CASUAL SEXISM

Stereotypes in Malory Towers and St Clare's

    Darell, the good girl . Who know when to pull off praks, regrets the mistakes she makes , short tempered but controls that as well , trust worthy friend and has simple and nice people like her as her friends as well. Oh-so-perfect!
   The twins at St.Clare's. Again, stuck up in the start. Turn from comfort loving spoiled brats to the most responsible girls who help their juniors out and what not. Great ,Isn't it?
     Fun fact : I used to adore these books A LOT. Still have all of them in my bookshelf. More like, my childhood in a bookshelf . I still don't wanna give them up :P
      But now, I personally feel that I don't agree with a lot of ideas from the book. Hear me out
       Both of these are boarding schools full of girls. They study , play sports ,pull  pranks on others . Everything   is great . But then, in EVERY book there is some  " new unusual" girl  and that's fine ( Cause Obviously, we need to keep the story going . We need drama).
         A good fifty percent of the time , this girl is RUDE and stuck up. Or especially if she's American, the other girls  either hate her for her American accent , and try to inculcate in her the "British sense of honor" and try to make her say "Twenty" and not "Twenny" or just hate her blatantly cause she's American and hence has to be rude.They make fun of  girls who want to dress up a bit, to show how they love themselves a simple girl like Sally (Malory Towers) and not girls who grow nails and wear nail polish.
And more than often , these stuck up girls are RICH . So what does it generally mean? If you're rich, you're stuck up. If you're American, you' re stuck up.
   And then comes the spy girl,  who mostly just wants to  "spill the tea" about others. She keeps spying on others and goes on to mess about  with others business and takes pride in having a side-kick who is good at heart but can't seem to be able to  speak up. And speaking of side-kicks. Next come the ones who stick with the rich and the beautiful girls.  They listen to everything they say and simply Adore them!  AWw we can't forget our dear Gwendolyn Mary , can we?
     Now come the "nice" ones. The old girls of the school usually like the tom boys who have horses and a large number of brothers. They like girls who don't shun away from going on a good swim (but not good enough to go in the ocean, and nearly die xD) and getting dirty. Mostly these girls are fun and outgoing.
      Then come the Nerds who spend their entire day studying cause  LOL you cant study as well as have friends , can you? You just have to be a nerd obsessed with studies and yeah , you might as well have some sad family problem and  you got into the school you're in ,through a scholarship you worked really REALLY  hard on .
    Doesn't it sound like Enid Blyton had specific ideas and opinions about people and then wrote stories with such characters. I don't know how many of you people know this but Enid Blyton has mentioned that the character George / Georgina in the Famous Five was based on her. Hence the glorification of tom boyish characters which is totally fine , but not at the cost of the others.
    Or it might even be that Enid Blyton was a grown up woman who know that such generalizations are not to be made in real life but is her audience with the same mindset? Most of them are young kids who grow up reading her books.Trust me, I did too and I have absolutely no regrets. But these books strongly sow such mentalities in children. Yes, people may grow up to see reason or probably not everyone does .
    Why can't books be  more accepting? You could be rich and still be nice . Being A "nerd" could be considered cool (I genuinely think it is #NerdFighteria xD ). You could be a girly girl or a tom boy or anywhere in between and still people would accept  you for who you are. You could be accepting of the fact that people from other countries could be different and that's okay.
   Enid Blyton's books do teach a  lot of values but definitley miss out on the "accepting" nature we all need to have.
 I mean, i get it. You need to keep the story going. You need a plot. All can't be happy. But the thing is such stereotypes were repeated over and over again and the fact that girls are always jealous of each other , see others as competitors , do sly stuff to bring each other down is what pisses me off. Enough for now. Bye!!

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