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We can’t erase past writers’ approaches to disability, but we can focus on those who know better.
Is it Groundhog Day? Not a month seems to go by without another report of publishers rewriting or changing words in books written a long time ago that now may be deemed offensive. In February, Roald Dahl hit the headlines when the Roald Dahl Story Company, now owned by the behemoth Netflix, announced it had worked with Puffin to revise the texts of his novels in order to "cater for the sensitivities of modern audiences" – cue the prime minister and Queen Consort wading into the row about the morality of changing an author’s work retrospectively. Then came the Guardian reporting that Ian Fleming Publications had employed sensitivity readers to suggest changes for modern readers, such as removing the N-word and references to the ethnicity of some characters.
Of course, revising text is nothing new. It’s a long time since "golliwogs" were rightly cut from Enid Blyton’s books, and Agatha Christie’s N-word book title was changed to the non-offensive and far more enticing And Then There Were None. Publishers want books to sell and if they get some negative PR on representation and language then it makes good business sense to revise texts for modern readers whatever you may think of the ethics of changing a writer’s work. It helps, as with Dahl, Fleming and Blyton, when the authors are dead and not around to kick up a fuss. Netflix wanting to profit from its investment in the Roald Dahl Story Company was undoubtedly another incentive.
What’s been missing from the revision debate is the perspective of disability. It’s quite right that offensive terms such as "suffers from", "wheelchair-bound" and "has a fit" are rewritten, although disabled authors are still fighting the battle for them not to appear in newly published books in the first place. Yet word changes do not address our argument that disability rarely appears in books (though in children’s literature this is improving) and when we are represented, it’s with stereotypes written through an ableist lens such as death; magical cures; misery memoirs; and triumph over tragedy, where characters feel they have to do something exceptional to prove they still have value as a disabled person, with being an "ordinary" not cutting the mustard.
Word changes do not address our argument that disability rarely appears in books (though in children’s literature this is improving) and when we are represented, it’s with stereotypes written through an ableist lens
No one is talking about keeping Colin in The Secret Garden alive or, in Heidi, Clara giving lectures on the social model of disability, and that’s right because they are a product of their times and an indicator of how society has changed when it comes to disability awareness and politics and how far we’ve come. Rewriting those stories now would feel as wrong as it would do if James’ character in James and the Giant Peach was changed to be a TikTok video viral superstar. Up to date? Yes, but totally out of context with Dahl’s era and original conception.
For books to truly represent the world in which we live, we need to firstly recognise that the UK has changed exponentially since the 1960s and 1970s and that every work of fiction is shaped by the mores, culture and sensibilities of the time it was written in. Get rid of offensive slurs, absolutely, but surely it’s time to move on from the same old classics that parents buy their children because they enjoyed them in their youth, and encourage current and aspiring writers to write future bestsellers that truly represent the world we live in, which should include disabled characters where their condition is not the focal part of the story.
That’s why, as a sideline, I’m writing a children’s novel with a wheelchair-using heroine. As a child I loved Enid Blyton’s Mallory Towers series and longed to go to boarding school to be the first wheelchair lacrosse player. Rewriting Blyton’s books to include disabled and neurodiverse characters just wouldn’t work, as it would jar with Blyton’s view for her novels and also the culture in which they were written when disabled children were siphoned off into special schools. Therefore, I’m writing what I’d have loved to read as a child – a modern and inclusive take on the boarding school genre, which includes the rich diversity of backgrounds, ethnicity and other characteristics of children you’ll find in a school today.
Sensitivity readers have taken a lot of flak over the revision of old books and that shouldn’t be the case as they are only doing their job and have knowledge about communities that authors and publishing staff may not. But I hope that, over the next decade and beyond, the publishing industry will place more emphasis on publishing new books written by people with lived experience than they do on making a profit from dead authors’ works. Those authors have had their day and still can be enjoyed within their cultural context, but now it’s time to find and publish the classics of the future.