Famous Five and sex role stereotypes

[Ineedacupofteadesperately]

Bloody hell. Been reading the Famous Five books with DD. On the one hand, it gives rise to a lot of discussion, and she loves the mystery element but on the other I'm wondering whether to stop reading them and turn to something a bit more empowering.... it's not surprising that George "wants to be a boy" (mentioned literally every bloody chapter) because everyone's constantly going on about how Anne loves doing everyone elses' shitwork because she's such a girly girl.

In the last one I read Julian (extremely bossy and annoying, according to DD), Dick and George go off on an adventure while Anne does the washing up, clears up after breakfast and makes the beds. Not bloody surprising George wants to "be a boy". DD and I discussed how George doesn't really want to be a boy she just wants to go on adventures and not have to do the housework (which they've gaslighted Anne into thinking she likes).

It wasn't THAT long ago that these books were written. Scary stuff. What was Enid Blyton thinking? Was it meant to be critical of sex role stereotypes?

Enid Blyton loved a good stereotype.

I gave up reading them after the first couple (and a couple of secret sevens). They are all the same story, rehashed.

I think the books were a product of their time. Boys and girls had rigidly defined stereotypes, and if a girl defied those stereotypes it did not prove the stereotypes wrong, but was instead evidence that she wasn't quite a proper girl/woman. Because of course women who liked stereotypically male things were a little bit male.

Things have moved on, and to us those views seem ridiculous. Which is why seeing those same regressive attitudes resurfacing as somehow "progressive" is so jarring.

I remember re-reading these when my daughter was little. I had to stop and change to something else because they gave me the rage, and I didn't want her hearing the tripe in those books! I know they are a product of their time, but some things really should remain in the past, in my opinion.

I loved Enid Blyton and still do...they were written in a different era and totally represented the times as any old classics do...

The whole point of literature of different eras is to look at the social context at the time...not to censor it as the modern day versions of the faraway tree have done..

I used to get furious about poor George always being left to 'look after Anne' while the boys went off adventuring. And yet, Blyton apparently based George on herself, so it seems that she was partly rebelling against gender stereotypes. But at the same time, she trapped a lot of her female characters in these stultifying roles. George is interesting because as the series goes on she seems to become more resigned to being bossed about by Julian and doing the shitwork. In the first few books, she properly defies all those conventions.

And I agree about the Faraway Tree stories. Spankings changed to scoldings and Dick becoming Rick. Meanwhile all the casual sexism remains. Where is the consistency?

Yep, they are so stereotypically old fashioned. And yet so enduring popular with children. My 7 year old has just read some secret seven and famous five - loves them. She definitely thinks of herself as George rather than Anne.
Apparently Pamela Butchart has been commisioned to write a couple of new Secret Sevens.

I swapped the characters around so Julian did a bit of caravan cleaning and sandwich making. But I have to say I stopped reading them aloud because they were just too 'of their time.'

DS loves Pamela Butchart so I hope she challenges the crap a bit.

I feel like we are moving backwards to the Enid Blyton era thinking except with a postmodern twist where Julian, Dick and Anne are 'cis' and George is trans. Maybe Dick might be trans also as I seem to remember he was more sensitive and kinder to his sister than Julian.

Such awful stereotyping but it does highlight that the idea that a GNC person must want to be the opposite sex rather than just themselves is a persistent and deep rooted one.

Maybe I'll have to space out reading them. I hate discouraging reading anything and DD is beginning to realise (to her horror) how constrained womens' lives were in the past which overall is inevitable I think and not necessarily a bad thing. But my blood pressure won't take too many at once....

collidascope good point about them changing the names but retaining the casual sexism. I don't think books should be changed from the original at all though. We have been reading them together so there is lots of commentary from me to put it in context.

I don't think books should be changed from the original at all though.

No, I don't either. I think reading those books grounded me for feminism. I was just so furious about the girls always being sent to wash up.
Plus part of the charm of those books was the olde worlde tea shops, different currency, freer childhood. I think it makes sense to show the bad side of it all, the restriction girls faced.

