Enid Blyton (30 page)

I must say that I agree with all your ideas, as far as my own particular knowledge goes. I am no ‘mystic’, as you know, and therefore think that supernatural manifestations can always be reduced to commonsense explanations. You cover so many interesting phases of mind, all of which aroused my curiosity, making me stop and consider, and delve into my own experiences. You used many happy phrases, apt for the reader’s understanding – like the ‘magic lantern’ idea for hypnagogic imagery. I hadn’t thought of that simile before, but it is, of course, exactly right. I’ve been experimenting with this kind of imagery so different from my own way of imagining which really consists of a kind of opening of ‘sluice gates’ and allowing a flow of cinematograph pictures and sounds to flood into my conscious mind, from the ‘under-mind’. Quite different from the magic lantern slides of hypnagogic pictures. I find that the gargoylish and grotesque type do not come along as frequently as the more ordinary type – such as clouds, waves, fountains, the moving, interchanging things– or still pictures in colour (or uncoloured) beautifully etched in every detail, such as a brilliant golden gorse-bush against a clear blue sky, each thorn put in meticulously – or a child’s head in perfect silhouette that I can ‘stare’ at for a long time before it dissolves. Never the kind of fast-moving cinematic picture, complete with sound-track that my conscious mind pulls up from my under-mind when writing. All the same, I think that my hypnagogic imagery (which I find easy to induce now I’ve tried to) is only composed of things in my visual memory, nothing really new – even the gargoylish faces are more like the kind of thing one seeks to find in cloud shapes – just a shape like something, which one’s eye completes on its own and we say ‘there’s a horse’s head in that cloud’ and so on. I have sometimes heard noises in the hypnagogic imagery, but have always assumed (probably quite wrongly) that they were outside noises – a sudden snore from my husband, sounding like a commanding voice – the sudden rattle of my window, which may sound like some kind of spoken or shouted sentence. They have always seemed to me to be too real to be imagined – they must come from outside me, not inside my mind.

I feel I would also like to comment on your
‘presque vu’
reports. For some reason I had not heard the experiences called by that name, but it is really a very good definition. I have only once had this experience, in my teens, under ‘laughing gas’. I have had gas many times, but only once did I ever experience
‘presque vu’
– and then it was in one respect different from the things you report in that instead of
’almost seeing’,
I did see and grasp everything, or so I thought! – and then lost it. This is what happened. 1 have never forgotten it and its extraordinary clarity has always remained with me. I found myself (apparently bodiless but still firmly myself) being drawn through space at a speed so great that I thought I must be going at the pace of light itself. I seemed to go through vibrating waves of light, and thought that I must be passing many suns and many universes. (I love astronomy, hence my suppositions, I suppose!) Finally, after a long, incredibly long journey in an incredibly short time I arrived somewhere. This Somewhere was, as far as I could make out, in my dazed and amazed state, a place of wonderful light (not daylight or sunlight) – and I saw, or knew, that there were Beings there – no shape, nothing tangible – but! knew they were great and holy and ineffable. Then I knew I was going to hear the secret of Everything – and Everything was explained to me, simply and with the utmost lucidity. I was overjoyed – filled with wonder and delight. I knew the reasons behind existence, time, space, evil, goodness, pain – and I rejoiced, and marvelled that no one had guessed such things before. Then I knew I must go back to my body, wherever it was, through all the long eras of time and vastness of space, and as I left in sorrow, my spirit cried out, or seemed to cry out ‘Let me tell everyone this wonderful thing I know, this secret that explains everything and will bring such rejoicing and happiness!’ And as I went back down aeons of time, I was told I must not divulge the secret and I cried out why – and as I went, I was told why, and I said ‘At least let me always remember’, but no, I was not even to be allowed to remember even one small detail myself, and I cried out again – ‘But why may I not remember?’ And then, just at the very moment when I returned to my body in the dentist’s chair, I was told why I must not even hug the knowledge to myself, and it was such a logical and wonderful reason that I accepted it joyfully, in the fullest understanding, and found myself opening my eyes, and smiling happily in the chair, completely overcome with what I thought had been a true and overwhelming revelation. This is the only
presque vu
experience I have had, and as you will agree, it was more than
presque vu
– it was ‘complètement vu’ – and yet ended by being completely lost. I can still get back the feeling at the end of it of acquiescing joyfully in my forgoing of the secret, and yet hugging to myself the certainty that ‘all’s well with the world’, despite everything!*

