For the Honour of the School: Class in the Girls’ School Story

This article explores the constructions of class in British girls’ school stories. Feminist scholarship has, to some extent, reclaimed the school story, pointing to the widening of acceptable gender roles for female characters in girls’ school stories, compared to their counterparts in mixed-gender stories, and indeed real life. While the limitations of this middle/upper class milieu have been noted, they are less often explored. I use readings of Bourdieu as applied to femininities by scholars such as McRobbie and Skeggs to examine how the lived experience of class can trouble the status quo. School stories often limit encounters with working-class characters to servants, recipients of patronage or straightforward threats. However, in Brent-Dyer’s A Problem for the Chalet School (1956) a working-class character enters the school on her own terms. Her presence sparks the reaffirmation of the expectations for successful upper-class femininity.