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new hobby?
January 07, 2009
I seem to have a new hobby--reading old children's and YA novels. I certainly have been doing it a lot lately. I don't know...maybe I'm just looking to escape--from my age, from this age, whatever. It's not without peril, though. One of the dangers of reading the original versions of 19th and early 20th Century children's books? The racism.
Case in Point--here is an especially egregious passage from the very first Bobbsey Twins book, "The Bobbsey Twins, Or Merry Days Indoors And Out" By Laura Lee Hope (Copyright 1904):
Flossie's dolls were five in number. Dorothy was her pride, and had
light hair and blue eyes, and three dresses, one of real lace. The next
was Gertrude, a short doll with black eyes and hair and a traveling
dress that was very cute. Then came Lucy, who had lost one arm, and
Polly, who had lost both an arm and a leg. The fifth doll was Jujube, a
colored boy, dressed in a fiery suit of red, with a blue cap and real
rubber boots. This doll had come from Sam and Dinah and had been much
admired at first, but was now taken out only when all the others went
too.
"He doesn't really belong to the family, you know," Flossie would
explain to her friends. "But I have to keep him, for mamma says there is
no colored orphan asylum for dolls. Besides, I don't think Sam and Dinah
would like to see their doll child in an asylum." The dolls were all
kept in a row in a big bureau drawer at the top of the house, but
Flossie always took pains to separate Jujube from the rest by placing
the cover of a pasteboard box between them.
I suppose the separation just may be construed as a modesty thing--after all, Dorothy, Gertrude, Lucy, and Polly are girls, and "Jujube" is a boy. But it jumps out at you, doesn't it?
Not to mention this sort of thing (The Bobbsey Twins At Home, 1916):
"Well, ob all t'ings!" gasped the fat, colored cook. "If you chilluns t'ink dat I'se gwine t' upsot mahse'f so yo' kin see suffin t' laugh at, den all I'se got t' say is I ain't gwine t' do it! No, sah! Not fo' one
minute!"
Which may as well have been hieroglyphics when I was eight. Not understanding that the author had written phonetically, I could never make it out, and pretty much ignored Dinah and Sam's dialogue through most of the books. (I finally figured it out the summer I was 17, while staying at Gram's and leafing through her old editions.)
This isn't Simon Legree-style racism; Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey treat their employees pretty well, and they are portrayed as hard-working, dependable people. But it's still unbearable--all the more so, it seems, for being so...offhand. I'd like to put it down to bad writing, but I can't. It isn't just the Stratemeyer Syndicate hacks who were guilty of putting the racism of the day down in print for posterity. Here's a gem from Louisa May Alcott, where Rose Campbell reveals an distinct lack of sensitivity when meeting two �Chinamen�:
�Don�t dare ask me to speak to them, uncle; I shall be sure to laugh at the odd names and the pig-tails and the slanting eyes.�
A funny thing happened in the sequel, though. Annabell Bliss, a blonde twit character, actually falls in love with and marries one of the aforementioned Chinese. Pretty advanced stuff for 1876!
Abrupt change of subject--
Jewelry Television, give me a break! You STILL haven't processed my order? I say again--I want my necklace, dammit!
Reading: "Tenth Life", by Richard Lockridge. The last Heimrich, 1977.
"The Bobbsey Twins, Or Merry Days Indoors And Out" By Laura Lee Hope (Edward Stratemeyer)
Surfing: You're gonna love my nuts!.
Listening: "One Year Later" news stories about the tornado that leveled Niece and Nephew's house on January 7th, 2008.
At Random: click here
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