I still remember the days when I was in 3rd or 4th I started reading the 'Malory Towers' by Enid Blyton. I would request my mother to buy me the next part of the series as soon as I finished the previous one. I was enthralled by the fact that there was an all girls school located right next to a sea, where they could play pranks on teachers, all of them had nearly perfect families and would enjoy midnight feasts. I thought that even though the characters had flaws, they were above them and were kind and 'sensible'; especially the protagonist, Darell. She was the teacher's pet, great at sports, very smart, and loved her family. She was almost always chosen as the Head of Form, which obviously made her a very lovable character. All the girls who were a part of this batch, have a close bond with each other even though there might be some spiteful moments between them, which is what I liked the most.
After an year or so, I almost finished the entire series, and decided to take a break from it for a while. Then I returned again to the books after a while and started re-reading some parts of the books I had, but my experience was different, let me tell you how. I noticed things in the books that were disturbing and had gone unnoticed before.
1. Judgemental characters
The girls do not try to accept any new girls in the form (class) without judging any of them and even their parents at time. They accept girls only if they are like them or like sports. If a girl shows some self love or does things like wearing a bracelet, then she is called spoilt and snooty. If a girl starts crying of homesickness or cannot wake up early the next day they start saying mean things and call her a baby even though it's totally normal to be homesick.
2. Sterotypes
Enid Blyton has also placed her own prejudices against people from a particular nationality. For example, in the third book of the series, she introduces a new American girl called Zerelda. She is instantly disliked because she is supposedly "spoilt" with too many "airs and graces". They are constantly trying to change her to inculcate a "British sense of honour" and are bashing hate on her for her unusual accent. The "stuck-up" girls are always shown as rich and this creates an image in the readers' mind of rich people as stuck-up.
In almost each book there is one girl (generally hated by everyone) who will "spill the beans" about someone doing the wrong thing after which she is bullied by all the girls in the form especially by the older girls. The bullying is even more intense if the beans are spilt about one of the older girls such as Darell. I am a girl who truly believes in raising her voice against something wrong and the thought of being targeted by an entire form of mean girls genuinely scares me.
I have enjoyed these books and I did learn of few things from the series too but some of these elements just evoke an unpleasant feeling in a reader which decreased the joy of re-reading them.
I have also ordered the new book that just came out (New Class at Malory Towers) especially because it has characters from diverse races including an Indian one which intrigued me. Hopefully I'll write a blog about that one too.
