“The past is a foreign country: they do things
differently there.”
L
P Hartley
I once owned about twenty of the William books, in hard-back
versions. They have all long since
vanished.
In one of my intermittent re-visits
to the reading of my childhood, I acquired from Oxfam an 80’s paperback edition
of a William book, with modernised
illustrations. The front cover shows
William in jeans, t-shirt and trainers. The
text, however, has not been comparably updated.
William may be shown in the new pictures in the attire of modern youth,
but all the references in the stories are still to his cap and boots and
stockings.
Two impulses seem to me to underlie the
updating of children’s literature from the past. The one is purely commercial: to make it sell
better by making it more accessible – ‘relevant’ is the vogue term - to the
reader who demands the familiar. The
other is the terror of the past and its incorrect values, and the difficult attendant
problem that the literature of the past is full of the content of the past, and
its attitudes.
William
in trainers smacked to me of false representation for the unwary reader. From the cover, you would have been entitled
to expect a 1980’s child. And you don’t
solve the problem of the William books simply by updating the drawings. Or even
by changing all the references to clothes in the text. Sometimes you can’t do that anyway. You can’t just do away with William’s
cap: William uses his cap to bring home
tadpoles. What about the differences in
the language? And how are you to cope with the social/ educational
situation? Do you do away with the servants? Do you
stop William from learning Latin, and have him studying ICT?
From a politically-correct point of
view, also, rather than from a purely commercial one, William is unacceptable
on a number of counts. He is from the
past; he is white; he is male; he is British; he is middle-class by birth, if not
– a small point in his favour – by inclination; he is even without ethnic-minority
friends. In which case, isn’t the William
series like a laptop so chock full of viruses that it’s hardly worth trying
to clean it up, and the only viable course of action is to throw it away and
start again with something new?
And, indeed, there is an excellent
case to be made for a modern William whose best friend is called Mohammed,
rather than Ginger; whose spelling is corrected by a word processor; and whose
real name is Wilhelmina. But that need
not mean the elimination of the original William who is her ancestor. In an age that prides itself on its inclusivism,
surely there should be room for both?
It is only fair to say that I also have
acquired paperback copies of the first ten of the series. These have the original
Thomas Henry illustrations, with the familiar red and yellow front covers. What you see is what you get, and the whole
thinking behind a vintage edition like this represents a completely different
approach to reading.
The William-in-trainers approach,
it seems to me, is like inviting people to stay in an historic building because
it has internet access and multi-channel TV. But if those are your priorities,
why not just opt for a modern hotel: of which there are plenty? Those who want historic buildings are those
who like history, or who want something romantic, or a temporary escape from
the modern world, or just something a bit different. Overt mod cons simply wreck the
ambience.
With this vintage edition of William, we are in the territory of Hartley Greece or Spain or Ireland
On
this view, reading is a process of evaluation.
You do not have to accept everything about the country you are
visiting. Because you like Spanish wine,
you are not obliged to like Spanish bullfighting. You might take to Greek beaches and Greek
cheese, but not to Greek retsina. But you are much more likely to come to an
informed decision if you are allowed to make up your own mind, rather than
having what is suitable decided for you.
Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series has likewise been re-issued in paperback with the
original illustrations. When you dip
into these, however, you find that the approach is not quite the same. There
are minor changes to the text that seem to me partly commercially and partly pc
inspired, without being fully either. I
find it an uncomfortable mix.
Jo the gypsy girl is now the
traveller girl. That is understandable:
using the term ‘gypsy’ nowadays can get you done for racism. What is more puzzling is what has been done
to references to money. In the original Five Fall into Adventure, Dick gives Jo a shilling and her eyes
gleam. In the new version – with strict
equivalence to when we decimalised - he
gives her 5p.
5p? That wouldn’t buy her a tube of Polos. Her eyes, however, still gleam: leading one
modern child to whom I showed the extract to designate her “a sad bitch”. If a change from shillings to new pence is
valid, isn’t some allowance for inflation equally so? Forty years ago, £150 000 would buy you a
mansion. By 2008, it was only the value of the average
British house.
A similar sort of thing happens in Five Fall into Adventure. Mr Perton, a criminal, gives each of the
children a pound note. Not wanting to
keep the money, Julian collects the notes and hands them to Aggie, Mr Perton’s
servant.
