Enid Blyton - what changes are/are not OK?

[VictoriaOKeefe]

My example:
Jo-Jo in the Island of Adventure - i think Jo-Jo should have been kept as a black villain but with the "rolling eyes" and "nigra" speech removed. Changing him to a white man sends the dangerous message to children that a member of a marginalised group cannot be a nasty, small-minded jerk (as TPratchett put it). Women are marginalised but i wouldn't pee on my cruel abrasive mother if she was on fire.

It is a total travesty to change books because of current fashions - people need to accept the past was different. It is like places taking down statutes of people now out of favour with some people - where does it stop destroying busts of Julius Ceasar. The current generation need to be educated about the past - you know when everyone was not attached to a phone!

Listen to me, then. I never use those words.

The only person using those words on the thread is the OP.

sirfredfredgeorge: "chav" and "bogan" are often used as insults on certain forums, including such as the baby names section of MN.

People need to be educated about the past, I agree. But not by reading books that present unpleasant attitudes to race, nationality, sex and class as normal and laudable. Particularly not if the books are formulaic, badly written and have a very limited vocabulary.

No need to censor them or ban them - just let them die. They are only still around because nostalgic parents are buying them.

“sirfredfredgeorge: "chav" and "bogan" are often used as insults on certain forums, including such as the baby names section of MN.”

What’s that got to do with this thread?

Victoria, I don't think "hypocrisy" means what you think it does.

No need to censor them or ban them - just let them die. They are only still around because nostalgic parents are buying them.

If the people in this thread really are discussing every bit of sexism, racism and any other ism in EB books, then it's going to be an incredibly long read.

Perhaps they will die out because people will be like "remember when my mum used to read us those really awful racist, sexist books by Enid Blyton? It took ages to get through them because they were so awful. Definitely going to avoid those in future".

Lots of people saying that the old EB books are good for teaching their children about the past. I just think that the way the book is packaged and presented, makes it seem normal/acceptable and some children will definitely be absorbing the themes in the way the original books were written.

If a parent reads their black child a racist EB book, what does it teach them? That in the past popular books had really racist themes? How does this help them? They will already be aware of racism, so it doesn't teach that and I don't think we should be expecting them to feel grateful that modern children's books are now better in this regard.

Downthestrada, more importantly, with all the books that are out there, why would a parent insist on supporting such books under the guise of teaching their children about the past?

These books are not particularly well written, have very little literary value, and there are many other non-racist, non-sexism, etc books out there to choose from. Both for their literary value and to teach children about the horrible past.

I just don't buy this business about the books being used to teach kids about the past. Of all the other choices out there? Insisting on buying and popularising such horrid beliefs about others?

Very worrying.

Someone also mentioned that Enid's books can help kids better understand these subjects in adult books. Firstly, I'd be very worried if there are popular and accepted adult books that normalises or uses racism as acceptable themes. Secondly, if books like Enid Blyton's are the sorts of things used to help students grapple with literature or to aid comprehension, etc, then the UK education system is in trouble.

Gnashing I agree.

I think it's just nostalgia and maybe people trying to justify it. There are other ways of teaching that the past was different. I'm certainly glad that my mum didn't try to read me EB books after a day of racist bullying at school.

The books were crap anyway, hopefully they die out.

No changes - but age appropriate discussion/explanations and questions to discuss with an adult re society has changed.

They could not successfully modernise most of these books. Two i remember, but cannot fathom the name, involved children living alone making own homes at a preteen age. One under a tree, one in a barn. The sense of adventure and freedom cannot translate til now as we are now all much more aware of the impossibility of that reality. When i was little, i believed it was possible. Nowadays kids dont believe not so much.

I do not believe in censoring or ridding of books. I do agree in the idea of a foreward to point out these books are in original print and the racist terms.

Zerelda wanted to be an actress like her idol Lossie Laxton but couldn’t act. The rest of the form set her up to fail and enjoyed taking her down a peg or two

I think it was Maureen in the fifth year who buddied up with Gwen that they set up to fail by making out they were interested in her ‘skills’ then ripped the piss out of her. Zerelda was quite popular IIRC and it was Miss Hibbert who inadvertently ridiculed her, although she apologised after and gave her some constructive criticism

I think it was Maureen in the fifth year who buddied up with Gwen that they set up to fail by making out they were interested in her ‘skills’ then ripped the piss out of her. Zerelda was quite popular IIRC and it was Miss Hibbert who inadvertently ridiculed her, although she apologised after and gave her some constructive criticism

Yup two incidents.

They encouraged Zerelda to read for Juliet knowing what her American accent would do to the part, they also bouyed her "skills" meaning she threw herself into the part further causing Miss H to have a conniption Zerelda became more popular post Juliet-gate as the girls discovered she was made of "decent stuff"

DS (5) was given the Wishing Chair books for his bday and we sat down to read them. They were recent reissues but hadn't changed the name of the pixie character - which is Chinky ffs. I made a split-second decision to refer to the character as Pixie instead which I then had to stick to for three books and relay to DH to do the same.

