After Roald Dahl, it’s up to Agatha Christie to see her novels go through the hands of sensitivity readers to remove terms deemed offensive, reveals the Telegraph.
After James Bond and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, it is the turn of Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot to pass through the filter of “sensitivity readers”, or proofreaders in sensitivity, charged by publishing houses to track down potentially offensive terms.
According to the revelations of Telegraph, some passages have therefore been modified or reworked in new editions of HaperCollins. The daily thus indicates that it was able to consult digital versions of texts published between 1920 and 1976, and indicates that several passages have been redacted from “descriptions, insults or references to ethnicities, in particular for the characters that the protagonists of Christie meet outside the UK”.
“Simply Disgusting”
For example, note the TelegraphIn Death on the Nile, starring Hercule Poirot, Mrs Allerton’s character states, “they come back and stare and stare and their eyes are just gross, and so are their noses. And I don’t think I really like children.” The sentence was changed to read: “They come back and stare and stare. And I don’t think I really like children.”
Terms like “oriental” have also been removed. Just like the term “Nubian” in the expression “Nubian boatman”. An anti-Semitic remark by Poirot also disappeared. Just like the term “gypsy type”, in prase “a young woman of the gypsy type”.
In other works, terms describing a hotel employee, such as “beautiful white teeth”, have been removed.
In 2020, ten little niggersthe famous novel by Agatha Christie published in 1939, had been republished under the title They were ten.
“Agatha Christie was primarily there to entertain and she wouldn’t have liked the idea of anyone being hurt by one of her turns of phrase,” Agatha Christie’s great-grandson James Prichard said at the time. .
“If only one person felt this, it would already be too much! We must no longer use terms that risk hurting: this is the behavior to adopt in 2020.”
Several books of Roald Dahl as Mathilda, holy witches or Charlie and the chocolate factorywere also rewritten under the supervision of UK publisher Puffin to remove language deemed offensive.
“Hideous and Messy”
The words “gros” (“fat”) and “laide” (“ugly”) have thus been removed. Augustus Gloop, in Charlie and the chocolate factoryis now “enormous”, while The Two Rascals, Commère Gredin is no longer “hideous and dirty”, but just “unclean”. The word “female” (“woman”) has also been replaced by that of “woman”.
The James Bond scripts by Ian Fleming have also been rewritten to remove rascist passages.