History FairForItsDay / Literature

* Creator/JKRowling outing [[Literature/HarryPotter Dumbledore]] as [[WordOfGay gay]] was this back in 2007, on a meta level. This was an era where homophobia was more present than today (same-sex mariage was still a rarity, for instance), and LGBT characters were still pretty rare in fiction aimed at children (and possibly illegal, under the infamous UK "clause 28", up until 2003). Nowadays, outing a character as gay with little to no indication of this in the text proper would feel like a cop-out. Not helped by the fact that later media appearances would stick to the WordOfGay (or at best AmbiguouslyGay) approach, nor by J. K. Rowling's own transphobic comments in the 2020's.

* Creator/JKRowling outing [[Literature/HarryPotter Dumbledore]] as gay was this back in 2007, on a meta level. This was an era where homophobia was more present than today (same-sex mariage was still a rarity, for instance), and LGBT characters were still pretty rare in fiction aimed at children (and possibly illegal, under the infamous UK "clause 28", up until 2003). Nowadays, outing a character as gay with little to no indication of this in the text proper would feel like a cop-out. Not helped by the fact that later media appearances would stick to the WordOfGay (or at best AmbiguouslyGay) approach, nor by J. K. Rowling's own transphobic comments in the 2020's.

* Creator/JKRowling outing [[Literature/HarryPotter Dumbledore]] as gay was this back in 2007, on a meta level. This was an era where homophobia was more present than today (same-sex mariage was still a rarity, for instance), and LGBT characters were still pretty rare in fiction aimed at children (and possibly illegal, under the infamous UK "clause 28", up until 2003). Nowadays, outing a character as gay with little to no indication of this in the text proper would feel like a cop-out. Not helped by the fact that later media appearances would stick to the WordOfGay (or at best ambiguously gay) approach, nor by J. K. Rowling's own transphobic comments in the 2020's.

* Creator/JKRowling outing [[Literature/HarryPotter Dumbledore]] as gay was this back in 2007, on a meta level. This was an era where homophobia was more present than today (same-sex mariage was still a rarity, for instance), and LGBT characters were still pretty rare in fiction aimed at children (and possibly illegal, under the infamous UK "clause 28", up until 2003). Nowadays, outing a character as gay with little to no indication of this in the text proper would feel like a cop-out. Not helped by the fact that later media appearances would stick to the WordOfGay approach, and by J. K. Rowling's own transphobic comments in the 2020's.

* ''Literature/{{Dracula}}'' often gets critiqued for DeathBySex and treating it like independent women are deserving of death, since Lucy, who had three suitors, is one of the two main characters to die in the novel, while Mina, who's HappilyMarried, survives. In the actual book, Lucy has no ambitions beyond marrying a man she loves, and she has so many suitors ''because'' she's pure and innocent. Her letters to Mina makes it clear that she feels horrible for having declined proposals from two of them, meaning that she did not have a relationship with several men at once. Her death is treated as nothing short of a tragedy, and since she died before her wedding, she was most likely a virgin. Mina, on the other hand, married in the course of the story, and figured out most of the Count's plots on her own using Jonathan's journal (with some help from Van Helsing).

* A Literature/DannyDunn book, ''Danny Dunn on a Desert Island'' features a rather cringe-worthy depiction of a Pacific Islander tribe and chief, including the use of some infantilizing language; however, the story completely subverts the trope of [[OnceAcceptableTargets Pacific Islanders as savage cannibals]], the way they were commonly portrayed in contemporary works.

