Porque no los dos?

We can understand how a book sits within it's contextual history while still having a personal opinion that it's bad qualities overshadow it's good ones. Especially if these bad aspects are a consequence of the fact books as a medium are unchanging.

I guess my take on this would be that ignoring or "getting past" passages like this is no less subjective than being upset by it. I don't really see how it's a question of objectivity.

Personally when I see things like this, I am taken aback, and often think how wrong it was that this line of thinking was ever so commonplace that it made it into a book with unrelated subject matter.

That said, I don't think I've ever just dropped a book after seeing similar. I don't think that makes me more objective. Perhaps less discerning? I've also finished books with brutal scenes of violence, and with simply terrible writing. I don't think finishing those makes me more objective either.

I also find it really hard to overlook stuff like that in older books/classics. My thing is that, even with classics, my primary motivation for reading is enjoyment (unless it’s for class). No matter how well-renowned a book is and no matter how many years it’s been beloved, I still can’t fully just enjoy a book if it’s riddled with racism, misogyny, and such — it always ends up turning into an analytical/critical experience from like, a historical standpoint (as in I start looking at the book as a historical source rather than a novel, which isn’t what I always want to do when I pick up a book). I’ve been told “that’s what you have to expect from the period it was written in,” which I understand, but that doesn’t mean it was okay at the time; it was just more normalized. I tend to stick to newer releases now largely for that reason, because I just don’t want to have to sit though pages of content I don’t enjoy/makes me uncomfortable solely because a book is considered to be a classic 😅

If you're already calling them problematic, then no. The word problematic implies a need for revision. There's nothing objective about a need to change a classic to be in lock step with current ideology.

Rolling your eyes is permitted. There are plenty of fantasy writers I roll my eyes at whenever they attempt to write a sex scene.

You’re very closed minded if you project your morality from 2022 on all of written literature. If you were alive back then you’d have acted in the same abhorrent way more likely than not and that’s the truth

This sub and reddit in general low key racist. There are plenty of good books to read that aren't going to make you uncomfortable. Don't force it if you don't want to but on the flip side it doesn't make you a bad person if you continue to read it.

If you want to read classics you just have to accept that they were written in a different era to what we live in now. Don't blindly accept each belief and moral they expressed, just accept that that's the way it was, right or wrong you can't undo what was believed then. If you think you'll be too distracted by opinions you differ from to get into the story, then don't read it. You'll miss the good, and just be miserable. Life's too short to read bad books, whatever your interpretation of bad is. Read the plot outline online, and be done with it.

Also reflect on how strongly defined your own values and beliefs are. The mind can't distinguish easily between truth and reality. That's why affirmations work, with repetition your brain believes it as true. Similarly, surrounding yourself with people, shows or books whose values are different to you, no matter how 'fun' they are, can lead to you accepting and then believing those different values, beliefs and morals.

I loved Trixie Belden as a girl and kept a fee books. A couple of years ago I came across them and decided to read one to see if my pre-teen daughter was ready for them. Nope. The plot was fun and pre-teen-exciting, but I could jot get past the author's habit of describing the physical characteristics of each character she introduced, within a few lines of their introduction (sometimes before their name) and ever good character being attractive and every bad character being unattractive. I knew that my daughter was too fixated on appearances at that stage to avoid taking on that 'pretty is good, ugly is bad' mentality.

But if you think you can let the negative, misogynistic, racist etc passages wash over you with just a 'glad we've grown as a society' thought and delve into the books, you may find a lot of good values and attributes we seem to have thrown out with the negative ones. Many classics, values aside, have a different 'formula' and tlrhyt to story telling than modern writing, which can also be enjoyable.

It's really up to you. Can you read the troubling passages without getting bogged down, blinded or swayed by them? If you can, go for it. And if you can't - and it's fine if you can't - then find something else to read.

You don't have to appreciate something you dislike. Maybe later in life you'll look back on your own old favorites and find yourself surprised that there are objectionable passages waiting for you.

