Lessons I Have Learned From Reading Girls' School Stories

I sometimes claim to collect girls’ school stories. But, deep down, I know “collect” is far too grand a term: it also implies some degree of discretion and selectivity. Really, I just buy whatever I come across and then read it.

But, collector or not, I do have an entire bookcase filled with girls’ school stories—only a small bookcase, but still—ranging from Sarah Fielding’s The Governess; or, Little Female Academy (1749: said, in the introduction to my 1968 Oxford reprint, to be the first full-length novel written explicitly for children and, therefore, the first girls’ school story as well) to a much more modern series in which the girls all have boyfriends from a local boys’ school (unthinkable, in the Enid Blyton model!) and in which the hockey team is rather unfortunately called the Trebizon Tramps.

(Apparently, the Trebizon books were published between 1978 and 1994, but the few volumes I have are all from the 1980s.)

One argument that could be made against girls’ school stories as a genre is that they have a tendency to be formulaic. The same argument is often levelled against detective fiction, and it can be countered in the same way: certainly, the banal ones are formulaic, but a clever author working in an established genre can do much to subvert the reader’s expectations.

But that’s not really the point. I just like reading them, much as I like reading stories about plucky girl detectives, and therefore own a scary quantity of Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden novels.

And I have, over the years, culled a number of valuable life lessons from my reading of girls’ school stories, which will allow you to navigate life in a girls’ boarding school, should such a thing be necessary.

1. Midnight feasts must always include boiled eggs, sardines, biscuits, cake (preferably left over from somebody’s birthday, the celebration of which is the best reason for holding a midnight feast), boiled sweets, and tinned pineapple.

It may include bottled ginger beer, which allows a certain enjoyable hysteria to infiltrate the party through the fear that a mistress may hear the tops popping off and come to investigate. However, a midnight feast has more cachet if you manage to coax the cook into making fresh lemonade.

But a midnight feast should never, ever involve cooking sausages. This can only lead directly to disaster.

2. Midnight feasts should never be held anywhere near a swimming pool. This will also end in disaster. Plus, schoolgirls are hearty enough, without needing to hold swimming races at midnight.

3. If you develop a passionate friendship (or, more accurately, a “pash”) with another girl in the school, the object of your affections is significantly more likely than her schoolfellows to die in a freak cross-country skiing accident.

(Seriously. I wish I could remember the name of the book in which this was the main life lesson, but they all blur into each other after a few years.)

4. Mysterious men who hang around the school for no apparent reason are invariably either

a. planning to steal the school’s silver tennis trophies, in which case the school’s rebel should thwart his purpose and thus transform herself the school’s heroine, or

b. the long-lost and extremely wealthy relative of the girl who has just arrived at the school from somewhere in the Antipodes, and is busy not only shocking the school with the freedom of her colonial manners but also winning all their cricket matches through her mysterious power of “spin bowling.”

5. If an unusually tall and strong girl arrives at the school, another student will almost certainly fall over a cliff or be trapped in a burning building at some point during the coming term.

This outcome is inevitable if the unusually tall girl has a famous mountaineer for a father.

6. Unusually tall and strong girls also have problems with anger management. Why bad tempers are associated with physical strength is never explained in the books.

I suspect steroids.

7. School bullies are always motivated by jealousy of the other girls’ prettiness, because they themselves invariably have poor complexions and greasy hair. Their bullying can be stopped if you tell them firmly to stop eating chocolates and brush their hair one hundred times before bed every night.

8. If the school is divided into different houses for sporting events, one house will always be subject to the scorn of the others. This will stop when the members of the disdained house show an unusual talent for handicrafts, thus saving the school’s annual charity sale.

9. French mistresses are always either plump and cheerful or thin and cranky. In either case, they are the best subjects for practical jokes, because French mistresses are thoroughly credulous, and can be made to believe in anything from imaginary odours to self-propelled crockery.

If you have more than one French mistress, the two will usually be fierce enemies. You can use this to your advantage in practical jokes.

10. Most schools have girls who fall into the following categories: a skilled artist; a mathematical genius, who is often an excellent musician as well; a clever writer; a talented sportswoman; a practical joker; and a skilled needlewoman.

All of these will come in handy when you inevitably have to put on a pantomime in your fifth year.

If your school was founded by Enid Blyton, you stand a good chance of finding that one of your classmates used to ride bareback in a circus. She may also be of Spanish or gypsy ethnicity, and will therefore have a fiery and uncontrollable temper, even if she is not unusually tall.

11. Occasionally, a school will allow in a girl whose working-class father has made an enormous amount of money. She will not, of course, “fit into” the school, and may spend most of her time boasting about what her father can afford to buy.

If this is the case, it is in no way repellent for you to respond, “Really? Can he afford to buy himself a few hundred hs?

In fact, your classmates will ignore the egregious classism and applaud your quick wit.

Of course, the girl will almost certainly be expelled for bringing the school into disrepute—the headmistress will describe her as a “failed experiment”—so you need to make that remark early in the term.

12. If any of your classmates run away from school, there’s no need to be alarmed: they will certainly have forgotten to check on local public transport, and can easily be collected from the local train station.

13. One of your classmates will sleepwalk. This is usually a sign that they’re being pushed beyond their endurance by ambitious parents or ignored by parents who blame them for the death of a favoured sibling. These parents will be in no way affronted if you send them a letter pointing out the flaws in their parenting practices.

14. If your school has an unusual location, be aware that this is a sign that you may face certain challenges. Schoolgirls in Austria, for example, need to be prepared for everything from attending the Passion Play in Oberammergau to facing down Nazis. Schoolgirls who live in a former Cistercian abbey, on the other hand, face the threat of becoming entangled in the English folk-dancing revival.

I leave it to you to decide which is worse.

15. Finally, if your best friend is unusually beautiful and generally beloved, beware: she will almost certainly not “play the game,” and you will have to jeopardise your own place in the school to protect her from the consequences of her folly.