| 1 | %% https://mommylolo.com/2015/08/03/what-girls-can-be/ |
| 2 | !!Books with their own pages |
| 3 | [[index]] |
| 4 | * ''ValuesDissonance/AnneOfGreenGables'' |
| 5 | * ''ValuesDissonance/{{Dune}}'' |
| 6 | * ''ValuesDissonance/GrandmasterOfDemonicCultivationMoDaoZuShi'' |
| 7 | * ''ValuesDissonance/PrideAndPrejudice'' |
| 8 | [[/index]] |
| 9 | ---- |
| 10 | * ''Literature/OneQEightyFour'': Aomame's request to Tamaru for a handgun is treated as a risky endeavor at best and outright illegal at worst. This makes sense to Japanese readers, since Japan has incredibly strict gun control laws. America, however, has some of the most relaxed gun laws, so the seriousness that Aomame's request is treated with may come off as overly dramatic to American readers. |
| 11 | * ''Literature/AndThenThereWereNone'': Often overlaps with DeliberateValuesDissonance, as while many characters espouse bigoted (and often hypocritical) sentiments, none of them are meant to be sympathetic, given that they're all murderers of some degree. |
| 12 | ** The very title of the book was subject to the cultural variant of this from the outset: putting the n-word in a book title was much less shocking in England than in the United States, where the slur was considered as vulgar as "fuck," necessitating the rename to ''And Then There Were None''. Instances of the n-word in dialogue were similarly trimmed out, most prominently in the titular nursery rhyme. Decades later, the temporal equivalent took hold in the book's native England after awareness of the n-word's racist connotations became more commonplace, making the American title standard worldwide. |
| 13 | ** Philip Lombard justifies the abandonment of the natives with what amounts to "What Value is a Non-White?" (and Vera seems to agree-- Emily Brent, of all people, [[EvenEvilHasStandards calls her out on it!]]); he also refers to Isaac Morris as a "little Jewboy" and figures Morris called his bluff on his need for money because [[GreedyJew Jews just know these kinds of things.]] Of course, Lombard is far from an ideal role model even in that time-period. |
| 14 | ** More subtly, the main 'clue' of who the murderer is rests on the interpretation that [[spoiler:he is the only character who is not guilty of the crime they are accused of committing.]] But from an American perspective, [[spoiler:Judge Wargrave violated Seton's right to due process under the law by getting the jury to convict him without evidence that he really was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, so the reader may not reach that conclusion.]] |
| 15 | ** In contrast to the novel, the 2015 BBC mini-series has a noticeable payload of f-bombs and similar -- how much they would have been frowned on in real life in 1939 is hard to be exact on for different social milieu, but it is definite that they would not have been allowed to appear in print before at least the 1960s. |
| 16 | ** The 2015 mini-series also has a couple of quick moments when Blore implies that Lombard is suspicious / the killer because he's Irish, and therefore must be a member of the IRA. |
| 17 | ** The reason that Vera committed a crime at all. All the portrayals of her are consistent in this matter: there's no implication that she wanted to marry a rich man, she just wanted to marry Hugo. ''Hugo'' was the one who refused to marry her without money; there's no indication that Vera cared about being 'provided for', or that she wouldn't have been happy to continue working if it meant they could be married. If their situation had happened from TheSeventies, onwards, Hugo would have simply have accepted their being a two-income couple and married Vera, meaning Cyril would still be alive. |
| 18 | ** Pagan: |
| 19 | *** The killer attributes Marston's selfish attitude (wherein he runs over two children and doesn't care about it except that he lost his license as a result) to [[FreudianExcuse upbringing]], having not been taught the sense of responsibility as he was "amoral" and "pagan". This is rather than attributing it to an inherent LackOfEmpathy as would be more common to audiences nowadays (and the "pagan" remark would be unlikely to enter into the discussion at all.) |
| 20 | *** Additional dissonance on the word pagan, because the common meaning changed subtly from the period it was written. It used to include "raised without any religion at all" and not just "raised in religion outside the Christianity /the norm" (not counting all the meanings and implications of the word and existence of modern pagans/ neo-pagans and adjacent beliefs which would make this entry even longer than it is). Moral dissonance is two-fold. First, someone being Christian (or even religious) by default is not the norm it was before. Second, it is now generally accepted that "Somebody can be good without God", that someone's religion or lack of it are not indicative of their morality. |
| 21 | * ''Literature/TheBlueNosedWitch'': |
| 22 | ** One of the children among those Blanche goes trick-or-treating with is dressed as a "gypsy", described as wearing spangled earrings and illustrated in a long skirt, headscarf, and jingle belt. In modern times this costume is seen as an offensive stereotype and discouraged. |
| 23 | ** ChildHater Old Man Skinner has no other consequences for shooting slingshot rocks at children outside of Blanche playing a trick on him by blowing smoke down his chimney backwards. Nowadays he'd possibly be arrested for that kind of action towards kids, even if it's just rocks he's attacking them with. |
| 24 | ** The treats that Blanche and the other kids get are unwrapped and consist of things like jelly doughnuts and--later when she goes to an adult party to keep trick or treating--nuts, pumpkin seeds, and pretzels. Nowadays thanks to the UrbanLegend fear of RazorApples, most Halloween candy given out is sealed and unwrapped homemade treats would most likely be tossed out if given out casually. |
| 25 | * ''[[https://www.villagevoice.com/2011/01/27/hallmarks-old-school-list-of-what-girls-can-be-model-actress-mom/ What Girls Can Be]]'', a picture book released by Hallmark in TheSixties that comes off as downright depressing today. The book was for showing little girls the career choices they had to pick from. Some choices were schoolteacher and typist, and ended with ''housewife''. Hallmark also put out a ''What Boys Can Be'' equivalent, which ended with the boy in that book becoming President. |
| 26 | * The ''D'Artagnan'' Romances, better known as ''Literature/TheThreeMusketeers'' and its sequels, feature characters who routinely commit adultery in pursuit of wealth or advantage, shamelessly mock the least intelligent among them, consider beating up their servants as a valid alternative to giving them their wages when they are short on money, bully the lower classes (at least one of whom ended up in a MortonsFork when he had to risk either angering the upper class musketeers or the Cardinal's guards) and commit high treason several times a novel -- and those are the protagonists. The books being historical fiction, the author himself lampshades it as an example of people behaving differently in the old days (in a way that's inspired suspicion that he was mocking people who behaved that way in his own time). |
| 27 | ** The female villain Milady de Winter is kidnapped by the heroes, subjected to a mock trial, and decapitated by an executioner which they had privately hired. The entire gruesome plot was orchestrated by her ex-husband Athos, who also counts her lying to him about her past as a crime. Milady's son Mordaunt is subsequently treated as unreasonable, because he wants revenge for the death of his mother. It is hard to claim that the heroes have the higher ground when they play judge, jury, and executioner. |
| 28 | * The ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' |
| 29 | ** ''Literature/MenAtArms'' has a modern British perspective on gun control that is quickly noticed by American readers as being distinct from their country's approach--where gun control laws vary wildly state-to-state (with even the strictest having much easier permit standards to own a personal firearm) and guns are a source of huge political tension. The gonne of the novel is an ArtifactOfDoom that seduces any holder into committing murders with it and some of those murders are to prevent itself from being duplicated--with the hint that it's aware that it is something monstrous that should not become common. |
| 30 | ** Other ''Discworld'' books mention the "spring-gonne," which is a highly compact crossbow that is also highly illegal. The antipathy the Assassins and Watch have towards it stems from the fact that a person who owns one can just go around with death in their pocket (more technically up their pant leg, but still) like a modern gun--and unlike a sword-stroke or even a normal crossbow that you can at least see, and which takes more muscle power from the wielder. |
| 31 | ** In ''Literature/{{Night Watch|Discworld}}'', the narration notes that weapons-control laws just got law-abiding citizens to give up their best means of self-defense, while violent criminals couldn't believe their luck. This is nearly identical to assertions many pro-gun advocates make about gun control, and may seem confusing to many gun control supporters (although there is also the fact that the Watch, in this era, is "just another gang" that is uninterested in actually protecting law-abiding citizens unless they also happen to be rich). |
| 32 | * A kind of subtle example can be found in English classrooms everywhere that read books like ''Literature/TheAdventuresOfTomSawyer'' or other novels from earlier time periods that depict boys engaging in activities that nowadays many would consider "gay." Despite their more "manly" activities like playing at wargames or going exploring, whenever young male characters go swimming naked together or engage in an emotional connection of any kind that doesn't revolve around anger, the eyebrows raise and the children (mostly boys) start wondering if they were a little gay. |
| 33 | ** The more shocking part of the book is probably the bit when Tom kisses his sleeping aunt ''on the mouth''. Then he tells her he did it, and ''she asks him to do it again''. Of course, it’s perfectly innocent, but it still comes across as very, very [[{{Squick}} squicky]] these days. |
| 34 | ** And, obviously, there’s the notorious racism expressed in the depiction of Injun Joe, and using corporal punishment by legal guardians and ''teachers''. |
| 35 | ** Corporal punishment is still employed in some public schools in the UsefulNotes/UnitedStates. Including [[http://www.mdn.org/mostugov/corporalpunishment.htm in Missouri]] where the book takes place. |
| 36 | * In Theodor Fontane's 19th-century novel ''Literature/EffiBriest'', the eponymous 16-year-old protagonist is married off to the much older Baron Innstetten by her parents. She consented to this, passing up a chance to marry a cousin she genuinely liked, because of his excellent career prospects. This is, for the time and in the opinion of everyone involved, a sensible and normal decision. Bored and feeling constrained in her marriage, she then has an extramarital affair with an (even older) military officer. Modern readers may feel unsympathetic to Effi because marrying for money is now considered by many cold and unscrupulous. Or unsympathetic to Innstetten because having sex with underage teenagers is now considered immoral. And then there is the fact that [[spoiler:Innstetten kills the other man in a duel and takes Effi's child away from her forever after divorcing her, just so he can keep face; he's not really jealous and was never really in love with Effi.]] This book is remarkable for the amount of AlternativeCharacterInterpretation for both Effi and Innstetten, and how widely opinions vary on which characters readers blame or excuse. |
| 37 | * The novel ''Literature/BeauGeste'' follows three upper class English boys who have been raised by their aunt. The family is in dire financial straits, so the aunt sells a treasured family heirloom to make ends meet. The narrator and his brothers immediately leave home to join the [[LegionOfLostSouls French Foreign Legion]], leaving notes claiming to have stolen the jewel, as a way of allowing their aunt to save face by not having to admit she was forced to sell her jewelry to survive. The narrator's brothers die in {{UsefulNotes/Algeria}}, and the narrator himself deserts the Legion. It's depicted in the story as making a noble sacrifice to save family honour; from a modern perspective, it comes across as three young men throwing away their lives for no good reason. |
| 38 | * In ''Literature/TheVampyre'', the protagonist, Aubrey, is tricked by the semi-eponomyous Lord Ruthven into swearing an oath to keep the secret that Ruthven is a vampire for AYearAndADay. Ruthven then intentionally seduces the protagonist's sister, and, to really twist the knife, proposes to her and sets the wedding day to be the day the promise expires. The stress of [[IGaveMyWord keeping his word]] and being unable to warn his sister drives Aubrey to a nervous breakdown, Ruthven drains the sister of blood before Aubrey can warn her, [[TheBadGuyWins and escapes scot free]]. To a modern reader, Aubrey keeping his promise to an amoral sociopath who is clearly toying with him rather than saving his sister comes across as the height of LawfulStupid, rather than a good man trapped by his own honour as he was intended to be. |
| 39 | * Creator/GeneStrattonPorter: |
| 40 | ** Her 1904 novel ''Literature/{{Freckles}}'' is based in large part on the notion that the hero, raised in an orphanage, thinks he's the bastard child of abusive parents, and therefore unworthy of love or respect. The other characters, particularly the love interest, spend much of their time convincing him that he ''is'' worthy -- not because he's a good and decent man himself and therefore it doesn't matter what his parents are, but because his goodness and "fineness" prove that his ''parents'' must necessarily have been upstanding, righteous, and probably well-to-do. The clear implication is that an abused child is unworthy of compassion, because as the offspring of abusive parents it must be innately incapable of anything good. |
| 41 | ** ''Literature/HerFathersDaughter'': A major plot thread revolves around one of the heroine's male classmates struggling to win first place in his high school class over a "Jap" for the honor of true Americans. It's revealed that the supposed Japanese teenager is really a mature man posing as a teenager to "steal" a better education than he could have obtained back home, and this is presented as a common practice that should be rooted out. The Japanese student also turns out to be deviously dishonorable and willing to kill to maintain his standing in the class. Nowadays, of course, the Japanese educational system has the reputation of being much more exacting than our own. Another oddity, from today's perspective, is the belief that the Japanese are incapable of creating anything original; instead, they steal technology from advanced countries such as the US. (Admittedly, there are many today who maintain a similar belief, though it's less contempt and more acknowledgement that Japan's skill is taking existing inventions and making them better than anyone else rather than coming up with new technology.) The heroine also engages in extended rants about the danger of the colored races, especially Asians, overrunning the world because American women are too self-centered to have lots of babies as they ought to. |
| 42 | * Creator/AgathaChristie, in many of her stories. Her most infamous example would have to be the controversy over the title of ''Literature/AndThenThereWereNone''. It started out as ''Ten Little Niggers'', based on the nursery rhyme of the same name, but when that was deemed too offensive, it was changed to ''Ten Little Indians''. And when ''that'' was viewed as too offensive, it was changed to the now commonly-used title ''And Then There Were None''. |
| 43 | ** Christie also used the word casually in other novels. In ''Literature/DumbWitness'', one chapter is titled "A Nigger in the Woodpile" (an [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigger_in_the_woodpile old American expression]] meaning "something suspicious or wrong"). In ''Literature/TheHollow'', a dessert called "Nigger in his Shirt" is mentioned. |
| 44 | ** In ''Literature/MurderOnTheOrientExpress'', some of the suspects on board the train are listed as "American subjects" in Poirot's notebook. Plenty of Americans would object to being called "subjects" rather than "citizens", as the former term implies fealty to a monarch and Americans consider it a matter of pride that their nation, since its founding, has never had one of those. |
| 45 | ** In ''Literature/DeathInTheClouds'' (also published under the name ''Death in the Air''), the narration casually mentions that Jane Grey and Norman Gale both "dislike[d] negroes". This is not intended to make them seem unsympathetic in any way. |
| 46 | ** To Christie's credit, after UsefulNotes/WorldWarII she herself revised many of her early books to eliminate the kind of casual anti-semitism common in the 1920s and 1930s. Case in point: the minor character of Morris in ''ATTWN'', referred to as a "little Jewboy" originally, was changed in later editions of the book to be a "solicitor" instead. |
| 47 | ** Another factor is that Dame Agatha loved the FlorenceNightingaleEffect and used it frequently, with almost every ill young girl (often 20 or younger) ending the novel married to her doctor nearly twice her age. These days, this would be considered completely inappropriate and a violation of medical ethics. |
| 48 | ** The plot of the novel ''Literature/{{Nemesis|AgathaChristie}}'' (1971) depicts a PsychoLesbian who killed her younger lover (and surrogate daughter), because the girl wanted to end their relationship and to marry a male lover. The protagonist Jane Marple defends the poor girl's decision, because the girl desired "a normal woman's life" and motherhood. Things which her female lover could not give her. Nowadays lesbian couples can raise their own children, and Marple seems to be overlooking the fact that the girl's "normal" would-be-husband had a criminal record for vandalism, theft, and rape. If anything, both of the girl's lovers were a bit unhinged. |
| 49 | ** One of the main subplots in the novel ''Literature/ThreeActTragedy'' (1934) is that the famous actor Charles Cartwright (who has reached a proper age for retirement) is madly in love with the youthful Hermione "Egg" Lytton-Gore, who still lives with her mother. Nobody seems to find their age difference of 30 years to be odd or objectionable. Hermione herself hero-worships her lover, until she finds out about his criminal past. Nowadays, Cartwright's infatuation would have at least raised some eyebrows, since he is old enough to be Hermione's father. |
| 50 | ** A comic subplot in ''Literature/TheMysteriousAffairAtStyles'' (1920) is that the narrator Lieutenant Hastings is simultaneously in love with two women (Mary Cavendish and Cynthia Murdoch), and can't figure out why neither of them sees him as a potential lover. The facts that the two women barely know him (he is a recent house guest at their residence) and that Mary is married to Hastings' friend are not treated as major obstacles. If anything, Hastings' amorous advances are somewhat creepy. |
| 51 | |
| 52 | * Likewise, James Joyce's ''Literature/{{Ulysses}}'' used the word "nigger" freely. It referred to "nigger lips" three times, for example. Ireland had virtually no non-white population, and people used the word with impunity. |
| 53 | * Creator/GeoffreyChaucer's ''Literature/TheCanterburyTales'' was a collection of tales, many featuring some incredibly un-PC events and viewpoints. Chaucer wrote ''Literature/TheCanterburyTales'' as if he were [[BasedOnAGreatBigLie documenting true events]] and put reminders before at least one tale that the opinions expressed in the following story weren't his but the views of the character, so it's difficult to gauge Chaucer's own opinions on the matter. For example, the Nun tells an incredibly racist blood libel portraying Jews killing a Christian child. However, the Nun herself is shown to be an exceptionally shallow twit who most of the other pilgrims obviously don't like. While Chaucer likely wasn't much friendlier to Jews than his contemporaries, the seriousness of the Nun's Tale is inconclusive. |
| 54 | * Creator/VictorHugo: |
| 55 | ** ''Literature/LesMiserables'': |
| 56 | *** Modern female readers are likely to have their skin crawl off when reading about the early parts of their "courtship" (or, in modern terms, Marius's stalking of Cosette). However, when the novel was written, Marius's extreme shyness, his ardent desire to see Cosette and holding her on a kind of mental pedestal all came across as ''intensely'' romantic. (Many of the ''older'' female readers of the time would not have objected to having a [[PrettyBoy cute twentysomething]] follow them around like a lost puppy in the slightest.) |
| 57 | *** Lots of modern readers felt sorry for Eponine, who loved Marius and [[IWantMyBelovedToBeHappy tried her hardest to please him]], and thus weren't much pleased by how he basically ignored and looked down on her. At the time however, there wasn't really the concept of the "virtuous poor" or the mixing of social status. Marius was a baron and above Eponine and Cosette appeared to be the same as the daughter of a wealthy gentleman. This is also why Marius was so appalled by Valjean's distant past as a convict -- despite the fact that modern readers would see Valjean's lifetime of redemption as far overshadowing what he did all those years ago, it would have meant that to Marius, Valjean was just a convict. This is also why Thenardier tried to use Cosette's illegitimacy as blackmail -- the fact that she was the bastard daughter of a woman considered to be a whore would have been scandalous. |
| 58 | *** Many modern readers would likely also be rather disgusted by Marius's behavior towards Valjean once he learns that Valjean once committed some vague crime far in the past. The fact that Marius isolated Cosette from the man who worked so hard to raise her all those years (and that Cosette went along with it despite knowing her father figure's kindness) can be rather vexing to modern readers. |
| 59 | ** ''Literature/TheHunchbackOfNotreDame'': |
| 60 | *** Frollo's obsession with Esmeralda is regarded as twisted and inappropriate because he's a priest, and supposed to be celibate. It's highly questionable because he's of (minor) nobility, and she's Roma, the lowest social class in Paris. But there's no hesitation over the fact that ''[[AgeGapRomance he's 36 years old and she's barely 16]]''. |
| 61 | *** There's also the portrayal of Roma as child thieves. Esmeralda is shown sympathetically [[spoiler:because she turns out to be the daughter of a French woman]]. |
| 62 | * The works of Creator/{{Homer}}: |
| 63 | ** ''Literature/TheIliad'' centers around women being treated as pieces of property, to be looted in warfare. The play ''Theatre/TheTrojanWomen'' was already {{deconstructi|on}}ng this in ancient Athens. In general, prisoners taken in war automatically became slaves, something that was no different at the time the play was written than in Homer's two epic poems (the treatment the Athenians meted out to the Melians during the Peloponnesian War, for instance, is rather similar to the fate of the Trojans -- men slaughtered, women sold into slavery). At the time slavery was seen as a fact of life that could happen to anyone if s/he was unlucky. Consider the swineherd Eumaios in ''Literature/TheOdyssey'', a prince abducted as a child and sold into slavery by Phoenicians, yet apparently nobody thought of freeing him all these years. |
| 64 | ** Achilles's behavior in general often oscillates between dickish and unspeakably cruel, yet many ancient Greeks, e. g. Alexander the Great, considered him one of the greatest heroes ever. While some of his actions were seen as crossing a MoralEventHorizon even back then, if he lived today Greece would probably stop holding him in ''any'' regard and be seen as OldShame similar to Leopold II and Cecil Rhodes today. |
| 65 | ** In ''Literature/TheOdyssey'', Odysseus brags about the sacking and raping of the Cicones. Though given how this angers Athena, Homer might have meant it to be a morally ambiguous moment for Odysseus. |
| 66 | ** In the climax of the ''Odyssey'', Odysseus killing Penelope's suitors can come off as extremely brutal and cruel to today's readers, with moments like having his servants barring the doors so nobody can get out, executing some of them while they ''beg for mercy'', and then having all the servants who were complicit in the suitors' actions killed. But by the standards of Ancient Greece, the act would be seen as LaserGuidedKarma, as not only did the suitors harass Penelope for 10 whole years (a probable attempt at rape by coercion), but they were also breaking SacredHospitality the entire time by freeloading on Penelope and refusing to leave when she asked. Since hospitality customs were part of Zeus's domain, they'd essentially spent that decade insulting the king of the gods, so Odysseus killing them would be their punishment for blasphemy along with the other stuff. |
| 67 | ** Odysseus also planned to kill Penelope if she was unfaithful to him in the years following his apparent death, while by the standards of modern audiences ''[[MyGirlIsNotASlut he himself was unfaithful]]'' (albeit under QuestionableConsent circumstances). |
| 68 | * Creator/{{Virgil}}'s ''Literature/TheAeneid'' serves as an example from a Roman perspective; Aeneas is much more concerned with protecting his men than Odysseus was. That is, he shows some interest in protecting his men (albeit that Odysseus's men brought a lot of their troubles on themselves). |
| 69 | * Creator/ArthurConanDoyle: |
| 70 | ** ''Literature/SherlockHolmes'': |
