Tell-tale signs that these are older books...

When I was reading these novels for the first time, back when I was about 9 and it was about 1970/71, it never really registered (except when WWII intervened) that these were dated books. Part of that was because I was a child, and didn't pick up on clues like the San, and the fact that TB was treatable without being dispatched to mountaintops. (And isn't it uncanny how many people there were with fragile health in these novels??)

So: what tell-tale signs are there that might signal to readers that what they are reading is very, very dated? Money is very rarely mentioned, but that would be one.

My own:

The slang!!
References to "frocks"
The lack of any presence of boys (even Joey's sons as teenagers) in the stories -- it's as if the girls are unaware of their existence.
A large absence of any reference to careers, other than teaching or being a secretary (or a nun, as in the Robin's case) and the fact that women gave up jobs on marriage rather promptly.
The large families. The Maynard clan was pretty typical; Joey's 11 kids, even for a Catholic family, was slightly odd.
The religion; everyone seems unconsciously very devout.
The lack of diversity. Not surprising that there's no variation in socio-economic background, but there's zero in terms of cultural. We get different nationalities, but all European, and the religious difference that is emphasized is Catholic/Protestant. That certainly makes the demographics v. difft from anything post 1970 or so. I was in a day school with a similar economic demographic in London when I was reading these, and our ranks ranged from the daughter of a lady-in-waiting to the queen mother to the Jewish daughter of a movie producer and a Mexican girl, and our teachers including a Pakistani maths teacher.

Considering the length of time that these books span, I find that there is very little indication of social changes. There are few references to pop culture or current events. The big one is obviously the war, and later the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya, and the advent of space travel. These are the only notable events I can think of--anyone else have anything? It gives the series a feeling of being caught out of time. The school and it's families seem to exist in their own vaguely 1920s-30s world, that is only rarely disturbed by the real world.

I was rather impressed by the wartime books I read so far (The Chalet School in Exile and The Chalet School Goes To It) and the fact that they're so careful to make a distinction between "the nazis" and "the Germans". For books published in 1940 and 1941, when the war was nowhere near its end and the way it would end anything but clear, that is quite impressive.

>3 littlegreycloud:

That really impressed me, too, that EBD didn't paint all Germans with the same brush. Overall, while the series is undeniably Anglo-centric, it doesn't have the flag-waving, Rule Britannia attitude that is prevalent in a lot of older boarding school books.

>2 SylviaC:

There are a couple of smaller things, like how flying goes from unthinkable (it's not even mentioned as an option in the earlier books) to a more normal option, at least in emergencies, later on. Similarly, the options available for careers expanded as the series went on - Daisy even becomes a doctor, which I can't imagine any of the pre-war girls doing. Marry one, yes :-)

>3 littlegreycloud:,4

That is something I really appreciated too - that Germans were not automatically Nazis. But also the fact that the "Continentals" were treated as people, and not as stereotypes. Compare for example Mlle LePattre with the "Mamzelles" in the Malory Towers books.

Yes, that would have been a big distinction even for its time -- that each nationality wasn't given a certain set of stereotypical characteristics, but emerged as individuals.

I just started reading the original version of The School at the Chalet alongside the abridged version, and noticed that all mentions of money are multiplied in the later version. So when the book was written in 1925, the Bettany's had 3000 pounds in stock, which gave them an income of 120 pounds a year. In the 1967 version, that doubled to 6000 in stock, with an income of 240. School fees tripled from 120 to 360 pounds. So some of the points that were current to the original books were updated or left out in the abridged editions.

>7 SylviaC:: What a strange thing to do.

And why would the figure be doubled in one case and tripled in the other?

I suppose they were trying to reflect prices/value in the world at the time of the reprints. Perhaps school fees had risen above the rate of inflation. I do wish publishers wouldn't do that; I'd rather they added a footnote with an estimate of what those figures might be at the time of reprinting. It's like when "old money" (pounds, shillings, pence) gets changed to modern currency, as in the most recent St Clare's editions; it just feels wrong when other aspects haven't been changed.

I got very confused when I was reading a recent reprint of a Mallory Towers book and the kids were all putting five or ten pounds into a collection box. It was only when a fifty-pence coin was mentioned that I realised the money had all be converted to modern money.

So confusing.

I started reading these books (out of order) in the 1980s. I was an American who got hooked on vacation in Ireland, and was never able to figure out the money! Thankfully my mom was Irish (and had read the Chalet School when she was young) and was able to explain things that were outside my frame of reference. I agree that rereading them now I am very impressed by the wartime books and the treatment of the Nazis vs Germans issue.

Oh, and I remember when Joey was suddenly driving (I think in Guernsey after her marriage?)- it seemed like such a modern and adult thing!

I've just reread Mystery at the Chalet School with its unusual attention to films and cinema-going, attitudes to which are quite different from today. Only serious (e.g. historical themed) films are considered suitable for girls, and for many of them a trip to the cinema is quite a treat rather than a common activity. All the girls refer to the films as "flicks", a term which isn't used very much these days even in the UK.

And the "old girls" and mistresses smoke! Most of the books were written inside that time frame after it was acceptable for women to smoke, but before it was taboo to portray smoking by positive characters in children's books.

I used to read these as well as series like Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys, and before that, various Enid Blyton series while growing up. The majority of events were outside my experience - such as boarding school, driving a car, or even, as in the Peter and Jane series (which I used to teach my kids to read, as my mum taught me to read) going to the beach or popping out to the corner shop with no adult supervision. I also had to infer the meanings of words - such as 'sleuth', and I'm still not entirely sure exactly what a 'jalopy' is, other than some type of vehicle. My point being that I'm sure it was the same for everyone else, but we pick up on subtle clues we can't remember later that define the period for us. (ETA - so therefore, I can't answer the question.)

Oh - but I think I do remember noticing that no-one wore jeans / trousers / shorts.