* [[UsefulNotes/DichterAndDenker German philosopher]] Oswald Spengler wrote in his non-fiction book ''Literature/TheDeclineOfTheWest'' that every major culture is [[BlueAndOrangeMorality not understandable]] from the POV of most other major cultures. Which he claimed was the case with westerners and Jews, too. Now, note he wrote this during a time when antisemites would spread the craziest conspiracy theories about [[OnceAcceptableTargets the eeeevul Jews]]. And in another work, he criticized German antisemitism, pointing out that the Brits didn't mind that UsefulNotes/BenjaminDisraeli was Jewish, and only cared that he was a competent prime minister. And in yet another work, he wrote how real men don't care for the race of their women, and only choose whomever is the right mother for their kids -- and may even prefer women of another race. And finally, he pointed out how in South Africa, black and white miners worked in the same mine, but the white miner was paid 2 shillings per hour for 8 hours of work per day, while the black one (though Spengler used the word "kaffer", which he likely didn't know is considered very offensive) worked 12 hours for 1 shilling (per day, not per hour).

** Howard wrote many stereotypical DistressedDamsel characters ([[ExecutiveMeddling usually at the insistence of his publishers -- it let artist Margaret Brundage paint sexy girls for the covers]]), he also managed to create several strong female characters -- Belit, Velaria, and Red Sonya in particular. Not to mention Dark Agnes de Chastillion, who could easily be considered one of the first works of FeministFantasy.

** Howard wrote many stereotypical DistressedDamsel characters ([[ExecutiveMeddling usually at the insistence of his publishers -- it let artist Margaret Brundage paint sexy girls for the covers]]), he also managed to create several strong female characters -- Belit, Velaria, and Red Sonya in particular.

** The Calormenes may seem like offensive stereotypes of Middle Easterners, worshipping a God who turns out to be a [[GodOfEvil demon]] who can't accept anything good. However it's shown that there are still good Calormenes, Emeth for example is able to get into Aslan's Country because he was devout to his religion even though he wasn't worshipping Aslan. Aslan even says anybody who does good is really doing it in his name without knowing it.

* ''Literature/TheCuriousIncidentOfTheDogInTheNightTime'' is now considered to be a heavily dated book. Its main character essentially has HollywoodAutism, with little resemblance to the real condition. At the time it was written, however, such a sympathetic and nuanced portrayal of a person with autism was revolutionary and almost unheard-of.

* Creator/HRiderHaggard's 19th century stories about his GreatWhiteHunter Allan Quatermain (''Literature/KingSolomonsMines'', ''Allan Quatermain'', ''etc''.) have a number of UnfortunateImplications and the occasional racist overtone, but actually try hard not to be racist. The second book, ''Allan Quatermain'', even opens with an anti-racist essay by Quatermain. This does not make the books politically correct, mind you, and there's still a little accidental racism, but Haggard really does try, and his books are notable for pretty much lacking all the nastier stereotypes of black people, having many strong black characters, and even a sympathetic interracial romance. Admittedly, they're StarCrossedLovers, but Quatermain notes that the problems they face are largely circumstantial, and maybe one day such love may be quite acceptable. A notable quote from ''King Solomon's Mines'' has Quatermain talk about gentlemen:

* ''Literature/UncleTomsCabin'' is an example in regard to UnfortunateImplications -- the black characters are caricatures, but they're at least treated as human beings, and the whole point of the novel is to condemn slavery. When released, the novel outraged the Southerners, and an entire [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Tom_literature genre]] was created to respond to it. Over the years, supporters of slavery created InNameOnly adaptions of the story that used the worst of the blackface caricatures. It was these characterizations that stuck in the public's consciousness and gave rise to the concept of the "[[UncleTomfoolery Uncle Tom]]" (the black man who was subservient to white people and was seen as a "sell out" to his own race). The book's Uncle Tom character was anything but the stereotype: he was killed for defying his owner to help other slaves.
* Unlike other examples here, the "for its day" part in ''Literature/TheAdventuresOfHuckleberryFinn'' wasn't merely a ''comparatively'' positive portrayal that was nonetheless unfortunately marred; the caricatures in the book were part of a conscious ''subversion'' of such portrayals, as they reflect how black people look through the eyes of a racist child; as the book progresses, and Huck wises up, the black characters become less and less cartoonish. Much is made of Jim's many humorously absurd superstitions, but it should be noted that many of his suspicions are frequently vindicated, and many white characters believe things just as preposterous if not more so. As is requisite for any complex and well-rounded character, Jim has flaws and virtues like a real human being. While he's superstitious and blows off his chores [[note]]That's not entirely unreasonable, as it ''is'' literally slave labor. It's not like he would relish being forced to do degrading physical labor against his will.[[/note]], he's also determined, clear-sighted, compassionate, and has strong moral convictions, as seen with his love for his family and his protective instincts towards Huck. Strangely, this makes the book fall into an odd position, with its invocation of NWordPrivileges causing more trouble than books that are legitimately prejudiced. The N-bomb was part of common parlance for the impoverished, backwards southerners depicted in the novel, so it's not like Twain's misrepresenting reality.

