Libby Purves: Scholar who accuses Beatrix Potter of stealing Peter Rabbit needs to lie down

Sometimes, with the utmost kindness and respect, it is tempting to treat well-meaning activists a cup of tea and explain that even if we could rebuild the world the way they wanted it, it would only become duller and sadder. there is. Lonely and more distrustful.

The latest culture warrior in need of a calming beer and a chat is Dr. Emily Zobel Marshall, a ‘Postcolonial Literature Reader’ at Leeds Beckett University.

Emily is perfect for Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit. This is because Peter is a thief, a vandal, and when ordered to go blackberry picking with his brothers, he tore his leg in an attempt to destroy Mr. McGregor’s vegetable patch, fell into a watering can, and lost his jacket. It’s not because you’re a disobedient scoundrel who shows up in your house with a He overdosed on stolen parsley.

No: According to Dr. Zobel Marshall, Peter’s fault is that the story about him and his companions is “cultural appropriation.”

Peter may appear as “typically English” as Jemima Puddle Duck and Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, but such stories are hard-working American cotton plantations in the 19th century. “I am not merely inspired” by similar fables told by African slaves who were

In a recent article on the website The Conversation, Dr. Zobel Marshall points out that when Potter was a child, he loved the stories of “Trickster Hero” Blair Rabbit.

In African oral lore for centuries, this cunning rabbit has outwitted physically powerful opponents. American journalist Joel Chandler Harris, using the moniker African-American “Uncle Remus”, first published an article about the Brera Rabbit in the 19th century. Marshall believes that many of Potter’s stories were stolen from these Uncle Remus books. Cunning rabbits who take advantage of farmers reflect “violence, resistance and survival strategies of farm life,” she says.

Potter himself admitted in a letter that there was one “major flaw” in Mr. Todd’s story, one of the Peter Rabbit stories. . . Imitation of Uncle Remus.

To make matters worse, the Potter family’s fortune has historically been cotton. The cotton was woven in Manchester and picked by slaves in the American Deep South in the early 19th century. This partly explains her reading Uncle Remus at a young age.

Dr. Zobel Marshall puts it in damning terms: “Her story owes Blair Rabbit’s story.” . It needs to be fully recognized. ”

Dr. Zobelle Marshall’s argument is quite persuasive, but her essay seems to be aimed at inciting resentment and division between cultures, perhaps adding new guilt to white people. (She herself is of Martinica and English descent).

But what I find most frustrating is that she’s a respected expert on exactly this kind of cultural crossover. Scholars should know that stories are no one’s property, like the folk songs that traveled from the Celtic Coast to the Appalachians and from there to Bob Dylan’s New York cellar gigs in the early 1960s. .

I feel the same way about all those who denounce “cultural appropriation”. namely, the modern sin of inappropriately borrowing stories, clothing, customs, and designs from another society. It’s been applied to everything from fancy dress to poetry to yoga, and annoyed people usually only tend to get angry if the culture that adopts it is “dominant” over others.

To them, it is wrong for a Western woman to wear a sari and a Chinese jacket, but it is perfectly fine for an Indian lawyer or an African businessman to wear a pinstripe suit – 19th century England and Europe It’s a strange outfit created by a commercial for . class.

Or take some music. For the Cultural Police, it is an honor to have the Titi Nwanok CBE lead the ethnically diverse Cineke. The orchestra plays Mozart, but it is questionable that white rockers and jazzmen would pick up rhythms developed by blacks.

Likewise, they disgustly look down on the brutality of British chicken tikka masala, but never rage against an Indian chef’s Shepherd’s Pie. It’s a strangely modern and condescending way of pulling us all apart from each other. The literary world is now afraid to let writers create Black, Asian, and Latino characters unless the writers themselves enjoy the “lived experience” of those races. Publishers’ anxiety about these issues is only getting worse.

Twelve years ago, in more innocent days, I wrote the novel Regatta. In it, I tried to explore the emotions of an underprivileged black girl from South London who stood in amazement when she saw the open sea for the first time and felt the ripples. Salt water around her toes. She may now be censored.

Of course, ridicule is never right, and it is downright disrespectful to “black out” or parody an ethnic voice. But much of what has been denounced as “cultural appropriation” is better described in other terms: admiration for imitation, respectful enjoyment, empathy, flattery, and fellowship.

If we take it away, we will live spiritually and culturally in a small, stuffy, cramped space, in fear of everything new, unfamiliar, and alien.

We can never accept that members of other races and cultures are people with the same rights, joys, and desires as we do, unless we borrow and play with other people’s stories. Getting out of one’s rut ​​is a human desire, and no one should try to take it away.

So we come to another point that Dr. Zobel Marshall will consider.

Looking at the rabbit, she might look east. A Chinese proverb says, “A cunning rabbit has three burrows.” Indian legends also feature sly rabbits. The Zapotecs of Central America had their own cunning rabbits. And so did the Cherokee Native American tribe, long before millions of Africans were transported to the African continent to bring stories of the Brera rabbit.

You can even go all the way back to the 6th century BC, when the Greek writer Aesop wrote his fables. They’re there again, those fragile but artistic bunnies.

Look straight at me. These animals burrow into the ground and pop out to steal carrots. Small, agile and lawless. There is something about it that appeals to the universal human desire to evade, jump in, and outwit the strong.

Similarly, rats enjoy stories where they win over humans who sometimes feel weak and helpless.

Beatrix Potter has her industrious little rodents finishing suits for Gloucester tailors in one night. In Aesop’s Fables, a mouse forms a council of war while another nibbles through a trapper’s net to rescue a lion.

If I could land anywhere on Earth, I’m sure there would be people telling tales of rabbits, mice, foxes and cats. We have lived with them for thousands of years, admired their adaptability, learned from their weaknesses and cunning, and helped them endure a more complicated fate.

Folktales are universal property. Humans have always transmitted them, adjusting them for fun and moral lessons. Beatrix Potter painted them brilliantly, giving them clothing and enchanting backdrops.

So why apologize? Why is there so much fear, division, and disempowering vigilance that stifles human creativity?

Dr. Zobel Marshall, sit back and have a cup of tea and think about these things.