This experience has nothing to do with religion, it wasn’t a ‘vision’, only something amazingly produced by the gas – but I kept hold of my identity all the time, and did not lose the reporter sense of the practised writer, who instinctively retains all that is essential to her true ‘newsstory’. I have told only two or three people of this experience, as I did not think it sounded believable …

Your mescaline experiences must have been rather terrifying. They would be to me. I dread the feeling of losing my identity, of not being able to control my own mind!

*Enid related this experience to her daughter Gillian, but substituted the garden seat at Green Hedges for the ‘dentist’s chair’ and placed the time of this experience as the middle 1950s.

The Blyton Line

A psychologist’s view by Michael Woods

(An extract from ‘Blyton Revisited’, a special edition of
LINES,
Autumn 1969)

Imagine an author with an output of over two hundred books, loved by millions, not only in this country but in most of the English speaking world and the continent of Europe. Suppose, too, that this author not only ran a twice-monthly magazine and contributed to many famous journals, but also wrote many songs, plays and poems. Surely nobody could but admire and respect such phenomenal success – such variety and such creativity? Yes of course, but not if it belongs to a children’s author called Enid Blyton.

Enid Blyton was probably one of the most successful writers of children’s books this country has known. A visit to any public library will make this clear; usually every one of Enid Blyton’s books the library possesses is out on loan! But what of the writer herself? What information will we find about her? Surely such a large stone in a pond of children’s books must have created some ripples in the adult section. But not Enid Blyton. She has remained virtually ignored, even by those adults who are most concerned with children and children’s books. Even comics have fared better, and have been taken seriously as phenomena of our times by sociologists and others. It is virtually impossible to find any information about Enid Blyton, apart from a line in
Who’s Who
1969, which forgot to include her age and the fact that she died in November 1968.

If one draws a dividing line at puberty, the reactions on either side to the name Enid Blyton will be vastly different. One might almost use it as a test to determine whether a young person is mature enough to be admitted into a cinema to see an ‘X’ film. Amongst her vast public of children, just a whisper of her name conjures up feelings of excitement and anticipation; amongst adults reactions range from derision to nausea. What is it about Enid Blyton’s works that causes such strong feelings? Such admiration on the one side, and anger on the other? Can it be jealousy on the part of the adults at her fantastic success through doing something that appears so obvious and simple? Perhaps it is, but my feelings are that the answer lies deeper than that. Adults may crave background details as necessary for realism and atmosphere in a story, but to a child, however, they are just an irritation that gets in the way of the main action. It is action they want, and with Enid Blyton it is action they get.

The same is true for characterisation. Invariably the main characters are groups of four or five children, usually siblings and their cousins, ranging in age from about seven to fourteen, roughly the age boundaries of Blyton readers. Groups this size are usually safe because of their numbers. They are not so large as to be unwieldy. One may suppose they reflect, perhaps, the nuclear family, and offer far less opportunities for tension within the group than, say, units of three – the eternal triangle. It seems a deliberate policy on Enid Blyton’s part to define the characters in her books only in the haziest terms, it is very difficult to tell children apart, especially in a series like the ‘Secret Seven’. Those children who do stand out are complete oddities; George, the girl who tries to be a boy in the ‘Five’ series, and Philip, the boy who talks to animals in the ‘Adventure’ series. Elaborate characterisation may be necessary in an adult novel, but in children’s fiction it is probably a waste of time at best. Children’s imaginations readily supply characters to suit their own needs, and Enid Blyton’s policy of being vague about her characters enables the young reader to identify more easily with them.

Another inescapable point about Enid Blyton’s writing is its strong upper-middle-class bias. Vague mention is made of ‘Cook’, the children are shown in one drawing arriving in a chauffeur-driven car, and other minions are always at hand to arrange things for them, without any hint of worldly remuneration. The children adopt a superior attitude, not only to the crooks, but also to the cooks of the world, and Enid Blyton tosses this off casually as though it is the only right and natural order of things.

