Monday, July 26, 2010

What to do with Enid? Blyton books in the twenty-first century


It is not a mark of honour to be an uncritical, unabashed Disney fan in the world of the academic study of children's literature. The "magic" of Disney is tainted once you wake to the films' gender, race and class politics. It is still acceptable to inexplicably, and guiltily, want to visit Disneyland, however (as I have done in Los Angeles and Paris). Enid Blyton occupies a slightly lesser-known rung in the world of children's texts, but seems to provoke a similar polarity between loving adoration and total hatred.

They do let children off from most crimes (well, except for the James Bulger killers, but that was murder), so you must not record a conviction for this, but my first book love was directed at Enid Blyton's Faraway Tree and Wishing Chair series. Oddly, or perhaps "queerly" as Blyton would have said, many of my students at Deakin University, when asked their favourite children's book, often mention one of Blyton's books. I was surprised that her books were still a fixture of childhood reading.

I'm not sure how much of a part the illustrations played in my enjoyment of the books. The editions I collected were the large format, hardcover, lavishly illustrated ones like the one shown in this post. I used to draw versions of the pictures for school projects. At a certain age, I believed that it was entirely possible for there to be a magic tree at the top of which different "lands" materialised each week, many of which seemed to culminate in an unending buffet of desserts with obligatory treacle puddings prior to departure. In grade one, a girl at my primary school told me that the Faraway Tree was actually situated at the end of her street. This was in Frankston, Victoria, which meant it was perhaps not too dissimilar from someone claiming that a circle of fairy folk sat at the back of their trailer park behind an old car body. If the folk of the Faraway Tree were going to choose somewhere, it would probably not be in Frankston, but a suitably English glade or perhaps a European forest in which red and white spotted toadstools grow. But I believed her. And I was very jealous.

And so, it's time for another outraged response to modernising Blyton's prose for new editions of the Famous Five novels. I remember a similar outcry several years ago when two of the protagonists of the Faraway books, Fanny and cousin Dick, were relieved of their genitalia-connoting names to be renamed Frannie and Rick. We sniggered about those names in 1986. Did it take another 20 years for publishers to catch on to this?

I feel a bit ambivalent about these changes. On the one hand, children's texts are products of their time, and historical children's literature often makes for uncomfortable reading for adults, even scholars. I wouldn't like to put one of Angela Brazil's novels in which characters sing a "coon song" into the hands of a child. And yet similar ideologies sometimes inform E. Nesbit's books, yet they still seem to get the nostalgic seal of approval. If we accept that children's books help socialise children into our world, then if a child reads a book in which girls do all the cooking, boys take care of the important work and "dirty gypsies" spew forth hordes of children and try to steal babies (cue E. Nesbit) then they won't be exposed to ideas we agree with.

Which brings me to the other hand, child readers of today will not be fully immersed in books like Blyton's or Nesbit's. Instead, such books will likely be introduced by well-meaning parents or grandparents and will form a tiny sliver of their cultural exposure. In my own childhood reading, the unfamiliar, formal British dialogue of Blyton's books seemed to render them all the more fantastic. I'm not sure that I wanted them to resonate with my contemporary reality. I did not want Jo to peer into Moonface's house only to find that Duran Duran were playing a surprise gig in there with Bubbles the chimp guesting on drums. I find it irritating when British books must be "Americanised" along the lines of Harry Potter. I suppose the question that I fixate on is, are children looking for magical fantasy in need of contemporary language use or is some of the archaic language part of the charm? Does every word need to immediately make sense? Does every saying have to reflect contemporary usage?

So I suppose I sit in the middle in that if present day child readers are going to devour Enid Blyton then any overt racism should be quietly expurgated. The quaint and unfamiliar language, and some of the unfamiliar practices (like Dame Slap, a maniacal wielder of corporal punishment, who we are positioned to dislike) is part of the appeal of the books. I know there have been abridged and altered versions of Huckleberry Finn, and its race politics has generated a lot of discussion about its appropriateness for today's child readers, but would publishers attempt to jazz up the language to make it seem more familiar? Or is the historical specificity part of what helps the reader make sense of a different world and its different conceptions of race and gender? Taking away the sense of temporal difference also takes away the context for understanding different historical worldviews.