| 71 | *** ''The Hound of the Baskervilles'' has an example which also qualifies as ScienceMarchesOn: a secondary character is an expert on phrenology and various racial "sciences" of the day, traits which would certainly be villainous in any modern work, but merely paint the character as a CloudCuckoolander and something of a quack. Watson clearly finds the phrenology absurd but is tactful enough not to say it aloud, especially how the character gushes over the shape of Holmes's head and wishes for it to be displayed should the Great Detective depart from his mortal coil. |
| 72 | *** When Doyle depicted Mormons as a ReligionOfEvil, that wasn't considered controversial, whereas his similarly unsympathetic depiction of the Ku Klux Klan was. Nowadays, this is essentially reversed. He supposedly later issued an apology to the Mormons after being taken to task by them. |
| 73 | *** In "The Yellow Face" (a reference to a mask), when the mother of a mixed-race daughter showed Holmes and Watson a locket with a picture of herself and her late black husband, Watson commented that the man was "strikingly handsome and intelligent-looking, ''but'' bearing unmistakable signs upon his features of his African descent." Authors of the time would often describe sympathetic non-white characters as being very attractive except for their non-white features. |
| 74 | *** There are also different degrees of values dissonance between the UK and US. In the UK, the woman's second English husband took two minutes of thought before he accepted the daughter and took her and his wife home. In the US edition he needed ten minutes of thought, though in both cases he accepts his step-daughter and tells the woman that she could trust him to take care of the girl regardless of her race. |
| 75 | *** "The Three Gables" opens with a black man in an ugly salmon-colored suit coming in to threaten Holmes. Both Holmes himself and Watson's narration insult him repeatedly, in a manner that would certainly be considered racist today; Holmes repeatedly refers to Steve Dixie's smell and even comments about his 'woolly head'. To top it off, it has a Jewish villainess. Way to go, Sir Arthur! The villainess of this short story even delivers this line about a good young Englishman who traveled to Italy: |
| 76 | ---->''It was as if the air of Italy had got into his blood and brought with it the old cruel Italian spirit.'' |
| 77 | *** A non-racial Holmes example is the Great Detective's drug use, which began being dissonant when cocaine started being banned, but is particularly noticeable when the stories are billed as young adult literature. In Victorian times, a gentleman could freely walk to any drugstore and buy as much cocaine and morphine (and after 1899, heroin) as he saw fit. It's clearly not a ''positive'' trait (Watson, a doctor himself, greatly disapproves and eventually forces Holmes to give it up), but it wasn't outright ''illegal''. |
| 78 | *** In ''The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet'', [[KissingCousins Arthur being smitten with his cousin Mary — and his ''first'' cousin, no less]] is not once remarked upon as odd or {{Squick}}y. Not to mention, Mr. Holder seems to be ''tempted'' by the idea of them getting together. And what makes the deal even more bizarre is the fact that Holder ''raised them under the same roof.'' |
| 79 | *** This is a description of the Andaman Islanders from ''The Sign of Four'': |
| 80 | ---->''"They are naturally hideous, having large, misshapen heads, small fierce eyes, and distorted features. Their feet and hands, however, are remarkably small. So intractable and fierce are they, that all the efforts of the British officials have failed to win them over in any degree. They have always been a terror to shipwrecked crews, braining the survivors with their stone-headed clubs or shooting them with their poisoned arrows. These massacres are invariably concluded by a cannibal feast. Nice, amiable people, Watson! If this fellow had been left to his own unaided devices, this affair might have taken an even more ghastly turn. I fancy that, even as it is, Jonathan Small would give a good deal not to have employed him."'' ([[http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3326/3184612185_c09f72131e.jpg Not exactly hideous cannibalistic savages in real life, as it turns out.]]) |
| 81 | *** Naturally for Victorian literature, many acts of murder, extortion and conspiracy in Holmes's casebook were committed to cover up scandalous intimate liaisons which, if exposed publicly today, would be greeted with a resounding "So What?" from everyone except the paparazzi or a divorce attorney. |
| 82 | *** In a story from ''The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes'', a man confesses to concealing his sister's death so he can retain use of her properties long enough to clean up at the track. These days, his hiring someone to impersonate her smacks of identity theft and would be prosecuted as fraud. Holmes lets him walk, apparently not considering it objectionable once he's confirmed the sister died of natural causes and the guy wasn't a murderer. The fact that both he and the suspect refer to his creditors as "the Jews" doesn't help. |
| 83 | *** Quite a few culprits are allowed to go unprosecuted on the condition that they leave Britain or are treated as if the crimes they've committed outside of Europe are none of Holmes's affair. Crimes outside the U.K. may not be ''Lestrade's'' jurisdiction, but Holmes takes pride in not having the same constraints as the police, so it seems hypocritical when his commitment to justice ends at the British coastline. |
| 84 | *** In more of an in-universe example, Holmes will sometimes let a criminal go free even on British soil, usually if he empathized with the criminal's motivation. When Watson expresses surprise, Holmes responds that he's interested in justice and the truth, not necessarily with upholding the law. |
| 85 | *** Sherlock Holmes also shows some classism which he uses to deduct people's job and standing, and of course he is always right. From ''The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist'': |
| 86 | --->''"I nearly fell into the error of supposing that you were typewriting. Of course, it is obvious that it is music. You observe the spatulate finger-ends, Watson, which is common in both professions? There is a spirituality about the face, however" -- she gently turned it towards the light -- "which the typewriter does not generate. The lady is a musician."'' |
| 87 | *** In ''A Case of Identity'' (1891), Holmes is hired by the heiress Mary Sutherland to find out what happened to her missing fiancé, Hosmer Angel. Holmes find out that "Hosmer" is a false identity used by Mary's stepfather James Windibank, in order to seduce his stepdaughter. And that he has a financial interest in keeping Mary single. Holmes refuses to tell the truth to his client, allowing her to remain faithful to her lost love. He reasons that women should be left to their delusions. Not only does Holmes seem to be a misogynist, but he seems to act as an accomplice to James' deception. Way to go in keeping Mary safe from her predatory stepfather. |
| 88 | *** In ''The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton'' (1904), Holmes wants inside information on the private residence and the daily habits of the notorious blackmailer Milverton. So Holmes establishes a fake identity to seduce Milverton's housemaid, gets engaged to the woman, learns everything she knows about her employer, and then abandons her. He assures Watson that there is no harm done, as the woman has another suitor vying for her hand. Holmes himself acts like a predator in the story, and the working-class woman is treated as disposable. |
| 89 | ** In one of Doyle's "Literature/ProfessorChallenger" stories, "Literature/ThePoisonBelt", the Earth passes through a toxic region in the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminiferous_aether Ether]], which gradually kills [[spoiler:(actually just knocks out)]] the entire population of the world... in order of darkest to lightest skin. (e.g. "The Slavonic population of Austria is down, while the Teutonic has hardly been affected.") Professor Challenger's plan to protect people from its effects was offered to his friends, but not to his servants. |
| 90 | * In the book ''Film/GoneWithTheWind'', all the sympathetic male characters, except Rhett, who is something of a rogue, are in the Klan. Moreover, all the lower-class characters speak in a stereotypical slave FunetikAksent, while the upper class characters speak perfect English. |
| 91 | ** Readers might also be surprised by the fact that Gerald and Ellen name each of their three infants who died in infancy [[DeadGuyJunior Gerald Jr.]], as reusing names lost to infant mortality was a common practice at the time. |
| 92 | ** Scarlett's mother married at 15 and the rather sexual way in which the narrator describes Scarlett and her younger sister's attractiveness to men, they are 16 and 14 respectively, is somewhat {{squick}}y. |
| 93 | ** [[KissingCousins The marriage of Ashley and Melanie, cousins.]] Again, during the 19th century, it was quite common for cousins to marry, though the degree of relationship was usually second-cousin or more distant. At least it was commented on in the books -- Mrs. Tarleton mentions that the constant inbreeding has weakened the Wilkes and Hamilton stocks, and they need fresh blood to mix things up before they die out -- but today we'd probably be talking about how gross it was that they were all inbred, but hey, landed gentry have always been the same. |
| 94 | *** In the book when Scarlett's white friends complain because of the prison labor, she furiously calls them on their hypocrisy, reminding them that up until recently they had had slaves. In the movie, Ashley answers that "it's not the same", because he would have freed his slaves when his father had died (and he seems to think he has the moral high ground there). The book is worse, the narrator stating that it was different because the blacks had been better as slaves. Scarlett is meant to be the unsympathetic bitch that *gasp* enslaves whites. She's actually the only character honest enough to say she only wants money and prosperity, and is willing to enslave anyone, regardless of their skin color. Due to Values Dissonance, what made Scarlett a bitch in the '40s makes her the most sincere character of the cast now, and makes everyone else (except Rhett) annoying {{hypocrite}}s. Because Melanie and Ashley don't like the prison labor, but in fact, they basically live off Scarlett and off said prison labor. |
| 95 | ** One of the novel's sympathetic characters in the early chapters is Beatrice Tarleton, the powerful matriarch of the Tarleton clan, and the chief administrator of her family's plantation. We are told that Beatrice never whips her horses or her slaves, but we are informed that she regularly whips her mischievous sons. Her abusive behavior raises no objections from the other characters, except from the sons who fear her. When several of her sons are killed in combat, some characters note that Beatrice seems to be mourning her dead horses more than her dead sons. What a loving mother. Nowadays, AbusiveParents are rarely treated as sympathetic characters. |
| 96 | ** Sarah Jane "Pittypat" Hamilton is the aunt of Melanie Hamilton (by blood) and Scarlett O'Hara (by marriage), the legal guardian of Melanie until Melanie's marriage, and a leading socialite in Atlanta. However, she is repeatedly depicted as extremely timid, rather childish (a former slave acts as her caretaker and guardian), and relying on her brother (who dislikes her) and her nieces for most financial and legal affairs. The idea that her behavior is abnormal is never raised in the novel, though she acts less maturely than some of the novel's child characters. Nowadays, her behavior would suggest psychological disorders. |
| 97 | * The ''Literature/JamesBond'' series is extremely... well, there's no other word for it, ''bigoted'' -- indeed, it was considered questionable even by the standards of its time: |
| 98 | ** ''Literature/LiveAndLetDie'' is over-the-top with crazy racism. Hilariously, James Bond's Texan sidekick Felix Leiter tries to educate him about black culture in America.[[note]] 'Fortunately,' continued Leiter, 'I like the negroes and they know it somehow.'[[/note]] Also, Bond is surprised to see a "Negress" driving a car in New York. |
| 99 | ** Felix makes a joke in ''Literature/DiamondsAreForever'' about how you can't call a measure of whiskey a "jigger" anymore; now you have to call it a ''Jegro''. |
| 100 | ** ''Literature/FromRussiaWithLove'', where not only does Darko Kerim hold a stated belief in the Rape Is Love principle, but his own history with women also makes his role as a ''sympathetic character'' (one of a very small group of people Bond considers friends) border on the absurd. |
| 101 | ** In the novel ''Literature/{{Goldfinger}}'', |
| 102 | *** Bond "cures" a lesbian by being sexy enough. Though Pussy Galore is viewed as a lesbian throughout the book, she admits at the end that it was a label she never really applied to herself. She starts calling herself a lesbian after being assaulted by her uncle at age 12: "I come from the South. You know the definition of a virgin down there? Well, it's a girl who can run faster than her brother. In my case I couldn't run as fast as my uncle. I was twelve." |
| 103 | *** Koreans are treated as an irredeemably savage, lustful, chippy, and generally monstrous sub-species of humanity, with Bond considering them lower than apes and Goldfinger telling how he imports London prostitutes for them to have sex with[[note]]"The women are not much to look at, but they are white and that is all the Koreans ask – to submit the white race to the grossest indignities."[[/note]]. This reaches a nadir when Goldfinger rewards Oddjob for completing a task for him, by giving him a cat to eat. |
| 104 | ** In "[[Literature/ForYourEyesOnly The Hildebrand Rarity]]", Bond muses that "the only trouble with beautiful Negresses is that they don't know anything about birth control." Admittedly, he was having a conversation about Nigeria at the time, where contraception is indeed less prevalent, but the line's still jarring. |
| 105 | ** There's a bit in ''Literature/{{Thunderball}}'' where Bond is impressed by a woman (later revealed to be the book's Bond girl) because she "drives like a man". |
| 106 | ** ''Literature/OnHerMajestysSecretService'' isn't too bad compared to others in the series, but it has its moments. For example, the light going through Irma Bunt's yellow ski goggles is stated to "[turn] her face Chinese" and one of the things hypnotism is said to cure is homosexuality. |
| 107 | * Creator/OrsonScottCard, in his novel ''Literature/{{Enchantment}}'', quotes an unspecified Fleming story as having the line, "All women love semi-rape." Even if it ''is'' true for some women (which it might be, RuleThirtyFour being what it is), it still comes across as rather creepy. Said short story is "Literature/TheSpyWhoLovedMe". |
| 108 | * Helen Bannerman's children's story ''Literature/TheStoryOfLittleBlackSambo'' has long left a bad taste in people's mouths due to the horrible "darky" caricatures that illustrated most of the early publications. However, apart from this and the name of the title character. "Sambo", meaning "born on Sunday", was at one time a common and neutral name, but with remarkable tone-deafness and irony, the author actually got it from a minstrel-show character. The story is rather innocuous -- Sambo is depicted as being rather clever in solving his problems -- and has been retold (''sans'' UnfortunateImplications) several times in recent years. [[http://www.johnmariani.com/archive/2008/080106/alephBetBooksStoryOfLittleBlackSambo.jpg Here]] is an example of some earlier artwork for the story. Contrast that with the cover of [[http://www.k-state.edu/wwparent/story/award/r-sambo.htm one of the later editions]]... |
| 109 | * In the ''Literature/DocSavage'' novels, Doc runs a facility known as "the Crime College", where captured crooks are given brain surgery to erase their memories and wipe out criminal impulses, then retrained into productive, law-abiding citizens. This leaves a bad taste in the mouths of many modern readers, and some later authors have gone so far as to suggest that Doc was lobotomising criminals. (The college was phased out in later novels, probably as a result of ScienceMarchesOn.) |
| 110 | * Some parts of the ''Literature/HarryPotter'' books can strike readers as being full of this. Sometimes, it's simply just non-British readers reacting to British customs and values, but since TheNewTens and [[TheNewTwenties New '20s]], Creator/JKRowling's increasingly controversial beliefs (mostly on the topic of gender) have caused readers to notice questionable political undertones and social commentary in the books, which has unfortunately resulted in some elements of the story feeling uncomfortable to modern audiences: |
| 111 | ** Guns: |
| 112 | *** ''Literature/HarryPotterAndThePrisonerOfAzkaban'': When Sirius Black escapes from Azkaban prison, the Ministry of Magic alerts the Muggle community by telling them he's a dangerous criminal who's carrying a gun. Readers from countries where guns are considered a basic right like the USA would be concerned, but not that surprised by a criminal carrying a firearm. However, in the UK, firearms have been heavily restricted since [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearms_Act_1968 the 1960's]], and privately owning one is usually frowned. It is illegal for civilians to own a handgun for instance, and even police officers need to have special permits to carry them. So to them, a criminal carrying a gun is extremely alarming. |
| 113 | *** When Uncle Vernon is revealed to have somehow obtained a rifle to protect his family from the mysterious "stalker" (actually Hagrid) who he believes is targeting them. Petunia, Dudley, and Harry all react to this with extreme shock. |
| 114 | * "Literature/TheChargeOfTheLightBrigade" was treated at the time, most notably in Tennyson's poem, as an act of tragic heroism, exemplifying military courage despite the unfortunate mix-up in the orders making it all a futile blunder. A watching French general commented "it's magnificent, but it's not war". The modern sentiment is that it wasn't heroic at all, just tragic, and above all an indictment of a military system that made soldiers "lions led by donkeys". The lesser-known but much more amusing part of that quote, "it is stupidity/madness" would suggest that he caught it well enough. Unfortunately it seems to still work that way... but at least communication speed means botched orders can (usually) be corrected in time. |
| 115 | * There's an interesting dissonance in how modernity tends to look at "fops" in both historical fiction and works actually written in the 18th century. There's often an assumption that a man wearing makeup, facial powder, and elaborate clothing must either be AmbiguouslyGay or a CampGay, even though this was the style of the time for heterosexual men. Many people dressing this way were in fact trying to ''attract'' women with feminine mannerism. Indeed, this "superficial-femininity as a means of attracting females" has seen a recurrence in several modern subcultures, most notably the Anglo-European [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glam_rock Glam Rock]] scene of the early- to [[TheSeventies mid-1970s]] and those influenced by it, and the Japanese [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_kei Visual Kei]] scene. |
| 116 | * ''Literature/RomanceOfTheThreeKingdoms'' (the novel, not the anime) manages to have a TON of ValuesDissonance because it is set in early-AD China (the main story is from 184 to 234) and because of the Confucian moral slant of the novel. Some of the most extreme examples are ironically from the main protagonist Liu Bei, who sometimes puts HonorBeforeReason to the point where other good guys, despite sometimes having similar moral slants, have to call him on it. Some examples are when Liu Bei throws his infant son at the ground because the general who managed to save the child could have been killed in the process and Liu Bei considered his general far more valuable than his son, and when Liu Bei stays at the home of a commoner. The commoner goes out hunting and promises him a fresh kill but fails to kill anything, so the would-be hunter murders his wife and serves her for dinner instead. When Liu Bei finds out, he weeps tears of gratitude for the man's noble sacrifice. Many translations of the text come accompanied by extensive annotations explaining the differing values of the day and why the character are reacting the way they do. |
| 117 | * [[invoked]] What we modern readers consider a MarySue was considered an acceptable type once (see Little Eva in ''Literature/UncleTomsCabin''). More [[SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism idealistic]] characters were accepted in certain eras than now, types like the PrincessClassic and {{Pollyanna}}. |
| 118 | ** The 18th-century idea of children's literature and poetry was painfully moralistic and didactic. ''Literature/GoodyTwoShoes'' was an actual book. This trend was mocked by Creator/LewisCarroll in his ''Literature/AliceInWonderland'' books. |
| 119 | ** [[invoked]] Likewise what we'd call a MartyStu, especially the JerkassStu kind, was once considered a role model and pinnacle of manliness, and the classical definition of 'hero' was more like an {{Ubermensch}}. Naturally, today these characters come off as an AntiHero at best, DesignatedHero at worst. |
| 120 | * While it is still regarded as a masterpiece of world literature, ''Literature/WarAndPeace'' is not known for espousing the feminist philosophy. It never becomes so bad that women are considered inferior in the book, but anyone looking for it (and ignoring the [[AnAesop actual morals]] of the book) could probably find enough subtext to dismiss it as male chauvinist propaganda. There's also the Sonya/Nikolay/Marya love triangle. Sonya is secretly delighted when Andrey and Natasha reunite because Nikolay can't possibly have an 'incestuous' relationship with Marya; this despite the fact that ''Sonya'' is his blood relation (first cousins), while Marya is only his brother-in-law's sister. Which, to clarify, made her his ''actual'' sister by the standards of the time, while a cousin is just extended family and therefore at least one step removed. |
| 121 | * ''Literature/{{Victoria}}'' was written in the 21st century, but by a, er, ''right-wing'' author to put it rather lightly. The aim of the heroes is to restore the social values of small-town early 20th-century America throughout the land (with everything this entails for women and various "oppressed minorities"), and this is unambiguously presented as a good thing. They also use extremely brutal means bringing this about, up to and including nuking Atlanta[[note]](In context; Atlanta was ruled by a [[DirtyCommunists genocidal communist regime]], and the nuke was dropped to prevent the revolution from spreading -- which is still an overreaction, but at least they were actually targeting enemies)[[/note]], but of course this is always justified. Their mostly leftist enemies are treated with hatred, and/or contempt, throughout. The book is filled with [[AuthorFilibuster rants by the narrator]] about varous political and social issues, so the reader doesn't forget that this is a paleoconservative AuthorTract. |
| 122 | ** The values dissonance peaks in the last chapters, when the good guys fight their extreme antithesis, a nation of [[LadyLand high-tech, LGBT-friendly Amazons]]. The latter are genocidal totalitarians themselves, but a liberal reader is still not entirely unlikely to consider them the [[ALighterShadeOfBlack relatively more sympathetic party]]. Following their victory, the heroes re-educate most of the survivors into submissive Christian wives, and sell the "incurable" ones as slaves. |
| 123 | ** The story also has the heroes face off against [[ThoseWackyNazis Nazis]], who are portrayed as the ''most'' sympathetic of the various antagonists. Their leader is a charming, intelligent WorthyOpponent, and it's even made clear that the heroes ''agree'' with elements of the Nazi ideology and oppose them mainly for their [[RomanticismVersusEnlightenment coldly rational, modernistic and technocratic]] beliefs. |
| 124 | * Creator/GeorgeRRMartin's ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'' gives us a rare ''inverted'' example. Although Martin himself is an American, he noted that American readers were turned off by the amount of nudity and sex in his books. He stated that this was strictly an American response, as this reaction was not the case in Europe. |
| 125 | * ''Literature/LeftBehind'': |
| 126 | ** Buck blackmails a woman with the threat of outing her as a lesbian if she reveals certain information that she has, and that she legitimately feels the public has the right to know. Chloe, his wife, who used to be a realistic, fairly nice woman before she was "saved", laughs about said blackmail. Even better, the scene in question plays out exactly like the opening to a standard smear campaign to harass a woman out of her position (she's his boss, who he's been disrespecting, belittling, and treating like his secretary because he thinks she's not good enough). Buck brings up, out of nowhere, "Well, what if I go around telling everyone you're a lesbian? How will you like that?" It's not even clear initially that she ''is'' a lesbian, since her response is simply to panic at the idea he's going to start spreading the rumor and deny it (not that this stops him from taking this as "proof"). Later Buck takes over her office and, when she comes in to demand to know what he's doing, he attempts to kick the door into her face. This is, of course, presented as one of his great heroic actions in the books, and also totally hilarious, even more than blackmailing her. |
