Enid Blyton - what's been edited out/changed??

[Distantview]

Have picked up a 2021 version of The Magic Faraway tree. I used to love this series as a child.

It has a disclaimer about being edited to meet modern standards.

Now I'm trying to work out what was in the original that would be offensive today - does anyone know?

My mum ditched all mine! Without my knowledge. I’ve got a photo of me at 9 inside a camper van in France reading an Enid Blyton book.

The only things I remember about Enid Blyton books were about lemonade and picnics and sandwiches. About nasty bullying girls at school who got their comeuppance. Gymkhanas and things like that.

I’m glad you brought this up. I think of his name every now and again and shudder.

Dr Doolittle is pretty iffy in parts too, I suspect

Have you looked to see what the original was? I wonder if it was a reference to something that wouldn’t make sense to children now, like she’d forgotten her Liberty bodice or not pulled her stockings up something of that ilk. Again, really interesting for a child learn about if it’s not familiar!

I learned so much from reading original versions of all kinds of children’s literature (and adults).

Yes! I liked those too. Far from being a character to be mocked and looked down on, Fatty was the admired leader of the secret seven and very clever. I often think of how he was locked in a room by the baddies but was able to get out with the aid of a piece of newspaper and a piece of wire (or was it bent hairgrip?). We tried that at home and it works as long as the baddy has been silly enough to leave the key in the lock the other side.

PC gone mad again.

Yes, but Fatty isn't the one who is looked down on in the Five Find-Outers books. It's Ern Goon, the local bobby's nice, but working-class nephew, who is presented as comic relief because of his accent, vocabulary, morals and manners, all of which are endlessly ticked off by the MC class children, corrections which are humbly accepted by him as he tugs his forelock. And then everyone, including Ern, accepts that he has tea with the servants in the kitchen rather than upstairs in the playroom with the MC children.

If you're WC in Enid Blyton, you're allowed to be comic relief, a faithful servant, a picturesque 'wild man' or gypsy girl, a poacher who knows all about animals, an apple-cheeked farmer's wife ready to make enormous picnics, otherwise you're probably a criminal, especially if you're also foreign.

In the school stories, it's OK if you're Carlotta the picturesque circus girl becayse you can ride bareback and do somersaults, but if you're the daughter of the new school matron, you cheat and steal to keep your scholarship, or you get expelled for stealing because you're the nouveau riche daughter of a self-made rich working class man and your Head tells the other parents at speech day that you were a failed experiment. Or one of your classmates says you talk like 'the dustman's daughter'.

Her book the Little Black doll had a character Sambo who no one would play with because he was black but when the magical rain washed his blackness away and made him pink they all became friends. I can understand why that wasn't acceptable then or now.

There's also some dodgy language and attitude towards gypsy and travellers. As these stereotype still exist, It's not ideal to have kids reading books where they're reinforced, particularly when it doesn't take much to alter them whilst maintaining the fun story.

Does Pinkwhistle relate to what I think it means?

Rupert the bear has gypsy characters but afaik they’re friendly and helpful.

As in the sprites, imps etc - where the Brownies get their name from.

Ah. Just googled and found out.

Wasn't it Dick and Fanny?

Enid Blyton romanticised circus travellers, albeit with inaccurate stereotyping such as their caravans being dirty and untidy.

She seemed to dislike Gypsies; in the farm books they're portrayed as thieves and troublemakers, and again with the inaccurate dirty and untidy stereotype.

The bit where Moonface and Saucepan man locked themselves in the treehouse together and refused to come out unless Silky came round in her nightdress as they ‘thought it was pretty’. That was weird too.

Removing racist terms is fine, it is the completely unnecessary changes that are annoying.

“Pretty Little Liars” reader noticed updated pop culture reference in the Ebook. The book, that came out in 2006, now mentions TikTok instead of Fear Factor.

Thing is if you read the FFO in order Ern is not "Ern Goon, the local bobby's nice, but working-class nephew, who is presented as comic relief because of his accent, vocabulary, morals and manners..."

In the first book, he's pushed on them by a mixture of Goon and himself. Because he's come, Goon gets two of the parents to agree that they won't solve mysteries so that they don't get Ern into trouble.
Ern follows them round and repeats back all they say to Goon. He's the one who is turning up to join in uninvited, has got them into trouble with their parents etc. How many groups of children would actually have put up with that?

They're a close knit group who don't really want others to join them - much as the original four are in the first story when they don't really want Fatty to join them. They put up with Fatty at the beginning because they like his dog, and they're not especially nice to him. Gradually they come to accept him but it's only in the third book that he becomes their leader, a little grudgingly, but they admit he is the best at mysteries.

