Background and Main Characters
The Chalet School is founded in 1925 by Madge Bettany when her brother Dick has to return to his job in the Forestry Commission in India. She comes to the conclusion that starting a school would be a convenient way to generate some much-needed income, while also looking after her infirm younger sister Joey. Finding that suitable locations in England would be too expensive for her plans, she decides to look abroad, and finally settles on a large chalet in the Austrian Alps, conveniently providing a helpful climate for Joey's recuperation. Within a few years a sanatorium is built not far from the school, where tuberculosis patients convalesce. The founder, Dr Jem Russell, along with Dr Jack Maynard, provides assistance to members of the school and they eventually marry Madge and Joey respectively. Robin Humphries (in the later books Soeur Cécile) is also a main character, until she leaves the Chalet school to go to Oxford and later becomes a nun. The books then follow a variety of characters, including Daisy Venables, Bride Bettany and Gay Lambert, until Mary-Lou Trelawney comes to the school, and becomes the main character for several books. After she leaves school, in the later books, Joey's triplets, Len, Con & Margot, become main characters. The three main leads throughout the series are generally accepted to be Joey Bettany, Mary-Lou Trelawney and Len Maynard.
Throughout the series, various girls arrive at the school with personal problems, bad attitudes or behavioural issues. As a result of the ministrations of better-behaved classmates and the school mistresses, including Miss Annersley and Miss Wilson, they all tend to discover the error of their ways and become model pupils, or 'real Chalet School girls'. This formula of a troublesome new girl who reforms and conforms is most common in the later books.
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