| 127 | ** There's [[http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/left_behind/ a huge blog dedicated to discussing the Values Dissonance]] and some of the writing in that series. Notable examples: The protagonist Airline Pilot who considers himself a hero for refusing to ride on a bus from his plane to O'Hare Terminal, even though this requires him to walk around plane wrecks and ignore the dead and wounded inside. And the protagonist Reporter who discovers an International Conspiracy after it murders his close friend, and then runs right to the head of that conspiracy and trades silence for his life. |
| 128 | ** The Literature/UndergroundZealot series, by one of ''Literature/LeftBehind'''s co-authors, features an underground Christian movement fighting against the atheist government of the United Seven States of America because the government has prescribed the death penalty for religious belief. While the movement's anger is understandable, the fact that they respond by killing much of Los Angeles' population for having the sheer gall to live under an atheist government is not. They also consider the idea of ''world peace'' to be reprehensible on the grounds that only God can do that. |
| 129 | * Literature/SimonBlack was the AcePilot hero of a series of juvenile novels by Ivan Southall written in TheFifties and [[TheSixties early 60s]]. |
| 130 | ** In the first novel ''Meet Simon Black'', Simon is forced to land near Ayers Rock (now known by many as Uluru) and is attacked by Aborigines for no apparent reason. He's reluctant to shoot them, but only because he'll have to answer for it in court. |
| 131 | ** In ''Simon Black in the Antarctic'' (1956). While the patronizing attitudes toward a [[MysteriousAntarctica lost tribe of Neanderthals]] was expected, one thing that stood out was how contemporary novels about Antarctica emphasize its beauty, whereas this novel went on about how terrible the place was. In the same way, older writing tends to portray rainforests as hellish environments, challenges to be heroically overcome, rather than precious ecosystems. Granted, back then climate change was not even an idea yet... |
| 132 | * Some of the early ''Literature/DirkPittAdventures'' novels, written in TheSeventies, come off as this. |
| 133 | ** In ''The Mediterranean Caper'', Pitt slaps a woman in the face to get her out of a funk. |
| 134 | ** In ''Iceberg'', Pitt (a notable ladies' man) pretends to be a flamboyant gay man to put a bad guy at ease. |
| 135 | ** The same novel reveals that gorgeous Kristi Frye is actually [[spoiler:her supposedly dead brother Krisjan, having undergone gender reassignment surgery. She says she has to keep it quiet as if the truth got out, it would ruin her company and by extension the economy of Iceland.]] This wouldn't be an issue today given [[spoiler:transgender people are more visible and Iceland is a very progressive country. If anything, Kristi revealing the truth would ''increase'' the stock profile of her company.]] |
| 136 | * Frank Herbert's novels, ''Literature/TheDosadiExperiment'' and ''Franchise/{{Dune}}'', features multiple remarks stating homosexuals make ideal suicide bombers, as they already don't have to worry about spreading their genes. The number of terrible jokes that could arise from that statement just fills it with UnfortunateImplications. |
| 137 | * Works such as ''Literature/ToKillAMockingbird'' and ''Literature/TheAdventuresOfHuckleberryFinn'' contain period-appropriate depictions of racism and racist epithets, and as a result are sometimes criticised as racist despite their clear stance ''against'' racism. Nonetheless Creator/MarkTwain shared this himself; needless to say he did NOT like Native Americans. |
| 138 | * In the original ''Literature/DoctorDolittle'' books, the African animals were portrayed with considerably more dignity and sympathy than the human natives. |
| 139 | ** The king is shown to be pissed off at the whites because the last white man who came to his country first dug up holes everywhere looking for gold, and started to kill lots of elephants for ivory when he didn't find some. The second book features the (once) standard English trope -- an African character who has studied at a university and loves Cicero (he still dislikes algebra and shoes, on the third hand). |
| 140 | ** The greatest naturalist in the world, greater even than UsefulNotes/CharlesDarwin, is an Indian shaman, who is also a great warrior. He's illiterate, sometimes naive and quite realistic in the description. |
| 141 | * Sir Creator/WalterScott gives an ambivalent portrayal of Jews in ''Literature/{{Ivanhoe}}''. Isaac and Rebecca are both sympathetic characters who constantly suffer from unfair persecution. However, the book still indulges rather heavily on Jewish stereotypes by making Isaac a typically greedy, rich Jewish usurer. On the other hand, Isaac is said to only be this way because it is the role society placed upon him. He frequently shows that his love for his daughter outweighs his love of money, and his daughter Rebecca shows no signs of greed. The book also portrays plenty of period-appropriate views on Jews, even from the hero Ivanhoe, who considers himself a different race from Isaac and never considers courting Rebecca due to their differences in heritage. Because Rebecca is a much more developed character, many readers are annoyed that Ivanhoe never sways from Rowena. Among the 19th-century annoyed readers: W. M. Thackeray, who satirically "corrected" Scott's plot in ''Rebecca and Rowena'' -- and by "corrected," we mean "[[ComicallyMissingThePoint had Rebecca convert to Christianity]]." |
| 142 | * In lines 53-56 of Creator/{{Juvenal}}'s fifth ''Satire,'' he describes a black waiter as someone 'you would not want to meet by night among the tombs on the Latin Way.' This is because ghosts were believed to be [[LivingShadow black]] instead of [[BedsheetGhost white]] in those days, the afterlife being dark and gloomy in general, not because of the stereotypes now current in some parts of the world. |
| 143 | * In ''Literature/LordOfTheFlies'', the heretofore admirable and sensible character Piggy shouts at Jack's tribe "Do you want to be a bunch of painted niggers, or do you want to be sensible like Ralph is?" The phrase was changed in later editions: some replace it with "a bunch of painted Indians" (which may have been a case of acceptable targets at the time of the reprinting, but by today's standards isn't a whole lot better), and some replace it with "a bunch of painted savages" (which is probably the best and [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin most fitting to the story]]). |
| 144 | * Creator/RobertAHeinlein: |
| 145 | ** ''Literature/HaveSpaceSuitWillTravel'' (1958). While trudging across the surface of the Moon in a life and death situation, Kip takes dexedrine tablets when he gets exhausted. There is a major ValuesDissonance in that the reason he has dexedrine is that when he rebuilt a surplus space suit as a hobby while living on Earth, the town doctor wrote him prescriptions and the druggist he worked for filled them so the suit could contain the original medical supplies. This is when no one, including himself, ever expected him to actually go to the Moon. It is about impossible to imagine a modern law abiding doctor and pharmacist agreeing to provide dexedrine to a minor with no medical condition requiring it no matter how impressed they were at his hard work in rebuilding a space suit (about like turning a junked car into a pristine one). And this is a ''young adult'' story! |
| 146 | ** Most Heinlein characters written in TheFifties guzzle pills by the fistful -- sleepy pills when it's time for a nap, dexedrine or the equivalent when they need an energy burst, pills mixed with alcohol when in the mood for a party. A mere reflection of how things were done at the time, but the characters look like suicide risks / addicts to the modern eye. |
| 147 | ** Heinlein walked into his own ValuesDissonance in an earlier work, ''Literature/IfThisGoesOn'', about a brutal religious dictatorship overthrown by a revolutionary cabal. The original magazine edition, published in 1940, had the revolutionaries literally brainwashing the populace into ''mental independence and skepticism'': "More than a hundred million persons had to be examined to see if they could stand up under quick re-orientation, then re-examined after treatment to see if they had been sufficiently readjusted. Until a man passed the second examination we could not afford to enfranchise him as a free citizen of a democratic state." When Heinlein revised the story for book publication in 1953, he rejected his own idea, instead having a minor character (described as resembling "an angry Mark Twain") shout, "Free men aren't 'conditioned!' Free men are free because they are ornery and cussed and prefer to arrive at their own prejudices in their own way--not have them spoonfed by a self-appointed mind tinkerer!" |
| 148 | ** The WarIsGlorious vibes and militarism of ''Literature/StarshipTroopers'' readily date the book to TheFifties, when the UsefulNotes/ColdWar struggle against communism (analogized to the war against the Arachnids in the story) was more popular than it is now. After UsefulNotes/{{Vietnam|War}} and UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror (on top of increasing criticism of capitalism, to the point that a self-proclaimed democratic socialist became incredibly popular during the US Presidential election in 2016), more people today might agree with Creator/PaulVerhoeven's opinion of the novel (as expressed by [[Film/StarshipTroopers the film]]). Possible literary and animated [[{{Deconstruction}} "answers"]] to this book include Joe Haldeman's ''Literature/TheForeverWar'' (which Heinlein himself highly praised), John Steakley's ''Literature/{{Armor}}'', and Yoshiyuki Tomino's ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam''. |
| 149 | ** ''Literature/StrangerInAStrangeLand'': As a novel that tries to deconstruct and liberalize traditional views on sexuality and stereotyping, even a highly activist character (Jubal) intentionally makes a statement, dead serious, that would make almost anyone's modern blood boil: [[spoiler:''Nine times out of ten, if a woman is raped, it's partially her own fault.'']] |
| 150 | ** In both Literature/TimeForTheStars and Literature/StarmanJones aliens attack the humans exploring a newly discovered planet, forcing the humans to flee back into space. In both instances, the POV character hopes that in the future, better equipped humans will revisit the planet - not to better communicate with the aliens or learn anything from them, but to genocide the aliens and colonize the planet in question. |
| 151 | ** ''Literature/TheMoonIsAHarshMistress'': Luna gender politics are very different from Earth's, in-universe and in our own world. Group marriages are the norm, and having sex with another person's spouse isn't that big of a deal as long as you let your own spouse know ahead of time. People get married much earlier as well, with a character pointing out the curves on a 14 year old girl and noting she's unlikely to be a virgin. Cat-calling a woman is considered giving a polite compliment. Because [[GenderRarityValue men outnumber women on Luna by four to one]], chivalrous conduct is SeriousBusiness and harming women drives men to murderous rage: a woman who chases her husband into the street beating him until blood is drawn would not bat an eyelid from onlookers, but those same onlookers would without hesitation batter him and [[ThrownOutTheAirlock throw him out of the airlock]] [[DisproportionateRetribution if he so much as lightly shoved her in retaliation]]. |
| 152 | * ''Literature/TheSheik'', a 1919 novel, is practically the epitome of this trope. Young, independent heroine who has no use for traditional feminine values takes a trip into the desert and is kidnapped by a cringeworthy-stereotype of an Arab Sheik. Said Sheik proceeds to rape her more or less daily, giving her what is actually a fairly accurately written case of severe PTSD. The dissonance sets in when, halfway through the novel, she realizes she's in love with him because he's 'mastered' her, made her realize she's a woman and weak and needs a man, and proceeds to give up her personality and do whatever he wants to make him happy. While he eventually falls in love with her, too, he feels so terrible about what he did that he wants to send her away so he ''won't hurt her anymore'', and only agrees to let her stay because she tries to ''shoot herself in the head''. And even today, a lot of people consider this romantic. (The heroine's abrupt change of heart could easily be read as UsefulNotes/StockholmSyndrome, but nobody knew what that was in 1919 and that clearly wasn't the author's intent.) The cherry on the sundae of dissonance: he's not even Arabic, but rather the product of an English father and a Spanish mother. God forbid our heroine should fall in love with someone who's not white! The racism really is a category of dissonant fail all on its own. While Diana is favorably impressed by the Sheik's intelligence, it's because she's surprised he's not the savage idiot she assumed all Arabs to be. (It's worth noting that the Sheik's nemesis ''is'' the brutal slob she was expecting.) She's also very contemptuous of the native people of India, where she and her brother were staying before, and doesn't hesitate to say so. None of which would even be blinked at in 1919, but it's pretty cringe-worthy now. |
| 153 | * "One View of the Question" by Creator/RudyardKipling is about ValuesDissonance among other things. Only, this time the narrator is Shafiz Ullah Khan and readers encounter a good (and very cynical) exposition of how thoroughly perverted, small-minded, self-righteous and plain stupid "progressive" and "modern" Europeans themselves may seem from outside... complete with hopeless attempts to understand their quirks. |
| 154 | %%* Creator/MarkTwain in ''Literature/TheInnocentsAbroad'' offhandedly poured a cup of acid on purportedly respectable books of travelers bragging what "great dangers" they encountered in moderately visited locations and what "brave explorers" these tourists were, by presenting similar situations through his own eyes.%%How is it an example? |
| 155 | * ''Literature/TristanAndIseult'', a classic romance about true love, is full of the titular couple engaging in behavior that seems to be absolutely reprehensible. Of course this is all justified by their having true love... except this "true" love only came as a result of their accidentally drinking a love potion. Before that Iseult ''hated'' Tristan to the point of wanting to kill him. But apparently getting drugged is enough to make their love justify infidelity on both sides, deceit, the death of a dwarf whose crimes were being ugly and telling King Mark the truth about them fooling around and then ''proving'' it, and Tristan taking a young boy's dog. Some other translations have Iseult actually in love with Tristan despite their earlier "misunderstanding", getting her servant's hint that she served them the LovePotion, and drinking it willingly. That carries Values Dissonance as well in that Iseult would then be fine with forcing a man she loves to fall in love with her by letting him drink the love potion he didn't know was there and did not willingly consume. |
| 156 | * ''Literature/DonQuixote'' has the usually lovable Sancho Panza fantasizing about getting rich selling Africans into slavery, as well as a man who raped one woman and abducted another being instantly forgiven and counted as a friend by the heroes as soon as he agrees to let go of the second woman and marry the first. And let's not even get into the stuff about Muslims, which sadly probably ''isn't'' Values Dissonance for a lot of modern readers... |
| 157 | ** [[FairForItsDay On the other hand]], ''Don Quixote'' is notable for having the character of Ricote, a sympathetic Morisco (descendant of Muslims converted to Catholicism after the conquest of Granada), ''[[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome right at the time]]'' the Moriscos were subject to an extensive political bashing that led to their final expulsion by royal decree in 1609. And when 'real' Muslims do show up as characters in a [[ShowWithinAShow Book within the Book]] set in Algeria (based on Cervantes's [[ShownTheirWork own experience]] as a prisoner of war in Algiers), the Arabs do get a fair good portrayal compared to the Turks, who are said to be ruthless imperialists that treat all the locals as their slaves (and might be a reason for Don Quixote's modern popularity in the Arab world, especially in North Africa). Cervantes even claimed the whole book was a translation from an ''Arabic'' original found in the ''Jewish'' quarter of Toledo, at a time when simple knowledge of Arabic or Hebrew was reason enough to spend some days in the company of UsefulNotes/TheSpanishInquisition. |
| 158 | ** Sancho Panza's remarks about slavery were made in Part I, chapter 29, and he also makes a derogatory comment about Jews in Part II, chapter VIII. Maybe Sancho is lovable, but in those chapters he also is a naïve fool who talks a lot of silly nonsense. His evolution to a wiser character is in the next chapters of Part II, so we can say that those are not Cervantes's point of view. Also, Cervantes has some experiences that most of us lack: he was a war prisoner and was very near to be made a slave, and certainly his views about slavery cannot be the same as someone who never has suffered such things. |
| 159 | ** [[KarmaHoudini Don Fernando]], who had consensual sex with Dorotea after promising to marry her, and abducted Lucinda when she didn't want to marry him, choosing Cardenio, certainly is instantly forgiven and counted as a friend by the heroes as soon as he agrees to let go of Lucinda and marry Dorotea, but he is forgiven because he is the [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveMoney very rich]] [[BlueBlood second son]] of a powerful [[AristocratsAreEvil Duke]], and the world of Don Quixote is, sadly, [[MightMakesRight clearly the same as ours]]... but Don Quixote and Sancho are not aware of his evil deeds, only the curate and the barber, and Don Fernando [[BuyThemOff pays for all the things Don Quixote broke in the inn]]. |
| 160 | ** For another example of moral dissonance, let's see the next speech from Ricote at part II, chapter 65, where he praises the Spanish crown and his politic of expelling the Moors who converted to Catholicism from Spain, a place where they lived for centuries. (This politic that was seen as the only thing that can be done against the Muslim menace): ''"it will not do to rely upon favor or bribes, because with the great [[KnightTemplar Don Bernardino de Velasco]], [[AristocratsAreEvil Conde de Salazar]], to whom his Majesty has entrusted our expulsion, [[ScrewTheMoneyIHaveRules neither entreaties nor promises, bribes nor appeals to compassion, are of any use; ]] for though it is true he mingles mercy with justice, still, seeing that the whole body of our nation is tainted and corrupt, [[ShootTheDog he applies to it the cautery that burns rather than the salve that soothes]]; and thus, [[ReignOfTerror by prudence, sagacity, care and the fear he inspires]], he has borne on his mighty shoulders the weight of this great policy and carried it into effect, [[{{Determinator}} all our schemes and plots, importunities and wiles, being ineffectual to blind his Argus eyes, ever on the watch lest one of us should remain behind in concealment]], and like a hidden root come in course of time to sprout and bear poisonous fruit [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans in Spain, now cleansed, and relieved of the fear in which our vast numbers kept it]]. [[VisionaryVillain Heroic resolve]] of the great [[EvilOverlord Philip the Third]], and [[TheDragon unparalleled wisdom to have entrusted it to the said Don Bernardino de Velasco! ]]" '' |
| 161 | * ''Literature/TheGreatGatsby'' was written and takes place in the 1920s, providing for some in- and out-of-universe Values Dissonance. |
| 162 | ** Tom, the novel's resident JerkAss, fancies himself an intellectual by spouting a lot of racist tripe that he's read, which is intended to make him seem like an even bigger tool. His favorite racist screed, "''The Rise of the Colored Empires'' by this man Goddard" is thought by most critics to be a parody of Lothrop Stoddard's ''The Rising Tide of Color'' (1920), and that Fitzgerald is having at laugh at its expense. |
| 163 | ** Jay and Nick see a car with three black men in it being driven by a white man, which prompts Jay to comment how "anything can happen in this town". This scene takes place shortly after the incident mentioned above. |
| 164 | ** The character of Meyer Wolfsheim raises a lot of modern eyebrows. The only overt Jew in the story, he's also a gangster who fixed the World Series, wears human teeth for cufflinks, and speaks with a FunetikAksent. However, he's an obvious expy of real-life Jewish gangster Arnold Rothstein, who is widely suspected to be behind the Black Sox fix. |
| 165 | * ''Literature/LittleHouseOnThePrairie'': |
| 166 | ** ''Farmer Boy'' has numerous chapters in which Almanzo and/or his siblings stay out of school because there are more important things to do at home, and it's mentioned several times that "the big boys" only go to school during the winter, when there isn't any farm work. This ''was'' more important than regular school attendance -- many tasks on a farm like the Wilders' are extremely time-critical and if left undone could cause the family to starve or lose their land -- but is still likely startling to modern readers accustomed to things like compulsory school attendance and child labor laws. The rest of ''Little House'' books, focusing on Laura and her family, are more in line with today's "You're a kid; school is your job" attitude, since Ma is a former teacher and had firm ideas on the subject of proper education (and, frankly, because Laura and her siblings were all girls, and it was usually only boys who were expected to forego school for farmwork), but there are a few mentions across the series of the older boys only attending school for part of the year. |
| 167 | ** The ''Little House'' books were recounted by Laura in her old age and rewritten by Laura's daughter Rose Wilder Lane, and so were most likely white-washed to match then-current values. There's still plenty of stuff (like her father doing a {{blackface}} routine) that would be shocking today. There's also a lot of undisguised racism against Native Americans. |
| 168 | ** As with a lot of entries in this page, by today's standards there's some age issues. Laura was fifteen when she started being courted by 25-year-old Almanzo, something which would hardly be blinked at in the 1880s but which wouldn't be legally tolerated in modern America. Ma has some problems with it, but because of Laura's youth in general, rather than Almanzo's age in comparison. Laura herself is somewhat surprised, once she figures out she's ''being'' courted (she's fifteen, it takes her a while), but not because she herself is so young. Interestingly, Pa subverts the BoyfriendBlockingDad trope and seems to actively encourage it; he knows Almanzo well and trusts him, even if Ma is convinced he's going to get Laura's neck broken taking her driving every Sunday. (It's also worth noting that fifteen-year-old Laura is considered old enough to have a teaching license and lead a school.) |
| 169 | ** Another example occurs in the school scene, when three teenage toughs try to beat up the teacher, and he produces a whip and beats them to a pulp instead. These same boys had "thrashed" the teacher and broken up the school every year without comeuppance, beating last year's model so badly that he died of it, so the current teacher borrowed a whip from Almanzo's pa and came armed. |
| 170 | ** One example not explicitly stated, but causes {{squick}} amongst today's readers who think about it: the Ingalls clan generally lived in one-room cabins though Laura's childhood. Yet Ma kept pumping out kids after Laura and Mary (Carrie, then Charles Jr who died in infancy, then Grace). This means, to put it bluntly, Ma and Pa were having sex in the same room with their children. This was no doubt considered normal back then, but would get the parents arrested today. |
| 171 | ** Child characters get spanked by their parents for little things. To modern audience many of these go beyond CorporalPunishment and straight into abuse. Another child-rearing dissonance is that Laura was discouraged from crying, even as a little girl, because it was seen as too immature for a growing girl. |
| 172 | * The ''Franchise/PerryMason'' novels. The mysteries are great, but sometimes the morals and ideas from those days can... ''really'' be distracting. There will be times where certain characters will go on long monologues about how a woman should know her place in order to keep a man, to never ask questions or inquire into his decisions or affairs, and must make it her duty to make the home heaven on earth for him. And then there's his racism in terms of Asians... in one story, he pretty much had a bunch of characters bashing on how sneaky and untrustworthy "Japs" are, and used rather unflattering terms to describe them. (The author of these novels defended quite a few Chinese-Americans in court, so that was probably just anti-Japanese sentiment, not anti-Asian sentiment. Not that that makes it any better.) |
| 173 | * In the Chinese folk tale ''Literature/WaterMargin'', there's a section where some of the main characters (who are a part of the rebellion) are drugged at an inn. It turns out the inn is just a front for a black market for [[ImAHumanitarian human meat]]. Just as the owner is about to cut them up into meatbuns, his accomplice comes back in time to stop him and tell him the identity of his would-be victims. He spares them, and when they wake up, they're so thrilled that they're "all on the same side," they decide to become ''sworn blood brothers'' with him, and act like everything is completely rosy. Nothing like becoming best friends forever with a cannibalistic serial killer. |
