To wonder WTF is wrong with Catherine Cookson

[JandamiHash]

I used to love Catherine Cookson adaptations when I was a teenager. LOVED them. Had loads of box sets and books. I recently discovered them on U and i’ve been watching a few and OMG they’re either all hysterically ridiculous, depressing or brutally violent. Or full of pedophiles

In The Girl the male love interest tells the female lead that she’s been “teasing him with that look ever since you first entered my yard”. Referring to when she was 10 and he was an adult! After losing several body parts in his pursuit for her love, the male love interest and the now grown up “tease” get together after her husband conveniently dies of cholera.

The Glass Virgin has a frizzy haired Emily Mortimer simpering around the North East, opting to be a peasant because she heard a second hand rumour that she isn’t part of her aristocratic family any more. She falls in love with a younger (and not terrible looking) Mr Bates from Downton Abbey, who has a (terrible) Irish accent but is called Manuel Mendoza?! Despite not being Spanish. Cue Emily Mortimer spending about an hour in total running through fields with a lamp shouting “Manuel! Manuel”. BTW Manuel first met her when she was 9 or 10, as her riding instructor, and she falls in love with him because he basically groomed her.

Tonight I’ve been utterly traumatised by the Dwelling Place - where a 16yo orphan, who lives in a cave with her siblings, is brutally raped in front of her little brother, is impregnated by her rapist, and then a couple of years later falls in love with him!! All whilst being perused by a bloke who was all “Im sexy and I love you, but I’m off to marry Hayley Cropper because her dad runs a mill and I’ll be in charge if I marry her, even though I hate her. I’ll pop in now and again to stroke your hand and sniff your hair”.

WTF is wrong with Catherine Cookson?! And also - what was wrong with teenage me that I found these romantic?

Yes I know these books are old as dirt but still, most were written in the 60’s, and I don’t think that even then it was acceptable to fall in love with your rapist or be attracted to 10yo girls.

I want to watch more but I think they’re too insane and unhinged for my liking.

I look back with what I was reading - the millls and boons, Virginia Andrews etc with horror now. Feel a bit disgusted as it all was pictured to be quite normal. The incest makes me feel ill now but was portrayed as ...romantic ?!

i think i read some mills and boon and my dm said better to read now, when a teenager, than when you are 40
then i got into james herbert/Jeffrey archer

Sunday night telly was spent with my mum (Dad: "I'm not watching that rubbish. I'll be upstairs reading.") watching women have terrible things done to them at the hands of men and dough-faced ladies in crinolines. I used to think it was great! But yeah, seeing women being abused on telly wasn't fun. I suppose ITV wanted to show the "reality" of what went on back then. It certainly was no picnic.

The Cinder Path had Catherine Zeta Jones in it, before she got married.

Nice girls didn’t in those days so stories would be pretty boring if it wasn’t forced on them. Was how it was.
Edit -I’m 71 btw

I remember theses books and the inevitable TV adaptions.

Why hasn’t someone pulled them if these are the story lines and themes. They are dressed up as romance but are anything but!

My Mum loved Catherine Cookson. She’s a miserable person so that explains a lot.

No, it was classified as one of the greats of the western cannon. And yet, if you’ve ever read it, you think WTF to this even. It’s actually not a very good book, written completely in the male gaze and if that had not been the subject matter - I doubt it would have been viewed in this way.

One of Anita Shreve’s novels, Fortune’s Rocks,is about an affair between a 15 year old girl and a 41 year old man. Published in 1999, set in 1899 and classed as a romance, I remember thinking it was absolutely grim.

Yes I was thinking about the ‘romantic’ books I read as a teenager - the thorn birds is another very very dodgy one that doesn’t stand up to modern scrutiny and I loved that book so much at 14/15!!

They were examples of a ripping yarn rather than literature. Tess of the Durbervilles and Atonement deal with equally difficult subject matters and are respected.

