletSchool

* FairForItsDay: [[http://thisisschool.net/2012/03/20/in-defence-of-elinor-brent-dyer/ this essay]] goes into more detail.

* FridgeHorror: it's implied in ''Adrienne'' that if Robin hadn't turned up and saved the day, Adrienne's evil landlady would have sold her into prostitution.

* GrowingTheBeard: the wartime books, particularly ''Exile'', ''Goes To It'' and ''Highland Twins'', which are believed to contain some of [=EBD=]'s best and most powerful writing, not to mention that the idea of separating Germans from Nazis - see the entire Peace League plotline, and the more sympathetic German and Tyrolean characters - was pretty ahead of its time. Characters such as Verity-Ann Carey and Lavender Leigh who make nasty remarks about Germans are called on it by other girls, particularly the ones who were with the school in the Tyrol.

* TheyChangedItNowItSucks: the Armada abridged versions get this treatment, due to cuts being made by the publishers. While some changes were positive, such as getting rid of the [[FunetikAksent Funetik Aksents]] of characters such as the [=McDonald=] twins, some books had important plot elements missing. In some books such as ''Highland Twins'' and ''Ruey Richardson, Chaletian'', ''entire chapters'' were cut out of the books. Girls Gone By Publishers remedied this by re-publishing the unabridged books, albeit without [=EBD=]'s typos.

* TheWoobie: Try reading ''Gay from China'' and not wanting to give poor Jacynth Hardy a hug by the end of it. Especially when she finds out about [[spoiler:her auntie going in for a serious operation, and then dying.]] She gets better, with help from Joey, Miss Wilson and Gay.

* AlternateCharacterInterpretation: Is Joey a lovable GenkiGirl who embodies the spirit of the school, or an immature weirdo who won't let go of her childhood and has some serious growing up to do?

* BaseBreaker: the Swiss era. Some fans like the books and the new characters, while others feel the series went down the pan around this time. See JumpingTheShark below.

* DoubleStandard: The contrasting way certain characters' attitudes to men are handled, probably because of their backgrounds. Nice Christian girls Marie and Frieda talk about getting married and having babies? Perfectly OK. Sweary, fish-and-chips-eating, working-class Joan Baker talks about 'boys' to the other girls? She's clearly some kind of corruptive influence and it's perfectly fine for Mary-Lou Trelawney to pretend to befriend her while actually planning to reform her.

* LesYay: {{Bifauxnen}} Tom [[MeaningfulName Gay]] might have a ''little'' crush on Daisy Venables.

* PuritySue: The Robin starts off as this, but grows out of it. Joey kind of ends up as this.

* WhatDoYouMeanItWasntMadeOnDrugs: ''Althea Joins the Chalet School'' is one of the odder books in the series. Len getting covered in paint! A pink worm in an engine! Dreams about monkeys on ships and being chased by [[UnfortunateImplications scary black men with red lips and swords!]] A burglar stealing shoes! As one fan said, "some of the dreams in this one suggest EBD had been at the magic mushrooms."

* JumpingTheShark: For many fans, the Swiss books are among the weakest of the series, especially compared to the Austrian books. The Platz setting has been criticised as insular compared to the Tyrol years (and to a lesser extent, the Armiford and St Briavels periods), where the girls interacted with the local community a lot more. Some of the plotlines, particularly in the last few books (such as [[spoiler:Cecil being kidnapped]] and the entire plot of ''Redheads''), have been criticised as ridiculous and farfetched even by Chalet School series standards. The books have also been criticised for being out-of-touch with the modern world, and formulaic in terms of plot.

