Looking back in disgust denies us a window to the past that old classics offer
ANOTHER week, another bout of handwringing as a classic book is revisited and reread through a ‘woke’ 2018 prism. On the PC chopping block this week is Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of ‘Little House on the Prairie’ children’s books.
The series was largely autobiographical, drawing heavily on her poverty-stricken dust-bowl childhood. It was also hugely problematic in its attitudes toward Native Americans and African Americans and this week the US Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) voted to remove Wilder’s name from an award.
No one can dispute the books are full of racist attitudes (“The only good Indian is a dead Indian” is a common refrain from some of the white settler characters), but when the ALSC erased Wilder’s name from an award she herself won in 1954, they were also airbrushing out a huge and problematic chunk of America’s history. It’s worth noting the ALSC insists it has no interest in limiting access to the books, or stifling discussion about them.
Which might be OK if the move wasn’t symptomatic of a wider PC purge of works across the cultural spectrum (a plethora of films, TV shows, and cartoons have been held up to light for scrutiny of late and found wanting), but children’s books is an area where the practice is pursued with a particular gusto. The fear of ‘damaging’ young minds seems to have sparked a certain moral certitude.
Earlier this year, two other American classics found themselves written out of history when schools in Minnesota removed ‘Huckleberry Finn’ and ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ from the curriculum. It’s not the first time that the Mark Twain and Harper Lee novels have found themselves on the wrong side of public opinion, and it won’t be the last.
I wasn’t a ‘Little House on the Prairie’ fan myself but read a wide selection of books from the decades that went before. An undeniable seam of racism, xenophobia and sexism ran deep through the Enid Blyton adventures I hoovered upasa child, and the same can be said of the plummy murder mysteries of Agatha Christie I later fell in love with. Aside from a strange obsession with tongue sandwiches, I’m not sure I came off badly from my encounters. Another connected trend is the proliferation of ‘issue-based’ books for children. Body image, racism, immigration, mental illness, LGBT, anxiety and depression are just some of the topics that have been written about in children’s fiction in the last year. I suspect it’s partly because these kind of reads are what publishers are looking for right now, but is it also a reaction to the trend of reassessment?
There should be room for both types of books in children’s lives. Old classics, however uncomfortable they make us feel, offer a window to the past and can afford parents an opportunity to talk to their child about issues that might otherwise go unbroached.
But I can’t help but wonder, as publishing forges ahead into areas we are only just beginning to understand, how likely is it that generations to come will look back in disgust at our own efforts to reflect the now?