Anti Feminist Comments?

[Blytonfan]

There was a book/story by Blyton where one of the female characters wants to "work" but another female character says it's better to run a home and make jam or something to that effect.

Sorry for being so vague but that's all I remember.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Friends Pam and Joan have a conversation in House-at-the-Corner in which Joan says she's going to a Domestic Science School so she can learn to "be the centre of a home." Pam is astonished, exclaiming, "Fancy wanting to get back into your home when we girls have got the chance to get out of it! Everyone knows that housework and cooking are drudgery." However, Joan says that running a home properly and learning how to grow things and make red currant jelly etc. is satisfying - "I'd rather be the centre of a home, a real home like that, than a little unknown person in somebody's office, with only a typewriter and a telephone to mess about with."

It's ironic that Enid Blyton herself did rather well from "messing about with a typewriter" - though her work was creative. She'd no doubt have argued that she was "the centre of the home" since she wrote her books in her own house, yet she wasn't doing the work of the home as she hired other people to do the cooking, cleaning, gardening and child-rearing.

Pam is to go to college (once she's learnt the importance of domestic skills and hard work in general!) and her sister Lizzie/Elizabeth is to be a writer, so it's not as though the message is that women shouldn't work. It's more that the skills required for running a home and bringing up a family should be valued too.

[Bertie]

...Pam is to go to college (once she's learnt the importance of domestic skills and hard work in general!) and her sister Lizzie/Elizabeth is to be a writer, so it's not as though the message is that women shouldn't work. It's more that the skills required for running a home and bringing up a family should be valued too.

Completely agree with that bolded part, Anita.

I find 'anti-' in context like the thread title is used mostly to suggest an extremist, negative view. Rather than expressing a view that differs but is just as valid. For instance, when I googled 'anti-feminist' I find: 'opposed to feminism, ardent anti-feminist, someone who doesn't believe in social / political equality,' etc.

Whereas I would describe some of Enid's characters comments as just non-feminist, rather than ardently opposed to it. I'd say the 'ardent extreme' comes from those who think it's unacceptable for Enid to have a female character who would want to run a home, raise a family, etc. It's a perfectly valid lifestyle choice that it's fine to recognise without meaning that's 'all' women should choose. My mum chose it, and had a few of her friends criticise her for 'becoming an old fashioned housewife' even during that era decades ago. She still says to this day how she loved every minute of it, would do exactly the same again and wouldn't change a thing.

As you highlight with your example, Enid portrayed how all options are valid, and yet gets criticised for acknowledging how 'choosing' to run a home and bring up a family is just as valid a choice if that's what the person dearly wants to do. It doesn't make choosing other options wrong - and Enid has plenty of other characters that highlight that as well.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Good points, Bertie.

[Blytonfan]

Thank you Anita - yes that's the book to which I was referring.

And very valid points Bertie - 'anti-feminist' was probably too strong a word!

I must have read this book when I was 10 or 11 and somehow it stuck with me all these years! I had automatically agreed with Joan (maybe influenced by my mother who was an excellent home maker and cook)!

[Moonraker]

'anti-feminist' was probably too strong a word!

We all knew what you meant, Blytonfan! Probably 'sexist' would be a better word. Certainly today it probably would be deemed sexist, but not in 1940.

[Bertie]

Well, again, I would argue against that strong term in the context of the thread. As Anita's example illustrated, Enid has some female characters going off to do plenty of other jobs, but also just has some stating that looking after a home and family is also a perfectly valid lifestyle choice for those who it appeals to - and that that, as Anita worded it, 'should be valued too'.

That might be a non-feminist stance - but I'd argue against it being anti-feminist or sexist (although, I agree, today it probably would be accused of it by some. But that doesn't make the accusation correct).

Thanks for the positive responses, Anita and Blytonfan.

[Judith Crabb]

I note that a couple of weeks go the Weekend Australian review section of the newspaper featured a double-page extract from a book by Helen Hayward 'Home Work: Essays on Love and Housekeeping' which I gather is an encomium to housework to which she felt 'called' and which gave her great joy. The only contentment I've ever got out of housework - any of it - is the contentment that comes when its finished, but I have always envied the Helen Haywards of the world, as, unless you want to eat take-away and live in squalor, it's unavoidable, or unless (like Enid Blyton herself) you're wealthy enough to get someone else to do it for you. True, Hayward elevates her calling to 'Home work' making a loving and attractive environment for her husband and children. Maybe if I'd married my attitude would have changed, but I suspect that would have been unlikely as the demands of housework would have have increased enormously. Now, had I met a man who had a calling to be a house husband my attitude to housework may have been very different.

[Susie9598]

Such an interesting thread. House at the Corner is probably my ultra favourite Enid Blyton book. It’s well written, the characters are rounded and interesting, and it stands up well to adult rereading, which not all beloved titles do. I identified completely with Lizzie, as a wannabe teenage author; I didn’t wear glasses but had a brace on my teeth and was definitely a bit of an ugly duckling, overshadowed somewhat by a brilliant brother. I remember the conversation between Pam and Joan very well. To me, it seems that the essence of feminism is at least in part to do with choices, so it’s not correct to frame Joan’s stance as anti-feminist (I appreciate that’s not what you said, Blytonfan!)