In the same way Ern goes from being a bit of a clingy pain through to someone they trust and are genuinely pleased to see.
The teasing of his vocabulary is mostly because he has a habit of running words together "'SwatIsaid" and that when he's writing his "pomes" he uses very flowery language. Only manners one I can think is where he's forgotten to take his hat off inside and Pip and Bet's Mum, who is very strict, reprimands him - and she reprimands various FFO-ters for similar infractions.

By the end of the series Ern is very much regarded as one of them and treated by the children as such.

It's very clever writing showing how an outsider can integrate into a group, going from hostility through grudging acceptance to admiration and friendship.

There are other working class children who are leaders and very much set up for admiration:
Jack in the secret series, Barney in the R-mystery stories, Andy in the Adventurous Four, Jimmy in the circus books etc. All very much working class and very much set up for admiration by the readers.

How many other books written as long ago as those would not trigger some raised eyebrows nowadays?
And I suspect that books written nowadays will trigger just as many raised eyebrows in 70 years time, from things that modern day authors think that they were so forward thinking when they wrote them.

Lashings of Fanny & Dick - I think the publishers took that out in 1943. They felt it wasn't Enid's finest moments... although allegedly it did later inspire Jilly Cooper's literary (if you can call it that) career.

"Adult women" who were once the children who read the books. Which have sold phenomenonally well along children in seven decades.

This is a very interesting thread. I think racist terms do need removing, but not much else.

Horrified to learn Darrell slapping Gwendoline Mary Lacey has been changed! That's a very teachable moment.

I wonder if some of the books had previously been edited. I'm a 90s avid reader of Enid blyton- my copies came from the library, hand me downs, some new etc and I think perhaps the adventure series had been edited - I just don't recall the racist description of Joe (I have the audio version and accept it's been sanitised which I think is ok). I could have been oblivious - my childhood was surprisingly white for where I live and when I grew up! Or, like a lot of the chalet school books it might have been edited.

The adventure series can't really edit out the colonial overtones though and the idea of the white saviour when Phillip 'adopts' a 'native' boy in the river of adventure, or the children talk about being English and what that means. There's also a slightly uncomfortable moment with the children pretending to be from Jabberwocky...!

I couldn't agree more.
I think what's important above all is context and critical thinking.

These are children’s storybooks, written for children to enjoy. If we take the position that they are classics, and inspired so many young readers, that’s at odds with the position that a significant percentage of British children should be denied the opportunity to enjoy them so that objectively offensive narrative can be retained.

Sure, a white parent might think it offers a good teaching exercise about Britain’s historical attitudes and teaches critical thinking to converse with their children about why golliwogs, the n-word, and dark skin having negative connotations are no longer appropriate but are in the storybook because they were once considered okay; but no black parent wants their young child to read those words and see those pictures and have to have those conversations during what’s supposed to be a story for children rather than an academic commentary - particularly since it’s a rather hollow teaching exercise for them when they know that they and their children still encounter racism and that plenty of people still have no problem with golliwogs, and so the book is not simply representative of attitudes which have disappeared.

Thank you for your post. It made me catch myself a bit, so thank you. I grew up almost only reading Enid Blyton in the 1960s/early 70s, however my mum could buy or borrow it, so it is quite emotional. But yes times have moved on a lot and that identification is important. Whether Edith would have appreciated that is perhaps not certain. But she's not here now to comment so her publishers/estate have to do what they think best.

I think the class attitudes are very mixed.

The St Clare's twins are criticised for wanting to go to the fancy school with evening dress, and end up at the much more sensible St Clare's.

Then there's Sheila who puts on airs and graces, but it turns out that she's new money and very insecure about it which is why she's acting the way she did. Janet is undeniably snobby about her saying she talks like the daughter of the dustman, but I don't think she's presented as being particularly kind for saying this. And we have to remember that this was in a time where it was far more accepted the RP was the only correct way to speak.

Then you have Gwen being an utter snob sucking up to Clarissa because she's 'the Hon'. And then going off her when she thinks she's poor because she mistakes Clarissa's governess for Clarissa's mother at half term. She gets ger comeuppance when Clarissa's mother turns up in a Bentley at the end of term. And Clarissa becomes friends with Bill because friendships is built on things you have in common (horses for those two), not how rich you are.

Another book with class clashes is Those Dreadful Children. There the rough children and the prim and proper children get off to a very bad start, but in the end all come round to recognising the good in each other and the snooty ones become a lot less priggish. Although I think her presentation of Irish people would raise a few eyebrows.