Did it feel like it was set in the past on first reading?

[Stephen]

I was going to mention something about this on the "Don't Mention the War" thread, but thought it might do with a thread of its own. Basically, when you first read Enid Blyton, did it even feel like it was set in the past?

I started in the late 70s/early 80s when I was about 6 or 7. The likes of The Wishing Chair and Mister Meddle, but there was nothing at that tender age that screamed to me this had been written way back in the 1930s and 40s. As far as I was concerned it could have been set in the present day. Now the one obvious thing you might be thinking of is the old money. But I just kind of accepted that that's what they used in the story, but not in real life. It didn't really distract me at all, if anything all that stuff with sixpences and shillings was quite interesting. And there's one story in which Meddle drives a steam train. The fact I'd never seen a steam train in real life was no big issue. They have them in this book!

Stories for older children? As far as I was concerned, the Five Find-Outers could have been set in my local village. Just because you generally didn't hear about children solving mysteries didn't mean that it couldn't happen. The Famous Five? Just because I couldn't ever imagine myself being allowed to take a pair of horse drawn caravans on holiday under my charge didn't mean that it was impossible for every child out there. I didn't read the school stories until a few years later, but again just because I never went to boarding school didn't mean I couldn't read about what life was like for children who do (as in present tense). Not so much that these stories were set in the past, but more like fantasy, idyllic versions of the present day.

What prompted me to start this thread in the first place was a remark in The Valley of Adventure about the "recent war". I would have first read this aged eight, and as strange as it sounds, it didn't really feel all that inaccurate. WWII had finished a mere thirty six years previously (although even that figure I didn't dwell on), I knew many people who remembered and even taken part in it, so it was just something that happened some time before I was born. "Recent war" could apply here...

Thoughts?

[TheAngryPixie]

The first book I read was Give Go Down to the Sea and nope, I didn't realise when it was written or set. I sort of knew it was older than i was--not the 90s, because of the language like golly! Spiffing! Wizard! Brick! which nobody used. And the names--Fanny, Quentin, Julian, Anne etc. But didn't realise it was set as far back as the 40s/50s.

Really, language aside--they are quite timeless. And the names are not all THAT old fashioned. You still stumble across Julians and Annes and Georges in the wild. Quentins and Fannys, not so much.

[Bertie]

I can never really remember things like the first Enid book I read, or how I felt about them on first read. I guess that's probably because I first heard them when I was really young - 2 or 3 - and my older brothers were still being read to. By the time I remember reading them myself I was so well acquainted with the books that I knew full well things like where they were set and when they were written, and the terminology used, etc. And I loved that about them! To me it was always just a positive that they were mostly describing quite quaint, idyllic settings from earlier decades. Similar feelings to my later love of PG Wodehouse books as well, I guess.

[Boodi 2]

I never found the books "old fashioned", although obviously I started reading them in the mid to late 1960s, so within 20-25 years of their publication.

[Debbie]

Reading in the 80s.

The think I noticed was the servants really. No one I knew had a housekeeper or anything else. I can't even think of anyone I knew who had a cleaner in the way people do today. It's probably that part that dated it for me, although I wouldn't say I found them old-fashioned.
The children had more freedom than I did, and I envied them that, but I did know others who had far more freedom, so it didn't seem unlikely that some children were allowed to, and the explanation that Timmy made the difference settled it for me.
And my cousins boarded (army children) so the boarding didn't seem out of the ordinary either.

[Jack400]

I tended to visualise the stories as contemporary. The only time that they seemed dated was occasional references- such as boys wearing caps and lighting the candles in their cycle lamps. Somehow I just carried on reading and forgot the reference pretty quickly. It was educational to read such detail - though without feeling lectured.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Reading Enid Blyton books in the 1970s, certain elements struck me as enjoyably quaint (e.g. goloshes, pokers, lacrosse, cooks and maids, and expressions such as "You are a brick!" and "Do let's!"). They seemed relatively modern compared to many of the other books I read though (by authors like Lewis Carroll, Mrs. O. F. Walton, E. Nesbit, Kenneth Grahame and Frances Hodgson Burnett). I tended to be drawn to old-fashioned things anyway, so I felt more in tune with Enid Blyton than with some contemporary writers like Anne Digby or American author Judy Blume - even though I still quite enjoyed some of their books.

[GloomyGraham]

Yes, even to 7 or 8 year old me,some (as with CS Lewis) were obviously written/set in the past.

But as I'd read and enjoyed stories like 'Robin Hood', I didn't need things or the language used to be modernised.

[Anjalli]

I love her books and never felt it was set in any other time but in present time - back in the 80's and whenever i read them since then. I love the freedom of the children and that they can go out and get disguises and dress us and act like someone else, i guess i envy Fatty in that aspect, and have boats that they can row themselves and live on islands and to to boarding school and have so much fun just to mention some. Also the food - i could not get enough of reading about the different food they had, made me so hungry that i would usually have some form of chocolate to eat or bullseye whilst i am reading the books. I must confess i still do that even now. The Mr. Pink Whistle, Meddle, Twiddle, Faraway Tree, Wishing Chair (just to mention a few) are timeless for me and will stay so. As for the fairy stories, i love them so and would look in the flowers to see if i could see a fairy, unfortunately i never saw any.

[Anita Bensoussane]

...as I'd read and enjoyed stories like 'Robin Hood', I didn't need things or the language used to be modernised.

Same here. As a child I loved stepping into the past through the pages of books (and still do!) Encountering different speech patterns, vocabulary, clothes, food, customs, attitudes, etc. were all part of the enjoyment and I'd have felt cheated if I'd known that there had already been a few tweaks to my Famous Five paperbacks published by Knight (e.g. shorts occasionally - though not always - being replaced by jeans, and the novelty of a television being downplayed).

Anjalli, I often get hungry when reading about food too. I remember being eleven or twelve and preparing for a re-read of one of E. Nesbit's books (about the Bastable family) by putting together a picnic for myself made up only of food that would have been available in those days (e.g. a piece of meat pie, a tomato, a currant bun, an apple and a bag of humbugs). Having suitable food to hand helped make me feel as though I'd entered the world of the characters.

[Hannah]

I must have started reading the books around 1993 and didn't notice it was set in the past. I probably just assumed that personal living conditions were different - so why shouldn't they be like in the books for some kids?
It might have helped that I read the books in German, so outdated words or currency weren't as obvious as they might have been in English.

I guess a child reading the books nowadays would notice it more easily - they'd e. g. probably wonder why there are no mobiles used to get help or to communicate with each other.

[dsr]

Not only did I assume that the Valley of Adventure was set "in the present" (mid-seventies for me), I also assumed that the old couple had been living in the valley for 30 years or so.

As for the Famous Five and other children, I just assumed they lived "down south" and they do things differently there. I realised they were all rich children, and I didn't know any rich children (ie. boarding schools and private islands), so it was never a surprise if they weren't just like me and my friends.

[Courtenay]

I'm quite surprised at the number of people here who didn't realise Enid Blyton books were set in the past... to me as a young reader in 1980s Australia, it was always pretty obvious. Not only servants and dinner bells and all that, but the attitudes towards gender roles in particular — boys have all the exciting adventures, girls aren't allowed to come because it's too dangerous for them and they should stay home and do the cooking and cleaning (unless they're George Kirrin). I remember objecting strongly to that and my parents explaining to me that that really was how most people thought in those days. That was the biggest giveaway of all — that my parents had grown up reading these books (they were both born in the mid-late 1940s). In fact, Mum often remarked that in her primary school library (in an outer suburb of Melbourne with a large immigrant population) they had "nothing but Enid Blyton!" I've never been sure if that was an exaggeration or not, but clearly there was one author who heavily predominated.

Along with that, although we did have the 1970s Famous Five series on TV when I was really little, the actual books we had (probably the entire series, or very nearly) were a mixture of ones with Betty Maxey illustrations — usually the ones with the TV tie-in covers — and older ones with Eileen Soper illustrations. So it was clear enough from those that the Famous Five had been around for a long time and hadn't always worn jeans and '70s hairstyles! In any case, I preferred the Five Find-Outers, and the atmosphere of those — cosy village, bumbling bobby, and of course the numerous cooks and maids and so on again — was also pretty obviously something far removed from the world I was growing up in. But that didn't really bother me, as I mostly just enjoyed the stories! My biggest favourite was Galliano's Circus, which also clearly wasn't set in the modern world — all the circus folk being so wowed that Mr Wally's caravan is pulled by a car instead of by horses like theirs... But it did have a heroine who, unlike George, didn't even bother to whinge about restrictive gender stereotypes, but just went ahead and did what she wanted. I've always thought Lotta is a stronger "feminist" character than George for that reason.

