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 also reckon Jacqueline Wilson’s books will be globally trounced in 30 years. In one book she has a 14yo getting off with her teacher!!

I refused to read or watch it for that reason. Boak! 😰😰😰

Turned out to be a gay heartthrob didn’t he..

Oh oh oh I've just remembered Lena Kennedy! I don't think her books were quite so problematic but I do remember there being lots of melodrama in a more kitchen sink drama kind of way?

I used to read CC, as did most women i knew. But wouldn't touch them now. Recently I reread to Serve Them All my Days by Delderfield. Loved the book and the TV adaption, so started to read some others. Put them all very quickly back into the charity shop. Just so dated, as you might expect. Winston Graham the same - Poldark possibly okish due to love for the TV series (both), but some of his others no thanks again. Shame really.

If you're traumatised by Catherine Cookson then you need to get a grip.

Most disturbing books I ever read.

I love Jacqueline Wilson especially her older YA books from the 80s but yeah the Love Lessons one was problematic . There was an earlier one she did called The Power of the Shade with a similar pupil-teacher dynamic (she has a crush on him and he invited her to his place) but at least in that one the teacher say no to anything further happening. Same with one of her Girls (Ellie, Nadine, Magda) books. Love Lessons was basically about child abuse and grooming presented as an affair . The girl was excluded from school and blamed for being abused basically .

I loved this tv adaptation and suspect I was primary school age when I watched it, god knows what my mum was thinking! I read the book when I was 10 or 11yo and mum warned me it was a bit raunchy. It’s very raunchy!

I'm younger (40s) but even the 90s were grim. I think attitudes have only begun to really shift in the last 15 years or so- but for toxic males in power right now across the Pond that's the 'woke mind virus' which needs promptly purging away. I hope we won't be so stupid as to let a similar ilk gain power over here.
I am so angry at the prospect of my DDs potentially being treated the way my friends and I were treated when we were teens.

No, his illegitimate son (who also became a priest) drowns.

Thirded please @JandamiHash . This part made me howl "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”.

ETA: I'm sure a few years ago they used to show the adaptations at about 3pm which I found surprising given the amount of violence in them. I can't imagine they'd cut it all out because there'd be no program left.

OMG! My teenage years were scarred by blockbuster novels like this —they were full of rape and inappropriate sexualization of young girls. By the hero! Don’t know how I lucked into a normal love life and marriage with these exsmples.

I think I had the book at one point, but I never got round to reading it. I tend not to read something I have watched on tv or seen at the cinema, and vice versa. That doesn't work with my brain lol. It's either one or the other.

I loved the Mallens when it was on TV (though hated some of the characters) and read all the books lol.

I think it just goes to show how much we change our outlooks over the years. It’s really quite horrifying to look back and see, even in my own lifetime, how much unsavoury behaviour was accepted or tolerated, especially towards women and especially young women. Behaviour that is a sackable offence now was laughed at and you were derided as being stuck up or frigid for not liking it (remember how ubiquitous the word ‘frigid’ used to be in the past). Even as recent as Friends, I can see stuff that is wtf?

I loved the Catherine Cookson adaptations. They were very grim up north, but tbf it was quite grim up north in Victorian Britain. Particularly for poor women.
The Dwelling Place was just too far though.

Loved Poldark. that said, I have one issue .here are two rape scenarios in the books. One is presented as rape, it's obvious that the perpetrator is a slimeball vicar who rapes his reluctant bride again and again, the other scenario is portrayed as a bit more ambiguous, and the perpetrator is a good egg, a hero, and the victim is his ex flame who ended up marrying someone else and being widowed by him.

@JandamiHash Jacqueline Wilson has pretty much said she regrets "Love Lessons" and wouldn't write it now.

When I think about it now I had some dark reading habits as a kid. I read all the Flowers in the Attic books, The Thornbirds, The Mallens, Catherine Cookson, Thomas Hardy, that Lolita book yet I was a right Pollyanna as a child (ironically didn’t read that one). I don’t think I even stopped to think, hold on a minute. Thankfully I did eventually develop better thought processes once I hit my mid to late teens. I pick apart a lot of old books and movies/tv now.

It’s more being aghast at what was considered acceptable behaviour.

Another fan of hers in my teens/twenties. I think they were so popular because they were so relatable to what life was like back then. Especially for us working class Northerners.

I remember my Nan, who never liked to talk about the past, making comments that aligned with CCs storylines, lord of the Manor taking what they wanted from young girls in service type things. My grandfathers life was very similar to CCs as in her grew up with his sister who was really his mum, she’d been raped at 13 but he never knew that till he was older.

I think I still have a load of her books in the attic, I was thinking recently I might dig them out. It will be interesting to see how I perceive them now compared to when I was younger.

I remember loving the Fifteenth Streets with young Sean Bean. I wonder what those actors think about those adaptations in today’s world.

That’s another one I read. I think I’ve read nearly all the books mentioned on here and all in my teens.

@AliceMcK as soon as I started reading this thread I could hear Sean Bean's accent in my head 😂

The books were of their time, and I enjoyed them years ago.👍

Looking at some of the vile dross, with books, pods, music and films, that's around now, the pearl clutchers might be better focusing on those. 🙄

Was that Megan’s son?