| 174 | * [[Literature/BulldogDrummond Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond]] was one of the great 'Boy's Own' adventure heroes of British literature between the wars (1920s-1930s). You rarely see him or his adventures these days, mostly because the character was jingoistic to the point of naked racism and incredibly anti-semitic even by the standards of the time. The few modern works that reference or homage Drummond are either [[Film/{{Bullshot}} biting satires]] or [[ComicBook/TheLeagueOfExtraordinaryGentlemen outright attacks]] on what the character represented. |
| 175 | ** Drummond was depicted as a UsefulNotes/WorldWarI veteran. He found himself unable to get used to a peaceful life, and was more interested in excitement than morality. As he explained in an early story, he was perfectly willing to commit "humorous" crimes. Drummond was brutal, he physically overwhelmed his opponents, and he took pride in being able to swiftly "kill a man with his bare hands". The author Cecil Day-Lewis thought that Drummond was nothing more than a "public school bully". |
| 176 | ** Drummond's archenemies were the "mass-murdering terrorist" Carl Peterson and his vampish femme fatale Irma Peterson. Whether Carl and Irma were a married couple, a father-daughter duo, or incestuous lovers was left rather ambiguous. Various interpretations of their relationship have been depicted by continuations of the series, but whether this is a treated as fetish fuel for the readers or a disturbing element has varied quite a bit. |
| 177 | * Most of the 'imperial' British adventure heroes of the early [[The20thCentury 20th century]], such as the works of John Buchan (best known for ''Literature/TheThirtyNineSteps''), are similarly jingoistic and not without their tendency to resort to crude racial caricatures; for [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarI perhaps]] [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII obvious]] reasons, they're particularly harsh on Germans. When put up against Drummond, however, the works of Buchan are downright progressive by comparison. |
| 178 | * Creator/JulesVerne's ''Literature/OffOnAComet'' has a repulsive Jewish merchant, portrayed with an array of anti-Semitic clichés, who is consistently treated with contempt by the novel's French and Russian protagonists. It is implicit that the reader ought to share their view of him. In several post-1945 translations, all references to Judaism have been removed, making said merchant merely a repulsive and greedy individual. |
| 179 | ** ''Literature/RoburTheConqueror'' from the same author may be an even bigger offender, since its black character Frycollin is the ButtMonkey and a sum of just about every flaw imaginable -- he's gluttonous, cowardly, stupid -- with the only "redeeming" quality of "not speaking like a nigger" (Verne also makes sure to [[WriterOnBoard tell the reader]] how loathsome "Black English" is). |
| 180 | ** To be fair to the man, he was a determined French nationalist in the times when Jews were believed to be easily bought by any foreign influence because of them being "rootless", so his early Antisemitism was more political than racist. His opinions changed, though, and by the end of the Dreyfus Affair he, convinced by his friends in the literary circles, had become one of his most staunch supporters. And as for his attitude towards blacks, Frycollin is actually an exception, and is a clear transplant of a classical French archetype of a [[ButtMonkey comically stupid and cowardly servant]], who's black only because it was natural for an American servant in the mid-19th century to be black. Verne's other black characters [[FairForItsDay are portrayed fairly and openly]], and while they might be ignorant or even evil (like an African king in ''Literature/DickSandCaptainAtFifteen''), they're evil because they're evil, not because they're black. |
| 181 | * All of Creator/JaneAusten's novels suffer from this to varying degrees: |
| 182 | ** Sure, today's readers of ''Literature/PrideAndPrejudice'' tend to find Mrs. Bennet from cringe-worthy to utterly repulsive, but they still might miss how, in the Regency era, her indiscretion, attempting to talk to Mr. Darcy (who is, of course, of much higher station than herself) before they are formally introduced, and blatant mercenary attitude would be considered the worst sort of poor manners and was, in fact, a valid reason for Darcy not to want his best friend to marry into her family. Similarly, Darcy's refusal to dance at an assembly where there are more ladies than gentlemen is also phenomenally rude, although modern female readers have [[AllGirlsWantBadBoys the exact opposite reaction to his silence and stoicism]] than the women of Hertfordshire. |
| 183 | ** And in the 1995 adaptation, Lydia's being caught in only a chemise might be cause for a blush akin to one being caught in one's nightgown today, but by the standards of the day, she was practically ''in flagrante delicto''. |
| 184 | ** Lydia's situation in general is likely to create ValuesDissonance for modern readers, for whom the best possible resolution for "scoundrel runs off with 16-year-old girl and lives alone with her for two weeks, leaving a pile of debt behind" would ''not'' be "he is bribed into marrying her." In that time period, however, living alone with a man for two weeks would leave Lydia DefiledForever as far as society was concerned, making it impossible not only for ''her'' to marry, but for any of her sisters to make decent marriages either. And while Mrs. Bennet's fuss about her daughters getting married may also seem shallow and silly to a modern reader, the issue of the entailment on Mr. Bennet's estate helps to clarify that marriage is literally the ''only'' way to make sure that any of the Bennet girls will be provided for after Mr. Bennet's death. Jane and Lizzie could probably find work as ladiess' companions, which at least would keep them from total poverty, but the younger ones are so uneducated and unmannered as to probably be shit out of luck. |
| 185 | ** It should perhaps be pointed out that Mr. Darcy is the ''only'' character who seems at all concerned with whether or not Lydia actually wants to marry Wickham. (Lizzie also doesn't like it, but on the grounds that Wickham is a bad person--and, crucially, Lizzie also ''still'' thinks it's the best option, despite her general horror at the idea.) |
| 186 | ** ''Literature/SenseAndSensibility'' runs into problems concerning the ages of the characters. A modern reader would find it laughable that 19-year-old Elinor should legitimately worry about being an old maid, but back in the Regency era, that was really a concern. Furthermore, the "right guy" for 16-year-old Marianne is [[AgeGapRomance 35-year-old Colonel Brandon]], who has a niece slightly older than her. |
| 187 | ** ''Literature/MansfieldPark'' has two major plot points that turn on the morality/scandalousness of certain actions. The first is that of a woman who leaves her husband for another man and eventually is divorced; although this would still be considered disgraceful today, it's no longer grounds for the family patriarch to exile her to a small isolated cottage for ther rest of her natural life. The second is that a group of friends are doing home theatricals amongst themselves. True, they pick a racy play that they use as an excuse to flirt with each other, but Edmund objects right from the start that it's inappropriate before the play is even chosen--although Edmund is stodgy and supposed to be perceived as stodgy, he comes off as downright ridiculous in the era where acting is a fun and wholesome activity as early as elementary school. |
| 188 | ** Modern readers tend to judge Anne Elliot of ''Literature/{{Persuasion}}'' harshly for breaking off her engagement with Captain Wentworth, but in Austen's day, it would have seemed like the most prudent thing to do. Like most women at the time, Anne would have to rely entirely on her husband for financial stability, and Wentworth was in a dangerous line of work in which promotion was by no means guaranteed. For all anyone knew, he could have died at sea a year later, leaving her penniless and helpless. |
| 189 | ** One knock against Mr. Elliot from ''Persuasion'' is his habit of "Sunday traveling", which was highly improper because it flouted the Sabbath. |
| 190 | ** A couple of Austen's books have characters marrying or wanting to marry [[KissingCousins their first cousins,]] which was totally acceptable at the time. (And it's still common (and legal) in the modern day, too, but is often frowned upon when it's ''first'' cousins.) Different branches of a family marrying into each other was all right if they were of the same social standing. |
| 191 | ** Today's readers are often shocked that so many of the male characters talk about joining the church. In most Western churches, the clergy for the major religions have advanced degrees with special focus on religious studies and may also need training in psychology/counseling. It's also expected that you were "called" to service, which is a big deal and not especially common. Lately there are less-formal churches where "minister" is more on par with "counselor," where you're involved in the church but still have a day job, but if a reader thinks of that, they assume it's a modern development. In Austen's world, however, the church was one of the few respectable professions a young man could enter. Since a university degree was also required (though it was just a general course of study, not specifically religious), the requirements were more "someone who can afford a degree, knows the right people...and to the best of anyone's knowledge is of good character." Some may have legitimately had a vocation, but it wasn't considered necessary. [[http://www.jasnachicago.org/clergy-jane-austens-time This article]] explains it better. |
| 192 | ** On the flip side, the fact that being in the military seems to be seen as a vocation of ill-repute in Austen novels unless one is a high-ranking officer (like Colonel Brandon or Captain Wentworth) is probably equally puzzling to modern readers. This is ValuesDissonance particular to the Napoleonic era, where England was enmeshed in wars against France on the continent. That meant every soldier worth his salt was already fighting there, unless he was an officer who was either retired or at home training new recruits. Anyone else still traipsing around rural Britain was a low-ranking new recruit or just useless as a soldier. There's also that in the way war was practiced at the time, low ranks were [[RedShirt Red Shirts]] while the officers were somewhat more protected; this didn't really change until UsefulNotes/WorldWarI (where part of why it changed society so dramatically is that it killed a whole generation of men from all ranks of it). To sum it up: people with any genuine prestige and aiming for respect became officers, or worked their way up there after years of military service. Enlisting was a last resort for upper-class men who didn't have enough money to just be landed gentlemen, and couldn't shake it well enough in university to join a more respectable profession like the clergy. UsefulNotes/TheNapoleonicWars, which had all hands on deck on the continent, just exaggerated this dynamic, so George Wickham would be an obviously bad prospect right off the bat to people in Austen's time. |
| 193 | ** Modern readers get a little insight into contemporary stereotypes of the French when Mary Crawford (''Mansfield Park'') suggests that someone will need "the arts of a Frenchwoman" to induce her rakish brother to marry and Mr. Knightley (''Emma'') uses "being French" as a synonym for doubletalk and meaningless conversation. In other words, the French are artful, shallow, and not to be trusted. |
| 194 | ** Modern readers may also find the rules around who uses first names and when unfamiliar--characters like Mrs. Elton, who almost immediately starts calling Jane Fairfax plain "Jane" and Mr. Knightley plain "Knightley", or Caroline Bingley calling Lizzie "Eliza", would have seemed much ruder to contemporary readers than to us. (Mrs. Elton is being overbearing and condescending by forcing her "friendship" on a poorer associate; Caroline is being catty.) Similarly, Isabella Thorpe and Lydia Bennet both leap to declaring girls they've just met "bosom friends" and using just first names, which is meant to show that they're flighty and move too quickly into superficial closeness, something their decisions about men later show. In that era, only your closest associates outside your family would address you by your first name, and it really was, or at least was ''supposed'' to be, a big deal to move from "Miss Elizabeth" to "Elizabeth". |
| 195 | * Creator/JonathanSwift's ''Literature/GulliversTravels'' depicts the Houyhnhnms as a perfect society based on Reason -- infinitely superior to the narrator's native humanity anyway -- but to a modern reader they're contemptible. Whether Gulliver's value judgments at that point are meant to be taken at face value or [[UnreliableNarrator not]] may be questionable, but in any case Ted Danson didn't tell us the nice horses had a rigid racial hierarchy (among themselves, based on their coat colors) and were last seen contemplating genocide... |
| 196 | ** Swift's proposition of a perfect society might fully well have seemed just as alien to his contemporary audience. Further elaborated in [[http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/essays/politics-vs-literature.htm this essay]] by George Orwell. |
| 197 | ** In the second book, Gulliver describes the public beheading of a murderer... to which he was brought along with his 8-year-old "nanny". Back than, bringing a kid to see people executed even in much more gruesome ways than mere beheading was completely normal. |
| 198 | ** In the fourth book, Gulliver describes how a Yahoo female attempted to rape him. At the end, he casually mentions she was 11 at most. An 11-year-old girl (even a savage one) attempting to initiate sex with a man of 50? Hardly stuff for mainstream literature today. |
| 199 | * Malory's ''Literature/LeMorteDArthur'' is decked in this trope. |
| 200 | ** A stand-out instance is the tale of Sir Pelleas and the lady Ettard, whom he has fallen in love with. He proves himself in a joust and thus feels himself entitled to her love, even though she hates him (and it's implied she's not just {{Tsundere}}, she literally hates him). Pelleas refuses to leave her alone, harries her, hangs around outside of her castle, and she is described as afraid of him. He's a [[StalkerWithACrush creepy]] guy. And the heroic Sir Gawain gets involved in a scheme to convince Ettard to love Pelleas, because women in those days had no right to decline a passing fair knight like Sir Pelleas, but he ends up bedding Ettard himself. Pelleas demands vengeance -- against ''Ettard'' -- and in the end the Lady of the Lake uses magic to make Ettard fall in love with Sir Pelleas. Then Sir Pelleas falls in love with the Lady of the Lake, leaves Ettard, and Ettard dies of sorrow. Pelleas gets to become a Knight of the Round Table. |
| 201 | ** King Uther falls in love with Lady Igraine, wife of the Duke of Cornwall. She realizes this and warns her husband, who prepares for Uther's advances. [[spoiler:Merlin helps Uther to get to Igraine and sleep with her about two hours after her husband coincidentally dies. Igraine does not know this because Uther is magically disguised as her husband. After she receives word of her husband's death, Igraine marries Uther and her ''only'' concern is that she is pregnant with what she believes to be her first husband's child. Uther assures her that it is his child since he was disguised as her husband at the time. And she is ''happy'', because it means that the child was not illegitimate!]] |
| 202 | *** Not entirely dissonant from modern values; this would still be a big problem if it happened to, say, a member of the royal family of the UK or another constitutional monarchy. Many modern readers would understand the situation easily enough, though they'd rationalize it in terms of politics rather than solely religion. |
| 203 | *** Igraine might also simply be more focused on the repercussions of what she has just learnt rather than the moral acceptability [[spoiler:of being raped by a man who wasn't at that time legally allowed to. That her baby will not only live past its birth but have vastly improved life prospects is a pretty good reason for joy.]] |
| 204 | * ''Literature/MacdonaldHall'': |
| 205 | ** In ''Go Jump in a Pool'', the final leg of the fundraising effort involves playing the stock market with methods that would now likely be classified as insider trading (the book was written in 1979, and current insider trading laws were only codified in the 1980s). |
| 206 | ** ''Macdonald Hall Goes Hollywood'' features both StalkerWithACrush behavior being PlayedForLaughs and a {{Brownface}} disguise by a young movie star attending a dance incognito. |
| 207 | * ''Literature/{{Nibelungenlied}}'' has a scene where the protagonist heroically pins his best friend's love interest down, so that his friend won't be rejected. |
| 208 | * Creator/OHenry: |
| 209 | ** ''A Harlem Tragedy'' is about a woman being proud of her abuse at her husband's hands, because it shows that he's interested in her, and that he's overpoweringly strong and masculine, and he always apologizes later and buys her things as an apology. Her friend, whose husband is much more meek and compliant, feels terribly jealous. It's clearly intended as satire, but ''still''. |
| 210 | ** His racial attitudes can be sometimes particularly jarring, because they're usually not immediately relevant to the story, so they're not expected when they appear. For instance, an out-of-work match salesman in one of his minor stories talks about how gasoline is so much better for setting black people on fire (and the word he uses is not "black"). Still, his attitude towards black characters was actually quite FairForItsDay (although with lots of [[WhiteMansBurden patronizing attitudes]] and UncleTomFoolery -- which can be genuinely jarring for today's readers). In the above mentioned short story, the protagonist is a SnakeOilSalesman/petty LovableRogue who seems to be almost an IneffectualSympatheticVillain, when compared to the DeepSouth ''regular folks'' [[FridgeHorror who were buying his 'patent instantaneous fire kindler']] before they 'stroke oil', which got him out of his business. |
| 211 | * Creator/EnidBlyton's children's books often encounter ValuesDissonance: |
| 212 | ** ''Literature/TheFamousFive'' are often criticized for the fact that Anne takes pleasure in preparing food for the boys. Also, while Anne being at the bottom of the hierarchy is justified by her being the youngest of the four children, the older George (Georgina) is also subtly shown to be considered subordinate to Dick by the boys. Additionally, George's resistance to traditional gender roles is every bit as disturbing as Anne's cheerful compliance: George hates herself for being a girl and constantly attempts to find self-worth and gain respect by being "as good as a boy". (Both attitude and ambition are treated as unimportant by the other characters and narration.) |
| 213 | ** On the topic of Georgina.: The resident tomboy has boyish short hair, dresses like a boy, she likes it when people mistake her for a boy, she demands to be called "Master" instead of "Miss", and convinced her school teachers to always address her as "George", never as "Georgina". It sounds a lot as the modern definition of gender dysphoria, there is a mismatch between their gender identity—their personal sense of their own gender—and their sex assigned at birth. |
| 214 | ** ''Literature/TheFarawayTree'' series had Miss Slap (a teacher who slapped children) changed to Miss Snap in modern editions (she just shouts a lot), and even changed a boy who didn't go to school (he worked on his father's fishing boat) into a boy who went to school and only went on the boat at weekends. |
| 215 | ** Her use of golliwogs and the word "nigger" have also been altered in reprint, as has the tale of [[UnfortunateImplications a black doll who wanted to be pink]]. |
| 216 | ** As early as 1960, a publisher (Phyllis Hartnoll) rejected a story of hers, saying: ''"There is a faint but unattractive touch of old-fashioned xenophobia in the author's attitude to the thieves; they are 'foreign'...and this seems to be regarded as sufficient to explain their criminality."'' |
| 217 | ** However, in 2008 Creator/AnneRice made a video on bbc.co.uk defending her. You can watch it [[http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/blyton/8404.shtml here!]] |
| 218 | ** The first ''Literature/SixCousins'' book has a nasty case involving Jane, a tomboy who pays no attention to her appearance because she lives on a farm and spends most of her time working on it. At one point, she meets a friend of her brother Jack by chance, and Jack later calls her out for being so untidy and dirty, saying that his friend must have got a terrible first impression of her, which would reflect badly on the rest of the family. That might have been OK, except that he then tells her that it's a woman's duty to look good and that he's ashamed of her, and Jane ends up in tears, leaving a bad taste in a lot of readers' mouths. |
| 219 | ** Enid Blyton's [[WesternAnimation/NoddysToylandAdventures Noddy]] books (1949-1963) used to have [[https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/106474_v1.jpg golliwogs as recurring characters]] [[BlackFace who were black colored dolls]] that caused a lot of trouble with Noddy, Big Ears, Tessie Bear, and the citizens of Toy Town. Their most infamous appearance is in the [[https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/106467_v1.jpg 1951 book "Here Comes Noddy Again"]] where they not only steal Noddy's car and hat, they even take his clothes, leaving him naked. [[note]] In later editions, that scene was redrawn with The Goblins stealing Noddy's hat and car. [[/note]] [[MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch While there were other Golliwog characters that were friendly such as Mr Golly]], they were all replaced in the [[TheSeventies mid-70s]] by new characters such as Mr Sparks, [[https://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/author/covers/hurrah-for-little-noddy.jpg who replaces Mr Golly]], and The Goblins, [[https://i.imgur.com/G6PC5Kp.png who replaced The Golliwogs]]. The Golliwogs managed to still appear in [[https://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/author/illustrations/540wide+6756257.jpg illustrations]] and the entire franchise as late as 1974. [[note]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1aet0m8YjI&t=1219s Mr. Golly was mentioned in the 1974 vinyl record]] ''Noddy's Magic Holiday''. [[/note]] [[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/6359248/Noddy-returns-without-the-golliwogs.html One of Enid's daughters]] [[CreatorBacklash has mentioned that The Golliwogs are never making a comeback in modern Noddy books and the entire franchise]]. The only appearances of The Golliwogs on television was TheFifties puppet series ''The Adventures of Noddy'' [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soPQMb2jdWw which ran from 1955 till 1963.]] |
| 220 | ** ''Literature/TheNaughtiestGirl'' books are set at a progressive boarding school where one of the things they do are the weekly Meetings, where the entire school gets together and discusses important matters. One of the regular features of said Meetings is the complaints section, where anyone with a complaint about another student can voice it and the matter will be discussed. Except that these matters can involve anything from 'X won't stop pulling my hair' to 'Y cheated on a test', and these matters are discussed in front of ''the entire school'', with the other students doling out punishments. Sure, the students who run the Meetings take care to point out that sometimes matters turn up that are too serious to be discussed in public, but they're still publicly humiliating students every week in front of ''everyone'', including their friends and teachers. Who the fuck thought that was a good idea? |
| 221 | * When Samuel Richardson's ''Literature/{{Pamela}}'' first came out, one of the complaints of "antipamelists" was not that Pamela fell in love with her boss/kidnapper after several {{Near Rape Experience}}s but that a ''real'' man wouldn't have ''nearly'' raped her. One of the other complaints was that the book was a bad example -- not because near rape is bad, but because an upper class man marrying the help is the worst possible thing. There's also the element where Mr. B justifies his marriage to Pamela to his snobby sister when said sister tries to trap him by asking how he'd like it if the sister married her footman--he says that a woman is obviously led by her husband, so if Pamela has an upper class husband she's elevated by being subordinate to a man of such high standing, but if his sister marries a lower class man she would then have to be subordinate to him and thus be lowered. |
| 222 | * For societies which value the concept of romantic love, folk tales (even from previous periods in the people's own history) where the heroine's reward after her ordeal is essentially to bag a man of wealth can be a bit jarring. [[StandardHeroReward Likewise where the hero's reward after completing a quest is marrying the king's hot daughter.]] |
