Line #8 YMMV/ChaletSchool


1	* {{Adorkable}}: Miss Ferrars, the titular mistress in ''A New Mistress''. When she gets confirmation of her new job, she's very excited and acting more like a teenage girl than a university graduate. Samaris Davies is also this in ''Two Sams'', being the one girl in her form who's actually keen to work, and being a FanGirl of Nina Rutherford and generally enthusiastic about everything.
2	* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation: 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?
3	** Miss Bubb: a SadistTeacher and an example of TyrantTakesTheHelm, or a well-meaning teacher who wanted good results and was undermined too often?
4	** Eustacia Benson: a horrible little brat, or seriously misunderstood by the authorities?
5	** Mary-Lou Trelawney: a worthy successor to Joey and a genuinely likeable, kind-hearted girl who does her best to help others and make sure everyone is happy, or a self-righteous, interfering busybody?
6	** The Chalet School itself: the school every girl would have dreamed of going to, or a repressive, ultra-conformist CrapsaccharineWorld?
7	* BaseBreakingCharacter: Mary-Lou, for the reasons stated above. Some fans love her as a child/Junior in the earlier books, but dislike her in the later ones, feeling that she gets too much screentime and is in AuthorsDarling territory, and is too bossy and interfering. Other fans love her, sometimes even more than Joey, for her GenkiGirl nature, her determination to make sure nobody is left out and solve problems, no matter how big, and her BigDamnHeroes moments.
8	* BizarroEpisode: ''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 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."
9	* BrokenBase:
10	** The Swiss era. Some fans like the books and the new characters, while others feel the series went down the pan around this time.
11	** Most Chalet School books written by other authors after [=EBD=]'s death, such as ''Peace Comes to the Chalet School'', have been received favourably by fans. ''The Chalet Girls Grow Up'', however, is an exception. Some fans love its DarkerAndEdgier nature, while others think it's downright horrible, and a mockery of [=EBD=]'s work.
12	* CanonDefilement: As stated above, many fans considered ''The Chalet Girls Grow Up'' to be this because of the way many of the characters are handled. To be more precise: [[spoiler:Miss Wilson, Madge and Jem are all killed off offscreen; Jack - a devout Catholic - is DrivenToSuicide; Joey gets Alzheimer's and becomes increasingly eccentric and senile, with her books failing to sell; Len is in an abusive marriage with Reg Entwhistle, who leaves her for Mary-Lou, and one of her daughters dies of meningitis; Con has several affairs with men who don't love her and writes Mills & Boon-esque romances; Clem Barras gets a divorce; and the school itself is closed down and then bulldozed.]]
13	* EnsembleDarkhorse: Gaudenz, the school handyman who appears in the Swiss books, has his fair share of fangirls.
14	** Joan Baker has a sizeable fandom, particularly among the more cynical Chalet School fans who see her as a WorkingClassHero and sympathise with her for never quite fitting in, even after she reforms.
15	** Dickie Christie, the daughter of the owner of the Big House where the School is based during the St Briavel's years, and one of Peggy's best friends, is considered to be 'the best Head Girl that never was' by a fair few fans.
16	* 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.
17	* 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.
18	** Gay Lambert running away from school becomes this when you recall that she did it not only at night, but during the blackout. No lights being permitted, and small country roads, meant she could easily have been hit by a car. Or ''worse''. The staff are horrified just thinking about it.
19	** Although it's almost a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment, there's a line in ''Exile'' about [[spoiler:Herr Marani's ashes being sent to his family, after being imprisoned in a concentration camp.]] [[NothingIsScarier It's never said what happened to him or how he died.]] Even more horrifying? ''The Nazis actually did things like this in real life.''
20	** It's [[NothingIsScarier never stated exactly what happens to Professor Richardson]] after he and his companion make their second serious attempt at space travel. He ''vanishes'' and is never heard from again. A popular fan theory is that he was probably shot down by the Soviets and his death was covered up somehow.
21	* {{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. Some readers find the Robin to be like this as a child.
22	* 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.
23	* HarsherInHindsight: ''New House'', where Joey, Frieda, Marie, Simone and a few others have their final term at school and eagerly look forward to the future, not realising [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII war is around the corner.]] Three books later, Miss Wilson, Joey and several other girls have to flee for their lives from the Nazis and spend several days in hiding, [[spoiler: Herr Marani is murdered by the Nazis, the Venables girls lose their mother]], Frieda's husband is in a concentration camp and the school has been forced to close.
24	* 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.