** ''Literature/TunnelInTheSky'' is also on the receiving end of this. While it seems ridiculously 1950sish at times -- like boys and girls not being allowed to go out hunting together, or girls' obsession with getting married -- it would have actually been pretty radical by the standards of the time, with strong female characters, including an entire military corps made up of women in combat roles -- something that we're only ''just now, in the 21st century'', accepting. One of the strong characters is a black woman. It's also notable for depicting a society where race is ''not'' something considered important, resulting in nobody in-universe seeing anything particularly noteworthy about the protagonist being black.

** In ''Literature/SpaceCadet'' one of the cadets accuses his classmates of being racist. They protest they don't have any negative feelings about one of their officers, who is black. "Don't be silly " is the reply; of course they don't have such feelings about their officer, who is, after all, human. He's talking about Venusians.
** Recall that Heinlein was born in 1907 in ''Missouri'', so all of the above is definite evidence that he was a radical progressive given his upbringing. Even so, he didn't escape all of it, and still espoused the racist lie of "The Lost Cause", which among other things said that slavery was good for black people and that freeing them was bad because they're naturally violent and don't deserve freedom. Heinlein's progressive attitudes softened that to them not being ''ready'' for freedom, as shown in ''Double Star'' with the quote "A slave cannot be freed, save he do it himself. Nor can you enslave a free man; the very most you can do is kill him!" In other words, if black people were enslaved, it's because they deserved it, and the North was wrong to free them after the war.

* Like most of the protagonists of 'boy's own' British adventure novels of the early twentieth century, Creator/JohnBuchan's ''Literature/TheThirtyNineSteps'' reads as being quite racist and jingoistic to a modern reader; however, when compared to his peers (such as [[Literature/BulldogDrummond "Bulldog" Drummond]]), protagonist Richard Hannay is notable for actually being quite open-minded and empathetic towards many of the traditionally stereotyped groups of the literature of the period (such as Germans, pacifists, Jews, ''etc''), and frequently avoids demonizing them. A lot has been made of the racial slurs against Jews in the first chapter of ''The Thirty-Nine Steps'', but a more careful reading shows that they are all made by one paranoid and possibly unbalanced character. In RealLife, Buchan supported Zionism to the extent that at the outbreak of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, he featured on Hitler's death list of pro-Semitic persons.

* Machiavelli's ''Literature/ThePrince'' certainly qualifies. These days, it's largely considered a manual for [[KickTheDog puppy kicking]], and only the most cynical dictator or greasy politician would follow it. When it was written, it was basic pragmatism and even a little hopeful. A small minority of critics go so far as to label the whole thing a satire.

* R.A. Salvatore's ''Literature/TheLegendOfDrizzt'' not only [[SeinfeldIsUnfunny set off loads of cliches]], but it portrayed a character who was a member of an "Evil" race (ordinarily just villainous mooks) as a person. However, these days others point out that in-universe, pretty much every other drow are AlwaysChaoticEvil xenophobes, and Drizzt simply not being that way makes him come off as either "One of the good ones", or implying that it's the Drow ''culture'' that's bad - both sentiments are considered ''quite'' racist during TheNewTwenties.