* UnfortunateImplications / ValuesDissonance - where do we begin? (Consider that the series began in the '20s and ended in the early '60s.)
** Girls are expected to give up their jobs once they marry and become housewives. For instance, one character, Julie Lucy, is a barrister, and when she gets engaged, another character remarks that she'll have to give it up as she won't have time 'as the wife of a housemaster'.
** Men's job is to protect their daughters and wives, and the female characters are always deferential to them, even the headmistresses (to Jack, Jem and the other San doctors). EBD also seemed to equate feminism with hating men, if Joey's comments in ''The Chalet School Reunion'' are anything to go by.
** The 'feminine' subjects appear to get more emphasis than traditionally more masculine subjects, such as maths and science. Girls are expected to be proficient in subjects such as cooking and sewing, so that they will make good wives (see above). Joey gets no end of flak from the Tirolean girls about her failure at sewing.
** There's a heavy emphasis on obedience and religion, especially Catholicism, and one girl shocks her peers by saying that she is an agnostic. Needless to say, she's convinced into believing in G-d after an avalanche.
** And then there's the racism - for instance, Joey's comment about her sons, who have been messing around with blacklead, looking like 'two little nigger boys' in ''Joey Goes to the Oberland'', and Robin talking about Daisy 'working like a nigger'. Not to mention some of the girls in ''Rivals of the Chalet School'' starting up their own branch of the Ku Klux Klan, after reading books about them, in order to get back at the St Scholastika's girls.

* AlasPoorVillain: [[spoiler:Miss Bubb]] reappears in ''Coming of Age'', and has changed, a ''lot'', to the Heads' surprise. She has lost her job, is recovering from flu, and collapses at the Sale. It gets worse - by the time of ''Reunion'', she's dying.

** Reg Entwistle, for his unromantic proposal to Len Maynard in ''Prefects'', and for coming across as quite possessive of Len, which may have inspired his less-than-favourable in ''The Chalet Girls Grow Up''.

* GrowingTheBeard: the wartime books, particularly ''Exile'', ''Goes To It'' and ''Highland Twins'', which are believed to contain some of [=EBD=]'s best and most powerful writing, not to mention that the attitude of separating Germans from Nazis - see the entire Peace League plotline - was pretty ahead of its time.

** It's doubtful whether any girl outside the MBR families would not have been expelled for knocking Betty Landon out with a bookend. Thekla von Stift is expelled and told that had she caused Mrs. Linton to worry by getting Joyce Linton into trouble, Mrs. Linton could have died and she could have been a potential murderess! However, Margot - whocould have easily killed someone - gets off with a ticking-off from Miss Annersley and not much else, and Betty is ''blamed'' for being 'tactless'!

* TheyChangedItNowItSucks: the Armada abridged versions get this treatment, due to cuts being made by the publishers. While some changes were positive, such as getting rid of the [[Funetik Aksent FunetikAksents]] of characters such as the [=McDonald=] twins, some books had important plot elements missing. In some books such as ''Highland Twins'' and ''Ruey Richardson, Chaletian'', ''entire chapters'' were cut out of the books. Girls Gone By Publishers remedied this by re-publishing the unabridged books, albeit without [=EBD=]'s typos.

* JumpingTheShark: For many fans, the Swiss books are among the weakest of the series, especially compared to the Austrian books.

* TakeThat - Lavender Leigh and the ''Lavender Laughs'' travel books ''may'' possibly be one to Christopher Robin and [=AA=] Milne.

* AlternateCharacterInterpretation - is Joey a lovable GenkiGirl who embodies the spirit of the school, or an immature weirdo who won't let go of her childhood and has some serious growing up to do?

* DoubleStandard - the contrasting way certain characters' attitudes to men are handled, probably because of their backgrounds. Nice Christian girls Marie and Frieda talk about getting married and having babies? Perfectly OK. Sweary, fish-and-chips-eating, working-class Joan Baker talks about 'boys' to the other girls? She's clearly some kind of corruptive influence and it's perfectly fine for Mary-Lou Trelawney to pretend to befriend her while actually planning to reform her.