In the modern version, of course,
the pound notes have become coins (the kids get two pounds each). And yet the pictures remain the same. In the text we have Julian handing over
coins, and in the picture above it we see him handing over notes. (While we’re at it, if we’re changing from
notes to coins, shouldn’t we do away with the anachronism of live-in servants
as well? So that Aggie is kept in the
household - and paid - for services other than housework?)
Aggie is reluctant to accept the
money, because it is a fortune. A fortune? A tenner?
That would get you and your companion a cappuccino and a blueberry
muffin in Cafe Nero, with enough left over to tip the Eastern-European graduate
serving you, and buy another half hour in the car park.
Are we to assume from this that
children are presumed incapable of coping with the fact that money was once
different from what it is now? And at
what stage are they going to be exposed to this disturbing truth?
Or are we to preserve them from
reality indefinitely, and have Shylock saying, “My daughter, my euros”? Thus losing the emotional power in the alliterative
contrast of ‘daughter’ and ‘ducats’. Is
Shylock to be allowed his “almost half a kilo of protein”? (If you use ‘pound’ you fall foul of trading
standards, and we dare not say ‘flesh’, lest we should offend the Vegans).
What would happen if Britain
For myself, I never, at any stage
of my life, had a problem that ducats were the currency of another country in
another age: any more than modern readers of the Harry Potter series seem to
have had in coping with the wizards’ ‘knuts’ and ‘galleons’, or modern children
in eating chocolate representations of ancient coins.
Christ damned the Pharisees for
straining at a gnat while swallowing a camel.
Why the fuss about turning pound notes into pound coins, when the text
retains Aggie’s husband, the vertically-challenged ‘Hunchy’. Isn’t his derogatory nickname unacceptable in
terms of modern attitudes towards the disabled?
Do we change his shape, and thus
obviate the need for his nickname, and simply retain his unpleasant
personality: losing some of the sinister atmosphere of Owls’ Dene, Mr Perton’s
house, in the process as a necessary price to be paid? Or do we take an historical perspective on
the series: and reflect that today we are more sensitive – theoretically, at least
- in how we assign nicknames?
On the subject of unacceptable nicknames, and turning
from The Famous Five to a different
series, what of ‘Fatty’ in The Five Findouters? Fatty is an acronym of Frederick Algernon Trottville. Easy: simply change his name. But that is not the end of the problem. Fatty is also stout. But he is also a master of disguises. His disguises – passing himself off as an
adult – are tied up with his build. His skill in disguise is likewise linked to
his intelligence. Fatty is the leader:
the cleverest, and also the richest, of the children. At least one of the girls adores him as he
is. He is thus a positive role
model. Is that a good or bad thing? Does it help fat children to feel positive
about themselves? If so, isn’t there
then the danger that they won’t be encouraged to lose weight?
Fatty, by modern criteria, raises
so many difficulties that the only thing to do with him is what we must do with
Shakespeare’s Falstaff: and fling both of them to oblivion. Unless, as with Hunchy, we take the
historical perspective and reflect on the social advances we have made in our
new deference to personal appearance.
When I was a child, my favourite Enid Blyton
books by a long way were the trio that made up the Faraway Tree Series. As
with my William books, my own
original copies have long since vanished.
Dipping into a new edition with new illustrations, I note that certain names
have been altered. Jo, Bessie and Fanny
have become Joe, Beth and Franny. Cousin
Dick has become Cousin Rick. Dame Slap
has become Dame Snap. These changes are
worth consideration.
‘Jo’ has become ‘Joe’ because ‘Jo’
is the female version of the name, and we may agree that it was an odd choice
for Enid Blyton to assign to a boy. We
may safely assume that it was not simply a spelling error. It is the same name as that given to the
boy-like girl in The Famous Five, with
whom there are ‘Jo/Joe’ confusions. Enid
Blyton was well aware of the difference.
Nor is it a reverse instance of the George/Georgina situation: Jo, as
depicted, is quite comfortable with being a boy.
Whether there were sociological or
psychological issues at work in the assigning of the name is a question I do
not feel competent to explore. I merely
point out that the emending of ‘Jo’ to ‘Joe’ is an interesting bucking of a
trend in an era committed to eliminating gender differences; one in which an
actress has become an actor, and “you guys” covers both sexes; and we would be
unwise to decide in advance, before meeting either of them, the sex of a
‘Chris’ or a ‘Fred’. If current trends
continue, we may not unreasonably assume that ‘Toni’ and ‘Tony’, ‘Frances’ and ‘Francis’,
‘Lesley and Leslie’ – and, indeed ‘Jo’ and ‘Joe’ - will in due course blend
with one another and acquire a common spelling for either sex. That is, if biology should triumph over
sociology, and both sexes should continue to exist.
