Time for another Famous Five book. This time it is Enid Blyton's 1946 work, "Five Go Off in a Caravan".
From the wikipedia summary:
Quote:
In this part all five (Julian, Dick, George, Anne and Timmy) meet a new friend called Nobby and his chimpanzee "Pongo". There's a secret under the ground where the Five have their caravans and the secret is of Nobby's uncle Tiger Dan and his friend Lou. They have had troubles with Tiger Dan and Lou. The mystery starts in one day when the children and Timmy were commanded to camp somewhere else with their caravans. But sooner or later, the two "evil characters" - Tiger Dan and Lou - show up and try to tell them to move. what is going on??......
I am not expecting too much of this one, since it has a circus setting, which makes it sound more of a Blyton-Fellini crossover.
However it gets a very favourable review here: http://www.enidblyton.net/famous-five/five-go-off-in-a-caravan.html
Quote:
This is a truly great read. I loved everything about the story. The idyllic setting at the beginning, the leisurely two or three day journey to the lake, the circus camp scene, their caravan site up in the hills and, of course, the adventures underground! There is none of the annoyances of the inferior Five Go Adventuring Again. The Five are at their best when they're all pulling together and no one is isolated from the rest of the group.
Five Go To Smuggler's Top was a hard act to follow, but Miss Blyton followed it well. This is one of my favourites, which stands the test of time and bears re-reading many times.
A world without helicopter parents.
One thing that particularly stands out in a book written in the 1940's is how much autonomy was given to children, if Enid Blyton is to be considered any guide. While I don't know if upper middleclass English kids of 10-13 years old were allowed to go off by themselves for weeks at a time, there must be at least some truth to it for the scenario to be acceptable to publishers and readers of the time.
Take for example their decision to go off in a caravan, horse drawn in these days:
And that is about it, there is no fear of being abducted by paedophiles, attacked by ethnic gangs, family services charging the parents with neglect, etc. etc.
Compare that to the world of today, where children are cloistered by their suffocatingly neurotic helicopter parents.
The first hate crime.
Hardly have they started their holiday, and Anne cheerily falls into a very traditional role.
who drives the caravan?
who drives the caravan?
Horses
Dobby and Trotter are their names.
If that seems strange now, it was the way it had always been done, from the time of the Mongol Hordes and before.
hrm
oh so its horse-drawn instead of a motor vehicle.
This is becoming increasingly unrealistic Tigger.
Horse-drawn caravans were
Horse-drawn caravans were still manufactured into the 1930s, according to "Caravans - The Illustrated History 1919-1959 By Andrew Jenkinson".
not what I meant
I dont refer to the inconceivability of horse drawn caravans, but that children would be allowed off like this.
It was written as childrens escapist fare*, so would include material like this.
*(or are you going to claim that in addition to having a great deal of freedom of and responsibility children back then were also regularly solving crimes?)
Another world.
This was written before middleclass parents were deluged with books, videos, seminars on the correct ways of raising children, also when class distinctions were solid enough that people were not so anxious to assert class signifiers through every externality that comes into their possession, including children.
It must have been a beautiful age, when children saw so little of their parents they'd never get the chance to discover what morons they are.
Also one should not forget that underclass kids today still have the freedom to do what they want without parental supervision, so will wander the streets at all hours of the night vandalising things and selling their bodies to sugar-daddies.
This turned out to be rather good.
Firstly a circus setting did not prove to be an impediment, as the kids still managed to find a secret passageway anyway, though at some distance from the circus itself. Also there were some rather traumatic episodes which probably wouldn't get past modern publishers with their committees of child psychologists vetoing anything too intense. Such as a boy and animals were brutalised, with one dog getting killed (not Timmy thankfully), with the villains being very nasty pieces of work.