Courtenay wrote:I've now had time to read the main article on Enid in Dorset magazine — "Blyton's Ripping Yarns" by Adam Lee-Potter (and I'm sure "ripping yarns" is yet another supposed-to-be-Blytonesque cliche that Enid herself never used) — and I'm still deeply unimpressed.
The author does make some attempt to be balanced, not only writing extensively about the ugly and sometimes outright cruel side of Enid's personality, but going into the possible reason why she was like that — "Blyton was — but then, aren't we all? — forged by her own childhood." He goes on to describe how she was shattered when her father left their family when she was 12 and this stunted her emotional and even physical development, leading to her apparent inability to be a good wife (at least to Hugh) and mother but also enabling her to create these marvellous fantasy worlds as her way of escaping from all that she couldn't cope with. I'm familiar with that analysis and I'm sure there's something in it, but the article doesn't really go into much depth and the overriding impression it leaves of Enid is very negative.
This isn't helped by the fact that the writer of this article leans heavily on the biopic
Enid, with input from the producer and director as well as Helena Bonham Carter; I haven't seen that film, but I know from others' comments here that a lot of people feel it was a very unfair portrayal. There's also a quote from Imogen's "scathing autobiography"
A Childhood at Green Hedges, but nothing to indicate that Enid's older daughter, Gillian, took a more forgiving view of their mother. Enid was obviously a very complex character — and I don't know nearly as much about her personal life as many people here do, as I haven't read any biographies of her at all — but I'm afraid this article could more or less be summed up as saying: "Gosh, she was a monster, but hey, she was brilliant at self-marketing and she wrote all these books that are still selling like hot cakes despite the fact that they're more than a little non-PC."
The bit that made me wince most, though — and this shows how carefully Mr Lee-Potter has read Blyton (or not, rather) — is this claim near the beginning, that Enid "has often been accused of racist and xenophobic views because of her references to golliwogs and unlikeable black characters such as the appallingly-named Sooty Lenoir, a French schoolboy in
Five Go to Smuggler's Top."
I actually yelped out loud when I first read that line — Sooty Lenoir an "unlikeable black character"?! For starters, it's clear from the story that he's NOT black in the ethnic sense, simply very dark in his hair and eyes; I never got the impression Enid meant that his skin was black (she would have said so if it was). Sooty is the nickname his friends at school have given him and he seems to accept it happily, not viewing it as a racial taunt of any kind. And "unlikeable"?! I haven't read
Smuggler's Top since I was about 8 years old and I still remember Sooty as one of the most fun, interesting and thoroughly likeable of Enid's "supporting" characters in the Famous Five books. Superficial and stupid misreadings of Enid like that verdict above just go to show how many of her critics haven't read her books properly — they're just looking through the narrow lens of their own assumptions and prejudices and finding what they expect to find, even if it isn't actually there.
In conclusion, not an article I want to either keep for myself or share with my family after all!