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?

I actually empathise with Ann a lot more than George. Not because my ultimate dream is making house (its not) but because I have a lot of phobias - things like heights and things like that.

People think George is brave but its not bravery if you aren't scared. Ann does things despite being rather solidly terrified and she should get more kudos for that than she does.

Julian is very up himself but he's basically been ego fed by the grown ups that he's responsible and knows best. I think Dick annoys me more because Julian has some well meaning belief he's doing the right thing. Dick often just likes wind George for a laugh. I generally felt Dick was quite aptly named.

All Blyton's books have stereotypes but her school books are better for showing a range of girls - and the girls who tend to be heroines are not so sappy and as housewife-in-waiting as Ann. There is maybe also something to say about how the girls in these stories were allowed to be girls for much, much longer. Darrel is busy being the top lacrosse player, not being groomed into an only fans account.

I sometimes think that Uncle Quentin is a bit of a quaint

You see this is why I love an MN analysis. It's like an online book club tear down, that's what I call, 'an education'

Crikey! I wondered if I had had a brain fade, then realised my post here was over THREE YEARS AGO

I'm amazed those books are still in circulation! Not to advocate piling them up and burning them in the marketplace, but there are lots of better choices these days.

I loved them growing up, but they're a product of their times.

Everyone loves George because she kicks back against the gender conforming roles. I like to think she grew up to be a cigar smoking lesbian with a house full of dogs who didn't GAF.

One of the reasons I find the whole gender thing so repressive now is that it harks back to exactly these stereotypes and thinks it's progressive. If they were written now George would be on bloody puberty blockers and announcing her pronouns.

Of course, I've only gone and called M.E.Atkinson 'Mary' instead of Margaret...
Little enough info on her out there, not even a photo on the (all books out of print) dust-jackets.
She wrote several one-act plays for women, one of which is dedicated "To the Beaconsfield Townswomen's Guild", and she's appears in the (generally very good) Locket books as the aunt who helps the children put down their real-life adventures in book form. In later stories people they meet either disbelieve that the stories are true, or are pleased to meet the children they've read about in those earlier books!

I adored The Famous Five and George was one of my first feminist influences even though, in real life I was much more like Anne - not the caring part but just as timid. Likewise I longed to be Jo March but really I'm more like Amy.

Please let's leave them as they are, otherwise how will our daughters know how far we have come?

There is maybe also something to say about how the girls in these stories were allowed to be girls for much, much longer. Darrel is busy being the top lacrosse player, not being groomed into an only fans account.

I vaguely remember watching one of those programmes where kids spend a week living as a period from the passed. I think it was 1940s. There were no phones, gymslips and some very sexist lessons. But one thing the teens liked (all girls) was the lack of pressure on them to be 'grown up'. They loved just playing games at break and not worrying about hair and makeup and boys.

We thought the Famous Five books were sexist when I was a kid and I'm 40 now so I don't know why you would want to read them with your daughter in the year of our lord 2021. Enid Blyton's books are about as 'problematic' as you can get in class children's literature. In the Famous Five, Anne was always cooking for the boys and being told to stay home when there was anything really dangerous going on. I could see that was BS even 30 years ago.

Why not read Roald Dahl if you want to read some children's classics? He has also been deemed problematic these days but there is nothing too overtly sexist or racist in his books, apart from maybe the Oompa Loompas in the Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory book. Chronicles of Narnia is also a good option - some subtly old-fashioned attitudes here and there but nothing too egregious. I read the entire series recently with my 8-9 year old and he enjoyed them.

@rosy71

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

Me too, I identified with George and thought Anne was really cissy. And my kids enjoyed the Malory Towers school stories despite them being nothing like their own experience. They recognised out of date predjudices as they got older but as people have said, these books were of their time and thousands of kids have enjoyed reading them. Enid Blyton in her real life was supposed to have been a bit of a cow to her own children.

"Enid Blyton in her real life was supposed to have been a bit of a cow to her own children."

Only according to Imogen, the younger daughter. Her eldest daughter, Gillian disagreed so strongly that the two ended by not speaking to each other for the rest of their lives.

Coincidentally, I was in need of a book at a place I was staying and found a copy of Swallows and Amazons lying around, one of those Great Books one has never got around to reading. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it! The Walker kids have fairly normal sex-roles for the era, though the girls do get some action, quite heroic at one point. But the Blackett girls, the Amazons, are absolutely adorable. I just wanted to hug them both and feed them cake!

p.s. Who said "Din-din-dinner"?

There was a great Enid Blyton thread on MN a while ago. I loved them, all the adventure and everything, it was plain even to me as a very small child the stereotypes being enacted by George and Anne, and the trope of Very Important scientist man not even being able to remember to eat etc.

