Golliwogs and Teddy Bears: Embodied Racism in

Golliwogs and Teddy Bears: Embodied
Racism in Children's Popular Culture
DONNA VARGA
T
AND R H O D A Z U K
HE FREQUENT DEPICTIONS OF GOLLIWOG AND TEDDY BEAR PAIRINGS
in early to mid-twentieth century children's illustrated stories,
published in Britain but also widely available and popular in
North America, illuminate Eurocentric ideas about African personhood. A contemporary resurgence of the pairings lends urgency to
this inquiry. Through comparative analysis of historical and recent
representations of golliwogs and teddy bears, we seek to extend
understandings of white anxiety toward persons of the African
Diaspora, and of the ways in which the pairing of white childhood
innocence with racialized texts and images enables a politically naive
reading of the latter as being unsullied by racism.
The disturbing persistence of racist ideology in popular culture is
evident in two symptomatic representations from toy collector's publications. The first, a photograph in an issue of Teddy Bear and
Friends^ shows a 1930s beat called "Guildford," his name a nostalgic
reference to the English town where the original owner lived as a
child ("Guildford" 66). On the teddy's lap is a newly manufactured
miniature golliwog. The doll has long frizzy hair, pop eyes, and wears
a minstrel costume, including white gloves and spats. It was commissioned for the photograph because, write the editors, in the past
"most British children played with teddies and golliwogs"—thus
they invoke nursery yearnings for the "good old days" represented by
"Guildford." The golliwog, created by a "golly artist," is just a
"friend." While more adult in appearance than the teddy, its tiny
size, emphasizing emasculated harmlessness protected and nursed by
the teddy's enveloping body as if an infant is a reassertion of white
The Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 46, No. 3, 2013
© 2013, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
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paternalism, reminiscent of pro-slavery rhetoric. Indeed, the ifxx and
images modulate a century-long racist aesthetic common in children's
literary culture.
A second image, produced by an Australian teddy bear maker displaying novelty toys designed for Halloween, goes further in calling
on the pro-slavery tradition of racial caricature. Carrying the theme of
teddy bear/golliwog inseparability to the point of merging the identities of both, the photograph shows a teddy bear in blackface, wearing
a fright wig and a painted on minstrel suit. The accompanying verse
explains that whether a teddy bear's costume is "sweet or horrible/
Freaky, cute, or in between," the character is "adorable" (Mutz's Tootsz). This rhetoric allows both producer and consumer of the toy to
indulge in racist nostalgia while evading responsibility for it.
The golliwog and teddy bear were paired as denizens of the childhood nursery from the early years of the twentieth century. The golliwog emerged first as a book character in 1895, and then as a toy,
while the teddy bear began as a toy in 1905 and was then featured in
illustrated stories. Over the first half of the twentieth century the
teddy bear's characterization shifted from that of boyhood mischievousness to early childhood dependency, and the golliwog from itinerant stage entertainer—bearer of the codes of black-faced minstrelsy
—to domestic servant, to nursery protege. By the second half of the
twentieth century and into the twenty-first the characters have
become worldwide icons of adult nostalgia for illusory personal and
societal "innocent" times.
As material objects, illustrated stories function as sources of knowledge that perform culture by constructing meanings, values and subjectivities. As such, children's books are social artifacts that reproduce
adult beliefs, values, and actions. For the critical reader, they provide
a means for exploring the history of ideas about human social relations
and how these have been transferred and transformed across generations. For their child readers and adult admirers, published stories are
pedagogical tools that, notwithstanding variations in the audience's
knowledge, experience, attention and motivations, allow for the possibility of transmitting a reading/listening experience that can formulate a common basis for cultural understandings. We can thereby
evaluate with some assurance their existence in relation to the authoritative ideas they convey. Illustrations evoke an emotional sensibility
in response to the story content that may or may not be supported by
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649
the text. In some instances, especially for non-literate children, images
can be more powerful than the text in knowledge production. Images
might also be a powerful source of memory and nostalgic emotion in
relation to childhood story experiences.
Although the critique of racialized illustration and stories in children's literature has been of academic interest since the late 1970s
(Dixon 94-127; MacCann & Woodward 1-12; Presiwerk 1 4 0 ^ 4 ) ,
scant attention has been directed to the history and recuperation of
the golliwog. Meanwhile, there is evidence that people of African descent have viewed the figure negatively (Coleman; Tulloch). Neither
has there been substantial critical study of the origins and development of the teddy bear figure. Most information about its history is
an idealization of and myth-making about the president after whom
it is said to have been named.
