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I was just reading a couple of thought-provoking articles about Enid Blyton today, which talk about the thread of 'covert racism and sexism' that runs through her work. A cartload of critics recommend booting her off childrens' reading lists, because her stories apparently 'portray certain communities in a derogatory light'.
For example, Africans and Asians in the Gollywog, excessively girlish characters like Annie in the Famous Five and excessively boyish female characters like George (who according to some smart-ass critic had the "severest case of penis envy" in literary history).
However, as much as I still love her work, I have to agree that going back and reading her books is a mixed bag. Many 'characters' are actually caricatures, and barely cover the bare skeletons of age-old stereotypes. Like, when I went back and read Malory Towers, I was stunned at how bluntly the French boarder Claudine is 'lazy and untidy', and the American girl whatsername, is 'brazen and ill mannered'. All this is while clearly contrasting them with the 'well brought up, disciplined women' that Britain produces. Really? Then HOW do you explain Liz Whore-ley?
In a similar vein, most of the children in the Secret Seven Series, Faraway Tree, are a bunch of goody two-shoes who are now so annoying that I instinctively want to hurt them. And don't even get me started on the Famous Five - it just fries me that George is shown as more independent/smarter than Annie, simply because she wants to be a boy. Calling her 'George' instead of her real name 'Georgina' only underlines this fact. I was pretty much like 'George' when I was a kid (as hard as this is to believe, it IS true), except that I never wanted to BE a boy - or be called Larry, for that matter.
For example, Africans and Asians in the Gollywog, excessively girlish characters like Annie in the Famous Five and excessively boyish female characters like George (who according to some smart-ass critic had the "severest case of penis envy" in literary history).
However, as much as I still love her work, I have to agree that going back and reading her books is a mixed bag. Many 'characters' are actually caricatures, and barely cover the bare skeletons of age-old stereotypes. Like, when I went back and read Malory Towers, I was stunned at how bluntly the French boarder Claudine is 'lazy and untidy', and the American girl whatsername, is 'brazen and ill mannered'. All this is while clearly contrasting them with the 'well brought up, disciplined women' that Britain produces. Really? Then HOW do you explain Liz Whore-ley?
In a similar vein, most of the children in the Secret Seven Series, Faraway Tree, are a bunch of goody two-shoes who are now so annoying that I instinctively want to hurt them. And don't even get me started on the Famous Five - it just fries me that George is shown as more independent/smarter than Annie, simply because she wants to be a boy. Calling her 'George' instead of her real name 'Georgina' only underlines this fact. I was pretty much like 'George' when I was a kid (as hard as this is to believe, it IS true), except that I never wanted to BE a boy - or be called Larry, for that matter.
In a way, I think EB is being lampooned not so much for attempting to derogate other communities as much as for failing to deviate from the aged British social norms that already lorded it over the rest of the world, literally. In this age of Postcolonialism and multi-ethnicity, the old-fashioned white male absolutes just don't cut it anymore.
I know this sounds like my English Lit background talking (I can already imagine my mum panicking and reaching for her passport, in anticipation of one of my dreaded "Hey ma, you wanna know what we learnt in lit class today?" discourses).
But I'm pretty sure all this stuff would have struck me even if I wasn't doing Lit. Hell, Enid Blyton's books are actually picking fields for eager psychology students (Kavs?) and feminist/postcolonial theorists. So I'm not alone.
What really strikes me, is that if I go back and read one of Roald Dahl's books, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda or Witches (one of my all-time favourites), I don't have the same sense of "Oh my God, he's so sexist/racist, I didn't notice it the first time". Which is not to say he is completely free from prejudices, but I still think the only "ist" he consciously prescribes to is "anti-grownup-ist". I mean, who else can describe the Queen of England (yes, the living one) "whizpoping" and get away with it?
I think it's because he's so overtly gross and disgusting and so clearly revels in it that any other element just fades into the background. I still remember the part in 'Witches' where he writes that witches can sniff out clean children because they smell like dogs droppings... hah!! Advocating every child's dream - the muddier and ickier you are, the safer you are too (I gather from this that Kavita's and my mudbaths insure us for life).