* The early ''Literature/TomSwift'' (1910) novels are an interesting case. In the books, the few times characters (even the villain) reference the [[SomeOfMyBestFriendsAreX black friend]], Eradicate's, race, he is called "black", which is more than fair for its day in books written literally twice as close to the days of legal slavery than to today. Unfortunately, the narrator calls him basically everything short of the n-word in the first book when he is in a chapter for a long time, apparently to avoid redundancy. Also, Eradicate is implied to be rather lazy, which is jarring simply because he seems to spend all of his waking day looking for work, whereas a white character living as a hobo also plays a prominent part in the book, but without implications of laziness. That said, Eradicate also saves Tom from very dangerous situations multiple times, so MightyWhitey is averted, despite Tom fixing his stuff often (which Tom also does with most of the secondary white characters as well).

* The Literature/LandOfOz series by Creator/LFrankBaum makes it difficult to realize that it was written more than a hundred years ago when you consider how many women are in positions of power, how many different personalities and mannerisms come with each woman, there was an all-female revolt against the Emerald City, the entire Land of Oz itself is ruled by a woman, and how little cultural quips such as women being delegated to being inside the home are mercilessly shunned by eponymous characters. It's about as quietly feminist a fantasy world as it gets, and it was written in a time nearly two decades before the United States granted women the right to vote. Though at the same time, one doesn't have to read too carefully to spot some pretty ridiculous (by today's standards) stereotypes. For instance, the soldiers of the all-female revolt mentioned above use knitting needles as their weapon of choice, and they conquer the Emerald City because the army (which is only one old man) would never dare harm a lady. Also, when the leader of the revolt, Jinjur, is expelled from her throne, she laments that she now has to go back home and milk cows. Still, Jinjur is expelled by the all-female army of real soldiers fielded by Glinda the Good, and replaced on the throne by another woman, Queen Ozma. So it's not exactly The Patriarchy Strikes Back. Baum was a suffragist himself (in fact his mother-in-law was feminist and suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage, whose views were even more radical than that of most women's rights activists at the time, which he channeled into his work).

* ''Lady in Waiting'' by Jackie Kendall and Debby Jones, a 1995 Christian self-help book, may seem overall backwards in expecting single women to do so much service. However, some parts of it are actually rather progressive. One single woman is encouraged to pursue a doctoral degree -- sadly, some religious leaders and denominations still discouraged women's advanced education at the time, stating that a woman did not need it since motherhood was a woman's true calling. Another part states that a spiritually beautiful woman is interesting and has goals for herself -- possibly encouraging goals other than motherhood. And just the fact that the book implies that the women reading it want to find husbands because they want romantic love and adult companionship (as compared to just seeing marriage as the way to achieving their one and only ultimate goal of having children) may seem actually revolutionary. Overall, just the fact that the book acknowledges that women could or would possibly want something in their lives other than to become mothers goes against what some groups believe.
* The ''Literature/SherlockHolmes'' stories feature various racist stereotypes common to the era of the 1870s to the 1890s, but there is a hint of WriterOnBoard in the way Holmes, Watson, and the women in the series express, to different degrees, distaste for the way divorce laws were slanted against women. Holmes also lampshades, a century-plus ago, the "American fascination with guns". There's also one story in which members of the Ku Klux Klan appear as villains (at a time when the Klan were tolerated by a disturbing number of people in polite society), and Holmes' reaction to them is one of ''seething'' contempt. He also shows interracial marriage favorably in one story, written at a time when it was widely taboo and even illegal, with a woman having to hide her mixed race child due to this (her new husband, who is white, accepts her child, though). Also, the one woman Holmes truly respects as his intellectual equal (because she managed to outsmart him) has a habit of running around London in male disguise, because that makes it easier to go wherever she wants to go. And Holmes himself dresses up like an old woman once or twice for spying purposes, which is shocking to Watson, but not really presented as morally wrong to the reader.