A focus on illustrated stories as a component of the socio-historical
culture of childhood, and an examination of their relationship to contemporary adult popular culture, provides the discursive context for
understanding the golliwog and teddy bear pairing as generative of
social possibilities for thinking about persons of the African Diaspora.
In addition, a demonstration of how the concept of childhood innocence is socially constructed rather than a natural state of being
(Aries; Gutman & Coninck-Smith; Varga "Constructing the Child";
Zelizer) allows us to counter popular claims that the material culture
of childhood, including stories, are apolitical.
Black and White and Read all Over
Racism against blacks has been a normative component of children's
literature from at least the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth
centuries. Dorothy Broderick, in her treatment of American children's
literature, 1820s—1920s, determined that the seven stereotypes of
blacks in American literature for adults identified by Sterling A.
Brown in 1939 holds true in American children's literature: the
contented slave; the wretched freeman; the comic Negro; the brute
Negro; the tragic mulatto; the local color Negro, the exotic primitive
There is clear evidence that racist representational practices persisted
(Dixon; Larrick). Although no such systematic analysis is available on
the subject of British and colonial children's literature, fixed practices
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Donna Varga and Rhoda Zuk
of looking are reflected in rhose texts as well; by and large, books in
Britain and its commonwealth countries represent the same narrow
range of stereotypes. These are in turn rooted in larger intellectual
discourses.
From the mid-nineteenth century, the white Eurocentric argument
of African inferiority was supported by anthropological claims that
black skin tone was evidence of incomplete evolution (Gould, Mismeasure 31-7; Kuper 1-41; Pieterse 45-51). Thus African persons
were viewed as child-like adults with a consequent inability to think
rationally that made them a danger to themselves and othets, and
legitimized their enslavement and colonization by whites. Dominant
scientific discourse gave license to imagine the human form of the
African person's body as being all but completely extinguished. Caricatured imagery provided for simian-like elongated feet, hands and
head. Alleged animal-like thickness of skin presumed immunity to
pain. Coal-black skin color marked immorality; goggle eyes, irrationality; exaggerated red lips, gluttony; wild frizzy hair, the frighteningly untamable. The African person's behaviors were defined as
including extravagant movement and voice because of an imagined
overly sensitive animal-like nervous system. Reputed preference for
pleasure rather than serious and steadfast pursuits, and inability to
attain self-control were considered as outcomes of biological intellectual deficiency.
This caricature found its most enduring depiction in the minstrel
stereotype. Originating in the US in the 1820s and a common
entertainment in Britain by the 1850s, the white performer used
burnt cork to colour his face; painted a broad band of white or red
around his mouth; put on elongated shoes to represent the supposed
ape-like feet of blacks; dressed in fitted trousers and waistcoat to
emphasize black male sexual debauchery; a tailcoat and top hat as
mockery of incomplete civility; and/or a fright wig - the long black
hair would srand on end when a cord was pulled. The minstrel spoke
in a spurious dialect; sang, danced, clowned. Black performers in
minstrel theatres were made to apply the burnt cork and paint as
well^—in effect imitating white people who imitated black people!
(Emery 197; Gilmore; Lorr 15; Mahar 1; Pieterse 156-58; Saxton
165; Turner 74).
In contrast, by the second half of the nineteenth century, white
childhood was being popularly defined by Jean-Jacques Rousseau's
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651
eighteenth-century argument as a period of moral innocence, an idea
amplified by theological assertions that white children were "angels
incarnate" who had "entered this world with the innocence and
sanctity of heaven still clinging to them" (Calvert 104—5). A widespread consciousness of the white child as God's earthly emissary was
facilitated through literary representations, perhaps especially the
1852 blond haired, blue eyed Eva of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and the 1895
golden haired Eppie oí Silas Marner (Boas 58). In the realm of visual
culture, the eighteenth-century painterly equation of "childhood with
innocence and with nature" (Higgonet 49) is, in the nineteenth
century, popularized by the production of prints of idealized child
portraits (Higgonet 51).
The belief in white childhood innocence was given scientific credence in the late nineteenth century through the application of recapitulation theory to human development by the child study
authority, G. Stanley Hall (Ross 309-40). Based on the Lamarkian
premise of inheritable abilities, recapitulation theory posited that
individual development was a successive passage through the
evolutionary phases of one's race (Gould, Ontogeny 135—47). Infants
and young children were deemed to be at a stage of unenlightened
morality analogous to animals. However, unlike the hypothetical
"animalness" of African persons, the outcome of these conflated
beliefs was an archetype of a white childhood naturally innocent of
impiety in thought and action.