I get what people are saying about a learning opportunity but I'm not sure this would have worked in that way. I wish they'd just changed it so we could have enjoyed a fairly innocuous fairy story together.

they made Anne younger than the others to justify her being left out of anything dangerous but I don't remember her being younger in the books

She was a bit younger - the youngest of the three siblings - but not massively. It's probably more than 40 years since I've ready any of them, but I have a feeling they were supposed to be 13, 12 (or possibly 11?) and 10 at the beginning of the series.

In the very first Five book J, D and A were 12,11 and 10 and George was 11 like Dick so would ‘fit right in.’ There are later references to their ages, things like ‘well if Julian can’t be responsible aged 14 it’s a poor show’ in later books.

How old they were supposed to be by book 21 isn’t eluded to as surely Julian would be about 20! I don’t think she intended there to be so many

I've noticed that the girls are younger in all the adventure books - Jo is a few years older than Fanny in the Faraway Tree, with Bessie in between. Bets in the Find-Outers is eight, Pip, Daisy and Fatty about 11, Larry is older at 12 or 13. FF as above but the same ages for Jack, Philip, Dinah and Lucy-Ann (x of Adventure), Jack, Mike, Peggy and Nora (Secret Island), the Adventurous Four, etc.
Subconscious justification?

It's probably relevant that I read the books in the 70s so corporal punishment was still the norm in schools and far from unusual at home, but also the most problematic books had gone out of print - I'd never heard of the Three Golliwogs until I was an adult, for example. The only gollies mentioned were invariably the mayors, in Toytown (Noddy) and in the Land of Toys, so most respectable. The baddies tended to be goblins (greenish), nouveau riches, or vaguely-Nazi types so yes, foreign, and often swarthy with it, but the good-hearted jolly foreigners were equally numerous.
Some of the Blytons I won't share with dd until she's old enough to understand subtext properly - the Put-em-Rights and the Six Bad Boys - the latter is hugely progressive for its time, trying to show how a group of diverse boys ended up in juvenile Court, and does show how their situations were all regarded by institutions and locals of the day. Hugely educational while also viciously anti-Irish and nasty about women who worked but didn't have to. Island of Adventure is I think the only other one that is beyond the standards I'm willing to explain, though if for example I still had my copy of Little Black Sambo (not Blyton) I wouldn't show it to the kids until they're much older. Five go to Smugglers Top has the baddie pretending to be deaf, so that will need talking through so dd doesn't think that's plausible let alone likely.

The only gollies mentioned were invariably the mayors, in Toytown (Noddy) and in the Land of Toys, so most respectable. The baddies tended to be goblins (greenish),

You do know that's because the originals were already rewritten in the late 60's/70's Here's the original of the dark dark wood:
morpheusatloppers.wordpress.com/2017/01/27/morpheus-on-noddy-in-the-dark-dark-wood/
I believe that was already rewritten to goblins by the 70's, even if the more positive black characters were still there, unfortunately I can't find a 70's edition online to check (and I don't have any copies, although sadly I do have many other EB's)

Bertram, my point was that how can people talk about classism and then deride "chavs" for their choices in life such as baby names?
Also there's Doctor Who's "The Unquiet Dead" where Rose Tyler barges into Victorian Britain and decides to start 21st century consciousness raising without the slightest regard for Gwyneth and Sneed's different circumstances.

Yes, each age thinks it's perfect or better at least and later we realise they weren't really. Enid B worked (many women didn't) and she had role models of strong girls like George and derided frilly dress silly girls stuff so that was a huge change from some other books and very good for girls but there was certainly so much sexism in the books we were getting from the library in the 70s that we were amused by it. However that was also the case in books we read written in the Victorian age and earlier and in many of the songs we sang and sing which are often based on old poems. The old fairy tales are some of them most interesting with children starved to death, abandoned and all the rest and the old nursery rhymes my parents sang and said to us and I did with my children. It is just part of our culture and history but does not mean those are the only books we read. it is a small part of a wide range of media to which we are exposed.

Game of Thrones wihch I've never watched actually presumably similarly presents a past (an accurate past) where men fight with swords and rape women. It is very popular.

"strong girls like George"
Girly girl isn't weakness. It's that kind of thinking which has led to baby girls being named Ryan (which means "little king")

"Bertram, my point was that how can people talk about classism and then deride "chavs" for their choices in life such as baby names?"
In order for it to be hypocrisy it it has to be the same people!

The pout about George is that she isn't actually a strong girl. She's a girl who dispises her own sex, but still always has to be rescued by boys in the end. She is only ever "almost as good as a girl". She's a shocking role model-and obviously isn't intended to be one. She's intended to be an example of what happens when you don't "girl" right.

In the books George pretends to be a boy she is strong and brave like a boy.
Anne is female and girly and seen as week.
All this is telling girls is that traditional female attributes are inferior to male attributes.
I know it's a slightly different time but the suffragettes didn't feel they had to pretend to be men to want rights for women.
I remember reading swallows and amazon's which I think was written at a similar time and the girls in that were allowed to be girls and strong, as were the girls in the narnia books.