Quote:
Originally Posted by pdurrant
But casual racism and sexism in older novels? It depends. If it's the characters behaving as they would have done given the time period, it would be odd to have them behaving any other way. If, for example, the Dorothy L. Sayers was bowdlerized to remove the anti-semitic remarks of the characters in it, it would be a poorer depiction of the time period.
But if the racism/sexism is authorial, I tend not to continue.
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What he said.
In my opinion, what counts is intent. In this case of the doings of the character.
Does he (or she, or whatever) *like* doing things we now (and I'm guessing many back then) think of as horrible?
If so, I might not continue, if the character is poised as the "good guy".
OTOH, if the racism or whatever is merely "background decoration", and the protagonist doesn't revel in it, then it doesn't bother me.
Note 1: Intent is hard to gauge, but in a book it is easier than real life. The author can easily indicate the characters feelings.
Note 2: I'm quite sure that most things we today consider wrong were also considered wrong back then. I have a hard time believing that anyone truly thought that treating people poorly (for whatever reason) is doing them good.
It may have been accepted, to the point of passively ignoring it, though.
Note 2b: of course, there are always exceptions, but
IMO, those are lunatics and fanatics.