The discursive innocence of white childhood was also marked by
distinct bodily features, behaviors, and setting but in this instance of
perfection rather than inferiority. Their chubby limbs symbolized
affinity to infancy, considered the most innocent of ages. Wide-open
eyes revealed a lack of worldly knowledge. Exposed translucent skin
denoted a vulnerable purity; softly curled hair signaled malleability.
Freedom from adult responsibilities and vice was represented through
playing outdoors with domesticated natute (bunnies, puppies, and
chicks) or in a nursery setting with its small-sized furniture and toys,
especially dolls and soft-cloth animals (Kline 52—61).
The ideological opposition of white and African personhood was
incorporated into children's picture book and story culture through
aesthetic techniques that elicit affective responses to make human
nature understandable within the paradigm of white racial
dominance. From the mid-nineteenth century this involved the use of
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Donna Varga and Rhoda Zuk
textual and visual formulations that evoke sensorial perceptions and
emotional responses to the threat of African "otherness" to white purity (Bernstein 30—48). For instance, the 1882 story Dottie's Big Bath
(André) conveys the distress experienced by an upper class girl when,
during a visit to the seashore, she is disconcerted by the skin color of
an African musician (Figure 1). His swarthy complexion is intended
to emphasize hers as one of angelic fairness. Although both their garments ate trimmed in orange ribbon, and their jackets have the same
green hue, his costume is typical of an "urban sambo" caricature; a
means of ridiculing blacks who have the audacity to attain through
styles of language and clothing "white,"—that is, human—culture.
That his is only a costumed innocence is conveyed through Dottie's
invocation of the white cultural mantra of the African person as pollutant, over whom even a child, if white, has the authority to insult,
FIGURE 1. André, Richard. Dottie's Big Bath, or The Sea Side. London: F.
Warne & Co, 1882; 18. Print. (Image courtesy of the Osborne Collection of
Early Children's Books, Toronto Public Library, Canada)
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653
scold and chase away: "O naughty man!" she cries "What hands! / Go
home and wash your dirty face!" (18).
The Eurocentric belief that evolutionary limitations made it
impossible for Africans to be fully civilized justified portraying the
latter as bestial. In stories and images this is revealed through fantasies of African indecency, stupidity, debauchery, and brutality. White
children were warned that they were desired victims of the African
person's gluttonous appetite for human flesh, and the African males'
insatiable sexual desire for white women. The Story of the Five Rebellious Dolls (Nesbit 1904) acts as an object lesson for children of the
dangers faced by virginal white females who might stray into the
dark continent. After running away from home the dolls find themselves in the "land of the Gimcrack Jamborees" (np). Armed with
spears the "very brown and fierce" Gimcrack Jamborees kidnap the
defenseless dolls for their chiefs pleasure. The chief propositions the
"very pretty" Pinkie. She refuses, and she and her twin, Bluey, are
forced "to dance with the Gimcrack Jamborees while [their friends]
Quang and Jim sat tightly tied up."
The Golliwog
The 1895 publication of Florence and Bertha Upton's The Adventures
of Two Dutch Dolls and a "Golliwogg" introduces an additional and
subsequently pervasive characterization of the African person in the
form of the golliwog. Florence Kate Upton, artist and illustrator,
an American born of British parents, emigrated to England in her
early twenties. Hoping to help support her family and earn her way
to painting school, she turned, like many women artists of the period, to work for the burgeoning children's book market. The design
of the golliwog was modeled on a minstrel doll she acquired as a
child from an "an American Fair" (qtd. in Davis 10). She declared
that inspiration for the character could not be explained further,
claiming that we "must fall back on the Topsy theory — 'he growed'" (qrd. in Davis 10). Despite her assertion of limited external
influence, the origins of Upton's golliwog are firmly grounded in
American and British racist popular culture, the extensiveness of
which would have been impossible to miss during her childhood
and adult life.
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Donna Varga and Rhoda Zuk
The origins of the golliwog are stressed here because the critical
attention to its derivation has been largely restricted to Florence
Upton's association with high art movements and to the character as
aesthetic inspiration."^ There is no denying the achievement represented in Upton's images, but the racism is manifest. Upton herself
discounted the racialization of the character; stressing instead that
although "ugly" he is singularly good humored, gentle, and genuine
(Davis 11). This disavowal in favor of an emphasis on the figure's
exceptionalism has persisted. The details of the golliwog's role in the
1895 story are presented here, at length, because of the book's centrality in the history of "innocent" racism in children's book culture
(the character's enthusiasts deny racist intent because he is "nice"),
and because the details have remained a constant element in golliwog
and teddy pairings.