| 223 | * Creator/{{Herodotus}} in his ''Literature/{{Histories}}'' narrates an illustration of this trope, which may be the UrExample. King Darius of Persia asked some Greeks at his court how much he'd have to pay them to eat their fathers' corpses; they said they wouldn't do it for any money. He then summoned some members of an Indian tribe who did in fact eat the bodies of their dead and asked them, in the Greeks' presence, what he'd have to pay them to cremate their fathers' bodies (the ancient Greek norm); they said he shouldn't speak of such a horrible thing. A point which may be lost on many readers is that for Darius, both options were horrible, because according to Zoroastrian tradition, fire was not to be defiled with corpses. |
| 224 | * ''Literature/TallTaleAmerica'' has a fair bit of this, but the most flagrant is probably the part that was meant to {{Bowdlerise}} the original story. In the chapter on Myth/PecosBill, he no longer shoots his wife to keep her from starving to death. Instead he ''threatens'' her with this fate to teach her not to "disobey her lord and master" (a.k.a. her husband). Yeah ... that {{Aesop}} wouldn't really fly well these days. |
| 225 | * ''Literature/TheDivineComedy'' can be seen as ValuesResonance. The only Jews Dante put in hell are Caiaphas and Judas Iscariot. All of the sinners he encounters being punished for greed, heresy, usury, and counterfeiting in hell (all of which Jews were commonly accused of during the Middle Ages) are gentiles. This is very important because a piece of literature at that time would expect and condone anything that shows Jews as sinners or marginalizes them in anyway. He also puts a poet who writes homosexual love poems in heaven, as well as a few virtuous pagans. He lets Cato the Younger be the caretaker/gatekeeper of Purgatory which implies that one day he will be allowed into Heaven. One time in Paradise he actually says (paraphrased) that an Indian who is a good person but has never heard the name of Jesus should be allowed into heaven. Dante was not happy about the Catholic doctrine that made anyone who isn't a Christian go to Hell or Limbo. Especially poignant throughout Inferno and Purgatory where Virgil guides him and Dante cannot reconcile how Virgil is a great man and has saved his life but will have to return to limbo for what is essentially an accident of not knowing Christianity. |
| 226 | ** Also notable is the inclusion of eminent Muslims such as Averroes in Limbo. Even Muhammad, who Dante places in Hell (for being a "schismatic"), still tells Dante to warn a contemporary schismatic of his wrongdoing, so as to spare him from the same fate. |
| 227 | ** The part about the Jews not being in Hell might have to do with the fact he was a good friend of the Jewish poet [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_the_Roman Immanuel the Roman]]. |
| 228 | * Some of [[Creator/TheBrothersGrimm Grimm's]] fairy tales, in, for example, [[https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm110.html the Jew in the thorns.]] |
| 229 | * In Creator/BeverlyCleary's ''[[Literature/RamonaQuimby Beezus and Ramona]]'', pre-school age Ramona is left to play in a sandbox in a public park with no supervision. Modern parents would be too terrified of her being scooped up by a pedo to do such a thing. Later in the series, Kindergartener Ramona hides all day because she doesn't want a substitute teacher (with no concern over where she is that we see), walks to and from school, crossing a busy street, is left home alone, and is punished by having to sit outside the classroom -- when the classroom opens not onto a hallway, but a playground! |
| 230 | * This comes up now and then in the works of Gary Paulsen, as children and teenagers are frequently allowed to do things on their own that wouldn't fly today. Most shocking to modern readers would probably be ''Literature/TheCookcamp'', in which the unnamed protagonist is given a pocketknife and allowed to play with it unsupervised when he's ''five years old.'' Another example is in the ''Literature/{{Hatchet}}'' series, where Brian clearly has PTSD after his experience being stranded in the wilderness, having trouble readjusting to life in civilization and even viciously attacking a bully and then chalking it up to "animal instinct." Everyone, including Brian's mother, agrees that the best thing for him to do is return to the wilderness. Nowadays he would be taken to a therapist, most likely as soon as he was rescued. |
| 231 | * The classic mystery novel ''Literature/TheWomanInWhite'' by Creator/WilkieCollins, first published in 1859, centers on the dire and terrible Secret with a capital S that the evil baronet Sir Percival Glyde is going to great lengths to conceal. The nature of the Secret? [[spoiler:Turns out, [[BastardBastard his parents weren't married when he was born]], so he is not the legitimate heir to the baronetcy or to his father's property.]] Granted, this does mean he's [[spoiler:committed some pretty serious fraud -- he falsified a marriage register to make a claim on a title that wasn't legally his --]] but still, a modern reader is likely to think "really? That's all?" and possibly even be sympathetic to him. This is probably why some recent adaptations add something extra to give the Secret a bit of spice; both the 1997 BBC adaptation and the Andrew Lloyd-Webber musical version add the detail that [[spoiler:he raped Anne Catherick when she was a child]]. |
| 232 | * ''Literature/MissPettigrewLivesForADay'', written in Britain in 1938, features a night-club singer called Miss Fosse trying to choose between her three lovers, Nick, Phil and Michael. Nick's a thorough cad, but the main point against him seems to be that he's a "foreigner", with various slurs against Italians made throughout the book -- never mind that his family appears to have been in England for at least five generations. Likewise, the title character sees Phil as a kind, generous man, but openly says that Miss Fosse shouldn't marry a man who's ''possibly'' of Jewish ancestry ("he's not quite English, and one should marry within one's own nationality"). Meanwhile Michael, who believes that Miss Fosse needs "physical correction" from time to time, wins out as the ideal husband. Not entirely surprisingly, when the movie adaptation [[DevelopmentHell finally showed up]] in 2008, while the basic plot remained the same a lot of these elements had disappeared. |
| 233 | * Creator/GeorgeOrwell wrote about Values Dissonance in his essay on [[http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/smollett/english/e_ts Tobias Smollett]]: ''Duelling, gambling and fornication seem almost morally neutral to him. It so happens that in private life he was a better man than the majority of writers. He was a faithful husband who shortened his life by overworking for the sake of his family, a sturdy republican who hated France as the country of the Grand Monarchy, and a patriotic Scotsman at a time when — the 1745 rebellion being a fairly recent memory — it was far from fashionable to be a Scotsman. But he has very little sense of sin. His heroes do things, and do them on almost every page, which in any 19th-century English novel would instantly call forth vengeance from the skies. He accepts as a law of nature the viciousness, the nepotism and the disorder of 18th-century society, and therein lies his charm. Many of his best passages would be ruined by an intrusion of the moral sense.'' Of note is that Smollett specialized in writing picaresque novels, a genre focusing on lower-class "outsiders", who relied on their wits to survive in an inherently corrupt society. His novels are fairly realistic in depicting child abuse, hypocrisy, greed, deceit, snobbery, privateering, slavery, prostitution, the pursuit of dowries, homosexuality, life in a debtor's prison, the nature of political and arts patronage, and widespread discrimination and corruption. His works were never prudish. |
| 234 | * As for Orwell himself, ''DownAndOutInLondonAndParis'' features a literal ranking of the races in order of trustworthiness. |
| 235 | * Creator/HRiderHaggard's adventure novel ''Literature/KingSolomonsMines'', which pre-dates ''Literature/HeartOfDarkness'', is equally unlikely to be regarded as a balanced picture of African tribal societies, although Haggard at least seems to regard the tribespeople who aren't villains as ''noble'' savages -- and [[FairForItsDay the sequel, "Allan Quartermain," begins with a diatribe against racism]]. However, an even more striking piece of Values Dissonance is that the first thing on Allan Quartermain and chums' agenda, before even starting their adventure, is mowing down numerous elephants and giraffes on a hunt. In his defense, he does make elephant hunting sound like the most fun you could have standing up. |
| 236 | ** Interestingly, this novel also contains an example of ValuesResonance. At the end of the book, Ignosi states that he will now close Kukuana to outside influence arguing that white men are mostly a destructive force in black Africa. Both Allan Quartermain and the author seem to agree. |
| 237 | ** Similar attitudes about wildlife are extremely common in older wilderness-adventure fiction. Even the Hardy Boys were known to shoot wild animals on sight, either because they were [[AttackAttackAttack attacked by a predator for no reason]], or because the creature in question was considered a dangerous pest at the time. |
| 238 | ** Creator/JulesVerne's ''Literature/InSearchOfTheCastaways'' is especially notable -- at one point one of the heroes shoots a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabiru jabiru bird]] to show his hunting skills, and the narrator ''specifically'' says that the bird is "very rare and vanishing", yet sees nothing wrong with killing it. |
| 239 | * ''Literature/ParadiseLost'' regularly gets criticized for being misogynistic due to Eve's role in the plot. This is partially bad because ''Paradise Lost'' is based on Literature/TheBible (at least in the Christian tradition, with the Jewish tradition holding that the serpent just saw Eve first), which defines Eve fulfilling that exact role. [[FairForItsDay However, for the time and culture it came out in, Eve is a very progressive female character]]. The level of character development, her level of intelligence and reasoning, and her extremely significant role in the plot were almost unheard of in female characters, who were regularly little more than background characters added when needed by the plot. Also, Milton goes to great lengths to distinguish that Eve and Satan are distinct and unalike. Consider that at the time, it was an acceptable artistic portrayal to have the serpent or tempter ''possess Eve's face,'' showing that in fact the serpent was an aspect of Eve, therefore women are evil, a-''ha!'' |
| 240 | * A substantial part of Creator/{{Plato}}'s ''Literature/{{Charmides}}'' involves a group of middle-aged men discussing a 15-year-old boy's beauty, having him brought before them, and lusting after him. There are descriptions of the men almost falling out of their chairs at the sight of him, and jokes about how seeing the boy naked would make them forget about other things. TruthInTelevision: This type of attitude was considered normal in most of the Hellenistic world at the time. In the 21st century, some teachers really do fawn over their favorite students like this, although it isn't usually sexual in nature and is probably more related to the paternal instinct than the sexual one. Lookism exists in adults' treatment of youths as well, even when this lookism isn't sexual. |
| 241 | * In the short stories of ''Literature/CarnackiTheGhostFinder'', the titular character regularly expends the lives of cats or dogs in his paranormal investigations, leaving them confined as live bait in order to test if a potential ghost is dangerous. Servants and underlings of named characters tend to soak up a lot of abuse, such as a constable who is thrown bodily down the stairs of a haunted house by his superior, or a butler who doesn't press charges, sue, or even quit when he's wounded near-fatally by a booby trap set by his employer's father. |
| 242 | * ''Literature/ALittlePrincess'': Multiple: |
| 243 | ** ''A Little Princess'' ends with Sara being restored to her wealth and position and her friend Becky ends up as Sara's personal attendant. Modern audiences may find this a little shocking, but in the context of when the novel is set, it's a fitting happy ending. Considering that Becky would have risen into a very powerful position and gained security as well as a kind and friendly mistress, it's a very happy ending indeed. This trope is likely the reason the film adaptation has Becky being adopted by Sara's father at the end. |
| 244 | ** [[Invoked]] Sara's complaints that she is ugly because she has a slender build, short dark hair, green eyes, and olive skin may lead modern readers to see Sara in a negative light. However, Sara does not in any way match the Victorian-Edwardian image of child beauty and she compares herself to another child who has "dimples and rose-colored cheeks, and long hair the color of gold." Black hair was also not a good hair color to have in 19th-Century British India — as it suggested Sara (or her mother) might be mixed-race. Also at various points we get mentions of Sara's "brown" hand and "small dark face". Given that such descriptors are used even when she's been in England for several years, well after a mere acquired tan from playing outdoors in India would have faded, it's clear that she has naturally dark skin. |
| 245 | * Creator/GeorgeMacDonaldFraser wrote mostly historical fiction, which can lead to a lot of ValuesDissonance. Usually it's {{lampshade|Hanging}}d. The author was from the Greatest Generation and a pretty firm believer in PoliticalCorrectnessIsEvil, though, so sometimes even his lampshading can be dissonant to younger readers. |
| 246 | ** One of his ''Literature/McAuslan'' stories is about a black soldier who wants to join the pipe band in a Highland regiment (ca. 1947). It's notable because even though the outcome feels right to modern readers -- the piper joins successfully -- every one of his superior officers was against it, to greater or lesser degree, and he's only allowed to join because the Colonel tricks the pipe sergeant into sticking up for his piping skills. |
| 247 | * Edward Everett Hale's short story "Literature/TheManWithoutACountry" was written in 1863 as a deliberate piece of propaganda. A young man who commits treason against the United States cries "I wish I may never hear of the United States again!", and [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor gets just what he asked for.]] He's forced to live on US Navy ships always stationed ''just'' out of sight of land, his news and conversation is censored, magazines he reads are cut up so that all references to the States are omitted. By the end of his life, the narrator finds that he's made a shrine to the United States in his bedroom and he blabs on his deathbed about how one should hold your country sacred, love it, cherish it, etc. Good sentiment and all, but such patriotic fervor seems a little scary nowadays. Basically it was low-key Brainwashing, revolving the man's entire life around the ''lack'' of the United States. Wouldn't it have just been kinder all around to exile the guy rather than torture him with a cruel half-life at sea? |
| 248 | * Jahnna N. Malcom's ''Literature/TheJewelKingdom'' series had a couple of cases. In the first book, Roxanne, the future princess of the Red Mountains, runs away before the coronation because she doesn't want to be a princess--she'll have to move to a place she either hasn't been to or doesn't know well, she prefers running around and climbing trees to remaining indoors, her future kingdom is a desert mountain range unlike her sisters', which are all much more widely populated and idyllic, and she'll have to rule over her people, despite not wanting to rule and having no real experience at it. After running away, she makes some allies, foils an attempt to put an impostor on her throne, and returns to the coronation willingly. OK, fine. Except that Roxanne is about eleven (though she doesn't act like it), and the idea of giving a pre-teen that kind of responsibility, especially since she wasn't prepared for it, is a ridiculous idea. Another example comes from the third book. In it Emily, the princess of Greenwood, is a notorious practical joker who has played tricks on everyone while refusing to see that most other people don't think that they're funny. Eventually, when a prank is played on a subject that seriously harms him, the people of Greenwood believe that Emily played it, and one of them says that he's going to talk to her father (the King) about her, because 'when a princess starts harming her own people, it's time for her to stop being a princess'. Again, fine, but like Roxanne, Emily is eleven, and expecting an eleven-year-old to be responsible and mature on that level is simply ridiculous -- not to mention that there was no proof that it ''was'' Emily, and she had several witnesses that would have given her an alibi and testified to her non-violent nature if it had come to it. |
| 249 | * The modern reader of Creator/MargeryAllingham's ''Literature/PoliceAtTheFuneral'' are likely to abruptly realign their sympathies when the secret minor villain George Faraday is using to blackmail his aunt is revealed: [[spoiler:George is the result of a 'messalliance' with a mullatto woman (i.e. a woman who was the product of an interracial marriage) -- a fact of which George is not at all ashamed but his aunt would do anything to keep hidden]]. Good on you, George! |
| 250 | * During the [=1850s=], there existed an entire genre of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Tom_literature "anti-Tom" literature]] (or plantation literature) written by Southern authors in reaction to ''Literature/UncleTomsCabin''. Such books portrayed [[HappinessInSlavery slavery as beneficial to Africans]], and argued that the claims made by abolitionists about the conditions "enjoyed" by slaves were exaggerated and false. Such literature became not quite CondemnedByHistory after [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar the Civil War]] -- there was still a fair bit of plantation nostalgia. |
| 251 | * ''Literature/LandOfOz'': |
| 252 | ** The ''Oz'' series has a few of this. One of the major ones is in the second book, where young boy Tip learns that he is the lost Princess of Oz and is transformed back into his "[[FirstLawOfGenderBending true form]]". After he does so, he changes from his previous personality into an out-and-out girly girl who does little to no adventuring. |
| 253 | ** A few other bits of dissonance show up as well, such as in the first book when the Tin Man, who can't bear to see any other creature die at the hand of another... kills a wildcat that was chasing a small mouse by chopping off its head with his ax. |
| 254 | ** The reckless use of magic in the latter books would likely raise many eyebrows if used in modern fantasy. It's disturbingly easy to deconstruct the Ozma-Glinda regime as ''1984'' with wizards and talking animals (all but three people in the kingdom are banned from using magic, Ozma has a magical mirror to [[BigBrotherIsWatchingYou spy on her citizens]], dissenters are memory-wiped, etc.) Deconstructing Ozma's gender identity is also popular among fanfic writers, in particular the idea that she still sees herself as the boy Tip and the pretty princess thing is merely an act. Even several professionally published derivative works make Ozma into at minimum a GirlyGirlWithATomboyStreak. The [[Literature/TheMagicOfOz penultimate book]] written by Baum himself has a former wizard who believes the magic ban to be a childish action, and fully expects it to be lifted someday. It is possible Baum himself didn't like the implications too much. |
| 255 | ** Ozma and Dorothy's relationship raises eyebrows more than it was intended to. Their declarations of love and frequent kissing were meant to be seen as [[PseudoRomanticFriendship innocent, childish gestures]]. They instead come off as outright romantic. In particular, Princess Ozma declares Dorothy to be an official princess of Oz and her "constant companion". She arranges for Dorothy to move into Ozma's palace, as her permanent housemate. It is clarified that Dorothy is the only one allowed to enter Ozma's private rooms without permission, at any time she wishes. And the illustrations depict the two princesses kissing each other, by locking lips. Suggestive isn't it? |
| 256 | * ''Literature/FatherBrown'': This article published at the Golden Age of Detective Fiction Forum -- "[[http://gadetection.wordpress.com/2008/05/18/the-sins-of-the-saint-racism-in-gk-chesterton/ The Sins of the Saint: Racism in GK Chesterton]]" -- written by a Chesterton fan analyzes 15 Father Brown tales that seem to contain this and absolves some of UnfortunateImplications… and others not. It also points that a lot of classic authors of DetectiveLiterature (Creator/AgathaChristie, [=McDonald=], Burton Stevenson) also had racist views, and he asks the reader to take in mind the purpose of the work (they were not racist propaganda, but DetectiveLiterature). |
| 257 | * ''Literature/MarioAndTheMagician'' contains this InUniverse as well as outside with the the beach scene: when the narrator's 8 year old daughter gets naked for a few seconds, the Italians react with rage, whistling and treat this as personal insult. The narrator considers his daughter's behaviour fully normal, and is disgusted by the Italians' reaction. Of course, the issue of public nudity remains highly contested to this day. |
| 258 | * Creator/AlexanderPushkin's ''Literature/RuslanAndLudmila'' has two characters, a sorcerer and a sorceress who are mortal rivals. The cause? When the future sorcerer was a young shepherd, the future sorceress rejected him. He went on a ten year long raiding spree, returned a rich war hero, and she rejected him again. So, he went to study sorcery [[DoubleStandardRapeSciFi in order to win her love]], cast the proper spells, she came to him... and he rejected her because the studies took 40 years, and she (him as well, of course) grew old. Did we mention that the sorcerer is the good guy? |
| 259 | * In the original ''Literature/{{Dracula}}'', Lucy is a completely pure, almost perfect individual and is described as virtuous, yet most modern adaptations will portray her as extremely promiscuous and "slutty" purely for the fact that she has three men that want to marry her and her sole ambition is to get married before she turns twenty. Needless to say, an upper class Victorian woman wouldn't be expected to have much more ambitions than that. And Lucy genuinely seems to care deeply for all three men that woo her, though that normally gets changed to her flirting shamelessly with each of them, even after she's chosen Arthur. |
| 260 | * Explored in ''Literature/{{Obasan}}'', by Joy Kogawa. The family is Japanese, and the protagonist's brother is a fan of ComicBook/CaptainAmerica comic books. During UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, Captain America's archenemy was the worst kind of Japanese stereotype. The family in the book goes to a Japanese interment camp. Yet the brother remains a fan of the comics. |
| 261 | * Creator/RoaldDahl's ''Literature/DannyTheChampionOfTheWorld'' has a few examples: |
| 262 | ** Besides the use of "Gypsy", when "Romani" is preferred in modern times, there's the big, central theme of poaching being a whimsical and fun bonding experience between father and son. For animal rights advocates, the idea of killing birds as being delightful fun is rather abhorrent. |
| 263 | ** The poaching story is particularly odd as Roald Dahl also wrote ''Literature/TheMagicFinger'' which is a 100% unironic anti-hunting story. Of course small game hunting is something still widely practiced so how much values dissonance one feels here will vary from household to household. |
| 264 | * ''Literature/JaneEyre'' |
| 265 | ** When Rochester is interrogating Jane's motives for being in love with him, he suggests that she's a GoldDigger. Jane's response is, paraphrased, "I don't care about your BigFancyHouse--what am I, Jewish?" |
| 266 | ** One sentence in the thirty-fourth chapter of ''Literature/JaneEyre'' (1847) conveys the idea that school pupils in foreign European countries are generally ill-mannered compared to pupils taught in English schools; such xenophobic attitude does not occur before (or after) this sentence (in fact Jane taught a French girl, Adèle, earlier in the novel, and they got along very well), so it takes the reader completely by surprise. For that matter, even though Adèle is a nice girl, she's portrayed as flighty and vain just because she's French, and in need of an English education to cure her of her "French defects." [[{{Hypocrite}} When you remember that Jane opposes intolerance because she was discriminated by her aunt in childhood, well...]] |
| 267 | * ''{{Literature/Villette}}'' has the same attitude present in a more elaborate form. [[AuthorAvatar Lucy]] is very noticeably turned off by the Labascurians' (Belgians', really) hedonistic attitude. The issue of religion (Protestant Lucy vs Catholic locals) doesn't help either. Both this and the passage in ''Jane Eyre'' were presumably inspired by the same thing: Brontë's experiences as a teacher in Brussels. |
| 268 | * While fairly progressive for its time in how it depicted women and racial minorities, ''Literature/ItCantHappenHere'' depicted gay men in a stereotypical manner. The only gays in the novel — Saranson and several unnamed M.M.s — are depicted as depraved villains. The novel's homophobia may seem jarring to modern readers who accept LGBTQ people. |
| 269 | ** Meanwhile, it's an entirely different trope to readers who are aware of the fact that the [[ANaziByAnyOtherName villains]] are NoCelebritiesWereHarmed versions of Nazis, and Saranson as Ernst Rohm, who was the leader of the Brown Shirts and, by the time's standards, openly gay. |