Of course, publishers for decades did their best to pretend that Enid's books were set in the (then) present day, with modern illustrations and updates to the text and so on, but there's no way they can do that now, as we've all discussed here before — not with the rise of modern technology like mobile phones and the internet and social media and so on. Young readers today definitely won't be able to assume these books are set in the same era they live in, but that shouldn't stop them enjoying and appreciating Enid's writing! That's what makes me wish the publishers would just keep the original texts in print, with a foreword to explain changes in customs and attitudes if they feel that's necessary, rather than tampering with them to try to make them fit today's world.

[db105]

I didn't give a lot of thought to when they were set, but I kind of assumed they had been written some years ago (I was vaguely aware they had been around for years before I started reading them and that no new ones were being published), but I assumed they were kind of contemporary. I certainly wasn't aware that they had been written in a completely different generation. Years later, when I learned that Enid Blyton was dead, and that in fact she had died years before I was born, I remember being surprised and saddened.

One thing that helped me make the assumption that they were relatively recent was that they were set in a different country (different from mine, I mean), so any quaintness with the money, or the food or the vocabulary could be understood to be because of that. Also, as a child there are many things you take in stride when you are reading, because there are so many things about the world that you don't know. It's easy for children to suspend disbelief.

As has been mentioned, of course, it wasn't until mobile phones and computers that the books became clearly non-contemporary.

Other things that have been mentioned in this thread are the sexist attitudes and the servants. Regarding the sexist attitudes, the awareness about those issues was very different in the 80s when I was reading these, particularly for an oblivious young boy like me (I'm sure I would have been more aware of it if I had been a girl). In hindsight, even in a book written in the 80s they probably wouldn't have kept the girls out of the dangerous parts of the adventures, but at the time what I knew was that we boys liked things like playing football, while girls liked dolls, or jumping rope. And in my home, my father didn't really do much domestic work. Funnily enough, there was a George-like girl in the same year as me in my school, not in the sense that she wanted people to pretend she was a boy, but that she liked playing football with us boys instead of playing with the girls. While this was unusual, it was accepted quite naturally, helped by the fact that she really was "as good as a boy" at playing football, not the best player but not the worst either, so her playing with us was accepted without argument.

Regarding servants, my parents, who were middle class (a university teacher and a high school teacher), employed a lady to do some household work in our home (it was something like a few hours in the morning three days a week, certainly not live in), but I assumed it was something of the sort when a servant was mentioned. Besides, servants were never a central part of the plot, so it wasn't something I payed a lot of attention to.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Not only did I assume that the Valley of Adventure was set "in the present" (mid-seventies for me), I also assumed that the old couple had been living in the valley for 30 years or so.

I also imagined that the couple had been in the valley for perhaps a couple of decades, and had grown old there! Even though I didn't think the story was set in the 1970s, I couldn't say exactly when the Second World War had taken place (it was just "a long time ago" as far as I was concerned), or exactly when Enid Blyton had written the book (it was just "some time ago"). The idea of Elsa and her husband having guarded the treasure caves in the remote valley for so long added an extra spooky element to a story that was already deliciously haunting, wistful and unsettling.

I'm quite surprised at the number of people here who didn't realise Enid Blyton books were set in the past... to me as a young reader in 1980s Australia, it was always pretty obvious. Not only servants and dinner bells and all that, but the attitudes towards gender roles in particular — boys have all the exciting adventures, girls aren't allowed to come because it's too dangerous for them and they should stay home and do the cooking and cleaning (unless they're George Kirrin).

Attitudes towards gender roles in 1970s North Wales were still pretty much the same as in Enid Blyton's books, to be honest. I used to roll my eyes at the Secret Seven girls not being allowed out at night, but at the same time I saw that that was just the way society was.

When my sister and I had a Hornby railway set for Christmas, we told our Sunday School teacher and she remarked, "Trains are for boys!" She wasn't the only one to say that! In PE lessons at school, boys did football but girls did hockey and netball. In the playground, boys never joined in with "girls' games" such as skipping or French elastics, and girls didn't take part in the boys' games of football. At secondary school we had a school uniform which included a grey skirt for girls. There was no option to wear trousers if you were female - or a skirt if you were male. Competitions at school were often set up as boys v. girls. In lower school, pupils of both sexes did DCT (Woodwork and Metalwork) and Home Economics (Cookery and Sewing). However, when it came to choosing O Level options, DCT was chosen mostly if not exclusively by boys, while Home Economics was chosen mostly if not exclusively by girls. Without realising it, we'd absorbed certain expectations and few questioned them - or even thought to.