Great Lives on Radio Four - Enid Blyton

[pete9012S]

Some great points Anita - thank you.

Every modern article or interview about Enid these days seems very repetitive, lazily researched and very narrow in scope.
They hardly seem to be worth bothering about.
Why not interview the children who still love and read her books all over the world and ask their opinion, that's what I say.

She is a children's author, after all!

[Wolfgang]

Some great points Anita - thank you.

Why not interview the children who still love and read her books all over the world and ask their opinion, that's what I say.

At the end you want to say we have to listen to Greta Thunberg as well .

Seriously, I suppose many people don't want Enid Blyton to be taken seriously because she described an English society filled with nationalism, racism, class establishment and prejudice. It would be far too inconvenient to admit that a century ago this was a standard way of thinking. It's usually more comfortable to blame the prophet or the messenger than the prophecy or message itself.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Enid Blyton lived much of her life at a time when colonialism was accepted and Empire Day was celebrated every year. She also wrote throughout the Second World War and it would have been natural at such a time to emphasise the bravery and resourcefulness of British children, as she does in The Adventurous Four. However, people of the past didn't swallow the norms of the day unthinkingly, any more than we do now, and Enid Blyton was actually fairly forward-looking in some respects. It's just that, in order to spice up a book or article or programme, many critics choose to concentrate on the negative and paint an extreme picture instead of a more balanced one.

Even as a child, I was troubled by the fact that French girl Claudine (St. Clare's series) was advised to acquire "the English sense of honour" and take it back to France with her - and by Philip's remark in The Circus of Adventure (when he's feeling exasperated with Gussy), "Why don't foreigners bring up their kids properly?" However, we see far more positive attitudes elsewhere. Critics often focus on Jo-Jo the black villain from The Island of Adventure but fail to mention likeable black characters such as Mafumu from The Secret Mountain (who is clever, courageous, makes firm friends with Jack and co. and plays a major role in the adventure) or Fatty's reference to Boobanti the Zulu prince in The Mystery of the Strange Bundle, who uses his ability as a ventriloquist to play good-natured tricks on his classmates. We meet rude, brash Americans in Five on Finniston Farm (Junior and his father) and an American girl at Malory Towers (Zerelda) who is obsessed with her appearance and idolises film stars, yet the USA is portrayed in an almost wholly favourable light in The Queen Elizabeth Family and we follow the adventures of an admirable American boy (Kit) in The Boy Next Door. Critics rarely consider the latter two titles when discussing Enid's portrayal of Americans.

Regarding gollies in Enid Blyton's stories, it's not true that they're all bad as claimed in the radio programme. Many are kind and wise. Enid saw gollies as nursery toys (just like teddy bears, clockwork mice or golden-haired dolls) and never imagined that her stories would be viewed as reflections of racial issues.

Enid herself welcomed people of all races, saying in Enid Blyton's Magazine that readers from around the world were part of her "family":

Enid's editorial letter in Enid Blyton's Magazine No. 11, Vol. 2 (1954):

I want to send a special message to-day to my overseas readers, and tell them that we love to have them in our circle. They are all part of my big family of children and I love their letters as much as I love those from the children in my own country. I am particularly glad to know that so many of them are joining our Clubs - you would love to see their letters, British readers! I have just had one from a little girl in Malaya, Jaya Subramanian. She and her sister have joined the Sunbeams [which helped blind children]. Here is a little bit from her letter: 'I am happy to tell you that some of my friends also want to join as Sunbeams, and I assure you that we will always be at your side to help our brothers and sisters.' Thank you, Jaya, very much!

In another editorial letter Enid Blyton said she was pleased to see that the children's home in Beaconsfield (for which her readers raised money) helped children of all colours and backgrounds. She used to visit the home and, in her words, it was "just like the United Nations," with beautiful children of different races all playing together.

Within her books, varying attitudes can be found towards social class. Bobby in The Put-Em-Rights feels that it's better to find friends from within his own social class (the working class) but the middle class characters from a large (but run down) house in The Children at Green Meadows readily make friends with children from the new council estate. In various books, middle class children become friends with working class children (e.g. the Find-Outers with Ern) or with princes, peasants, gypsies, fairground people and circus folk.

Some critics love to condemn but in doing so they ignore a great deal of Enid Blyton's output and simplify what is actually a complex reality.

[IceMaiden]

Well I ended up listening to this after a well-meaning relative handed me a radio and said "there's a programme on here about Enid Blyton". As it was beyond the original air date I assumed it was a different show. It started ok then it went downhill and by the end I was seething. Talk about character assassination! Neither of the two women claiming to be fans said anything in defence of to correct the completely wrong claptrap that was being spouted by the presenter - some fan ! In fact all three seemed to do the only two things the supposed learned folk do when it comes to Enid Blyton - either ridicule her by poking fun or demonize her for having faults . As if anybody else is flawless, no human being is or ever has been perfect - the only one who was got nailed to a cross for his troubles! People don't like perfection, they like others to have weaknesses and chinks that they can rip into and hold over them - if you did 100 good things but one bad it would be the one bad that would be remembered by most.

Utterly dreadful load of flim-flam and incorrect too, the golliwogs in the stories weren't all bad, what about Mr Blacky in the Wishing Chair Again whose the most respected member and head of Toyland among others? As for being repetitive and formulaic, for goodness sake if you write hundreds of stories sooner or later they will start being similar as there's only so many scenarios you can do or come up with! Even Disney is so out of ideas they are simply re-releasing inferior versions of their own films! Those who say Enid is repetitive should try Agatha Christie, every single Poirot and Marple film ends exactly the same way with exactly the same twist -all of them! - yet she's raved about. Nobody says she's formulaic yet she is (and wrote far less books to need different ideas in!) or complains about her writing style, but it's ok to slate Enid Blyton .