Enid Blyton - ridiculous

[JumpRope]

Dick and Fannie from The Magic Faraway Tree have been renamed Rick and Frannie.

I'm a bit pissed off. How ridiculous!

[newestbridearound]

My favourite books of all time. In fact this thread has made me want to read them again .

[Pigeonhouse]

I can't remember the Fantastic Four, Crowler, and I always hated the Faraway Tree books, so I can't remember too much about them. But you certainly don't have to struggle to find fairly objectionable attitudes in most of her books.

Black people/golliwogs are stupid, credulous and/or criminal. Girls are either timid, domestic and continually set to making meals and bedmaking in caves while the boys get on with the exploring and decision-making, or - like George and Jo in the Famous Five - are presented as pathologically hating their own sex and trying continually to 'be as a good as a boy'. 'Normal' people are white, English and middle-class - any others are either comic relief (like Ern and Goon in the Five Find-Outers, the French teachers in the school stories), rent-a-villains, dishonourable/frivolous and needing to be taught proper behaviour by English people (gypsy-Spanish-circus-girl Carlotta , dishonest French Claudine who cheats, lies and steals, in St Clare's, the filmstar wannabe American Zerelda in Malory Towers) etc etc.

I don't think it's really an issue for children who read widely, but EB wrote so much (800 books or something along those lines?) that it would be worrying to think of an impressionable child living entirely inside a fictional world where those attitudes were all s/he was absorbing...

[Elsiequadrille]

Fatty (aka Frederick Algernon Trottville) was a great character. I remember trying out his invisible ink using lemon juice

[Pigeonhouse]

Brooncoo, my vague memory is that Fatty starts off being considered a show-off and ridiculous in the first Find-Outers book, but by the second one or so, he's very much in charge - everyone meets in his shed, he's always the one initiating or paying for things, putting on disguises, solving mysteries, and generally becomes the Alpha Male of the group and Pip and Larry have gone back to being the characterless drones they clearly are!

What's really interesting me about this thread is how many people are really, really fond of the Faraway Tree books, which I always thought were awful, even when I was about eight. I liked some of the lands that came to the top of the tree, and that one plot about some bad types taking over the tree so the good guys have to climb up and attack from inside the Slippery-Slip, but I hated all that comic jiggery-pokery about the Saucepan Man and Dame Washalot and the Angry Pixie.

[Bowlersarm]

They were written in a different age, and reflect that, that's all.

Quite interesting re reading them. I used to be insensed and full of rage at the way George was treated by the others. Now I find her incredibly infuriating-very annoying and sulky.

I collect children's books first editions. I love the Famous Five ones the best-the jackets just thrill me when I look at them. So sad, I know.

[clam]

ledaire I saw a version of "Mr Pinkwhistle Interferes" with the illustration on the front cover having him sitting on a little boy's bed!

[laregina]

YANBU - I love the Magic Faraway Tree books actually . I read them to my DC and part of the fun was giggling about the names

[laregina]

Pidgeonhouse I agree about the Saucepan Man actually - he was a pain the arse .

I didn't like the Famous Five much but I loved the Secret Seven - they seemed way more dodgy

[JakeBullet]

I seem to recall the Enid Blyton forums and people writing uo what became of Fatty, Larry, Daisy and Pip. Larry's was the funniest...something to do with being a bank manager. embezzlement and a dodgy time in the showers at Wormwood Scrubs contributing to his dodgy gait now he is out on parole.

[SomethingkindaOod]

www.fanfiction.net/book/Enid-Blyton/?&srt=1&r=10

[JakeBullet]

Was the Left responsible for pulping books they did not approve of then?

Someone posted that further back.

[PsammeadPaintedTheLion]

I'm currently reading the Faraway Tree series to my 4 year old. She loves them.

What does it matter if a character is called Frannie or Fanny? My 4 year old does not know what she used to be called, all she knows is that the character is called Frannie. It really does not matter to her in the least, this is only an issue for the parents, and a really unimportant one at that.

She likes the stories because they are just thrilling enough for her age group without being too frightening, because they appeal to her sense of fantasy, and because the characters are easy to understand and like.

They are simple stories, happily I have not encountered any racism, classism etc yet, if those things were in the orginal I am glad they have been removed. It's entirely appropriate for an older child to be made aware of those sort of historical issues, but the faraway tree books are for very small children and I want to read her a story, not give her a social history lesson.

[LaTrucha]

We have just read the Enchanted Wood. I had no idea the names had changed as I didn't read them as a child. I suppose my parents didn't like them.