* EnsembleDarkhorse - Gaudenz, the school handyman who appears in the Swiss books, has his fair share of fangirls.
* FairForItsDay - [[http://thisisschool.net/2012/03/20/in-defence-of-elinor-brent-dyer/ this essay]] goes into more detail.
* FanNickname - 'OOAO' for Mary-Lou, short for 'Our One And Only', 'MBR' for the Maynard / Bettany / Russell families, and 'EBDisms' for the author's various plot holes and inconsistencies.
* {{Glurge}} - to the more cynical modern reader, some of the books can come across as immensely glurgey, particularly the ones with heavy emphasis on religion.
* JerkassWoobie - Grizel Cochrane, the resident BrokenBird. Yes, she can be a real bitch to the younger and less cynical kids, and a lot of the pupils are scared of her when she becomes a teacher, but she has a terrible relationship with her father and stepmother, and suffers some pretty nasty injuries throughout the series. Plus she never wanted to be a music teacher in the first place and only trained as one because her father would have cut her off otherwise.
* JumpingTheShark: for many fans, the Swiss books are among the weakest of the series, especially compared to the Austrian books.
* LesYay - {{Bifauxnen}} Tom [[MeaningfulName Gay]] might have a ''little'' crush on Daisy Venables.

* PuritySue - the Robin starts off as this, but grows out of it. Joey kind of ends up as this.
* TheScrappy - Mary-Lou is disliked by a good few fans for being a self-righteous goody-two-shoes (particularly when she's a prefect), and getting away with talking smack to the teachers because 'it's not cheek, it's Mary-Lou' (see DoubleStandard above). It doesn't help when EBD makes Kathie Ferrars look like an unreasonable bad guy when she - quite understandably - has a problem with Mary-Lou's over-familiarity in ''A New Mistress at the Chalet School''. Merryn Williams evidently hated her, judging how she made Mary-Lou behave towards Len in ''The Chalet Girls Grow Up''.
* StayInTheKitchen - usually, when any serious problems come up, the female characters have to stand aside and let the male characters take over. Particularly jarring when you consider how few male characters there are compared to female ones.

* WhatAnIdiot: 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."

* TheWoobie: try reading ''Gay from China'' and not wanting to give poor Jacynth Hardy a hug by the end of it. Especially when she finds out about [[spoiler:her auntie going in for a serious operation, and then dying.]] She gets better, with help from Joey, Miss Wilson and Gay.

* AttentionWhore - Joey in the later books, especially where babies are concerned. She seems to treat having babies as some kind of competition.

* {{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.

* TookALevelInJerkass - Margot Maynard around the time of ''Theodora and the Chalet School''. She goes from temperamental and merely mischievous to blackmailing Ted, throwing a bookend at another girl's head and knocking her out, and bullying her charges. Presumably this is to make her eventual vocation as a nun even more dramatic.

* HeartwarmingMoments: from ''The Chalet School In Exile'': "Oh, Jack, what a - solid lump - of comfort you - are!" Oh, ''Joey''.

* WhatDoYouMeanItWasntMadeOnDrugs: ''Althea Joins the Chalet School'' is one of the odder books in the series. Len getting covered in paint! A pink worm in an engine! Dreams about monkeys on ships and being chased by [[UnfortunateImplications scary black men with red lips and swords!]] A burglar stealing shoes! As one fan said, "some of the dreams in this one suggest EBD had been at the magic mushrooms."

* JumpingTheShark: for many fans, many of the Swiss books are among the weakest of the series, especially compared to the Austrian books.

** And then there's the racism - for instance, Joey's comment about her sons, who have been messing around with blacklead, looking like 'two little nigger boys' in ''Joey Goes to the Oberland'', and Robin talking about Daisy 'working like a nigger'. Not to mention some of the girls in ''Rivals of the Chalet School'' starting up their own branch of the Ku Klux Klan, after reading books about them, in order to get back at the St Scholastika's girls.

** It's doubtful whether any girl outside the MBR families would not have been expelled for knocking Betty Landon out with a bookend. However, Margot gets off with a ticking-off from Miss Annersley and not much else, and Betty is ''blamed'' for being 'tactless'!