If you’ve got a spare 3 hours, it’s worth watching Contrapoints video essay on Twilight and the purpose/meanings of romantic fiction. The middle section gets into all this business and the fantasy vs reality role of being ravaged and so on. Even with Catherine Cookson, it can be reductive to say things happening to characters in stories are condoned as what we want to happen IRL, but they feed some other need. They’re dated for sure, and she had her own issues going on, but they’re just one (very successful) incarnation of a tale old as time.

It is an interesting but depressing chicken and egg situation where women write about and read about men treating us in various abhorrent and abusive ways which normalises the abuse.
It also sets the bar of “good” so low that we tolerate and are happy with male behaviour which we would never find acceptable in a woman.

In the 90s I did my uni dissertation on the portrayal of women in romantic fiction. I read ALOT of mainstream popular fiction for it. All of the themes you describe in CC were in Mill's and Boon (though usually more glamorous settings). Then in the 80s you had what were termed ‘shopping and fucking’ novels like Lace. Sex plus consumerism. Women had more agency in these novels but not that much. Rape was a common theme.

Why on earth focus on Catherine Cookson’s work written over half a century ago? I was far more concerned by Fifty Shades.

My mum loved her books, but I wasn’t that keen and they seemed to make so many into ‘ mini dramas’.
I tried one or two, but found them a bit boring. She was ‘ of her time’ really and very popular

My grandma used to read a lot of Catherine Cookson. Had no idea they were so racy / grim.

Philippa Carr, Daughters of England series, is also dodgy. I remember my mum devouring them in the 80s. Another friend recommended them to me recently. I'm not sure I'll ever think of her in the same way.

Agreed

Im sexy and I love you, but I’m off to marry Hayley Cropper

This stood out for me🤣🤣🤣

I used to read Catherine Cookson novels in my teens/early twenties, so during the 1980s. I do remember thinking they were a bit grim, but it’s only now that you’re pointing out some of the really disturbing themes, that I realise just how much of it must either have gone over my head or been obliterated from my memory. I don’t read them or anything like them now, mostly because my reading tastes have changed over the years, but I feel like having a look at one now to see how I react now that I’m older!

Can’t believe I can remember this but in the book Manuel Mendoza is an Irish orphan who has to make his own way in the world from about 12, and one day he hears someone calling out to a foreign sailor “Hey Manuel! Manuel Mendoza!” He likes the name and decides to take it for himself, hence the Irish accent but Spanish name

I've had a few interesting conversations with my mum (80) recently. She adored Cookson. She read the lot.
DM couldn't stand her MIL, fair enough, probably with good cause but digging through MILs past my mum's complete callousness is amazing.
MIL's mum died in childbirth, my mum said this wasnt a problem because she was treated like a princess by her dad and older brothers.
She had a piano, this signifies poshness and leisure time to my mum.
That piano was actually in a crowded terraced mining house.
MIL wasn't lonely or neglected because her older sister with her own kids lives down the road.
Mil left home at 14, my mum sees this as adventure and boldness, not a 14 being exploited, working in a boarding school as a cleaner.
MIL gets pregnant, ( mum sees this as her own fault) begs sister to take her in, turned away. (Well you would). Has to marry the father (happy ending) he knocks her around (she did have a temper) he earns good money but she has to work, pregnant at the brickworks ( my mum literally sees this as her delilberately taking this job to annoy FIL)
It goes on, my Cookson loving mum, literally sees her MIL as the bad guy and FIL ( wife beating but she asked for it) as the strong, funny charming poor exploited man.

Cookson filled my mum's head with utterly evil justification for when bad things happen to people she didn't like.She had a piano and was s3xually promiscuous, the ingratitude!

Yet Atonement was so badly written. Tess is a brilliant book, a classic Hardy.

I quite like the one with Emilia Fox who marries in to that rough Geordie family. The Black Tower? Of course, she's been abused.

I don't mind the Catherine Cookson TV series. Tide of life is disturbing though. Classic abusive relationship. Financial abuse, physical abuse, rape. The Fifteen Streets is good. The Dwelling place is awful. I haven't read any of the books.

These types of stories are as old as time and do represent lots of peoples experiences whether we like it or not

Dont read 1001 nights then whatever you do!