* The Franchise/NancyDrew and Literature/HardyBoys books had to undergo some pretty extensive rewrites (to the extent that sometimes only the title was the same) in the 1960s because of this. The original stories started back in 1927 had a lot of more offensive stereotypes, and the unfortunate habit of referring to a large number of the villains as "dark," "swarthy," and "foreign," not to mention stereotypical characters who were supposed to be the ''good'' guys. At least one scholarly article wondered whether or not it was a good thing, since rather than make minority characters more complex and three-dimensional, they just got rid of them entirely, [[MonochromeCasting whitewashing the entire series]], leaving some scholars to say, "Sure they were offensive, but at least they were ''there.''"

*** Dantes seems to blame Mercedes for marrying Fernand and consider it an act of unfaithfulness. It's very arguable, though, as Mercedes defends herself by reminding him that Fernand was her closest and oldest friend and her emotional support after Dantes was imprisoned, and she had no way of knowing that Fernand was behind it. The Count later tells her that he doesn't begrudge her anything. Additionally, many of the women in the story, even if they aren't necessarily the nicest people, are independent, well-rounded characters.

* In ''Literature/AConfederacyOfDunces'', the CampGay Dorian and JiveTurkey Burma came come across as somewhat as bigoted caricatures to modern readers. But Burma is clearly portrayed as a victim of PoliceBrutality and one of the [[OnlySaneMan few characters to be both sane and basically decent]], while Dorian is never portrayed as a villain and is clearly the better man compared to Ignatius. And speaking of Ignatius, the ultra-conservative, {{Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist}}'s bizarre mixture of contempt and condescension towards homosexuals and black people is very clearly portrayed as one of his many, ''many'' grotesque flaws.

* ''Literature/TheJungle'' was a quintessentially progressive novel, even though it very clearly came from an old social context. A notable example was when Marija resorted to prostitution. Her generalizations about sex work are outdated, claiming that prostitutes are all victims, and that no one would choose this life if she had any alternative, particularly considering that it involved sleeping with men of different races. Still, the overall message is that condemnation of sex workers is both unfair and ignorant, and that's cruel to shame women for their decisions, particularly when you don't know their history or what's brought them to this point.

** There's also a lesser-known non-Holmes mystery short story by Creator/ArthurConanDoyle with the title ''The Man with the Watches''[[http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/ManWat.shtml]], which is remarkably gay-positive or at least advocating for tolerance. Alright, the narrator is a homophobic / transphobic jerk, the story still ends in [[BuryYourGays tragedy]], and the gay couple are criminals (card sharps) willing to use violence, but the narrative supports the reading that the tragedy wouldn't have happened if the narrator hadn't been such a bigoted bully, and the surviving partner of the pair (who'd been presented as a "seducer of the innocent" by the narrator up to that point) is explicitly shown to not be evil or inhuman in the end, with the narrator even bonding with him a little over their shared grief. And for a straight, mainstream author in the Victorian era, writing this story for the family-friendly, middle-class ''The Strand'' magazine, a story that not only shows the "love that dare not speak its name" in fairly unmistakable ways ''at all'', but also invites the reader to sympathize with the gay characters, is pretty amazing already.

* Like most of the protagonists of 'boy's own' British adventure novels of the early twentieth century, John Buchan's Richard Hannay of such works as ''Literature/TheThirtyNineSteps'' reads as being quite racist and jingoistic to a modern reader; however, when compared to his peers (such as [[Literature/BulldogDrummond "Bulldog" Drummond]]), Hannay is notable for actually being quite open-minded and empathetic towards many of the traditionally stereotyped groups of the literature of the period (such as Germans, pacifists, Jews, ''etc''), and frequently avoids demonizing them. A lot has been made of racial slurs against Jews in ''The Thirty-Nine Steps'', but a more careful reading shows that they are all made by one paranoid and possibly unbalanced character. In RealLife, Buchan supported Zionism to the extent that at the outbreak of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, he featured on Hitler's death list of pro-Semitic persons.
* ''Literature/{{Greenmantle}}'', the second Richard Hannay novel, is noteworthy for treating its German villains with a degree of sympathy and respect, quite surprising given that the book was written in the midst of UsefulNotes/WorldWarI. Even Kaiser Wilhelm makes a brief cameo, coming off as a decent man manipulated by his subordinates into starting the war.