25	** Eustacia Benson doesn't do herself any favours by being rude, arrogant and unfriendly towards the other girls from Day 1, telling tales, and making nasty comments about everything from Catholics to the local peasantry. However, she is the result of an upbringing by two parents who were clueless about children, both of whom died when she was young, and is later packed off to her aunt's house, where she does not get on at all with her male cousins. As [[http://www.the-cbb.co.uk/board/archive/files/FD_Obedience_Eustacia_101010.htm this thread]] points out, the school could have handled her better and made more of an effort to understand her, instead of just writing her off as a hopeless case.
26	** Lavender Leigh is a horrible little brat, and like Eustacia, her preciousness and habit of grassing the other girls up makes her unpopular, but it's hard not to feel sorry for her when all the other girls in her form - even the nice ones like Peggy and Bride Bettany - make a huge point of ignoring her for days, and she spends most of her time feeling lonely and miserable and crying herself to sleep. As someone who's been carted around the world by her ditzy aunt, she's not remotely used to being with kids her own age and has no idea how to behave.
27	** Annis Lovell is rude, surly and constantly in trouble, but has a miserable home life. Her mother is dead, her sailor father is missing off the Coast of Cape Horn [[spoiler:(but turns out to be alive)]], and her evil aunt drags her around various boarding houses in seaside towns, refuses to let her stay with her friends because she disapproves of their easygoing behaviour, and threatens to cut Annis off financially unless she stays at school until she is eighteen. Annis wants to be a nurse, but her aunt wants her to teach, and after a particularly cold letter from her aunt, Annis snaps and runs away from school. [[spoiler:As it turns out, her aunt has also been embezzling Annis' money.]]
28	** Naomi Elton may be guilty of DisabilityAsAnExcuseForJerkassery in ''Trials'', but as she reveals to Mary-Lou, she's got a good reason to be bitter and have little faith in G-d. [[spoiler:Her parents were killed in the same car crash that disabled her for life, and she had to give up her dreams of being a ballerina.]]
29	* LesYay: {{Bifauxnen}} Tom [[MeaningfulName Gay]] might have a ''little'' crush on Daisy Venables.
30	** Tom herself is on the receiving end of this in ''Rosalie'' when Rosalie Way, who she's been told to look after, develops a massive crush on her. Tom finds it very uncomfortable.
31	** Kathie Ferrars and Nancy Wilmot are a popular pairing in Chalet School fandom. In ''The Chalet Girls Grow Up'', a couple of characters even speculate that the two are more than friends. In the Tyrol books, there's Miss Wilson and Miss Stewart.
32	** Although girls in the Chalet School claim that they aren't 'soppy' and don't have crushes (unlike Angela Brazil's characters or some of the sillier girls in Enid Blyton's stories), there are a few girls with very obvious crushes on older girls or girls in their year, such as Francie Wilford (for Margot) or Jack Lambert (for Len). Even teachers aren't immune; Elizabeth Arnett has one on Miss Linton in ''Goes to It'', and although Miss Linton finds it a bit weird, it does help Elizabeth to grow up and move away from [[ToxicFriendInfluence Betty Wynne-Davies]].
33	* NightmareFuel: Yes, even the Chalet School books have this. One particularly chilling example is in ''Triplets'', when a mentally ill woman, Frau Schumacher, kidnaps Cecil while she and the second twins are on a walk with Rösli, the nanny. When the triplets go to rescue her with Bruno in tow, Frau Schumacher snaps and strangles Len, and is only stopped when Jack pulls a BigDamnHeroes and sedates her. Joey later reveals that Frau Schumacher's daughter, also called Cecilie, died when she was three, and Frau Schumacher subsequently went insane and, on seeing Cecil Maynard, genuinely believed Cecil was her own child.
34	** Eustacia's attempted escape from the school, where she tries to go to Germany on foot via the Tiern Pass, since going through the towns carries the risk of being recognised. She gets caught in a heavy downpour, misses the turning to the Pass and just manages to escape from a rising flood by climbing up a rocky face and hiding in a cleft. If she hadn't managed to get up the mountainside in time, she would have drowned. Her sheer terror, combined with the fact that nobody can hear her screaming and she ends up being stuck there for hours, makes it a chilling scene.
35	** Annis Lovell's escape from the school in ''Island'' goes horribly wrong when she gets caught in fog and loses an oar. Although she manages to find land, she's forced to climb up the cliffs to safety as the water rises and only manages to get up there due to an adrenaline rush.
36	* TheScrappy:
37	** Jack Lambert is disliked by some fans due to her bullying of Jane Carew, obsession with Len and general AlphaBitch behaviour, especially given the possibility that, had the series continued, [=EBD=] would have made her the new heroine after the triplets left.
