Like, obviously I understand that books are born out of specific cultural moments, and that classical literature was written through ideological lenses and ways of being in the world that are different than today.
But what do we mean by "not judging" those books by (current?) moral standards? What are we actually trying to communicate when we say a book was "a product of it's time"?
by Hmm_PleaseTellMeMore
20 Comments
What’re we actually saying? “Look past the racism, sexism and all the other gross shit the characters say and do”
Seems to usually means something like “don’t refuse to read a book because characters say racist things that were par for the course at the time”
Can you offer some context? Of course we can judge by the moral standards of today, there’s no judging police that will arrest you for doing so. But equally sometimes people try to contextualize certain content to a time period so that they can try and view it from a different perspective.
There are merits to both and, IME most readers are capable of and do both those things at once.
What’s confusing? It’s saying that something from an era with different values doesn’t necessarily lose It’s literary value because it comes from a different culture. Most of what we believe today will probably be considered immoral or illogical at some point in the future. You can enjoy something and find value in something while understanding its context.
It means the speaker doesn’t care the book they’re talking about is racist/sexist/homophobic/etc.
It’s a bullshit thing to say. Some people in History also supported human rights. They also lived in times where they were unpopular, so the timing of your birth is no excuse.
It’s just another lens to look at a work. It’s totally fair to consume older works within the current context and lens of modern times, but that may lead to potential misunderstandings of the author’s intent or themes. In general, the ability to place yourself within the context of the author’s time and circumstance just provides another opportunity for you to experience the story from a perspective that may illuminate it in a different way than just applying your own day-to-day lens on it will.
There are people who can’t appreciate books if they don’t agree with all the moral expressions therein. These people greatly limit the range of ideas they expose themselves to, as well as their understanding of those ideas. This is what the injunction is meant to prevent.
Take Treasure Island for example.
Jim Hawkin’s friendship with Long John silver, between a very young boy and an old gruff man with a beard, would hit very differently if written in 2025.
Not using today’s moral standards to me means over looking things like that. Stuff that raises a lot of questions today that the author likely never intended.
Generally it’s because certain attitudes and beliefs come off *radically* differently due to shifting cultural standards and severely change the story in ways the author did not intend.
Look at Little Women, for instance. It is a huge deal for feminist literature. But if you look at it through a solely modern eye it’s instead really damn sexist. Everyone seems to be various shades of awful because, well, that’s just how history works. Judging it solely by modern standards tosses aside the rather massive leap forward it was, it ignores the historical influence and import.
Or look at Starship Troopers. Its core moral system aged incredibly poorly as attitudes towards militarism and interventionism shifted heavily in America, resulting in accusations of the author being outright fascist.
Huck Finn is a rather famous one, a book who’s core message is entirely about racism is wrong is rather commonly banned because it uses what was then completely normal language but is now basically the worst word.
I often here this in regards to 1) if the book is worth consuming and 2) within discussions of the authors intent or purpose. For example, if a character was written to use racial slurs today the authors intent would almost definitely be to show that in a negative light. An author may not have meant that to be a negative depiction.
However we can still see those depictions and judge them. If a character is racist, that character is racist.
Everything is a product of its time, I don’t understand why ppl keep forgetting it….in the far future, many contemporary best-selling authors will be considered immoral
It’s not a moral injunction against doing that, rather an observation that doing that risks missing or ignoring such vital, fundamental aspects of context as to be unwise.
Books from the past are more of a timestamp of collective belief at that time. I think it’s similar to the notion that you don’t need to “like” the protagonist.
I think mostly about Sun Also Rises. The book is about that generations loss of direction as a result of global and societal changes, from women’s suffrage, to WWI atrocities and many other events at the time. The characters are not appropriate by today’s standards, but they reflect the positions in main themes of the book. I forget the name of all the characters but there’s a female character who feels lost and depressed, and Hemingway asserts that it’s because she is without the traditional values previous generations- that the “flapper” lifestyle is hurting her. There are other examples
(It’s been a couple years since I read this book, might not be totally accurate but the just is there.)
That said- everyone’s different. Read what you want to and what you like. If you’re not into something you’re reading from the past then there’s nothing wrong with putting it down.
This is an excellent hostory question.
Lets take human sacrifice as an example. By todays moral standards, it’s horrific and shameful for anyone to even consider it.
However, there have been many societies that used it in the past and by many of their moral standards, you was an honour to be chosen.
Were they wrong to have different moral beliefs than us? That was their morals of the time, our’s have been shaped by many more centuries of world history.
Even 100 years ago had very different moral standards than they do today.
When looking at the past you either have to put yourself in their shoes or just accept that’s how it was rather than judging them for not learning the lessons that hadn’t happendd yet.
If the opening line of a novel written today was, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife,” it’s unlikely many people would read much past that. But Pride and Prejudice is a great novel.
A piece of classic literature needs to be judged by its context, but can be enjoyed or not based on modern experience.
A book is a product of the society that created the author. This can both be because the author was conservative, or radical for their time. But it can’t escape that context, regardless. But a reader is also the product of their time. So appreciating a piece of Classic literature needs contextual awareness of the biases of the author, their target readers, and also your own as a modern reader.
This is academic, however. Because if you find the cultural views of a piece of classic literature personally distasteful, that is a perfectly valid way to feel. You do not have to enjoy outdated ideas. You just can’t judge the author for having them.
I think what we mean is don’t DISMISS the book or the humanity of its characters outright because they lived in a world that might condone behaviors we don’t condone today. It means accept their reality of their world the way they might have inhabited it. It’s the air they breathe. Don’t just wave it away. Try to live inside their heads and actually accept their experience as valid through their eyes.
For example: Anna Karenina is set in a world where women paid a much, much higher price for infidelity than they might today. That might lead someone to toss it aside because it’s not realistic to today. That’s foolish. Those were the rules of Anna’s world and what’s compelling is how she navigated them.
As for reading problematic men from older literature, similar game: you have to approach them based on what they were taught was acceptable and true about women back in the bad old days (which now seem to be the bad news days, tbh).
With uncensored racist language and/or depictions of racism in older books, YMMV. I totally accept someone’s decision not to read Huck Finn if it hits too hard personally, but I don’t think the story is illegitimate because it contains slurs that were realistic to the time.
Anecdote:
I was picking out book to read to a disabled child and chose Tom Sawyer as I remember loving it as a kid.
I couldn’t read aloud the when I got to the “N word”.
Classic, important work.
Would be “controversial” if published today.
Most of the time people are trying to say the things other commenters are mentioning, but sometimes it means we need to consider the cultural context, not to justify bigotry, but to recognize things that look like one thing from our current societal lense, but meant something very different at the time. Like, there are quite a few terms that are considered slurs or bigoted terms nowadays that would have been the PC terms that marginalized communities and their allies were choosing to use decades ago.
One example is the mini skirts in the original Star Trek show. Many people nowadays perceive those short dresses as women characters being sexualized, but when the show was being filmed, those actresses wanted the right to wear those skirts in general and on TV, because the expectation around that time was that women should be covered on TV.
In 100 years time people will be saying the same of books written in the 2020’s that are perfectly acceptable to us. Those future people will also refuse to accept the argument that in a time when almost everyone believes a thing, it is pointless judging a book which also believes that same thing. In the end it’s personal. There will be just so much that you can overlook, or excuse as “of its time”, and no more. It’s all fine as long as the judgers aren’t proposing to burn books. Saying that you can’t stomach something is your right.