‘Bessie’ has become ‘Beth’ because ‘Bessie’ is now an unfamiliar form of
‘Elizabeth Elizabeth
‘Fanny’ and ‘Dick’ may be
considered together because both carry sexual connotations. That is true, although given the explicit
nature of sex education given in schools to modern children; they ought to be
able to cope with the problem. Besides,
slang terms for sex tend to come and go.
You could confront the issue squarely, and use it as a means of
illustrating the fascinating history of semantic change.
‘Fanny’ in American means
‘backside’, not ‘vulva’. Otherwise, to
‘get off your fanny’ is a gymnastic feat indeed: especially for a man. When ‘Walter’, the Victorian diarist, spoke
of a ‘gay woman’ he meant a prostitute, not a lesbian. The main point about the ‘gay hussar’ was his
cheerful heterosexuality. There was a time when to say you felt queer meant you
were unwell. ‘Roger’, as a verb, had a
Victorian sexual connotation it now seems to have lost. Talk to modern kids
about a ‘John Thomas’ and unless they’ve read Lady Chatterley’s Lover – which in unlikely: there are much less
demanding ways, these days, of encountering vicarious sex – they don’t know
what you’re on about. It would have been
a shame to rename the William books because of the connotations of ‘willy’:
only to find that language had moved on, and that ‘willy’ had been replaced by
‘dick’.
‘Fanny’ – Fanny Hill may have something to do with it – and ‘Dick’ has each
had a long innings and both seem fair set to remain. ‘Dickhead’, being so evocative, is not an
easily replaceable insult. And a poem like
Ted Hughes’ ‘Dick Straightup’ relies for its humour on the double meaning. Peaceful co-existence with non-sexual usage
of the words seems to be the best way ahead.
After all, change ‘Fanny’ to
Franny’ and you simply defer the evil day when the child/teenager/adult comes
across Aunt Fanny in the Famous Five series,
or Fanny Squeers in Nicholas Nickleby, or
Keats’ love Fanny Brawne, or the novelist Fanny Burney, or Fanny Craddock in
the history of British cookery. Unless
the past is re-written; so that we have Rick Turpin and Rick Whittington.
Dame Slap has become Dame Snap
because she now relies on a sharp tongue, rather than physical chastisement, as
a means of punishment. But the cane was
a feature of the Dame schools, and if you’re doing away with the cane, surely
you ought to do away with the ‘Dame’ as well?
Shouldn’t she be ‘Ms Snap’? And,
while we’re at it, won’t her blackboard and chalk be confusing for modern children? Shouldn’t we assign her a state-of-the-art
electronic whiteboard? Should she even be allowed to shout at children, when
education is a process of personal discovery?
But, given the violence of some
computer games, or the avidity with which modern children will race to watch a playground
fight in the hope of bloodshed, might they not be expected to cope with the
concept – if not the reality – of corporal punishment? It is not as if Dame Slap’s behaviour is held
out to the reader as something desirable: her land is one to be escaped from as
soon as possible.
And if this fact about the
educational past is to be concealed from children, some of them may nonetheless
grow up, and go on to university and read English. In which case they might at
some stage encounter the line: “Thrashed into Latin by the tingling rod”. Would they be old enough by then to have it explained
to them that – along with an explanation of
what ‘Latin’ was – a ‘rod’ was not, in this instance, another word for a
‘dick’, but was an implement used by schoolmasters for beating schoolboys when
they hadn’t done their homework? That it
was something known as corporal punishment.
Or are we forever to pretend it never happened?
If we want a guide to dealing with
the undesirable past, we probably can’t do better than the Jewish response to
The Holocaust. Keeping the memory of it
alive is the best way of ensuring that it doesn’t happen again.
Reinterpreting the past is a necessary and
valid activity. Rewriting it is
not. Change the view you take of the
data, but do not change the data itself.
Explain, if you have to, that the death of six million Jews was
necessary. But do not deny that the six million
deaths happened.
The same applies, in my view, to
the literature of the past. Let it speak
for itself, and by its own words let it stand condemned. Or acquitted.
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