Few writers have so successfully appealed to children as Roald Dahl. His readers, of more mature years as well, now have a chance to read a previously unpublished chapter of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The book has never been out of print since its first publication in 1964, yet this “missing” chapter failed to make the final version.
The chapter tells a sobering tale of what happens in the factory’s vanilla fudge room and was thought too anarchic for the sensibilities of children 50 years ago. It is in fact in line with Dahl’s approach, which wondrously subverts the canons of conventional good taste. His stories are part of a literary genre whose imagery inspires children’s imaginations by its shockingness.
The fairytales of Charles Perrault abound with the violent and fantastical. Little Red Riding Hood tells of subterfuge and slaughter. The same is true of the Brothers Grimm. Their great story The Juniper Tree recounts murder and cannibalism.
Grimm was aptly said by W H Auden in 1944 to be “among the few indispensable, common-property books upon which western culture can be founded . . . It is hardly too much to say that these tales rank next to the Bible in importance.”
Dahl’s brutal and brilliant fantasies are part of this great tradition. What parent or grandparent, tiring of the saccharine characters of much popular children’s entertainment, has not wished for a story or verse in the manner of Hilaire Belloc’s Cautionary Tales for Children? There we find the reassurance that Matilda, for telling lies, is burnt to death, and that Rebecca, who slammed doors for fun, perishes miserably.
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Only this week, Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes was removed from the shelves of a supermarket chain in Australia after a complaint about its unsuitable language. Roald Dahl, the master of the macabre, would surely be delighted.