I don't know about her other books, but I found the sexism fairly anodyne compared to what they are bombarded with on TV and at school at the moment.

My DCs are 6 and 3 and they have loved the book to the point of tears when it finished. I thought Blyton did a great job at having cliffhanger chapters and I am grateful that the book seems to have eased the transition between picture books and chapter books for them.

I am partially deaf, and pretty sensitive to insensitive comments about deafness made in every day life, which I think are numerous and commonplace. It hadn't ocurred to me to be offended by the jokes made about the Saucepanman's deafness until I read this thread. My kids find him hilarious. I think I don't find it offensive because the jokes are like a lot of ones for little children based on confusion of words. For this reason, I don't think I do mind him.

To be honest, I am quite glad they have changed the names. DD has adopted Frannie as her imaginary friend and I would not have liked her to be teased by older children for saying 'Fanny' at school without her knowing what it now means at all.

[frugalfuzzpig]

They were written in a different age, and reflect that, that's all.

I agree with that. Just like, as I mentioned earlier, the original Peter Pan. And I dare say a load of other children's classics that we haven't got to yet.

I have to say, I went through years of reading pretty much nothing but Blyton (I was a very early reader, but with comprehension issues that weren't picked up on - so I'd be pushed to read much harder books, and didn't really understand them despite being able to read the words - so I'd escape back to my comfort books) and I am fairly convinced that I'm not racist, sexist, xenophobic... :o

It's just like most things that can have outside influences on our children - TV, toys etc - as long as overall they get a healthy rounded view of life and we as parents are careful to provide a good example, are a few old fashioned stories really going to have much impact?

[thecatfromjapan]

Dd has downloaded an audio version of one of Enid Blyton's books. It's the one where they stay with a rich, black family, whose son is at school with one of the brothers.

It's racist.

I'd be embarrassed to let dd play it on a bus, out loud. Which is telling.

More than that, I think it would cause pain, and then anger, actually, to people listening to it. Which gives me pause for thought.

I genuinely think it's a problem without a simple solution.

Enid Blyton is a wonderful children's author. She wrote amazing adventure stories for children. She didn't write the sort of stories that adults think children should read ("stretching" them intellectually, or morally and educationally improving). I loved the "Adventure" series. I know so many people who went into literary careers and name that series as a first love!!!

But there is no getting away from the political content of some of her books.

I think the issue may lie in the fact that this content is - not yet - purely a historical artefact. Racism, and racial discrimination (especially structural discrimination) continues. There are people alive right now whose lives are made worse - actually worse - by racism. And that is why the racism (for example) of Blyton's books cannot be "safely" corralled into the display cabinet of "historical attitudes".

Likewise, I think if you are on the receiving end of sexist discrimination, and class/socio-economic discrimination, it is less easy to read this stuff.

It's not easy.

Simply dismissing people who say these things as "po-faced" adn "joyless lefties" is, I think, a little weak of brain. Using your intelligence to explore these questions almost certainly won't cause your head to melt, or give you wrinkles. You can do it safely, and even build up to it with small patches (starting with a couple of minutes, maybe) at convenient moments of the day. Maybe when you're in the bath, or on the loo, or something.

[thecatfromjapan]

Having said all that, I think I'd like to add that one of the things about Blyton's sexism is that it is not simple. I would say that she presents a complicated view of this particular issue in her books. I'm quite sure that one of the reasons she remains so popular with children is that she is so much on "their" side - and I think she holds open an active, powerful subject-role for children of both genders.

HEr idea of femininity/correct behaviour for females is surprisingly wide - I'm sure that's why she endures in popularity with girls. The borders of acceptable female behaviour/identity are patrolled in quite an annoying way, but also undermined with great regularity.

I remember attending a feminist conference, where a lesbian comic did a long spiel about George and Alicia and all the girl-friendships and power jostling at the schools.

I have a bit of a soft spot for Enid Blyton. And I'm less keen of Philip Pullman. I think she's actually less didactic as a writer, and permits her readers more imaginative freedom, and more freedom to position themselves against her overt point of view/to take issue with her.

But the racism still makes me cringe. And a lot of the class stuff. I don;t apporve of much censorship. I like the idea of explanatory prefaces. But I don;t think I do object to a little snipping of the racism, and class nastiness - maybe it can be re-inserted when racism really is a thing of the long distant past.

[persimmon]

I disagree Psammead, I think it is important that things are being softened and 'cleaned up' and changed from the originals. Makes me angry, actually. I adored Blyton books as a child and amazingly am neither sexist nor racist as an adult. It's patronising, misguided claptrap.