* Creator/HPLovecraft very rarely gave any female characters important roles in his stories, but his thoughts on women's rights were actually quite progressive for his time. Whenever women do show up in his stories, it's a very minor supporting role at best. That said, in ''Literature/TheShadowOutOfTime'', the narrator describes his ex-wife, who after he apparently went mad ([[ItMakesSenseInContext in actuality, his body had been swapped with an alien from the past]]) actually takes action and gets the rest of her family as far away from her now-abusive husband as possible. There is also talk of strong-willed and intelligent mothers (such as that of Arthur Jermyn), and one or two memorable female antagonists. This is also quite impressive compared to some of the other mythos writers of the time, some of whom did not write women at all. In contrast, his views on ''race'' were [[InvertedTrope bad even by 1930s standards]].

* Unlike other examples here, the "for its day" part in ''Literature/TheAdventuresOfHuckleberryFinn'' wasn't merely a ''comparatively'' positive portrayal that was nonetheless unfortunately marred; the caricatures in the book were part of a conscious ''subversion'' of such portrayals, as they reflect how black people look through the eyes of a racist child; as the book progresses, and Huck wises up, the black characters become less and less cartoonish. Much is made of Jim's many humorously absurd superstitions, but it should be noted that many of his suspicions are frequently vindicated, and many white characters believe things just as preposterous if not more so. As is requisite for any complex and well-rounded character, Jim has flaws and virtues like a real human being. While he's superstitious and blows off his chores [[note]]That's not entirely unreasonable, as it ''is'' literally slave labor. It's not like he would relish being forced to do degrading physical labor against his will.[[/note]], he's also determined, clear-sighted, compassionate, and has strong moral convictions, as seen with his love for his family and his protective instincts towards Huck. Strangely, this makes the book fall into somewhat of an UncannyValley of race relations, with its invocation of NWordPrivileges causing more trouble than books that are legitimately prejudiced. The N-bomb was part of common parlance for the impoverished, backwards southerners depicted in the novel, so it's not like Twain's misrepresenting reality.

* The epic Arthurian poem ''Literature/{{Parzival}}'' features a half-white, half-Moor brother of the main character called Feirefiz. While the author, Wolfram von Eschenbach, claimed that Feirefiz [[ArtisticLicenseBiology would have skin that alternated black-and-white because of this]] (like a magpie), Feirefiz is treated much more decently than most other pagans in Arthurian legends -- he gets baptized, sees the Holy Grail, marries the Grail-maiden, and goes back home to a happy ending.
* ''Literature/OrlandoFurioso'' does something similar with the Moorish knight Sacripant, who is, to some extent, the story's ChewToy, but is also probably the only genuinely decent person around. It's also worth noting that he gets a happy ending (although it involves converting to Christianity), while Orlando does not: Angelica's CharacterDevelopment from RichBitch to caring human being involves her choosing Sacripant over Orlando.

* ''Literature/UncleTomsCabin'' is an example in regard to UnfortunateImplications -- the black characters are caricatures, but they're at least treated as human beings, and the whole point of the novel is to condemn slavery. When released, the novel outraged the Southerners, and an entire [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Tom_literature genre]] was created to respond to it. Over the years, supporters of slavery created InNameOnly adaptions of the story that used the worst of the Blackface caricatures. It was these characterizations that stuck in the public's consciousness and gave rise to the concept of the "[[UncleTomfoolery Uncle Tom]]" (the black man who was subservient to white people and was seen as a "sell out" to his own race). The book's Uncle Tom character was anything but the stereotype: he was killed for defying his owner to help other slaves.