Most posters on an Australian news item about the story seem to hold Blyton as sacred and unalterable, mentioning her in the same sentence as the Bible and Shakespeare. We know that there are various editions of these central texts of Western literature too, of course. What really seems to be being assaulted here is the childhood experiences of adult readers. I felt a similar outrage when 1970s and 1980s episodes of Sesame Street were released on DVD recently but labelled "not for children" because of particular elements that did not meet the requirements of present day educational theory (if memory serves, going home with strangers, possibly the suspicious Mr Hooper, was also part of it). I wonder then if the defence of Blyton is more about the defence of our own youth, than preserving the sanctity of some fairly ordinary prose that has just happened to sell 500 million books worldwide?

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Winnipeg here I come! Girls, Texts, Cultures Symposium

I have become used to "girls" being a fringe, underappreciated realm of study. I almost have responses ready when people ask "so, you teach children?" (like the airport security attendant who was rubbing my clothing and bag down for traces of explosives a fortnight ago), and I've accepted that prestigious universities will take the candidate with the publication on Henry James informed by the philosophy of Agamben rather than girls' genre fiction.

Given this acceptance, I didn't expect to be invited to a symposium at a university on the other side of the world in order to speak and listen to other scholars on the subject. I've generously been invited by Professor Clare Bradford, who is the current recipient of a prestigious Trudeau Fellowship, to attend the 'Girls, Texts, Cultures' symposium at the University of Winnipeg in October. A quick Wikipedia check (only for initial checking, not for actual "research", students) revealed I'd be heading to the coldest city in the world with a population above 600,000. So perhaps it's warmer than Siberia, then.

I know I'll be joining Dr Kristine Moruzi, who has just taken up a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Alberta (hooray!), Professor Mavis Reimer (from the University of Winnipeg) and a range of other international scholars from gender studies, education, psychology, sociology and international development.

I've put in an abstract to speak about British books and magazine stories about Australian girls. I have a list of a dozen or so such books written by British authors to confront at the State Library. But where will I find the time for that as Lindsay Lohan has just entered jail and I must maintain a candlit vigil by the television in order to await news of her potential early release.

Monday, July 19, 2010

Blog Emerges from Book-induced Coma



At last the time approaches for my book manuscript to be submitted on 1 August. So guilty thoughts can now be spared for the ailing blog. As a result of one such guilty thought springing to mind as I mowed the lawn in advance of a rental inspection tomorrow, here I am reviving the poor neglected thing.

I've rejigged the title of the book, as the focus has changed somewhat from my PhD thesis, which focused on the connections between empire and mothering. The revised title is "Empire in British Girls' Literature and Culture: Imperial Girls, 1880-1915". In my mind I was hoping for "Imperial Girls" to occupy the coveted position before the colon, but the editors felt that it did not clearly indicate what the book was about. While this is true, it did make me think of Madonnna's "Material Girl" and hence that I might be staking a claim for some degree of cultural relevance for Victorian and Edwardian girlhood. But then, it's not about Madonna anymore, but Lady Gaga, so then we'd get down to something nonsensical like "Imperial Face" or "Victoriandro". I actually thought it would make a nice companion to Joseph Bristow's "Empire Boys". Nevertheless, this is my first book and I'm not a publishing expert, so this "talent" is not about to be difficult.

I'm mightily happy with the cover image, which is hopefully going to be the fine, patriotic girl you see before you in this post. The original book, A Patriotic Schoolgirl by Angela Brazil, was published after my time period, but the image was so appropriate that I had to use it. I've certainly learned a great deal about copyright law in gaining permission for images. Frustratingly, some of the illustrators I'm dealing with died less than 75 years ago, which leaves their works still in copyright. Children's books publishers have often shut up shop in the interim and the rights to old children's books that will never likely be published again are not sought after so many trails are cold and lead nowhere. It's strange to think of the rampant downloading going on with music, movies and tv shows to the point that stores are closing and labels downsizing, but the book world is still sticking with the straight and narrow in terms of permissions, the last bastion of copyright compliance.

I wonder if the eBook is going to see massive piracy and downloading impinge on sales? Not that I need to worry about my own small revenue from eBook sales, but I dread the thought of the physical bookstore going the way of the record store. I suppose it's similar to the bookless library. That said, I have been grateful for the ability to borrow an eBook at short notice rather than having to trek in to a university library to look up a small piece of information. It feels traitorous to even do so. While my interested has been sparked by the iPad, it feels like it would be joining the dark side to buy one. It seems we're still in the "early adopter" phase and, for some reason, I don't like being seen as arriving "early" to the consumer party. I'll walk in fashionably late in a few years' time when I begin to be ostracised for not owning one.