[persimmon]

..and I would like to be credited with sufficient intelligence by publishers to make my own decisions about whether reading material is 'suitable'.

[brooncoo]

I don't want a book changed or censored as some of the ideas or characters are now out of date or considered more unacceptable these days.

Either Blytons books will disappear or they will be an interesting reference to the past.

Catfromjapan - think you are being a bit patronising if you think others can't see the issues for themselves. Might go and have a bubble bath to see if I can expand and tax my little brain.

[Bowlersarm]

I think you are looking into it too deeply, thecat. They are old children's books. I make no apology for still enjoying them, for what they are.

[Ledaire]

clam

Absolutely innocent use of "interferes". My Dad used to obliquely warn me as a child about stranger danger by using that word. I didn't twig what interfering might have consisted of until I was much older and had indeed experienced it

[thecatfromjapan]

It's not patronising: it's prompted by furious rage. I hate it when people put something in a word-box in order to permit themselves to stop thinking about it.

[Bowlersarm]

Well, don't read them then thecat.

[DeWe]

I find Enid Blyton quite fascinating. Because although people accuse her of sexism-when she wrote them she was actually the other way.
To have George doing what the boys did-and better that them was really not done at the time, probably caused a few raised eyebrows. Not having the girls staying at home keeping out of danger was probably considered by some people that the boys had failed to keep them safe.

And I loved Anne when I read it, the descriptions of her "housekeeping" the cave in Five Run Away Together had me so jealous. I wanted a cave to do that to! Anne is actually written as a very brave character. She doesn't enjoy the adventures like the others, but she's not going to be left out and does her bit too.
I would definitely have been Anne. Dick to me has the least character.
But interestingly, if you read Russell Davis (?) account of filming the FF in the 70s, he wanted to be Dick from the start.

Her characters have similarities-as do, I think pretty much all authors who write a lot. Noel Streatfield, for example, tended to have a small rather pretty, slightly spoilt one, often good at dance (Louise, Lydia, Posy, Holly ...), a not-considered-pretty rather awkward one (Vicky, Gemma, Petrova, Jane,the boy in curtain up...), and a responsible (but talented) older one (Isabelle, Anne, Pauline, Sorrel...).

But I don't think all her groups are clones.
Famous Five: Leader (Julian), Tomboy (George) Second (Dick), Younger sister content in who she is(Anne)
Five find outers: Leader, show off and arogant (Fatty) Second (Larry), Pip (irritating big brother) Daisy (responsible, slightly mothering) Bets (youngest, trying to keep up with the older ones)
Adventure series: Neither Philip or Jack totally take the lead. Philip is the animal lover somewhat impetuous and inclined to a temper, and Jack is calmer, and a bird lover. Dinah, not a tomboy, but determined not to be left out. Lucy Anne, nervous, happy to follow Jack anywhere, even into danger, but not wanting adventures for the sake of it.
Adventurous 4: Andy is the leader, having left school to be a fisherman like his dad. Tom, not too disimilar to Dick as in second in command, but never jostling for leadership, tends to carelessness. Mary and Jill are identical twins, but Jill is definitely the leader and more inclined to have ideas etc.

I think if EB had written a story with a mix of these characters in, but not saying which they were, then you'd probably have been able to pick out which one they were. You can see similarities, but there not identical. And the form in which they're written means that similarities are inevitable. Just thinking about it Julian and Dick are in a lot of ways younger versions of the Hardy Boys with Julian as Frank and Dick as Jo.

[PsammeadPaintedTheLion]

Speaking of the faraway tree books in particular, I think it's absolutely fine that they are cleaned up.

I read the first one in the series to my child when she was three. She's just turned four and we're on the second book.

I see absolutely no reason or need for a child that young to be made aware that racism etc is something that even exists. I don't think it's a concept that would ever occur to a child of that age and I'd rather shield her from it until she encounters it herself which I know she will at some point.

When she does, old fashioned books are a good jumping off point in discussing that sort of issue, in looking at history in a way a child can relate to. Until then I am happy for the basic idea that someone is less worthy due to their sex, race, job etc to not even enter her head via a story she adores.

Not being a racist is not something one should feel proud of, any more than one feels proud of breathing air, or having a nose. It is a state of normality. Preserving that state for a child as young as 3 or 4 is neither mishuided nor claptrap, it is just normal. There is plenty of time in life to learn about how horrifying humans can be towards each other. A few years of innocence is not, I think, patronising.