Apart from its convenience in so many ways, for instance, being on hobnobbing terms with police inspectors and being able to conjure up impossible things like horse-drawn caravans and helicopters, this superior setting carries much weight with the young readers, in rather the same way that having army officers drawn from the upper echelons of society is supposed to inspire confidence in the troops. It does so by subtly adding to the fantasy element of the story, and with a few deft strokes places it well and truly beyond the experience of the majority of her readers.

Enid Blyton encourages the judgement of others by superficialities. Everybody is most clearly labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad’, ‘us’ or ‘them’ in the author’s own old-fashioned stereotype. Crooks always have rough voices, and are humourless and incredibly stupid. The children are always polite and nice to each other, they are always laughing – especially at others less fortunate than themselves. In the
Mountain of Adventure
which is set in Wales, the local people seem to say nothing else but ‘Look you, whateffer’ and nearly choke them selves on food. In
The Six Bad Boys
which is a rare and unsuccessful attempt at social realism, Enid’s own obvious middle-class prejudices are even more in evidence:

Bob, a middle-class boy from a broken home, meets up with a delinquent gang of working-class boys. ‘None of the boys was very clever,’ she writes. ‘Patrick [as ‘a wild Irish boy’] had a streak of cunning that the gang found useful’ … When Bob met the gang their leader Fred … rose to the occasion. He had sized up Bob at once – a boy a bit above them in station … (and later) ‘All four boys admired Bob and liked him, and because he was better dressed than they were and came from a better home they were proud to have him share their cellar.’

Another primary attraction is the inevitable inclusion of a strong animal interest. Of course the animals are usually dogs, and, in fact one of the ‘Famous Five’ in the series of that name is actually ‘Timmy’, George’s dog. Like all Blyton animals he always appears to know exactly what is going on and ‘woofs’ in the appropriate places. Even more fantastic is ‘KikI’, a parrot in the ‘Adventure’ series, who comments on and takes part in everything that happens. This imputation of human attributes to animals appeals to children, because it is something that they secretly believe to be true anyway. For adults though, this is one of the most infuriating aspects of Enid Blyton’s writing, not merely because it is patronising, but because it seems a deliberate attempt on the author’s part to cash in on children’s gullibility, and perpetuate a lie.

We have now established some of the ingredients of the successful ‘Blyton’ formula: superior social status, the absence of anything that smacks of the work-a-day world, the high fantasy level and the strong animal interest. These factors have played a large part in establishing Enid Blyton’s success but they would hardly be enough without a very good and usually well-written story. There are naturally enough a few rough corners and hurriedly patched up endings, the suspense though is admirably controlled and is exciting often at times even at an adult level.

Some critics observed, not without justification considering Enid Blyton’s phenomenal output and variety of styles, that the books were written by a syndicate following a formula much as we have described above. This may be true, but it does not really help with an explanation. Each Blyton book carries the inimitable ‘Blyton’ stamp just as it bears her babyish signature with those coy dots beneath. For me Enid Blyton is a real person. No syndicate would allow itself to exhibit such foibles. The secret of success lies not in calculated exploitation by a cynical adult or adults of a vast number of gullible children. I do not honestly believe she was clever enough for that. She was, I am sure, really a child at heart, a person who never developed emotionally beyond the basic infantile level.

‘Mother, Mother!’ the typical Enid Blyton adventure story is rarely without this familiar evocation in its first few lines, and of course there is dear old Mummy (never ‘Mum’ you may observe) ready at hand to offer succour and attention in abundance. Often the request is for food and Mother chides good naturedly but abundantly, ‘Darling, you have only just had your breakfast.’ Mother is suitably faceless and universal. The food is more reminiscent of an orgy in an Edwardian emporium than a modern child’s idea of a good ‘blow-out’. Enid Blyton writes of tongues, ham, pies, lemonade and ginger-beer. This is not just food, it is archetypal feasting, the author’s longing for the palmy days of her own childhood.