I think books where everyone is some sort of empowering role model, other than the obviously beyond the pale people, are pretty shitty to read. And reading old books is one of the ways kids learn to question what is in modern books, too.

Audiobooks are a good solution though for stuff you don't like, or can't, read out loud.

Swallows and Amazons is my favourite children's book series by a country mile, and a million times better than anything Enid Blyton ever wrote (I read dozens of her books as a child). Arthur Ransome wrote the series between 1930 and 1947. I re-read them every few years and still love all the characters. Nancy Blackett leaps off the page. Her given name is Ruth but she hates it and has taken the name Nancy instead, which she thinks is more piratical. Her uncle Jim feels this is fitting as pirates should be ruthless.

My favourite characters are Dick and Titty, both of whom would be re-named now, I expect. Sigh.

Susan Walker is probably the dullest character, but Ransome makes it abundantly clear in every book that nothing they do would be possible without Susan (or another character, in the books where the Walkers don't feature) taking responsibility for pitching the camp, making a good safe fireplace, buying in food, cooking it, getting everything cleared up afterwards and making sure the rest of the crew(s) get to bed at a reasonable hour, brush their teeth and don't do anything too risky (Susan doesn't always succeed there). It's made clear that some sensible, everyday stuff has to happen - (a) because otherwise adults won't let them go off on their adventures; but (b) also because otherwise everything would fall apart. Life would be too uncomfortable for adventures to happen.

(That latter point was one of the things that annoyed me immensely about the recent film version of Swallows and Amazons. The children are all extremely capable in the books, but in the film they were portrayed as nitwits who lost all their food on the voyage to the island. )

Oh, and one final observation - at least half of the adult characters are women, and resilient, intelligent, capable women at that. Mrs Walker is bringing up five children mostly on her own while her husband pursues his naval career. Mrs Blackett is a widow bringing up two children alone. Mrs Callum accompanies her husband on his archaeological digs and probably helps out, as Agatha Christie did Max Mallowan. Mrs Dixon, Mrs Jackson and Mary Swainson are farmers' wives/daughters, working hard on the farm and running side businesses (taking in holiday guests/dairy). The Great Aunt is one of the most formidable characters in children's literature. Missee Lee inherits the family piracy business from her father and makes a go of it, in the process forgoing her own dream of becoming a Cambridge Classics don. Mrs Barrable is a painter.

Does anyone remember 'The Family from One End St'?
Books about a large, working class family. They were written in the 30s so yeah the sex roles were of their time but the mother was bloody heroic: 6 or 7 children, managed the house (probably without domestic appliances) and did washing for the whole street if I remember correctly.

I read all of them (I read anything I could get my hands on)

Honestly, before I even knew what any of this feminism stuff was, I was team Anne all the way - she fucking took responsibility, whereas George was all 'I'm not like other girls' out for herself, Julian was patriarchy personified, and Dick just dithered around in the middle of it all.

@Kotatsu

I read all of them (I read anything I could get my hands on)

Honestly, before I even knew what any of this feminism stuff was, I was team Anne all the way - she fucking took responsibility, whereas George was all 'I'm not like other girls' out for herself, Julian was patriarchy personified, and Dick just dithered around in the middle of it all.

That's a rather more sophisticated take than I had but , yes I vaguely recall a similar, if considerably less analytical , response. I definitely didn't like George.

I think being the oldest and having to look after my younger siblings probably made me much more annoyed about George not pulling her weight (I can't remember what it was, but I do still remember a massive spike of anger at something George once said to Anne around this!), as otherwise I really would have wanted to identify with George, but I just couldn't.

That's an excellent point about Anne and George and one I'd never thought about before. George was one of the original 'cool girls' I guess?

I wanted to be George, fancied Dick (!), wanted to hit Julian, definitely did not want to be Anne. But most of all yearned for Timmy.

I so wanted to own that beautiful collie.

My mum was utterly unfussed about what I read - with the exception of Enid Blyton which she hid away somewhere and told me the girls in the book were treated really unfairly. By the time I read them I bloody loved the stories but was old enough to see how crap it was when the girls were expected to cater etc.

People saying these stories are of their time - the E Nesbit stories (Five Children and It and the rest of that series, and the Railway Children) are decades older but mostly have kids doing much the same stuff whether they're boys or girls. Nesbit was a radical, politically, and Blyton clearly was not. They're both arseholes about gypsies though!

Bit of a derail but what about The Chalet School?

I hated them - so smug and priggish- yet they had a morbid fascination because they were so awful. The Abbey School series was similar.