Perhaps you missed the slight kerfuffle about Beatrix Potter recently? I certainly did; it wasn’t until I was chatting on the phone on Sunday with M that it came to my attention. M had read about it in The Times; Beatrix Potter was being accused of cultural appropriation by some crazed academic because Peter Rabbit was a talking rabbit like Brer Rabbit, and Brer Rabbit stories were originally told by enslaved Africans. We both thought this seemed a bit silly.
Curious, I found the article in The Conversation by Dr Emily Zobel Marshall. It is a really interesting article! I am so glad to have read it. If you are a Potter fan, I urge you to do the same. And if you are a fan of Enid Blyton, for once she comes out of it well!
(Beatrix Potter, illustration for The Tale of Peter Rabbit, published by Frederick Warne, London, 1902; found here)
Zobel Marshall makes a compelling case that Potter knew and loved the Brer Rabbit stories of ‘Uncle Remus’ and drew on them for the plots of some of her stories as well as some of the language. Fearful of plagiarism and accusations of plagiarism, Potter herself never publicly acknowledged the link; since then very few academics have acknowledged the link either.
Finally, Zobel Marshall sites this refusal to discuss Potter’s use of Brer Rabbit as part of a wider appropriation of Black culture, in which Black culture is used by predominantly white culture and not acknowledged.
I mean, can any of this actually be disputed? The article is measured and well argued. I do disagree with her claim that the plot of The Tale of Peter Rabbit, of the trickster stealing food, being the ‘plot [that] is the main storyline in most of Potter’s tales’. The plots of most of her books are quite different. Still, I was curious about M’s interpretation of the article, based as it must have been on what they read in The Times. And a cursory Google brought up a list of furious headlines in the right-wing press.
I couldn’t read The Times article because it is behind a paywall. I think it must be this one. I note the use of the word ‘stole’; not a word that Zobel Marshall used once in her article, as far as I could see. However, inflammatory headlines in the Daily Express (‘Beatrix Potter Accused of ‘Copying’ African Slaves’ Stories for Peter Rabbit) and the so-called news site GB News (‘Now Peter Rabbit is Under Threat by Woke Mob as Beatrix Potter Attacked’) were followed by reasonable summaries of Zobel Marshall’s article so perhaps the Times article is also better balanced.
Not so Libby Purves’s reaction in the Daily Mail: ‘Academic Accusing Beatrix Potter of Stealing Peter Rabbit Needs a Lie Down.’ To be honest, I never have high hopes of the Mail and this is an opinion piece, but I do respect Purves and was therefore very disappointed by what I read. Purves admits that what Zobel Marshall writes is ‘fairly convincing’ but the problem is her tone: ‘her essay seems to be designed to whip up indignation and division between cultures — and, I suppose, supply a box-fresh new dose of white guilt’. Purves then goes on to explain that cultures have always borrowed from and influenced each other, which is not Zobel Marshall’s point, and to complain about the term ‘cultural appropriation’.
(A.B. Frost, illustration for Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings, by Joel Chandler Harris, published by D. Appleton and Co., 1911; found here)
Purves uses Zobel Marshall’s article to make a wider point, and I intend to do the same with hers. I find her reaction absolutely typical of those people who lose their wigs when the National Trust dares to include information in their properties that a family enriched itself through slavery or who immediately tell you, when the topic of slavery comes up, that Black Africans profited from slave trading too. Why are they so frightened about accepting historical fact? Why can’t we say that some British families profited enormously from the transatlantic slave trade? Why are we only supposed to feel pride in our past and not shame as well? Why can’t we acknowledge it if we draw on another cultural tradition for our own creative work?
Beatrix Potter wrote and illustrated wonderful books that we still enjoy today, and she drew on the stories of Brer Rabbit to do so. See – it’s not difficult to make a start, is it?