Which is not to say that Enid Blyton is not cool anymore. Oh no. If you can look past some of the more obviously cloying things, there's still a lot of great stuff. For one, the woman writes BRILLIANT escapist literature. The idea of magic lands at the top of the Faraway Tree is fantastic. Kavita will recall clearly one of my 'inspired' notions that the chickoo tree contained a "Pixie Highway", all this in the pre-alcohol days. And her descriptions of food still make me drool - buttered scones, ginger ale, fruitcake... damn, why wasn't I one of the Five Find-Outers?
There's got to be something to an author who can (posthumously) face a whole storm of blood-thirsty critics, and still emerge a popular choice not only in the UK, but in places like India, where the 'propah' British way of life is pretty much an alien concept. I guess she's like RK Narayan, who face the same kind of criticism for fetishizing small town India, but is a demigod in this country anyway. Which is why, while critics are scrapping over EB's politically incorrect 'Golliwog' character in Noddy, I'll be too busy reading 'The Faraway Tree' to notice.
5 comments:
When it comes to literature, I think kids are too young to truly understand the concept of racism. All they see is the outward package and I doubt the Enid Blyton's books are intentionally filled with propaganda to warp the mind of the youth. As you grow older, racism becomes more apparent (hell, I visited South Africa during Apartheid and didn't know it was going on - we even made friends with these English kids who kept in touch with us for years afterwards).
Check out this episode of Southpark, it illustrates my point.
http://allabout-sp.net/?p=season4/408
Loved this post. I worshipped Enid Blyton as a kid too, and I was really surprised the first time I heard that she was supposed to be sexist and racist. I thought back on it and felt, yeah, maybe, but I never went back to read any of them and see whether I felt that way. Your post did it for me, anyway!
But yes, I agree with you - some of her adventures are unparalleled - at least at that time, they succeeded in transporting me to lands hitherto undreamt of!
Hey Lorraine, that was a great post! I too have been an avid reader of EB in my childhood and have enjoyed them enormously.
I never felt any inkling of racism or gender bias in any of her books that I read so many time. In fact, in the Malory Towers series, I did not assume that all French girls were lazy or that all American girls are brazen and ill-tempered. I simply attributed these characteristics to those 2 particular girls as individuals.
As for the George vs Anne comparison - my take is that most kids reading (at least when we were kids) would not be able to see the fine gray area in between the 2 ends of the spectrum. They needed sharply edged characters that clearly indicated their own nature. So to make Anne less girlish or George more girlish would have left very little difference in their characterisation.
I guess as kids, we do not have it in us to embellish our thinking with deep emotions (I call them emotions for want of a better word) like racism or gender bias. We take things more at face value and are the happier for it.
I wonder why this article raked these issues up after almost 3-4 generations of kids have grown up reading these books and loving them?
I always thought EB books were a superb read and still do. In fact, I still retain my EBs (am very stingy about my books) and pick one up once in a while for a quick 40 min journey into that magical and adventurous world. Once again, a great post there. Do visit me when you can.
Umm.. By the way, I think you also need to take into account when these books were written and for whom. I am assuming, of course, that her primary audience was intended to be English kids.
Furthermore, if you look at some of our Indian literature, we're less than kind to foreigners, yet glorify the Indian culture to levels that you and I both know don't exist in daily life.
On the other hand, I think that a writers views will always colour their work. If it didn't, I doubt they'd be half as interesting. (Although this is more tangential to THIS topic)
On a personal note, please do not refer to the Magic Faraway Tree as "escapist literature". I know that may be the correct term, but to me it's a fairytale. I like it that way. Putting tags on it detracts from it's fairy-ness. I want to be able to hate Connie and laugh at her fish ice cream without wondering about the literary tags related to it!! (:P)
wow.. i think the comments were longer than the post!!
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