38	** 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 [[WouldHitAGirl less]]-[[RapeAsDrama than]]-[[DisappearedDad favourable]] portrayal in ''The Chalet Girls Grow Up''.
39	** Margot Maynard in the Swiss years, due to [[TookALevelInJerkass taking several levels in Jerkass]], bullying Ted Grantley for ''daring'' to be friends with Len and continuing to act like a bully even after Mary-Lou's epic TheReasonYouSuck speech to the triplets in ''Theodora'', nearly killing Betty Landon with a bookend in ''Triplets'' and terrorising younger girls in games classes in ''Challenge''. Some fans accuse her of having the 'Maynard Get Out of Jail Free Card' due to not being expelled or even suspended, despite other girls being punished more severely for less, and Miss Annersley of favouring her because she's [=BFF=] with Joey.
40	* 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}}s 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.
41	* 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.
42	** Gillian Linton. In ''The Chalet School and the Lintons'', while her AnnoyingYoungerSibling Joyce is too self-absorbed to realise just how ill their mother is, Gillian is very much aware of the seriousness of her mother's illness and has both the stress of looking after her mother and keeping an eye on Joyce to deal with. And she's only fifteen. Thankfully, Joey intervenes when Gillian confides in her and gives Joyce a pep talk, as well as reassuring Mrs Linton at the end [[spoiler:that Joyce has not been expelled, when Mrs Linton wrongly thinks that Joyce has been expelled and has a breakdown.]]
43	** From the same book, Miss Norman, who takes Joyce, Thekla von Stift and several younger girls for extra language coaching. While she's good at teaching little kids, she has trouble keeping older ones in line, and Joyce is ''very'' aware of this and takes advantage of it. Joey walks in on the girls singing the national anthem, with Miss Norman failing to make them shut up, and feels frustrated as she wants to intervene, but can't as it'll make Miss Norman look bad in front of the girls. Miss Norman finally has enough when Joyce and the other girls - besides Thekla, who thinks it's beneath her -- act like 'savages' in class, making weird noises and squatting on the floor, and sics Mlle Lepattre on them. What makes it even worse is that Miss Norman has to take on extra work as she needs the money to put her younger brother through school.
44	** Margot Russell / Venables, so very much. [[spoiler: Her family disowned her for running off with Stephen Venables, who turned out to be an abusive alcoholic and a total waste of space. Three of her five children died young while the family were living in Australia, and Stephen also died of a snake bite. She and her two surviving children, Primula - who had health problems - and Daisy, left Brisbane to go and live with Daisy's old nurse, Nellie Rickards, who took care of them and let them live with her. Nellie later died of pneumonia, and it was only thanks to plans she had made before her death - and a very kind solicitor - that Margot was able to sell the house. On Nellie's instructions, she took her daughters to find Jem, as she had learned through the papers that he was married and living in the Tyrol. When Joey and Frieda meet her and the girls in ''New House'', she's exhausted and about ready to give up, and on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Her health never really recovers, and she dies a few books later.]]
45	** Phoebe Wychcote in ''Jo to the Rescue'', a lonely girl with severe chronic pain, whose only contact is with her OldRetainer Debby and Reg Entwistle, a local boy. She makes a little money by sewing, but is sometimes unable to finish orders because of her illness. Her father, a famous cellist, died and left her his cello, which is coveted by SpoiledBrat Zephyr Burthill and her overindulgent dad. Phoebe doesn't want to part with it as it's all she has left of him, and asks Joey for help in desperation after the Burthills harass her.
46	** Jane Carew in ''Jane and the Chalet School''. Jane is completely new to school, having previously been taught by governesses due to her parents being actors in a touring company, and pretty much as soon as she starts at the Chalet School, Jack Lambert is gunning for her after she's moved into another dormitory to free up space for Jane, meaning that she won't get to spend as much time with Len, the dormitory prefect. Jack responds to this by not only picking on Jane but also getting the rest of the form to gang up on her as well, tripping her up during a sewing session, pinning her against a wall (though Len catches her before it can escalate) and attacks Jane for washing a teacher's car, because it's 'her' job, ''even though Jane was asked to do it''. Jane isn't completely on her own as she's in the form above Jack's and makes friends with José Helston, but she has to do some classes with Jack's form due to being behind in certain subjects, and Jack and her gang of sheep make the poor girl's life a misery, over something that ''isn't even her fault''. Good thing Jane is a PluckyGirl. And if that's not bad enough, her mum is injured in a car crash.
47	* {{Yandere}}: Jack Lambert has tendencies of this where Len is concerned. Let's just say she didn't take having to leave Len's dormitory to make space for Jane Carew very well in ''Jane''. See TheWoobie above.

Context YMMV / ChaletSchool