* ''Lady in Waiting'' by Jackie Kendall and Debby Jones, a 1995 Christian self-help book, may seem overall backwards in expecting single women to do so much service. However, some parts of it are actually rather progressive. One single woman is encouraged to pursue a doctoral degree -- sadly, some religious leaders and denominations still discouraged women's advanced education, stating that a woman did not need it since motherhood was a woman's true calling. Another part states that a spiritually beautiful woman is interesting and has goals for herself -- possibly encouraging goals other than motherhood. And just the fact that the book implies that the women reading it want to find husbands because they want romantic love and adult companionship (as compared to just seeing marriage as the way to achieving their one and only ultimate goal of having children) may seem actually revolutionary. Overall, just the fact that the book acknowledges that women could or would possibly want something in their lives other than to become mothers goes against what some groups believe.
* The ''Literature/SherlockHolmes'' stories feature various racist stereotypes common to the era of the 1870s to the 1890s, but there is a hint of WriterOnBoard in the way Holmes, Watson, and the women in the series express, to different degrees, distaste for the way divorce laws were slanted against women. Holmes also lampshades, a century-plus ago, the "American fascination with guns". There's also one story in which members of the Ku Klux Klan appear as villains (at a time when the Klan were generally well-tolerated by polite society), and Holmes' reaction to them is one of ''seething'' contempt. He also shows interracial marriage favorably in one story, when it was widely taboo and even illegal, with a woman having to hide her mixed race child due to this (her new husband, who is white, accepts her child though). Also, the one woman Holmes truly respects as his intellectual equal (because she managed to outsmart him) has a habit of running around London in male disguise, because that makes it easier to go wherever she wants to go. And Holmes himself dresses up like an old woman once or twice for spying purposes, which is shocking to Watson, but not really presented as morally wrong to the reader.

* Can be seen in much of [[Creator/CSLewis C.S. Lewis]]'s work. While some of his views on gender roles, race, and sexuality may seem outdated now, he almost always did his best to treat these subjects even-handedly and with more sympathy than many readers now give him credit for. He was actually fairly progressive for his day (and still is compared to many mainline Christian writers).
** The Calormenes may seem like offensive stereotypes of the Middle East, worshipping a God who turns out to be a [[GodOfEvil demon]] who can't accept anything good. However it's shown that there are still good Calormenes, Emeth for example is able to get into Aslan's Country because he was devout to his religion even though he wasn't worshipping Aslan. Aslan even says anybody who does good is really doing it in his name without knowing it.

* ''Literature/LittleWomen'' has been criticized by modern feminists for the fact that {{Tomboy}} Jo's character arc largely consists of her learning to be less wild and ambitious and more nurturing and feminine, that she ends the story as a wife and mother despite initially not having wanted ever to marry, and that the model of ideal womanhood the book's {{Aesop}}s promote constantly glorifies modesty, sacrifices, and "living for others." At the same time, to this day it's celebrated for revolving around four dimensional, flawed yet likable and relatable young heroines, for its sympathetic portrayal of Jo's tomboyishness and her struggle for independence and success as a writer, for having her reject the proposal of the boy whom everyone (including readers) expected her to marry and choose another man on her own terms, and for never having her entirely lose her scrappy personality, unlike the tomboy heroines in other 19th century children's books who tended to be more thoroughly punished and tamed into conventional ladies.
* The 1994 Olivia Goldsmith novel ''Flavor of the Month'' has the big twist of the revelation one of the starlets of a hot female-led TV show was born a man (their mother having long hid it from the world). It's revealed when she's shot and when her fiancee (who, amazingly, has never discovered the truth himself) identifies himself, the doctor openly scoff "that patient cannot be your fiancee." It's treated as the biggest scandal in Hollywood history with [[spoiler: that character's funeral]] surrounded by drag queens. Today, a doctor (especially a Hollywood one) wouldn't blink twice at a man claiming a man is his fiancee and transgender actors more accepted than they were in the early '90s.