There is the one where they go camping with the boys' tutor (safeguarding anyone?) and they uncover some sort of crime involving trains running in tunnels under the moor (?) and the comment is made that these are really OLD trains, not modern trains - I think Blyton had in mind a secret stash of Stevenson's Rockets. That brought back to me how old the books actually are.

even when i read them as a child, i only read them to get into a rage. i used to fantasise about alternative endings, where george saved the day every single time. i also used to daydream that she got sick of their shit and gave them a good kicking (because you knew julian and dick would be shit at fighting). they only helped convince me that i was a boy because every single time george (oh, George!) would end up admitting, because of something she couldn't do as well as the boys, that she was, after all, only a girl. i wanted to beat her up at that point as well.
i dont think the books should be changed; i think they should just be left to die like so much other sexist shit. it's not like they're even that interesting as stories.

I loved the Famous Five. George was definitely my favourite. I'm rereading them, with ds2 atm and Julian is incredibly bossy.

I remember arguing at school over who we would be when playing the famous five. Everyone wanted to be George, or at a push Timmy. No one ever wanted to be Anne. Ever.
I'd forgotten what a dick Julian was, not as bad as Uncle Quentin though, who was a cunt of the highest order.

I saw the thread title and my heart sank, thinking the TRAs had retrospectively transed gender non-conforming, free-wheeling George. It’s kinda nice that’s not the case, though I give it

I really enjoyed reading these books when I was a child (early 70s), but I was ashamed of liking them- knew they were badly written, sexist junk even then. I took them out of the school library and didn't let my parents see me reading them, as I knew my mother would have rolled her eyes.
They are fun though, in a junky kind of way...

I always thought George was the best too.

I'm defence of Anne though: she was a very caring character and someone needed to cook and tidy up. The work she did was often important even if it was boring and thankless (did the others appreciate it in the books? I can't remember now).

As a child I thought she was the most pathetic character. I have far more sympathy with her now, although I still wouldn't want to be her she typed in between loading the dishwasher and hoovering

Holy shit. Have I grown up and turned into Anne?

Daphne yes, Uncle Quentin. Self-obsessed, emotionally abusive (everyone is walking on eggshells so as not to get him angry the whole time), totally uncaring about his only child. He's completely dreadful. In the book I've just read he gets very upset when there's no-one to cook him tea even though his wife's in hospital, his daughter's just caught a lot of dangerous kidnappers (that he was employing to cook for and look after her - again, safeguarding?), and he's supposedly a famous scientist so you'd think he could manage to boil an egg FFS. But it's always about him and his convenience. Vile character.

In the book I've just read they sort of appreciate Anne's work but in a massively patronising 'let's pat her on the head, isn't she sweet' kind of way.

It's not just dick getting renamed Rick. Fanny is now frannie. I think there might have been an unfortunate sentence somewhere

I might have to NC now. Got Quentin from another book and had forgotten about uncle Quentin

I loved them and have read them to my DDs. Anne was my favourite character! I have grown up to detest housework and leave most of it to DH so I don't think it influenced me unduly.

Currently, I'm reading them Malory Towers. There were lots of things that happened in those stories that would be classed as bullying now but "snitching" was very frowned upon in the books. I try to discuss how things have changed as we are reading.

Though rather radically (for the time) Quentin appears to have taken his wife's name. Kirrin belongs to George's mother's family and is George's surname.

I used to love Enid Blyton, but they are shit, yes - not even very well written (I like to revisit a lot of my childhood favourites as an adult but I find Blyton unreadable now). I’m sure there was one where Dick paid George the compliment that she was “almost as good as a boy”!

If you like the adventures but hate the stereotypes, you might like Malcom Saville’s Lone Pine stories. Beautifully written, better characters and rollicking adventures set in real places that you can visit. They’re from the same era, so still dated, but the values are less jarring to a modern reader. Also Saville eventually allowed his characters to age, by popular demand, and so there are romance elements in the later books that teenagers would enjoy.

The Five Find-Outer books are far better and funnier than the Famous five. The girls are a bit more passive than the boys (especially Fatty) but they don't make tea or beds.