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.

I honestly don't see how you could read them aloud and have "discussions" as you go. It would take about a week to get through a chapter!. The vile attitudes aren't a sort of add on-they are pivotal to the plots.

Cross post, sirfred!

We would have to ban so many books to obtain rightthink. Most Shakespeare plays, Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, not to mention the Bible, Koran etc. Where does it end. It's Orwellian to ban things. Perhaps we should ban Orwell too seeing as his books might make people question all this madness?

Lostincake- you don't really think rhat do you? You're just saying it? Because I could explain to you, but I don't want to waste your time or mine if you're just doing a "it's Pc gorn mad....." rant.

No changes are okay.

It's a price of society history in words. The language shows the social views of the time and the norm of societal thinking for the era.

Consider the Prophet Muhammed who was a slave-owner, a warlord, a mass-murderer and took a child bride. This often get overlooked by my friends on the left because Islam is marginalised in Anglophone countries.

I don’t think they should be changed - all literature is a record of its time.

We have a huge bookcase stuffed full of books from my childhood (including Blyton) and many recently written books. Recently my DD and I have read Worst Witch, Dave Pigeon, Max Mystery Cat, Knitbone Pepper, Philosophers Stone and Secret Seven. All of these books have been fantastic in their own way. Enid Blyton definitely still has a place for children today - my daughter picked it out of the bookcase and asked to read it. She loved it as much as the recently written books and asked to read more. We laughed at some of the ridiculous sexism - she can spot it a mile off.

I remember consciously being annoyed at the stereotypes/sexism/racism when I read Enid Blyton as a child in the 80s, but could still appreciate the story and adventure.

TBH I take the OP's point BUT I also grew up reading Enid Blyton - pretty much read every book at least 4 times. I'm not a racist person now and have shared houses with people of all ethnicities.I also have a copy of "Little Black Sambo"! So I don't think I would change the books.

I donNt think the prophet Muhammad went to Malory Towers, did he?

Consider the Prophet Muhammed who was a slave-owner, a warlord, a mass-murderer and took a child bride. This often get overlooked by my friends on the left because Islam is marginalised in Anglophone countries.

You're revealing your true colours now, OP.

Go hug your Golly.

Like other lovely non-racist posters on this thread I grew up reading Enid Blyton and I’m (mostly fine). I also grew up watching Mind Your Language, Jim Davidson and Benny Hill on the telly. They never did me any harm. Can we bring them back too?

I think if you just keep them unedited as historic texts (and nobody is actually suggesting a Stalinist wholescale destruction) and don’t make revised texts available then you have effectively destroyed them in their original form as uncomplicated adventure/school stories for seven year olds to read for fun without parental involvement. And that’s fine if you think they’re crap, but sad if you think they had value in that’s form.

what true colours would they be? I'm just pointing out hypocrisy in condemning Blyton but giving marginalised groups leeway.
Ditto the hypocrisy of complaining about classism but using terms such as chavs and bogans.

Like other lovely non-racist posters on this thread I grew up reading Enid Blyton and I’m (mostly fine). I also grew up watching Mind Your Language, Jim Davidson and Benny Hill on the telly. They never did me any harm. Can we bring them back too?

Quite a few that do get shown (Porridge, for a start) have been edited since the 1970s ... you aren't seeing the originals.

How about the fashion for airbrushing cigarettes out of posters and photos from the past ?

Almost no-one reads the bible to their children, the CofE people who do expose their children to religion do so via the book of common prayer from 1662. But actually they don't, since the liturgy has been regularly updated and now they use Common Worship, specifically to keep it relevant in language. Bibles themselves of course are regularly updated.

Similar things happen in all religions, the actual texts are rarely read to children for entertainment, they might be read a recently published book of stories from Quran or Bible stories, but they won't be read the original. There hasn't been a single person on the thread suggesting the censorship or destruction of Enid Blyton, there's been support for the publishers own decision to adjust language (although there's been more support for them simply to stop publishing it) but no-one has advocated censorship.

