A Reader’s Remorse

So I started a re-read of all the Inspector Morse books by Colin Dexter. I thought this would be doubly nostalgic: I had read them in my 20’s and quite enjoyed them; and they were set in the period that I was growing up during the 1970s and early 80’s. I thought it might be nice to be reminded of simpler times…

And indeed things were very different - almost every story would be radically different (or just 5 pages long) if we had mobile phones, GPS and ubiquitous surveillance back then. Imagine driving along and looking out for a working telephone box to get back in touch with Police HQ. Not to mention the primary source of news being actual daily newspapers!

But…

I’m finding there’s just something incredibly uncomfortable about reading these novels now. There’s the casual racism (cod accents from “the chinaman” in the betting shop”) and the pervasive sexism. The author seems to work nurses and schoolgirls into every story. Nurses are there to be propositioned and school girls (long legs, tight jumpers and short skirts) are there to be object of sexual advances, often successful. When sex does happen it is illicit and sordid. Reading these just makes me feel grubby and I’ve realised that I don’t want to do it anymore.

It is potentially interesting to ask why the novel is written this way? It is true that Morse himself is portrayed as a slightly sleazy character (despite his high-brow tastes). We are also, be definition dealing with the criminal element (although almost all victims and perpetrators are middle, if not upper, class). But neither of these things seem to adequately explain the sexualised content.

Is this just an attempt by the author to “titillate” (almost literally) his intended readership? (Quite possible, he’s trying to sell books after all). Or does this reflect his own tastes and predilections; or is this just a reflection of the prevailing attitudes of the 7o’s and 80’s?

It’s also interesting to ask why I feel particular grubby reading this when I don’t get the same feeling reading, say, Jane Austen, in which women are regarded as chattels and married women are not able to own property in their own right? Am I perhaps worried that the attitudes depicted in the books are the same ones that I had at the time? I was there, is it partly my fault?

Or am I just over-thinking the whole thing and if I’m not enjoying them then I should donate the books to Oxfam and move to something else?(!)

Postscript

While I was packing upa the books ready to go to Oxfam I had a pang of conscience - was I really being fair to base my conclusions on the early books? Surely I should give the last book, written in 1999 another chance as things were so much better then?

So I opened “The Remorseful Day”a to its Prolegomenon. Within two pages a nurse is propositioned by a patient and there is a discussion of how sexy her black stockings are.

No, I was right, these are definitely going now!