Does rewriting literature rob it of its essence? — The Established
The recent decision to alter parts of Roald Dahl’s children’s books, deemed to be offensive and hurtful, could be seen as an attack on the freedom of expression.
In The Prevention of Literature, an essay by George Orwell, written in the defence of freedom of expression, Orwell implores his fellow intellectuals to condemn literary censorship of any kind.
He writes: “To write in plain, vigorous language one has to think fearlessly, and if one thinks fearlessly one cannot be politically orthodox,” explaining how the idea that storytelling should be politically correct is nothing but a tired stereotype.
CENSORSHIP AND CONTROVERSY
Last week, Puffin Books and Dahl Estate found themselves embroiled in a controversy after deciding to rewrite Roald Dahl’s children’s books to edit language that is deemed to be offensive and hurtful to sentiments because of their political incorrectness when it comes to the tropes of race, body positivity, caste, mental health and gender.
Dahl, one of the most popular children’s authors in the world for decades, has written classics such as Matilda, Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, The Witches, and The BFG. These changes are meant to ensure that “Dahl’s wonderful stories and characters continue to be enjoyed by all children today.” This would mean that Augustus Gloop from Charlie and The Chocolate Factory will no longer be an ‘enormous, fat child’, but rather just an ‘enormous child’, or that Mrs Twits from Twits is only ‘beastly’, and not ‘ugly and beastly.’
However, following the backlash claiming this censorship to be an attack on the freedom of expression from several people, including the likes of Salman Rushdie and Suzanne Nossel (CEO of PEN America), Puffin and Penguin Random House on Friday announced that they would publish the classic editions of Dahl’s work, so that “readers will be free to choose which version of Dahl’s stories they prefer.”
ALTERING LITERATURE OR REALITY?
Of course, this is not to say that Dahl’s work or Dahl himself was without problems. Sayantan Ghosh, executive editor at Simon and Schuster, says, “It is not an unknown fact that Dahl was very openly anti-semitist and racist, like many male writers of that era. They’ve written things that are unacceptable in today’s day and age. You go back to Charles Dickens, who is credited with writing the first novel ever — the things he has written about Indians is abhominal.”
He further elaborates on why despite this, revising literature is a quest without any end, and therefore not the right approach. “The truth remains that whether it is Dickens or Dahl, their work has mattered, and has developed the cannon of literature for centuries. We can’t keep altering literature, or art, because there is no end to it.”
“It is also vital to remember that it is impossible to be politically correct all the time, because then it will be a homogenous body. Everyone will talk about the same thing, in the same manner, because you’re bound by a rulebook and you can’t create art with rules,” he says.
“It is also vital to remember that it is impossible to be politically correct all the time, because then it will be a homogenous body.”
— Sayantan Ghosh
Meera Ganapathi, author, poet and founder-editor of the independent online magazine The Soup, wrote a children’s book called Paati vs Uncle which strikingly reminds you of Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl’s works, shares, “As Salman Rushdie said in that now famous tweet, while Dahl was no angel, he wrote in a different time, and books like these create a space for children to question and make sense of history.”
Ganapathi adds, “Altering literature with the need to make it perfect is like raising a child in a world of cushions–the world has sticks and stones and flowers all in good measure–children are intelligent enough to know what to take and what to leave behind.”
As an editor, Ghosh feels that a better approach would be to get contemporary writers on board, and have them write an introduction to the same text. This would bring to parents’ or children’s notice that these are the issues in the text, because “if you take everything apart and put it back together, is it even the same thing anymore?”
YOU CAN’T REWRITE HISTORY
This absurd censorship of Dahl’s works almost 30 years after his death reinforces the incessant need to make everything relevant, even the past. Literature especially is reflective of the times it has been written in, changing a work from the past to suit modern ideologies is robbing readers (in this case, children) of their opportunity to look at the world as an ever-changing, evolving place.
Researcher Divya Rabindranath, parent to an 11-year-old son, questions, “Where does this end? If years later from now, someone decides to change everything that was written today, would we agree with it? Imagine if it changes for the worse. What if someone from the right or conservative side decides to edit out all references to female liberation or pro-abortion rights in literature? That would be scary.”
Kallistheni Papadopoulos, a resident of Romford, Essex, UK who runs a book community called Book Galore, says, “People should accept that history has happened and not alter it. Use Roald Dahl stories to educate and show children how stories have changed over time. Give them the opportunities to discuss, to become articulate speakers. Taking that away by changing stories doesn’t help.”
At the same time, it is vital to remember that literature is not only reflective of the time it has been written in, but also of the author’s own bias. Take J.K Rowling’s Harry Potter series, for instance. It might as well be one of the most influential pieces of children’s literature, but is also one of the most frequently censored and banned series. Fans who argue about separating the art from the artist, forget that the author’s now infamous transphobic comments and beliefs remind one that her work has maybe all along intended to be reflective of her bigotry and intolerance towards a community that has perhaps loved her stories before they were indicative of its creator’s prejudice.
TO A CHILD’S CREDIT
Ganapathi shares, “As a children’s books author, I always think of my readers as thinking and individual-minded despite (and even because of) their age. They ask questions, are eager to learn but this move of bowdlerising assumes that children have no agency or thought process.”
On a similar note, Ghosh comments, “I think we discredit children a lot; they are quite perceptive and can figure out things on their own. I think they can figure out right from wrong on their own given the correct nurturing.”
According to Rabindranath, “Such books present an opportunity for parents to converse with the child that you know this is how it was in the past, but it’s wrong and there’s a reason why you can’t use such language. If you rewrite the past, then how are they ever going to question it, because they can, they are that intelligent if you allow them to be.”
Of course, literary censorship is not a new phenomenon, and its defenders have their own justifications for the same throughout history. The late Julia Briggs, a professor of English Literature as well as a fiction writer had argued: “Their ignorance and lack of preconceptions leave children peculiarly vulnerable to outside influences. The claim that they need protection can be extended to justify the exercise of censorship on a variety of grounds.”
Alas, rewriting something out of existence won’t form young minds into becoming inclusive. Propagating that all storytelling, art and literature should be politically correct and holier-than-thou means revising classics into some muddled woke atrocity, which serves absolutely no purpose.
Origanlly Published In The Established:
