What if I told you that the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and many other children’s stories you grew up with was also a flying ace, a wartime spy and a real live Casanova? I’m talking about Roald Dahl, and it’s true he has a complicated legacy. That’s why the late author was back in the limelight last week after his British publisher took a red pen to his classic works, removing language relating to weight, gender, race and mental health for the sake of being sensitive to young readers.
Now, Dahl’s publishers were never going to change much. They planned to take out references to Augustus Gloop and Aunt Sponge being enormously fat and Mrs Twit being hideously ugly, and replace the adjectives with less offensive ones. Matilda would be reading Jane Austen rather than Rudyard Kipling, and the witches trying to blend in among ordinary women would be scientists rather than secretaries. Nevertheless, the proposed changes ingited fires in bellies everywhere. Even Prime Minister Rishi Sunak chimed in with his two cents about censorship.
Where does that leave us? Talking about language again. I’m going to try to put this as carefully as possible, considering it wasn’t that long ago I made an argument in favour of changing Shakespeare’s script for modern-day sensibilities. But mess with Roald Dahl? Not on your life.
What does Roald Dahl mean to me?
It’s nigh on impossible to write about Dahl’s legacy without mentioning the views he once held or the dark undercurrents in his work. Yes, his children’s stories are a little sick and twisted. Yes, his adult collection is morally dubious at best. But Dahl many young readers’ first—myself included. My childhood was shaped by the likes of the Big Friendly Giant catching and storing dreams in glass bottles and Danny and his father clearing out a wood full of pheasants they day before the big hunt. I plan to read many of these stories to my children one day, and I can’t imagine someone switching out his gobblefunk for less offensive language, whatever that is.
I was a voracious reader for years and I shelved it when I went to university. But that all changed when my mom gave me her well-worn copy of short stories mid-way through my degree. I can still recall how I fell in love with reading all over again as I sat outside a lecture hall, thumbing through a story called The Visitor, hooting with laughter. Who would’ve guessed that the man whose stories I learned to read from could have also written such salacious drivel that would entertain me endlessly so many years later?
Why should we preserve Dahl’s language?
I was very much in favour of creative minds adapting Shakespeare’s work to suit their own needs because the bard adapted many of his stories from other sources and because no one has gone back and directly edited the sixteenth-century parchments. But editing Dahl directly doesn’t sit well with me. Taking creative license with spin-offs is one thing, but erasing original work is quite another.
Though Dahl wouldn’t be the first posthumously-edited writer, I understand and agree with the backlash. Several generations have grown up reading his wonderfully wicked stories no worse for wear. Many of the inuendos we take issue with are things we failed to grasp as children. Besides, how are we supposed to teach the next generation about the commonplace views of the time without reference to them? For me, Dahl’s stories are the reason I still love to read, and the reason I chose to write.