* This is done both deliberately and not in ''Literature/HoratioHornblower''. Hornblower empathizes with impressed sailors, hates invoking ATasteOfTheLash, and is disturbed by the brutality of war, but while the reader recognizes his worldview as ahead of its time, he believes it to be a weakness and tries to hide it. The ''Hornblower'' books were written from the late 1930s to the early 1960s, and it shows in the portrayal of most characters who aren't white and British--which results in an interesting phenomenon where the older Hornblower, written earlier, is less modern than his younger self, written later, as Forester brought Hornblower's character in line with changing contemporary attitudes. For example, Captain Hornblower in 1938 refuses to accept any Black sailors on his crew during a press, but Lieutenant Hornblower in 1952 lets slip his respect for the Haitian Revolution.
* ''Literature/TreasureIsland'': Today, Long John Silver (who is famously one-legged) and Blind Pew are held up as prime examples of the EvilCripple. When the book was written, the idea that people with disabilities could do anything other than live off the charity of their surroundings was revolutionary, and both Silver and Pew are intelligent, driven, able to command absolute loyalty from their followers, genuinely intimidating and quite physically capable in spite of their respective disabilities.

* The ''Literature/SherlockHolmes'' stories feature various racist stereotypes common to the era of the 1870s to the 1890s, but there is a hint of WriterOnBoard in the way Holmes, Watson, and the women in the series express, to different degrees, distaste for the way divorce laws were slanted against women. Holmes also lampshades, a century-plus ago, the "American fascination with guns". There's also one story in which members of the Ku Klux Klan appear as villains. He also shows interracial marriage favorably in one story, when it was widely taboo and even illegal, with a woman having to hide her mixed race child due to this (her new husband, who is white, accepts her child though). Also, the one woman Holmes truly respects as his intellectual equal (because she managed to outsmart him) has a habit of running around London in male disguise, because that makes it easier to go wherever she wants to go. And Holmes himself dresses up like an old woman once or twice for spying purposes, which is shocking to Watson, but not really presented as morally wrong to the reader.

* ''Literature/TreasureIsland'': Today, Long John Silver (who is famously one-legged) and Blind Pew are held up as prime examples of the EvilCripple. When the book was written, the idea that people with disabilities could do anything other than live off the charity of their surroundings was revolutionary, and both Silver and Pew are intelligent, driven, able to command absolute loyalty from their followers and quite physically capable in spite of their respective disabilities.

* ''Literature/TreasureIsland'': Today, Long John Silver and Blind Pew are held up as prime examples of the EvilCripple. When the book was written, the idea that people with disabilities could do anything other than live off the charity of their surroundings was revolutionary, and both Silver and Pew are intelligent, driven, able to command absolute loyalty from their followers and quite physically capable in spite of their respective disabilities.

* ''Literature/TheSilenceOfTheLambs'' centered on a CreepyCrossdresser serial killer who [[spoiler:murdered and skinned women to make himself a woman suit]]. However, both the book and the film try to distinguish between real transgenders and the villain, who only ''thinks'' he's a transgender due to his own self-hatred, and go out of their way to point out that most transgenders are normal, decent people who have no unusual inclination towards violence -- in fact, in the book, one of the ways Lecter suggests for finding a description or photograph of the killer is to look at people who both faked their identity to the surgeon, and were turned down for the surgery for psychological reasons; the former because a criminal record for almost anything (besides, well, charges based upon them cross-dressing) disqualifies the applicant (and both Lecter and the FBI agree that Buffalo Bill almost certainly had one), and the latter because, well, there was no way that anyone as disturbed as Buffalo Bill was going to pass a psychological test of any kind.

*** While his family also being followers of a mideastern religion.
** The hero of ''Literature/StarshipTroopers'' is revealed to be Philippino, and the heroine of ''Literature/PodkayneOfMars'' is part Maori.

** Homophobia: The lesbian Eugenie Danglars is portrayed as an extremely cold, standoffish, even morally ambiguous person. However, she is also a more-or-less openly gay character in a time period when homosexuality was something of a taboo, and she and her lover Louise d'Armilly are still portrayed as fairly good people compared to many of the other characters in the novel. It also completely averts the BuryYourGays trope: (Eugenie and Louise run off together to be artists, escaping their disapproving families and presumably going on to live happy lives).