| 270 | * Creator/CSLewis wrote in the middle of the twentieth century and his writing abounds with tropes from the first half. His novels universally favor the country in TheCityVsTheCountry, with people from the city being stunted, mean, and dirty, while the country is {{Arcadia}} and the people therein kind and beautiful. While he was progressive in having female heroes, he tended to bounce around a bit in his depiction, and the final fate of elder sister Susan has drawn some criticism; she's excluded from the final gathering of all the Earth humans of Narnia because she's gotten interested in lipstick and nylons. It's YMMV because defenders say she's become materialistic, while detractors say that both indicate she's become a sexual being. Oh, that's another thing that can hit readers; most Christian fiction nowadays is clearly labeled as such. |
| 271 | ** Considering that Lewis once said [[http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/84171-critics-who-treat-adult-as-a-term-of-approval-instead "To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence [...] But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development"]], it's just as likely that Susan's exclusion from Narnia was because she was more "immature" than her siblings (they all were unashamed of their love of Narnia while she tried to embrace adult things and deny the magical country, even though she was at an age where Lewis believed an obsession with adulthood was ridiculous). |
| 272 | ** Lewis left himself an out -- Susan may have lost interest in Narnia, but that doesn't mean she's lost forever; the primary reason she's not in ''The Last Battle'' is simply that, because of her lack of interest in Narnia at that time, she was not on that train ride and so is not killed in the crash. As Lewis himself wrote, there is no reason to assume that she won't come back to Narnia someday 'in her own time and her own way'. |
| 273 | *** It's also mentioned that Earth-heaven and Narnia-heaven are connected, suggesting that one way or another, Susan will join her family in the afterlife when she dies. |
| 274 | ** ''The Lion, the Witch & The Wardrobe'' also has the unfortunate line "battles are ugly when women fight". To Lewis's credit, this StayInTheKitchen attitude disappears in later books in the series (likely due to meeting and eventually marrying feminist Joy Gresham). In ''The Horse & His Boy'', Aravis has been trained in swordplay and knows how to hunt while Lucy also participates in the battle. Also Jill Pole actively fights in battle in the final book. The dissonance also comes into play when you realise that Lewis is saying that the idea of Lucy fighting in battle is bad because she's a girl and not because she's a child. It's fine for Edmund, who's barely a year older than her, to fight in battle. |
| 275 | ** The Professor's casual dismissal of the idea that Lucy might be delusional, simply because she doesn't ''look'' mad, can now come across as pretty ignorant and insensitive about mental illness. Of course Professor Diggory Kirke has very good reason to know that Narnia is quite real and so dismiss the idea that Lucy is deluded. |
| 276 | * ''Literature/SongOfTheLioness'', the first series in the Literature/{{Tortall Universe}}, features George, then in his mid-20s, telling the heroine Alanna, then a teenager, that they're obviously destined to be together. He then keeps harping on this until Alanna herself thinks of his behavior as "stalking," and in the worst moment to audiences today, ''covertly slips a drug into her drink'' so she'll be properly rested the night before her final test for knighthood. Though they don't officially hook up until Alanna is also an adult, {{Word Of God}} is that we were meant to find the relationship nothing but romantic the whole way through. When Blog/{{Mark Does Stuff}} covered the series, Tamora Pierce was shocked by the extremely negative reactions to those early bits, and upon rereading the scenes admitted that times had changed enough to make them seem quite creepy. |
| 277 | ** There was also a strong negative reaction by some readers when Daine got together with Numair in ''The Realms of the Gods''. She was 18 at the time, but he is well into his 30s and [[TeacherStudentRomance had been her teacher since she was 13]]. While Daine is very much an adult by Tortallan standards at this point, and was actually the one to initiate their relationship, it still sits poorly with modern audiences in particular. |
| 278 | * ''Literature/SandroOfChegem'' by Fazil Iskander tells the story of people from a remote, conservative mountain village living through most of the Soviet history. Naturally, there are a number of examples. One is about the people from the village visiting a city, and being shocked at the sight of an old female guard with a gun, so a lot of them constantly assemble near her, wondering what could be the meaning of that. Suspicious of their constant proximity, she summons a militsiya man. He explains to her they merely "have never seen female guards; somewhat savage highlanders." Upon hearing it, the villagers laugh out loud -- what could be more savage than an armed woman? |
| 279 | * Although Nancy Mitford's ''Literature/LoveInAColdClimate'' is still an amusing novel for the most part, nowadays someone writing a light-hearted comic novel would and should not feature a man sexually abusing a group of young girls as a plot point. This is portrayed as part of the girls' sexual awakening, one of them grows up to willingly marry the man who molested her (although it doesn't work out), and it is heavily implied at the end of the novel that said man is going to live happily ever after with a character who is adored by every other character. |
| 280 | * The Literature/PhilipMarlowe books of Creator/RaymondChandler were written in the forties and fifties, and their hero's perceptions are certainly of that age. |
| 281 | ** Marlowe and other characters show a distinct revulsion toward homosexuals. At one point, Marlowe gets punched full-force on the chin by a gay man, but he states that he recovered quickly because "men like him have no iron in their bones." |
| 282 | ** Marlowe uses racial slurs, such as wop. In ''Literature/FarewellMyLovely'' he casually throws around racist slurs about African Americans (although it is perhaps worth noting that when interacting with African American characters face-to-face in the same novel, he seems fairly tolerant and polite to them). |
| 283 | ** Although he doesn't display overt anti-Semitism, Marlowe will refer to Jewish people as "Jews" as a defining characteristic. |
| 284 | ** Marlowe is morally disgusted with the concept of pornography. The fact that pornography is illegal in the Forties is a plot point in ''Literature/TheBigSleep''. |
| 285 | ** In ''Literature/TheHighWindow'', the fact that a young woman does not usually wear makeup is a symptom of her neurotic disorder. Marlowe encourages her several times to put some on. |
| 286 | * The works of Creator/JRRTolkien are not immune to this trope, but generally subverts it as often as it's played straight: |
| 287 | ** In ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'', there are few significant roles for women and generally the fighters and commanders are all men. Even among the Elves, men are usually the warriors, while women are primarily shown as engaging in the healing arts. Other information in the various histories published after Tolkien's death suggests that the Elves draw a strict boundary between healers and warriors in general (with rare individuals such as Elrond who have been both), and it just happens that women tend to take on the healer role more often. And in the "Laws and Customs of the Eldar", Tolkien wrote that elves considered males and females equals and there were no tasks or jobs considered improper for a male or a female. |
| 288 | ** When the Fellowship departs Rivendell, Arwen remains behind as Aragorn's prize for becoming king, and plays little real role in the story. Had the story been written today, Arwen would almost without question have become a member of the Fellowship herself and accompanied Aragorn. Additionally, the entire concept that Elrond can set such a stringent set of conditions for Aragorn to have his daughter's hand in marriage is alien to many modern western audiences. (Although given how Elves and Men work, there is at least a very understandable reason, rather than simply "to marry the noblewoman you must be a king"; Arwen, as a descendant of Elrond Half-Elven, may choose whether her soul counts as human or elf, and by staying in Middle-Earth and marrying Aragorn, she'll be picking human. That means she goes to a separate afterlife from the entire rest of her family and they'll never see her again. And when you're an Elf, "never" is literally eternity. Even so, it's a bit strange to the modern eye for a father to have so much power over his grown daughter's romantic life.) Incidentally, Arwen's character did not show up in the history until the third draft, so that she has a very small role is understandable. |
| 289 | ** It's also expected that Éowyn's role in Edoras is to take care of her uncle, though she does ultimately achieve one of the greatest feats of arms in the ''entire book'' by slaying the Witch-King. On the other hand, Éowyn is also placed in command of the defenses of Edoras by Théoden when he rides out to attack Saruman, and later when the Rohirrim ride to answer Gondor's call for aid. This is no small charge, as it means that ''she'' is the one who will be responsible for the last defense of their people should Sauron be victorious. Unfortunately, Éowyn is unable to see it herself in her [[DeathSeeker current state]]. It must also be noted that she complained bitterly about being forced to be her ailing uncle's caretaker when she was a warrior, and the main characters sympathized with her point of view. |
| 290 | ** Galadriel plays with this, as she's one of the most important leaders of the White Council, and though Celeborn officially rules Lothlórien, she holds a great deal of power herself. She leads the defense against the attack by Dol Guldur during the War of the Ring, and the counter-attack in which she personally throws down the tower. In fact, in ''Literature/TheSilmarillion'', it's made clear she left Valinor and came to Middle-earth precisely to have lands of her own to rule. |
| 291 | ** The relationship between Frodo and Sam also raises eyebrows among modern readers. Tolkien based their relationship on that between British officers and their loyal "batmen" from the UsefulNotes/WorldWarI. Frodo is clearly the upper-class gentleman and Sam his servant, and that difference in social classes heavily affects their interactions in the early part of the story. On the other hand, Tolkien certainly expresses a high opinion of such "lowly" individuals, with Sam as perhaps the single most courageous character in the entire book, while making it quite clear that without Sam, the Quest would have failed.[[note]]And many modern-day readers actually consider Sam as the true hero of the story.[[/note]] |
| 292 | ** Along with this, the frank displays of emotion between Frodo and Sam, Aragorn and Boromir, and many other male characters has created a tremendous FountainOfMemes regarding the story containing an excess of HoYay to modern audiences. Many modern readers aren't accustomed to seeing platonic relationships between men depicted with such outward showings of emotion. |
| 293 | ** ''Every member of the Fellowship'' except for Samwise is a noble in some measure. Frodo, Meriadoc, and Peregrin are members of highly-esteemed hobbit families; Merry and Pippin in particular eventually assume hereditary offices that place them in control of parts of the Shire (the Oldbuck and the Thane of the Tooks, respectively). Gimli is the son of one of Thorin Oakenshield's companions, and thus a prominent member of the Line of Durin, though not actually the heir. Legolas's father is the ruler of the elves in Mirkwood. Boromir is the son of the steward of Gondor and Aragorn is the long-lost heir to its throne. Gandalf is [[GodWasMyCopilot a literal Angel]]. While Sam is treated well by the story and is in fact integral to finishing the quest, there's still an unspoken assumption that nobles are more capable of resolving problems than commoners. In today's society, hereditary nobility is often actually ''sneered'' at; the idea of inherent superiority simply based on who one is related to sits badly with modern audiences. |
| 294 | ** The depiction of Men who are from the {{Fantasy Counterpart Culture}}s not based in {{UsefulNotes/Europe}}, chiefly the Haradrim or Southrons (vaguely UsefulNotes/TheMiddleEast and {{UsefulNotes/Africa}}) and the Easterlings (vaguely {{UsefulNotes/Asia}}). To start with, all of them that we see work for Sauron, and the justifications or exceptions are relegated to the appendices and other parts of the ''Legendarium'' (for instance, part of Aragorn's backstory has him going deep into the South and far into into the East, where he met both good and evil Men, and more importantly that Númenor, in its fall into corruption, abandoned their mutually beneficial alliances in favor of imperialism, enslavement, and HumanSacrifice, which gave the Haradrim and Easterlings an understandably huge grudge against Númenor's descendant kingdoms). It is pointed out that the ordinary soldiers would really prefer to be at home instead of being conscripted to die in a horrific war far from home, and they're treated as honorable warriors compared to the [[OurOrcsAreDifferent orcs]], but that doesn't change the fact that they're treated as alien to the people of the West, described as cruel and even [[AllTrollsAreDifferent troll-like]], and there simply isn't any interaction between them within living memory that isn't hostile, until peace is brokered after Sauron's defeat (for instance, Gondor is said to have had "dealings... but never friendship" with the Men of the South in the distant past, but for many generations until the War of the Ring itself, no Southrons have gone into Gondor's territory and vice versa). |
| 295 | * ''Literature/SistersNoWay'': |
| 296 | ** There is a casual amount of racism in the book that would shock readers today. Cindy remembers her father trying to train her American mother to pronounce words the Irish way and not sound American. He also stopped her name from being spelled 'Cyndi' because it was "too American". At the time in Ireland, it was expected for any foreigner to immediately adopt Irish pronunciations, language and customs. Nowadays, this sentiment is largely gone from the public eye, with an increased amount of immigrants arriving into Ireland. |
| 297 | ** Cindy also casually mentions her friends going out on a drinking binge when they get their exam results. Her friends would be fourteen or fifteen at the time, which wouldn't work well with today's audience, especially with Ireland cracking down on underage drinking later on. Cindy herself also drinks wine at many meals without her father batting an eyelid -- and the 14-year-old Alva has also apparently had champagne plenty of times. |
| 298 | ** In the book, Margaret marries Richard in the fear that a conservative judge will rule against her getting custody of two daughters. Divorce wasn't legal in Ireland at all for many years. However, in [[TurnOfTheMillennium the 2000s]], this attitude would have gone away, and a court would likely favor Margaret due to Richard's alcoholism. |
| 299 | * A book by Dirk Braeke, ''Het uur nul'', contains a scene in which the main character is having sex with a prostitute (the titular prostitute is a 16-year-old shopaholic who sells her body in order to get clothing) in the toilets of a school (though to be fair the school is not tolerant to those things) played completely unironically. It was probably only released in Belgium and the Netherlands, where the book is rated 12+. It is not exactly something that would fare well in foreign Western countries. |
| 300 | * ''Literature/TheThornBirds'': When the book was first published it was considered a somewhat scandalous romance because it dealt with Ralph, a Catholic priest, falling in love with a girl named Meggie and having a sexual relationship with her (even fathering a child). Those who read the book today are more likely to be scandalized by the fact that Ralph [[WifeHusbandry practically raised Meggie]], having known her from early childhood. |
| 301 | * The work of Creator/TSEliot [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._S._Eliot#Allegations_of_anti-Semitism has been criticised]] on the grounds that it contains a strong element of Anti-Semitism, and it's hard to argue, as some have done, that lines like "The rat is underneath the pile. / The jew is underneath the lot." are ''in no way'' offensive. The real question is not whether Eliot is or isn't offensive at times, but how we're going to handle it; even those who admire him have to admit that, in his poetry, he played with Anti-Semitism in a way that strikes us now as being at best questionable. |
| 302 | * In Creator/RosemaryWells's book "Morris's Disappearing Bag", Morris's sister Betty gets a chemistry set for Christmas. Morris along with his brothers and sisters are young children, and Morris is a toddler at that point. [[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_0tA5dmNlUGY/TQeCSnWzX6I/AAAAAAAAI5o/Vxz_kphxors/s1600/morris5.jpg Each of his siblings (later Morris) each try to mix actual chemicals such as acid and creating a new gas.]] Since the book was created in 1975, chemistry sets were a popular Christmas gift given to children along with some being found in various stores. While chemistry sets can still be found today in children's stores, [[http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/cyanide-uranium-and-ammonium-nitrate-when-kids-really-had-fun-with-science/ back in the '50s -- early '90s children's chemistry sets would contain dangerous substances and sometimes would cause an explosion]]! |
| 303 | ** Her other books such as Hazel's Amazing Mother (1985) and Benjamin & Tulip (1973) can be a little uncomfortable to read nowadays due to how strict modern laws are when it comes to violence in children's media, including shows and books, along with how serious bullying is taken these days. Also, both of these books contain child protagonists wandering around town or outside far away from their home. Keep in mind these books were made during the years when [[FreeRangeChildren children were still allowed to wander]] without the fear or strangers or getting kidnapped. Another moment that can raise modern readers eyebrows is in "Benjamin & Tulip", where [[AdultsAreUseless Benjamin returns home and tells his aunt that he got beaten up and his aunt doesn't do anything to help him from getting beaten up by Tulip or call her out for it]]. Wells later abandoned the FreeRangeChildren trope sometime in TheNineties to focus on her characters during [[SliceOfLife school life or around family members.]] |
| 304 | * ''Literature/TheSecretGarden'': |
| 305 | ** In 1911, UsefulNotes/TheBritishEmpire was in full swing, and it shows in this book. Indian people are referred to as "blacks" and they're considered less respectable than white people. The narration even refers to Mary having used violence against her servants in the past. |
| 306 | ** This entire conversation: |
| 307 | --> Mary sat up in bed furious. |
| 308 | -->“What!” she said. “What! You thought I was a native. You—you daughter of a pig!” |
| 309 | --> Martha stared and looked hot. |
| 310 | --> “Who are you callin’ names?” she said. “You needn’t be so vexed. That’s not th’ way for a young lady to talk. I’ve nothin’ against th’ blacks. When you read about ’em in tracts they’re always very religious. You always read as a black’s a man an’ a brother. I’ve never seen a black an’ I was fair pleased to think I was goin’ to see one close. When I come in to light your fire this mornin’ I crep’ up to your bed an’ pulled th’ cover back careful to look at you. An’ there you was,” disappointedly, “no more black than me—for all you’re so yeller.” |
| 311 | --> Mary did not even try to control her rage and humiliation. |
| 312 | --> “You thought I was a native! You dared! You don’t know anything about natives! They are not people—they’re servants who must salaam to you. You know nothing about India. You know nothing about anything!” |
| 313 | ** On a less serious note, Mary, a ten-year-old girl, is often and bluntly referred to as "ugly" by both the narrator and other characters and often to her ''face''. Also, compare the approving references to her getting "fatter" (i.e. healthier and less scrawny) with today's concerns with obesity. |
| 314 | ** Mrs. Medlock, and even some of the more sympathetic characters like Martha and Mrs. Sowerby, also often refer to Mary as sour, contrary, or with adjectives that indicate a perpetually bad attitude. One wonders how much self-fulfilling prophecy played into her character. |
| 315 | ** Also, this: "She used the wrong Magic until she made him beat her." Ben Weatherstaff mentions a woman in the local village who nagged her husband until he ''beat her up'' and left for the pub. Colin's response is that she used the "wrong Magic" and Ben ''agrees''. |
| 316 | ** We're supposed to see Mary -- at least through Martha's eyes -- as dysfunctional and hopelessly coddled because at the advanced age of ''9'' she never goes anywhere by herself. In the same part of the world now, Mary would be at about the minimum age that children would start going out of sight of home without an adult. A bit more to the point, where would Mary go? She has just moved to the Yorkshire Moors, after having lived most of her early life in British India. Her only living relative is an uncle-by-marriage, she has no friends, and she is unfamiliar with the region. She can't exactly go on house visits or explorations. |
| 317 | * ''Literature/CharlieAndTheChocolateFactory'': Violet and Mike were considered "bad" in 1964 and 1971 because of their interests in gum and television, respectively. In the case of Mike, his depiction as "bad" for liking television can be traced back to author {{Creator/Roald Dahl}}'s intense dislike for television; even as late as ''Literature/{{Matilda}}'', published in 1988 near the end of his life, he was still depicting television-lovers as unpleasant and unintelligent. These characteristics, although worrisome when taken to the extreme in real life, are not seen as being repulsive enough to warrant the horrific punishments that Violet and Mike suffer. This is why the majority of post-1971 takes on the story not only give Mike Teavee ''unsavory'' tendencies, but also downplay Violet Beauregarde's gum-chewing in favor of an unhealthy motive, whether it is to lose weight, to be a constant winner or to promote gum-chewing as a "talent". |
| 318 | * ''Literature/FearAndLoathingInLasVegas:'' (1971) The night before the drug conference, Duke and Gonzo ended up at a restaurant where they ate a cheap meal and "watched four boozed-up cowboy types kick a faggot half to death between the pinball machines." Then they went back to their hotel. People writing nowadays would probably be less casual about witnessing homophobic violence, and definitely wouldn't refer to the victim as a "faggot." |
| 319 | * ''Literature/TheBabysittersClub'': This is the primary reason that nearly all attempts to revive the series for 21st-century readers have failed: |
| 320 | ** When the books were first written and published, it was acceptable for a preteen to work as a babysitter. These days, one would have to wait until at least their late teens to take on this responsibility. |
| 321 | ** The overall attitude towards autism has aged poorly, and may have been questionable even in the [[TheNineties early 1990s]], given that Temple Grandin was already famous for her research on animals. Susan's boundaries are completely overstepped in several ways. Kristy doesn’t acknowledge that the non-verbal Susan can still understand normal spoken language, and doesn’t allow her to fully enjoy playing the piano. Susan is forced to befriend the neighborhood children (who treat her like an outcast), which ignores how keeping friends can be difficult even if an autistic person has average intelligence and speech, particularly in adolescence. Kristy then tries to guilt-trip Susan's parents out of sending their daughter to a boarding school, which actually had just the right resources to help her out. Kristy's treatment of Susan is never called into question, and Susan’s mother hopes that her yet-to-arrive second child will be "normal", implying that she considers Susan "broken". |
| 322 | ** Non-fictional FreeRangeChildren have become a thing of the past due to the fear of child predators, so Mary Anne’s father not allowing her to stay outdoors alone after 10 PM would be seen as sensible today. |
| 323 | ** Kristy's mother Elizabeth (in her early-mid 40s) and new stepfather Watson (50s) adopt a 2-year-old girl from {{UsefulNotes/Vietnam}} after just a few months of marriage. Today, international adoption is viewed with much more hesitancy; and parents of Elizabeth and Watson's age are often not allowed to adopt babies and toddlers, or at least discouraged from it. Since Elizabeth and Watson both have children from previous marriages, they'd also likely be advised to wait longer after the wedding to bond as a family unit before adopting another child. |
| 324 | ** In ''Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls'', Kristy and Claudia begin receiving mysterious hang-up calls which they think are connected to reports of a prowler in the neighborhood. The calls turn out to have been made by two boys in their class who wanted to ask the girls to a school dance, but were too shy to speak to them. Kristy and Claudia are happy with this and end up going to the dance with the boys. In a modern setting, this behavior would likely be considered a form of harassment -- especially since Alan Gray gets a date with Kristy, who's repeatedly told him she doesn't like him and asked him to leave her alone. |