That happened to me and it gave me some perspective on how completely many of us are steeped in our contemporary society. And then you start to see and appreciate those early visionaries who realized that no, everything wasn't ok. The world needs changing. In ways we never even thought of.

To me that's just one of the important perspectives that reading both old and new literature can give a person.

I don't think I've been objective about any book I've ever read in my life. I have no intention of starting now.

Books are written by people immersed in cultures. They depict their eras to at least some extent even if they try not to. Sometimes they depict horrifying things on purpose to argue against them. Huck Finn sincerely believes that slavery is the will of God and decides to accept eternal damnation rather than turn Jim in. That moment wouldn't make sense if Mark Twain had not written racism how he saw it.

Literature is history.

I had similar issues with The Secret Garden, it's hard to believe that it was considered a children's book.

When I read books like this, I like to remind myself that although this was how many people were raised to regard other races, we have made a lot of progress.

After slogging through several "classics" this year, I've determined that I'll be happier avoiding them in the future.

Problematic doesn't mean that a thing needs revision; it just means that it needs contextualization or critique. You can enjoy a thing and still understand that it's an imperfect gem.

In terms of reading classics, it's up to the individual reader. It's valuable to know what the writer intended, and how their biases or upbringing may have affected them, and it's fine if someone isn't in a space to do that.

(For what it's worth, I think Mary's racism in Secret Garden is not meant to reflect well on her - it's there to highlight her bad attitude and arrogance before she learns to be better.)

So, you're saying you can't get past the fact that things used to be different?

You're going to miss out on a lot of great books.

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I didn't know anything about this book before, but here goes anyway: seems fair enough to me to represent racist attitudes of the time, and use the language of the time to show how they were expressed. You can't change the past. What is much less acceptable is the caricatural working class language and the caricature of working class people you see in that characterization of Martha.

The British working class had rather less problem with Indians than people like Burnett did. They elected one to Parliament not long after My Secret Garden was published:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapurji_Saklatvala

I doubt Burnett was capable of imagining Martha voting for him (ok, she would first have had to imagine women getting the vote).

This doesn’t answer your question, but I’d keep reading The Secret Garden. The main character’s growth is one of the main points of the book.

Also, think about whether the racism is portrayed is a positive light or not. In a lot of books that I see criticized, the whole point was that the racist character was an awful person. I have zero problems reading those books.

The root word of problematic is problem. The antonym is solution. Solution in a literary context is revision.

You'd think the literary world would be the last place to strip meaning from words to redefine them for every occasion, but we live in a strange world.

No, solution in a literary context is... context. Applying context to a problematic work is the solution.

Solution and revision aren't synonymous in any context. I think this is a you thing.

Seriously. Most of the point of The Secret Garden is that Mary here is a horrible spoiled child who needs to grow out of it.

I hate the racism and misogyny in older books but I still enjoy the stories. I'm not worried that I'm going to steal land from the Indigenous when I reread the Little House books (spoiler - Ma's incessant bigotry and Pa's disregard of the Treaty Line are nothing when you get to Happy Golden Years and Mr Boast tries to straight out BUY Laura's daughter). I think that learning where we came from is part of the process of changing where we're going and that reading about historical beliefs and actions is part of that.

I've come to the conclusion that some works are better left in the past. They are "classics," but you have to consider who chose them as a classic work that withstands time. I imagine the people calling for book bans and freaking out about the topic of race being covered, what classic books did we lose that the people with the most social power didn't want anyone else reading? If I get to a point in a book where I really don't see myself getting beyond the "views of the time" I just DNF and move on.

I’m happy I’m getting an unsanitised look into the attitudes of the past. They’re both difficult to find and often ignored

Dead Souls is about the buying and selling of slaves

Exactly. Same for some Agatha Christie books where a character says something kinda racist and is later revealed to be the murderer. People will accuse Agatha of racism, and I’m just like bro, it’s a clue that this character is the bad guy. She’s reinforcing that racism = bad.