I think it's very unlikely that many people here read any of the original pre war Blyton stories, but read revised post war versions where changes had already happened, so this nostalgia is not for the originals, just a 50-70's edit. What were the gollywogs in 3 gollywogs called for example?

My sister and I used to read EB's stories out loud and reverse the genders so in that sense the sexism was useful in helping us expose it and mock it at home. Many Mumsnetters will have books they inherited . I have my parents 1940s books for example of many kinds and plenty of us have all kinds of old bibles to which our children have access and they have not been harmed yet!

The Little house on the prairie book which briefly described the 13 year old who married at that age whose mother had also married young was always an interesting passage for me, not just that girls married at 13 (some, not most) in that area in those days but the way the writer then described it - not as the crime we might today but that she and her cousin thought it must be very hard to lose your freedom to play and have the responsibility of a child at such a young age.

Having originals available (and the internet can make some of these things a lot easier to find these days never mind old editions of books for 1p second hand and all those old books many of us read in badly stocked libraries which had very little that was new hence you did tend to see versions decades old!) is useful. Of course publishers can republish anything in any form they choose.

Those who are saying keep them as history texts are not merely advocating they be kept as historical artefacts but they are also advocating that these books and their disgraceful bias against others be read as entertainment for young children. Apparently that does not give rise to unconscious bias and many posters swear that they are unaffected by such things. Highly improbable.

Is there not a risk that heavy editing of children's literature means children won't be prepared for reading adult books which contain language and opinions which are unacceptable in modern times?

If children are only presented with works which fit into the ideas they are being taught are right, how will they learn to think critically? In this era of false news, and all sorts of propaganda being spewed out on the internet, it seems especially important that children should learn that just because something is written down, it doesn't mean it's correct.

I don’t think anything should be changed (especially not character names ). Either don’t let your children read them or don’t change them but explain carefully which bits are now unsuitable/how the world has changed.

That being said, a couple of them do contain the n word, and that would be my one strong exception to the above - that word should always come out.

Children are quite bright enough to understand that the books are a snapshot of a certain type of kid from a certain type of background in a certain era, and that many of the views have changed for the better.

I also think that blyton still gets kids reading, and in a world of iPhones and iPads, that’s important. But there are lots of bits that are problematical now, so a caveat is needed.

Enidblyton1 - I can’t help but feel you might be a bit biased

I really do not think racism in Enid's books are in the same class as Little House on the Prairie. Moreover, racism is for many obvious reasons not the same as other isms.

I have been surprised by this thread. I thought we'd come a long way but clearly many are unwilling to put themselves in other people's shoes and to see how the things the brush aside as tradition, interesting stuff is very damaging to swathes of their fellow human beings, generation after generation. It doesn't affect them so they have no problem having pleasure and encouraging their children to take pleasure in story plots that denigrate others. Normalising these books and reading them to kids, give the message to them that it is acceptable.

Jo Jones’ father wasn’t American.

There was an American girl in both MT and St C. Zerelda Brass (who’s hair was dyed and brassy, naturally) and Sadie in St C (who was elegant and rich).

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”

Ah, yes, Sadie and Zerelda! It was amusing that everyone tried to correct Zerelda's American accent when she was reciting Shakespeare. If they'd given it five minutes thought, they'd have realised that Shakespeare pre-dated the English migration to America, so Zerelda's pronunciation would be no further away from the 'original' than that of the middle class British schoolgirls.

I might be more willing to listen to people if they didn't hypocritically sermonise about classism while being happy to abuse lower class people as "chavs" or "bogans".

“I might be more willing to listen to people if they didn't hypocritically sermonise about classism while being happy to abuse lower class people as "chavs" or "bogans".”

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

Mind Your Language

Love it. The real butt of jokes is the English surely! Miiiiiiiiister Broooooown!