| 325 | ** The book ''Dawn and Whitney, Friends Forever'' involves Dawn being hired as a babysitter for Whitney, a girl her own age with Down's Syndrome. Dawn has never met someone with Down's Syndrome before (much less taken care of them), and Whitney's parents are fully aware that she'd be upset if she knew someone were being paid to spend time with her. Dawn's behavior towards Whitney comes across as patronizing too. It would now be more likely for Whitney's parents to hire professional care if she needed it, and they would be encouraged to support her in making friends by herself. |
| 326 | * Readers of Robertson Davies' Literature/CornishTrilogy are likely to wonder if Davies ever actually met any Romani, openly gay people, or even women, based on his rather cavalier and highly stereotypical depictions of them. |
| 327 | * In ''Literature/SuperFrogSavesTokyo'' by Creator/HarukiMurakami, the protagonist is a debt collector. This is portrayed as a respectable profession which contributes to society, and the protagonist is an honorable man. Contrast with the portrayal of debt collectors in Western Media (e.g. ''Film/RepoTheGeneticOpera''). |
| 328 | * In the ''Literature/MalazanBookOfTheFallen'', Karsa Orlong grew up with his warrior tribe far from civilization and as a result has a rather bizarre view on many things society generally sees as acceptable. The Dissonance is both in-universe (with the rest of the cast that is) and with the fans, as Erikson deliberately wrote a large part of ''Literature/HouseOfChains'' from his perspective. He does get better as he undergoes CharacterDevelopment. |
| 329 | * ''Literature/TheSpaceTrilogy'': An in-universe example with Merlin, in that he has fifth-century morals and expectations, exasperating the modern-day protagonists. For instance, upon hearing that one of the protagonist's husbands is in prison for a theft (one he'd actually committed), Merlin seemed to have ideas about riding off to attack the county jail to free him. Merlin even suggests overthrowing the king of the UsefulNotes/UnitedKingdom, at one point! |
| 330 | * ''Literature/TheScarletPimpernel'' contains some depictions and descriptions of the Jewish people that may cause modern readers to raise their eyebrows. For that matter, the novel's depiction of the French revolutionaries as a gang of borderline-subhuman bloodthirsty monsters tormenting and savagely massacring the poor, defenceless, innocent French aristocracy may also be somewhat at odds with the worldviews of many a more egalitarian and democratic reader (although one must remember in this particular case that the author is ''Baroness'' Orkzy, which may explain matters somewhat). |
| 331 | * ''Literature/TeenageWorrier'': |
| 332 | ** An ongoing storyline over the books is Hazel being afraid to come out as a lesbian to her parents — ultimately driving her to run away from home. Increased social acceptance of LGBT people makes such an outcome less likely today, since Hazel's parents are described as strict but not homophobic. |
| 333 | ** It's mentioned that Letty enjoyed football in primary school, but after moving up to high school, she was no longer allowed to play. At the time of publication in the [[TheNineties early 1990s]], this was common practice in British schools. In the [[TurnOfTheMillennium mid-2000s]], a reprint of the book changed it to her simply being discouraged from playing football; but nowadays, most schools would have a girls' team or at least encourage the girls to use local facilities. |
| 334 | ** Letty's parents being neglectful and absent-minded is PlayedForLaughs. They smoke and get drunk in the house, do not bother to cook or buy groceries, and are rarely at home — often leaving Letty to take care of Benjy. In more recent years, this would be seen as borderline inappropriate even for comedy. |
| 335 | ** Today, 15-year-old Letty dating 22-year-old Basil would be seen as highly problematic. She initially doesn't know his age and thinks he is around 18, but it would still be unlikely for her parents or friends not to intervene. Similarly, when Hazel's girlfriend leaves her for a twenty-something woman, Letty and Aggy don't think anything of it and are just sympathetic that Hazel got dumped. |
| 336 | ** In ''The Teenage Worrier's Worry Files'', Letty gets drunk at a party and then misses her period. She becomes worried that she slept with Junior and is now pregnant. Today, it's apparent that this would have been date rape, as Letty was too drunk to consent (although she ultimately discovers nothing happened.) |
| 337 | ** Letty's comments about Aggy's weight come across as rather fat-shaming to a modern reader, even though they're meant affectionately. |
| 338 | * ''{{Literature/Typhoon}}'' by Joseph Conrad uses the term ''Coolie'' to describe the Chinese slaves who are taken on a steamer, on top of having some stereotypical traits related to Chinese culture. Nowadays, this term is frowned up. |
| 339 | * Given that the man himself was on the eccentric side even in his own age, it should be little surprise that there's a fair amount of this in the works of Creator/HPLovecraft. |
| 340 | ** In "Pickman's Model", the narrator is as much disturbed by the fact Pickman's paintings are done in a realist style as for the inhuman ghouls they portray. In this modern era, where readers of SpeculativeFiction are ''used'' to realist-style artwork being the norm for science fiction, fantasy and horror, this just comes off as weird. |
| 341 | ** Lovecraft's stories have lost some of their bite in general for many readers, as they base themselves on the dominant social views of the time -- which, in a nutshell, boils down to [[HumanityIsSpecial humanity being created by a loving God and given complete dominion over the earth, and as such knowing everything]] -- and revealing this is not true. The sheer horror that this revelation tends to inflict can come off as rather silly to people who no longer share this mentality. |
| 342 | ** Most infamous of all is the common invocation of racism, especially as part of the horror. Whilst Lovecraft's precise racial views were unconventional, he was also seen as, in some areas, on the extreme end even for his time. This has led to "Facts Concerning The Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family" losing almost all of its bite, because the titular character committing suicide through self-immolation after learning [[spoiler:he descends from the loving and consensual union of his great-great-great-grandfather and a [[FrazettaMan white-furred ape-woman]] from DarkestAfrica]] now looks less "justified" and more "a huge overreaction". Oh, there's also the fact that his great-great-great-grandmother's oddities and reclusiveness were handwaved as her being Dutch. This is also why it's almost impossible to find "Medusa's Coils", which treats TheReveal that Marceline had an African female ancestor as being as horrible as TheReveal in "Shadow Over Innsmouth" and "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn". And why you'll have even less luck finding his story "The Street", which follows the development of a street from a Colonial country lane to a crowded slum and [[EsotericHappyEnding treats the slum spontaneously collapsing on itself and killing everyone in it as a "happy ending" because]]... it's full of non-WASP immigrants who, [[TakeOurWordForIt we're told]], are plotting anti-American revolutions. |
| 343 | ** Lovecraft's prejudices aren't limited to non-white minorities. "The Wall of Sleep" includes extensive descriptions of a character from the deep Catskills, who is rather blatantly and matter-of-factly depicted as subhuman and inbred. |
| 344 | * This [[https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/400/1*NzNWANeRwXNuNF6LYEbzxw.jpeg 1950s encyclopedia entry on human races]] depicts common racial stereotypes of the day. For further context, it was featured in [[https://medium.com/the-secret-history-of-america/douchebag-the-white-racial-slur-weve-all-been-waiting-for-a2323002f85d this article]] on 21st century race issues. |
| 345 | * "Literature/CaseyAtTheBat" by Ernest Thayer details a fan's reaction to Casey taking a called strike; he shouts, "Kill the umpire!" When the poem was written in 1888, abuse towards umpires was accepted and even encouraged. Nowadays, if you yell "Kill the umpire!" at a baseball game, you would likely be escorted out by security. |
| 346 | * In ''Literature/SnowWhite'', the titular Snow White is seen as tremendously beautiful from the day of her birth due to her [[RavenHairIvorySkin incredibly pale skin]] and blood red lips. That image often brings to mind [[EeriePaleSkinnedBrunette illness]] more than it did at the time of release. This is one reason why {{Grimmification}} and FracturedFairytale takes on the story tend to make Snow White a creepier character, even some making her an outright vampire. |
| 347 | * Hazel's depression is ignored or even teased in the 1929 story ''Literature/BigBlonde''. All her lovers and friends complain whenever she [[StepfordSmiler doesn't seem to be happy]]. They tell her that she's a buzzkill and that she should suck it up because everyone else has problems too. Even after Hazel is DrivenToSuicide, the doctor is just annoyed by her suicide attempt. |
| 348 | * "Literature/ConsiderHerWays" is a novella by Creator/JohnWyndham where the narrator, a doctor from the mid 20th century, finds herself in a post-{{Gendercide}} society and engages in a fierce argument with a historian about whether things are better now. The historian maintains that while the plague that wiped out all men was unfortunate, it freed women from patriarchy; the narrator claims that life in such a society would be barely worth living. Wyndham tries to present the dilemma seriously, but to the modern reader, he almost commits StrawmanHasAPoint in reverse. The historian points out that throughout history, women were subject to horrific oppression such as sexual violence and enslavement, and even in the modern era, women were encouraged, by means of consumerist manipulation, to StayInTheKitchen. The narrator, meanwhile, objects that without two sexes, romantic love is impossible ([[HideYourLesbians what's lesbianism?]]) and that romantic love is the source of all inspiration for poetry and art (what's [[UsefulNotes/{{Asexual}} asexuality]]?). This is especially egregious because she seems much more concerned about the absence of "lovers under the trees on a summer's night" than the emergence of an oligarchical caste-based dictatorship where education and reproduction are strictly controlled and dissidents are at least arrested, possibly executed. |
| 349 | ** In a more minor example, it's dropped in, very casually, that the narrator quit her job after marriage and went back after being widowed only to keep herself busy -- in the 21st century, many people would perceive it as wasteful to go through a doctor's training only to leave the profession at age twenty-four, married or not. |
| 350 | * Creator/ArthurHailey's novel ''Literature/{{Hotel}}'' was written in 1965 and focuses on a fictional hotel in UsefulNotes/NewOrleans. A key plotline involves young executive Peter trying to undo the non-segregated rule the hotel owner stubbornly clings to. This comes up majorly when a well-educated black dentist is denied entry and one of his colleagues causes a huge fuss over it. A big talk later in the book has some saying "state's rights" may still be viable but Peter pushes for them to finally end. In an introduction to a reprinted version of the book in TheNineties, Hailey notes changes since the publication, including assuring younger readers that the constant use of "Negro" is not meant as an insult but simply how black people were called at the time. He also admits regret at how nearly every character in the book is shown smoking a lot, as he was unaware at the time of the dangers that would cause. |
| 351 | * ''Literature/TheOutsiders'': The greaser protagonists repeatedly mention their unusually long haircuts. To modern readers, these haircuts aren't remotely long. They wouldn't even count as medium-length. |
| 352 | * ''Literature/TheVictoryOfAllanRutledge'', a 1910 novel, includes this dialogue in the ending: |
| 353 | -->"All that is needed to make your dream for this land come true is the Americanization and Christianization of its people." |
| 354 | * Harold Bell Wright was fairly progressive for his era (encouraging women to carry guns and ride horses, for example), but he still referred to black characters as 'the [insert race here]' instead of by their actual name. |
| 355 | * ''Literature/HeatherHasTwoMommies'' was terribly controversial for many years because it was about two women raising a child together. Over the years, more and more GayAesop picture books like ''Mama and Mama'' (and its SpearCounterpart ''Papa and Papa''), ''And Tango Makes Three'', and ''King and King'' have come out. The only thing that's really controversial about the book is that some versions mention how Heather was conceived using in-vitro. |
| 356 | * A lot of cat owner's guides, such as ''The Complete Cat Book'', are written by British writers. This creates dissonance for American readers due to one major cultural difference in cat rearing: in the UK, cat owners are encouraged to let their cats outside, while in the US cat enthusiasts and welfare groups discourage letting cats outside off leash (or at least unsupervised). So, books will often have entire sections on how to keep your cat safe outside and how it's only natural to let them outside, but many Americans see this as neglectful.[[note]]This likely has a great deal to do with the relative safety of the UK wilderness; there are no coyotes, wolves, bears, rabid raccoons, mountain lions, alligators, or other dangerous predators to threaten pet cats that wander, whereas in the United States there are all kinds of dangers that nobody in the UK would even think about.[[/note]] This dissonance even appears in {{xenofiction}} literature as American books are more likely to depict APetIntoTheWild more negatively than British ones. A related issue is the different attitudes towards declawing -- up until the late 2010s this was considered to be up to the owner in the US but as a cruel mutilation for the owner's convenience in the UK, which eventually banned it outright (except for medically necessary reasons) in 2006. However the US might finally be coming around -- New York followed the UK by banning it in 2019 and local laws in certain cities and towns heave started to appear. |
| 357 | * ''Literature/TheBerenstainBears'' is bound to fall into this due to much of the books having been written many decades ago: |
| 358 | ** ''"The Berenstain Bears and the Bully"'' has Sister deal with TheBully Tuffy [[ViolenceReallyIsTheAnswer by punching her in the nose]]. For this, she gets [[KarmaHoudini excused with a warning]], while Tuffy is stated to face the brunt of punishment. Nowadays, with many North American schools operating on a zero-tolerance policy, Sister would be punished as well for physical violence against a student (whether she instigated it or not). |
| 359 | * TheSeventies picture book ''There's a Nightmare In My Closet'' has the protagonist threatening the monster in his closet with a realistic-looking toy gun. He even threatens to shoot it. This joke aged poorly. The 1999 animated adaptation in ''WesternAnimation/GoodnightMoonAndOtherSleepytimeTales'' changes the gun to a sword. |
| 360 | * Paul Gallico's novel ''Literature/TheAbandoned'' (aka ''Jennie'') has a scene in the beginning where Peter (a boy who has awoken from an injury to find himself in the body of a cat) is [[KickTheDog physically abused by various townsfolk]], [[NoSympathy who view him as a pest and thus offer him no solace]], as he runs off in terror after getting ejected from his apartment. The book was originally written in 1950 and takes place in the earlier years of post-war England long before animal welfare had received major attention. Granted, it's clearly written to [[TheWoobie elicit sympathy for Peter]], but it would come off as ''even'' '''more''' [[BadPeopleAbuseAnimals despicable]] to modern readers. |
| 361 | * J.G. Ballard's ''Literature/{{Crash}}'' has this in the geographical sense. In his native Britain, the first publisher's assistant to read the submitted manuscript returned it with a note that Ballard did not need a publisher so much as a psychiatrist, which Ballard took as a sign that he had succeeded in his aim. And indeed, the novel was extremely controversial in Britain upon publication (as opposed to somewhat, but less so, in the US), a controversy that reared its head again with the release of the film. However, Ballard notes in his memoir that the French seem to have completely gotten it ... the French translation has never gone out of print, and no one there has called for a ban or denounced it. |
| 362 | * ''Literature/LookingBackward'': Obviously the idea that a command economy would be the best thing ever is controversial enough, given the record of communist states in the actual 20th century. The novel also claims that crimes are just the result of "atavism" (i.e. hereditary throwback traits). People with them are "treated in the hospitals." Just what treatment is unclear, but sterilization would seem to be the most probable, given that this was advocated by the eugenics movement when Bellamy lived (and later became law in 27 US states). This was likely based on theories such as those of Italian criminologist and physician Cesara Lombroso, who believed many criminals were such "atavisms" (of course, they have been [[ScienceMarchesOn long since debunked]]). |
| 363 | ** The book also introduced the idea of what is now known as the credit card as another feature of its utopian society. Today we see them as a mixed blessing, at best. |
| 364 | * In [[Creator/MartinAmis Martin Amis']] 1984 book ''Literature/{{Money}}'', the protagonist shows up late for a flight, but gets to board anyway because there was a bomb threat earlier for his plane and it got delayed. Later, his business partner explains that he called in the bomb threat, and he does it often whenever he's running late because they never interrogate first-class passengers. This joke seems absolutely unthinkable in a post-9/11 world. |
| 365 | * French writer Gabriel Matzneff has [[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/11/world/europe/gabriel-matzneff-pedophilia-france.html had this trope catch up with him in ''spades'']]. In the early 1970s, he wrote an entire book celebrating his sexual encounters with boys and girls ''under 16''[[note]]Called, literally, ''The Under-16s''[[/note]], some ''as young as '''8''''', while traveling abroad.[[note]]While French law is more tolerant of this kind of relationship, and lacks an age of consent, criminalizing it only if physical force is used, that only applies if the other person is over 15.[[/note]] Nobody cared since it was the Sexual Revolution and, ''pace'' de Sade, ''any'' rejection of bourgeois sexual mores was seen as a good thing. In his regularly published diaries he recounted his affairs with a string of teenage girls. When he was asked about on a talk show in the early 1990s, with one other guest disapproving quite strongly, ''she'' got attacked and criticized. Only in 2019, after publisher Vanessa Springora wrote a memoir of ''her'' relationship with Matzneff as a 16-year-old, exposing how emotionally exploitative and cruel he was to her, has the entire French literary establishment turned on him and dropped him like a hot rock. He's had to hide out in an undisclosed location on the Italian Riviera. He's been the subject of a criminal investigation starting in February 2020 as a result of this. |
| 366 | * ''{{Literature/Herland}}'': The all-female society is described positively as practicing eugenics by excluding any woman who has "defective" traits, and they lack any sexual desire due to developing parthenogenesis. For them, the only possible purpose of sex to women is reproduction, so any other reason baffles them. This reflects views at the time, when eugenics was very popular and women didn't (or at least shouldn't) care about sex, only being mothers. |
| 367 | * ''{{Literature/IT}}'': |
| 368 | ** The book begins with a HomophobicHateCrime. Most, if not all, of the police officers are [[NobleBigotWithABadge Noble Bigots with Badges]], and the novel -- written in TheEighties -- plays them sympathetically. Today, with increased awareness of police brutality towards minorities as well as the harm such attitudes cause even when not acted upon, the characters would be roundly condemned for their opinions. |
| 369 | ** Later on in the book, the prepubescent main characters have a group orgy. There's absolutely no way you could get away with this after 1986 without being [[PaedoHunt accused of pedophilia]], and [[Film/It1990 both film]] [[Film/It2017 adaptations]] wisely decided to do away with it. |
| 370 | * ''Literature/ThePigman'' is about two high school sophomores forming an IntergenerationalFriendship with a middle-aged widower. Innocent in the [[TheSixties late 1960s]] but not so much these days, especially when the man regularly gives the kids ''wine'' to drink. Also, one of the protagonists makes liberal usage of the word "retarded" as a means of saying stupid. |
| 371 | * Creator/CharlesDickens: |
| 372 | ** ''Literature/OliverTwist'' depicts [[TheDragon Fagin]] as a blatant Jewish stereotype and refers to him as "the Jew" more than anything else. This has become a very notorious example of this trope. Even later in Dickens' own life, he received complaints from Jews asking why he was so contemptuous to them given his desire to raise awareness of life's struggles in Victorian England. To Dickens' credit, he did try to make amends by referring to him by his real name more often in later chapters of the serialised novel, and also by writing several sympathetic Jewish characters in ''Literature/OurMutualFriend'', but the controversy about Fagin has never left. |
| 373 | *** It doesn't help that ''Our Mutual Friend'' was not a success in Dickens' lifetime and had to be VindicatedByHistory. Meanwhile, ''Oliver Twist'' is one of his most well-known novels to the general public, probably in part to the lasting success of the 1960 musical ''Theatre/{{Oliver}}'' Thus, much of the general public won't have even heard of ''Our Mutual Friend'', so Dickens' AuthorsSavingThrow is ignored as a result. |
| 374 | ** While his skills as a social commentator cannot be denied, his romances can feel very trite and under-developed to modern readers and even in comparison to some of his contemporaries like Creator/JaneAusten. In ''Literature/NicholasNickleby'', for example, Nicholas declares he loves Madeline Bray after only two brief encounters with her, knowing nothing about her. [[HappilyEverAfter And it ends happily]]. ''Literature/GreatExpectations'' is also an offender, as Estella is openly cruel to Pip and yet he falls for her anyway, with her beauty being the only explanation. With the rising awareness of the dangers of rushing into love, these aspects of the novels have raised eyebrows from readers. |
| 375 | * A lot of things from Creator/EdgarRiceBurroughs' work have not aged well. Much isn't too out of place from the era. There's racist depictions of black Africans and Arabs in the ''Tarzan'' novels, but then again many Europeans are also portrayed stereotypically. Women are also depicted with some rather sexist cliches, though several female characters are also portrayed well, [[FairForItsDay even equal to men]]. Worst of all is likely his eugenicist views. In both the ''Tarzan'' and ''Venus'' series, he depicts societies that practice eugenics favorably, to the point that one has ''eliminated'' crime (by killing off both the criminals and their families). Burroughs wrote a nonfiction essay called "I See A New Race" endorsing such a society as well. |
| 376 | * ''Literature/TheReluctantKing'': There are things in the books which are less than savory to many readers since TheSixties and TheSeventies. Among them: referring to the desert people as "savage" with a rather stereotypical appearance/way of life, the only gay character being not just a rapist but it seems also [[AllGaysArePedophiles conflated with a pedophile]] (as both victims were described as "young") along with negative references to "his kind", the victim blaming of a woman who suffers domestic abuse and sexual harassment perceived as a compliment to the recipient. They might be DeliberateValuesDissonance, except unlike other things (honor culture) no one in the books criticizes these things nor are they portrayed as wrong in other ways. |
| 377 | * ''Enemy Coast Ahead'' (1946) is a memoir by UsefulNotes/WorldWarII bomber pilot Guy Gibson. In November 1942 Gibson's group flew 1,336 missions to Italy for the loss of only two aircraft, and he comments "If we should cast our minds back and say, for a matter of example, that an air line flew three flights a day to Italy for three years running and only lost two aircraft, they would consider themselves one of the safest air lines in the world." People back then clearly had different ideas about safety in civil aviation. |
| 378 | * When Fallom, a {{hermaphrodite}}, joins the crew in ''Literature/{{Foundation and Earth}}'', the adults have to decide which pronouns to use. They decide that, because Fallom can bear children, ''she'' is the most appropriate. 35 years after it was written, this is known as misgendering and is considered offensive; it would be more appropriate to ask Fallom what pronouns to use, with ''they'' being the most common. |
| 379 | * In ''Literature/TheBestChristmasPageantEver'', the Herdmans "talk dirty, hit little kids, cuss their teachers...and take the name of the Lord in vain." In many parts of the UsefulNotes/UnitedStates, the last one isn't a huge deal anymore because of society generally becoming more secular and other religions (as well as atheism and agnosticism) becoming more widely accepted. |
| 380 | * In the Literature/JohnPutnamThatcher novels: |
| 381 | ** ''Death Shall Overcome'' (written in 1966). While the novel doesn't portray the racist coworker of an African-American stockbroker remotely sympathetically, modern readers might be incredulous about how much the guy's bosses let him get away with before finally firing him. |
| 382 | ** ''Murder Makes the Wheels Go Round'' (written in 1966). Corporate whistleblowers are viewed with a disturbing amount of disdain and a cynical belief that they can't possibly be acting out of selflessness. |
| 383 | ** ''Come to Dust'' (written in 1968). Several characters are more horrified by the idea that a missing man may be a closet homosexual than by the idea that he's a hit-and-run killer. Granted, it may be more of the fact that he's suspected of picking up teenaged boys in bars (and that he's a college recruiter who regularly comes into contact with underage Ivy League applicants) that really upsets everyone. |
| 384 | * Unfortunately, though progressive in many respects, Creator/{{Voltaire}} held some of the negative views common to his time. He was quite racist toward Black people, once saying their intelligence was in relation to Whites like that of the chimpanzees. Further, his antisemitism was pretty harsh as well (in fairness however, he did say good things of Jews too, and recanted his negative remarks later). He also promoted certain historical myths, such as saying Hypatia of Alexandria was murdered due to being a pagan/scientist (it was over a political dispute, not religion/science) and attributing the saying "Credo quia absurdum" ("I believe because it is absurd") to Augustine Of Hippo (it's loosely based on a phrase Tertullian wrote, but he might more like "this was too strange for people to have invented"), specifically. |
| 385 | * The plot of ''Literature/TheFlameAndTheFlower'' is essentially about a teenage girl who is repeatedly sexually assaulted by a man who had mistaken her for a prostitute. They're forced to marry after she gets pregnant, he's a complete jerk to her because he resents marrying her, then then they fall in love eventually and he's subsequently redeemed via ThePowerOfLove. This is a romance novel so it's presented as a positive outcome. To say the plot hasn't aged too well is a ''major'' understatement. Admittedly, it makes more sense if you consider the historical context; the sexual revolution was still ongoing when the book was published in [[TheSeventies the early 1970s]], pre-marital sex was just barely acceptable and the idea that women actively wanted sex at all (and that this didn't make them immoral) was still making it into the mainstream. Having the hero of the romance novel be forceful with the heroine got around the issue of 'good women didn't actively seek out sex' while still giving readers [[NotIfTheyEnjoyedItRationalization sexy stuff]]; it was treated more like an erotic fantasy than rape. Nowadays of course, few romance novels would take this approach as it very much comes across as RomanticizedAbuse and those that do often get harshly criticized. |
| 386 | * ''Literature/TheWindInTheWillows'' is mostly timeless, but some aspects prove that it was written at the beginning of the 20th century: |
| 387 | ** In an attempt to wean Toad off motor cars, Badger, Ratty and Mole lock him in his bedroom and stand guard over him. In 1908, this would have been considered a perfectly normal method. Over a century later, the trio would have been in serious trouble for vigilante imprisonment. |
| 388 | ** During Toad's trial at the Bench of Magistrates for theft, dangerous driving, and cheeking the police, the Clerk says that Toad's gravest offence is stealing the motor car, while cheeking the police deserves the most severe penalty. Nowadays, this comes off as SkewedPriorities; most people would cite dangerous driving as the worst one, given that it can actually, you know, [[LethallyStupid seriously injure or even]] ''[[LethallyStupid kill]]'' [[LethallyStupid drivers and pedestrians alike]]. In 1908, automobiles were still in their infancy and were a luxury, meaning that roads were unimpeded and dangerous driving was less [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin dangerous]] then than it is now (though still a really bad idea). Nowadays, the working class can save enough money to afford cars, roads are much busier, and correspondingly there are many historical examples of injuries and deaths caused by reckless drivers. |
| 389 | ** The Weasels of the Wild Wood are lower-class and therefore bad, while the Riverbankers are middle- and upper-class and therefore good. Indeed, the final passage states how Toad, Mole, Badger, and Rat enjoy summer walks in the now "tamed" Wild Wood and are greeted with respectful deference by the inhabitants -- in other words, the lower-classes know their place and wouldn't dare rebel against their "betters", ever again. |
| 390 | * In William Sloane's ''Literature/ToWalkTheNight'', an early clue that Grace, the widow of a brilliant but eccentric experimental physicist, is actually [[spoiler:an extradimensional being possessing a developmentally disabled woman]] is that she...dresses unfashionably despite being gorgeous. A beautiful woman with no feminine graces might still be considered unusual today, but not so much it would signify she's ''not human''. (The point appears to be that Grace just sucks at passing for normal, but this is shown almost entirely via her lack of traditional womanly virtues, to the point her bad clothes are the first thing the narrator notices.) For that matter, not much is made of the fact that [[spoiler:the body's actual owner, Luella, had her entire life hijacked and the ensuing [[DoubleStandardRapeSciFi consent issues]],]] and Luella herself is [[spoiler:referred to as an "idiot", "mindless" and "not human", which is now a totally unacceptable way to talk about disabled people.]] |
| 391 | * ''Literature/TheBigSleep'' has a number of issues with values dissonance that mark it as a product of its time: |
| 392 | ** Marlowe and other characters express open disgust for homosexuals. They freely use homophobic slurs like "queen" and make jokes at their expense. After getting decked by a gay man, Marlowe asserts that it didn't hurt much because gay men "have no iron in their bones." All of this would be highly unusual in today's political climate. |
| 393 | ** Geiger's pornography business is an underground criminal enterprise, and Marlowe is thoroughly disgusted by it. Today, porn is freely available online and more mainstream than ever. |
| 394 | ** Marlowe's alcoholism, to an extent. There are several times in the novel where he takes a swig either while driving or about to start driving, and neither he nor anyone else thinks anything of it. |
| 395 | * The ''Literature/{{Goosebumps}}'' book ''Literature/SayCheeseAndDieAgain'' primarily revolves around how the camera in question cursed Greg into becoming severely morbidly obese. He is repeatedly mocked for his weight by his classmates, and even his substitute teacher Mr. Saur. In fact, Greg is described as having gained weight in the least flattering way possible. There's also how the bullies referred to as Sumo 1 and Sumo 2 are given very unflattering depictions of being obese. As WebVideo/ThePopArena pointed out in his video, the majority of this book amounts to fat shaming; which even in 1996 wasn't seen as appropriate given this was around the time bullying started to make the rounds and become more recognizable. The 2018 e-book notably removes mention of the two bullies and downplays a lot of the more unflattering descriptions of Greg. |
| 396 | * One old riddle occasionally found in some books involved a man and his son who get in a car crash. The dad dies, the son survives. When the son arrives in the ER, a doctor takes one look and says "I can't operate! This is my son!" How is this possible? The intended answer is "The doctor's the kid's mother." While surgeons are ''usually'' men, it's not by an overwhelming percentage, and modern readers[[note]]including kids[[/note]] may wonder why it's supposed to be a riddle at all. Especially after decades of [[Series/DrQuinnMedicineWoman popular]] [[Series/{{ER}} shows]] [[Series/StElsewhere depicting]] [[Series/GreysAnatomy female]] [[Series/UntoldStoriesOfTheER doctors]]. They may also guess that the doctor is ''a'' father, and one of the men is a ''stepdad''[[note]]Divorce is also a lot more common these days.[[/note]], and/or the son's parents are a gay couple. |
| 397 | * ''Literature/JaineAustenMysteries'': The series was originally written in the [[TurnOfTheMillennium early 2000s]]. It can... certainly show, at times. |
| 398 | ** In ''Last Writes'', Jaine talks about how her mother has a habit of setting her up with inappropriate men. She describes one of them as an engineering student from {{UsefulNotes/Laos}}, who, when asked his opinion on her cat Prozac, replies "She'd be great for a stew". This could become rather uncomfortable nowadays, especially given the rise in hate towards Asian Americans following the COVID-19 Pandemic. |
| 399 | ** Also in ''Last Writes'', a recurring way that Jaine describes how much of a dump Miracle Studios is comes from her [[SarcasmMode lovely view]] of transvestite prostitutes on Santa Monica Boulevard. |
| 400 | * The first ''Literature/HoratioHornblower'' novel, ''The Happy Return / Beat to Quarters'' (1938) has Lieutenant Gerard, who was an officer on a slave ship before he joined the Royal Navy. Although it's not anachronistic for the other characters to treat this in a totally blasé fashion--with Hornblower considering only that it makes Gerard good as a prizemaster because he's experienced dealing with captives, and Lady Barbara (herself owning an enslaved maid) being enthralled by Gerard's "adventurous" tales of sailing up African rivers to abduct and sell human beings--it's still out-of-place for Hornblower, who is written as a man embarrassed about unknowingly holding attitudes that are ahead of his time, and the narration, which otherwise draws contrasts between 19th and 20th century attitudes. Notably, in the chronologically-earlier but later-written ''Lieutenant Hornblower'' (1952), Hornblower lets slip that his sympathies are with the ex-slaves of the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_Revolution Haitian Revolution]]. |
| 401 | * “Lamia” by Creator/JohnKeats [[{{Anvilicious}} unequivocally states]] that ScienceIsBad and [[MeasuringTheMarigolds causes a joyless, sterile existence]]. But since this thesis is strongly disputed, with many in the sciences arguing the opposite, [[PreachingToTheChoir those who aren’t Romantic poets]] don’t see what the fuss is about. |
| 402 | * ''Literature/IndustrialSocietyAndItsFuture'': Let's just say that if you aren't a technophobe with reactionary and SocialDarwinist type views, this won't be a manifesto you will be agreeing with. |
| 403 | * ''Literature/YertleTheTurtleAndOtherStories'' caused a controversy within Random House due to use of the word "burp." [[WordOfGod According to Dr. Seuss]], no other children's book had ever used it before, so there was a meet between higher-ups regarding whether or not it could be included. Nowadays, not even the strictest censor would bat an eye at a character burping. |
| 404 | * Volume 7 of ''Literature/TheAsteriskWar'' has Sylvia Lynneheym's musical and [[TournamentArc fighting circuit]] rivals, the GirlGroup Rusalka, plot to ruin her by starting the rumor that she has a boyfriend. This is potentially incomprehensible to Western viewers and has to do with the extreme ContractualPurity culture around Japanese {{Idol Singer}}s (talent agencies exercise ''very'' tight control over their lives to produce a particular sound and image, to say nothing of the behavior of idol {{otaku}} if there's ever the ''slightest hint'' that their favorite idol might be in a relationship with someone). Author Yuu Miyazaki also seems to have [[CreatorsCultureCarryover inferred Japanese mores for (apparently) non-Japanese singers who have a worldwide fanbase]]. If anything, relationship rumors would make Sylvia ''more'' popular in the West, since media outlets and fans love celebrity relationship drama. Granted, the plan is probably intended to come off as kind of dumb (their OnlySaneWoman, Mahulena, tries to talk the others out of it). |
| 405 | * In ''Literature/LostSouls1992'', Ann's rape is treated as just a shitty thing that her boyfriend Steve did to her, and that's it. Ann even still pines for Steve afterwards. These days especially, with more widespread understanding and criticism of sexual violence and domestic abuse, this comes off as pretty insensitive and problematic, and some modern readers have a difficult time sympathizing with Steve because of it. |
| 406 | * ''Literature/KeepTheAspidistraFlying'' features an extended passage where Gordon mocks a gay man who frequents the bookshop, in particular singling out and sneering at his lisp. This kind of blatant homophobia was widely accepted in the 1930s, when queerness was criminalized all throughout the western world, but nearly a century later, the passage and the views they reflect are subject to far greater scrutiny. |
| 407 | * Yuna, the protagonist of ''Literature/KumaKumaKumaBear'' staffs her many businesses with orphans, the youngest of whom barely even reach 10 years old. These jobs range from raising chickens and gathering their eggs, to serving as wait-staff for a cafe or a restaurant, to being assistant chefs and bakers. This is unquestionably portrayed as a good thing as A) the MedievalFantasy she lives in expect children to be smaller adults, chipping into the regular work out of necessity, B) the orphans get a massive share of the profits to become self-sustaining and be less reliant on government subsidies and the generosity of strangers, and C) Yuna is never greedily exploiting their labor and goodwill, and even actively goes out of her way to improve their quality of life several times. |
| 408 | * ''Literature/SwordArtOnline'': |
| 409 | ** Sinon's treatment is rife with this as it's depicted with a very Japanese view of gun use. To summarize, she and her mother went to a bank one day when she was eleven and an armed robber came in. In the ensuing struggle, Sinon managed to get a hold of the robber's gun and shot him and killed him. This would be traumatic enough on its own, but it's shown Sinon is treated like a pariah by almost everyone around her, including her own ''mother'', simply for having handled a gun and using it to kill in self-defense. Even the therapists she's mentioned to have seen treat her as though she's committed a grave sin by handling that weapon, so she has a case of PTSD so intense that a schoolyard bully can set off a panic attack simply by pointing a finger gun gesture at her and saying "bang". American viewers, regardless of their own individual views on guns and gun control, found this treatment cruel and nonsensical, with many pointing out that if an incident like this were to happen in the USA, most people would consider Sinon a hero for what she did and would treat the killing much more favorably, as it was clearly done in self-defense, and therefore, was justified by American standards. Even in several European countries, many of which are far more in line with Japan than America in their attitudes about guns, Sinon would almost universally have been seen as a victim of a crime who was just acting in self-defense and did nothing wrong.\ |
| 410 | There is also the fact that some Americans assume Sinon's treatment is the result of Japanese gunphobia (which isn't ''entirely'' far off -- guns are practically banned in the country and a firearm costs more than a ''luxury car''), when this is not really the case. Japan has rather set ways of viewing children where children are expected to be innocent and reliant upon adults. The fact that Sinon killed a person at such a young age (even in self-defense) is what is at issue to Japanese society, not that a gun was used. The fact that a kid could even be '''able''' to pull the trigger seems to them as meaning she's essentially got the mindset of a cold-blooded murderer. ''As a child.'' On the other hand, the story seems to be on Sinon's side, as it compares her action to the times when Kirito, while in [[MostDangerousVideoGame the eponymous game]], killed two members of the player killer guild Laughing Coffin in a heated battle, and later killed another to protect himself and Asuna. Ultimately, the Phantom Bullet arc ends with Kirito telling Sinon that she deserves to think of the people she saved through her actions, as well as [[spoiler:Sinon meeting the woman she saved, and learning that she also saved her unborn daughter.]] |
| 411 | *** On that note, the use of the word "murderer" and how killing, even in self-defense, is viewed. When Kirito has a heart-to-heart with Sinon, in order to get her to understand that he does actually know what she's going through, he several times states outright that he too is a "murderer". Even when explaining how the deaths came about -- self-defense every time -- he, and the audience by default, are supposed to think that there could have been another way (in two of the cases at the least, no, they made suicidal rushes as a final gambit and it was literally kill or be killed. The third was saving someone else who had so little health left, no move he made would have kept the guy alive) and since only death came, he can only be a murderer. Except, by most Western definitions at least, being a "murderer" implies either premeditation or an intention to kill, neither of which Kirito or Sinon ever had. But both, many times else, still refer to themselves as murderers. Hell, as a kid, Sinon was bullied by other kids who'd ring around her and chant "murderer" at her. |
| 412 | ** Gun Gale Online [[BribingYourWayToVictory heavily features the use of]] the RealMoneyTrade. It doesn't do much good for Sinon (a student who barely makes ends meet with the money her relatives give her), or Kirito (who, for some reason, doesn't use any money in the game), but it's possible to buy an extremely useful [[spoiler:thermoptic camouflage cloak]] for 300,000 yen, something that the main villain takes full advantage of. Granted, Zaskar, the makers of GGO, are in something of a legal gray area due to being neither fully in Japan nor the US, which makes it more difficult for Kikuoka to investigate the game. |
| 413 | ** It's mentioned that Kazuto and Suguha being first cousins would not preclude their getting into a relationship. What ''does'' preclude their relationship, though, is the fact that they're also adoptive siblings, and Kazuto is in love with Asuna. It's pointed out in one of Suguha's POV segments in the light novel. |
| 414 | --->Even if they were really cousins by birth, Kazuto and Suguha had been raised as brother and sister for years and years. If she revealed her feelings, Kazuto and her parents would be shocked and troubled. Not to mention that Kazuto's heart belonged to that lovely girl... |
| 415 | ** It's occasionally mentioned that most of Kirito's friends are female, and he considers [[TragicBromance Eugeo]] to be the only close male friend he has. While this doesn't seem that strange to a Western audience, most platonic Japanese friendships tend to be between people of the same sex. |
| 416 | * In ''Literature/SwordArtOnlineAlternativeGunGaleOnline'', Karen Kohiruimaki suffers from HeightAngst due to being [[HugeSchoolgirl six feet tall]] (which is taller than 99 percent of Japanese women[[note]]She's actually far taller than most women ''in general''. The tallest average height for women goes to Latvia, whose women on average stand at 5 feet six inches tall, or 1.7 meters[[/note]]), since Japanese people tend to have a preference for short and cute girls. Since Western standards of beauty differ, a lot of viewers outside Japan wonder why a fairly attractive girl like Karen is so insecure about her height. |
| 417 | * In ''Literature/{{Toradora}}'', Ryuji finds Kitamura sitting around with a giant bruise on his face. Kitamura eventually reveals that his father basically hauled off and punched the hell out of him because he ''dyed his hair'' (and also probably for not wanting to run for student council president). Both of these were explicitly stated to be cries for help on Kitamura's part. In most Western works, the rest of the episode would probably be about how abusive and wrong this was, both physically and emotionally. Being a Japanese series, the characters don't seem to think twice about it, and Kitamura comes back to school the next day with his hair dyed back and saying he's all better now. |
| 418 | * In ''Literature/TheTwelveKingdoms'', Yohko is thought to be some sort of hoodlum or perhaps prostituting herself just [[EvilRedhead because her hair is red]] and not black like other Japanese students, as dying one's hair is considered a sign of delinquency and is in fact banned in most Japanese schools. This escalates to the point where her parents are called and she is cornered by teachers to stop dying her hair for the sake of her honor student reputation. Unfortunately for her, [[MistakenForDyed she is a natural redhead]] [[spoiler:because she is [[TrappedInAnotherWorld from another world.]]]] Even more unfortunate is the fact that she's whisked away by the golden-haired Keiki, who only solidifies suspicions of her relating with unscrupulous characters. Because, even if he's innocent, we all know blond guys are evil especially when they're foreigners in Japan. |
| 419 | * In ''Literature/TheBurningSecret'' by Stefan Zweig, TheCasanova baron catches the eye of his new conquest by first befriending her son. Nowadays, a complete stranger being overly friendly and familiar with one's child out of the blue would alarm rather than attract a loving mother. |
| 420 | * The way smoking is handled in ''Literature/TheMoomins'' is clearly a product of the 50's. Moominpappa often smokes his pipe, and in ''The Exploits of Moominpappa'', the Hemulen Aunt's objection to his smoking is treated as one more reason why she's an annoying, uptight [[TheKilljoy Killjoy]] who deserved to get ditched to the Niblings, while Moominmamma dismisses the claims that it's bad for his health. Snufkin, who has a VagueAge but is around Moomintroll's age and therefore likely a teenager, also smokes casually, which [[SmokingIsCool is portrayed as making him cooler]]. Nowadays, portraying tobacco use positively in a series of all-ages novels would be frowned upon, and modern adaptations {{Bowdlerize}} out Snufkin's pipe as underage smoking has become ''extremely'' frowned upon. |
| 421 | * In the first two ''Literature/{{Fudge}}'' books by Creator/JudyBlume (''Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing'' and ''Superfudge''), [[AnnoyingYoungerSibling Fudge]] gets smacked by his and Peter's mom (who is noted to not resort to violence otherwise). This is portrayed as justified [[note]]Peter not only openly gives his approval after witnessing Fudge get smacked in ''Superfudge'', but even outright '''says''' (in text) that "she should've slugged him" for misbehaving at a restaurant in ''Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing''. He is a preteen in both books, but still.[[/note]] as it would've been in 1972 and 1980 respectively when both books were published but attention towards the long-term effects of CorporalPunishment has increased in the intervening years. Fudge being 3 and 4 in these books would also likely be a point of concern [[labelnote:Not to mention...]]...that what prompts both incidents is entering Peter's unlocked bedroom and doodling on the latter's unfinished school project and putting stamps on Tootsie in an attempt to trade her, thus it would even come across as DisproportionateRetribution[[/labelnote]] and thus, a children's book nowadays wouldn't get away with this except to intentionally depict AbusiveParents. |
| 422 | * In the Victorian BoardingSchool novel ''Literature/EricOrLittleByLittle'', the masters regularly beat students, sometimes quite brutally. The author describes the punishments as 'necessary and desirable for some dispositions', when today they'd be called criminal child abuse. Attitudes towards the boys' misbehaviour have changed in the opposite direction - for example, [[spoiler:being accused of stealing £6 (about £600 today) from the cricket-fund box]] is still very bad, but not so bad that a teenager would be considered 'worse than dead, guilty, stained, dishonoured' by everyone including his own mother. |
| 423 | * ''Literature/TheWaterBabies'' is startlingly racist even by Victorian standards, mainly against Irish people. There's a lengthy passage depicting an imaginary conversation with an Irishman, portrayed as a moronic compulsive liar, which ends with "…and wonder all the while why poor ould Ireland does not prosper like England and Scotland, and some other places, where folks have taken up a ridiculous fancy that honesty is the best policy". Other passages make jabs about potato-eating gorillas. It really clashes with the story's messages of kindness and forgiveness. |
| 424 | * ''Literature/RainbowMagic'': Several one-off books in the series are in NoExportForYou status because they center around things that would only be familiar to British children, ranging from Britain or Europe-exclusive holiday traditions (e.g. ''Konnie the Christmas Cracker Fairy'') to fairies based around UsefulNotes/TheBritishRoyalFamily (e.g. ''Meghan the Wedding Sparkle Fairy'', based on Creator/MeghanMarkle). |
| 425 | * ''Literature/{{Socks}}'', which was published in 1973, has a scene in the beginning where a random woman has a scandalized reaction when George says they're saving up to have Socks' mother spayed. Starting in the 1970s (at least in the US), spaying/neutering for cats and dogs has become part of standard pet care. In fact, it is considered irresponsible to not do so, because not only does it drastically reduce the chances of reproductive cancer (particularly mammary cancer) for the pet, but pet shelters are overflowing with homeless cats and dogs, and allowing them to breed freely contributes to the problem. |
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