The book's plot, rendered in verse by Florence's mother Bertha,
centers on dolls coming alive on Christmas Eve, with interactions
between the dolls and the golliwog richly illustrated. In the midst of
the dolls' play the golliwog appears and they express horror at the
spectacle: "Then all look round, as well they may / To see a horrid
sight! / The blackest gnome / Stands there alone, / They scatter in
their fright" (23). This is not just a fear of the golliwog's strange
appearance, but of the contagion represented in Dottie's Big Bath, that
threatened white persons through contact with the supposed dirtiness
of the African person's skin; it was a common message in children's
stories and soap advertisements from the late nineteenth into the
mid-twentieth centuries.
In spite of this social convention the dolls are immediately put at
ease by the golliwog's friendliness, and they proceed to engage in
competitive flirting: "Their fears allayed—each takes an arm, / While
up and down they walk; / With sidelong glance / Each tries her
chance, / And charms him with 'small talk"' (24). But here the racist
imagining of the African male's desire for white females is chaste.
The golliwog pays no heed - he is a good "boy." Still, he shows himself to be a nursery scamp, suggesting to the girls "they run away"
(47) from the toy store for a slide in the snow (Figure 2). When he
and the dolls fall, rhe golliwog is blamed and the dolls pelt him with
snowballs in the face. He is hit in both eyes and tries to run away
but the attack continues until he successfully strikes rhem down,
from the back, with "monster balls" (55). A few verses later he falls
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655
FIGURE 2. Upton, Bertha, and Florence Kate Upton. The Adventures of Two
Dutch Dolls and a "Golliwog". London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1895: np.
Print.
through the ice, and the girls have to endanger their own lives in
order to fish him out of the water. They carry him home in their
arms, a pathetic "leaden weight," his lack of manly forritude proven
by his "faintly beating heart" (62).
The golliwog character was immediately popular, and in the Uptons' twelve subsequent golliwog stories, only his name is featured
in the titles. In these books he does not always wear the minstrel
attire but dons clothing appropriate for the action and settings. He
instigates adventures, plots exotic travels and designs the costumes.
Several stories focus on his experiments with new technologies such
as automobiles, air balloons and bicycles. He revels in the opportunities available at the cusp of the twentieth century but in a reflection of racist beliefs about the African's dimwittedness, he remains
bound to the Eurocentric discourse of being a "bungling imitator "
(Emery 209). His escapades always result in disaster and cause the
dolls the shock and discomfort of accidents and pratfalls. Invariably, the golliwog suffers physical indignities, but true to the cultural fiction that the African person feels little pain, he recovers
quickly.
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Donna Varga and Rhoda Zuk
Including the golliwog in mutual adventures with the white
female dolls appears to allow for the possibility of black and white
co-existence—at least at the realm of childhood fantasy, and only
with built-in limitations—and is a contrivance that is repeated in
later teddy and golliwog pairings. On the one hand, the golliwog's
dandyish clothes, exaggetated facial characteristics, and errors of
judgment maintain him as primitive and potentially dangerous. He
can, therefore, serve as a target of punishing assaults to keep him
in his place. On the other hand, his not-so-smart character renders
him ideologically controllable; the dolls' willingness to accompany
him on adventures enables white children (and their parents) to
undetstand him as a sexual neuter, and thus a safe nursery companion. These elements of the golliwog's personality reflect the contradictory social beliefs dominant in Western societies that have been
used to justify corporal and supervisory discipline of African
persons.
Neither the name nor appearance of the original golliwog was patented, allowing for multiple variations of image, character and theme,
many of which in the early twentieth century were overtly hateful.
One of the most pervasive depictions was as companion to the teddy
bear. In this paiting the stereotypical features of the golliwog are usually maintained within the strictures of subservient compliance. It is
also in this pairing that the teddy bear's childlike innocence is
employed as a discursive tool that, for contemporary golliwog
fans, symbolically erases both the teddy's tacist acts toward the golliwog and the racist meanings of the golliwog in childhood and adult
popular culture.
Best Friends
In populat culture, the teddy bear's origin is based on a mythicized
rendering of President Theodore Roosevelt as animal welfare advocate
who, during a November 1902 hunt, ensured the survival of a captive
bear. This fabled beginning is refuted by ptess accounts. On November 14, the first day of the hunt, a bear flushed by the dogs was
chased for hours until it entered a water hole ("One Bear Bagged" 1).
The dogs mauled the bear who in turn attacked them; Holt Collier,
the esteemed African American hunter and guide who owned the dogs
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657
sought to save them and smashed the bear's head with his gun, then
roped the animal to a tree (Buchanan 169^70). Roosevelt was retrieved
from the campsite where he was lunching in order to shoot the bear.
He declined, as it was "unsporting" to shoot an animal beaten unconscious by another and claim hunter's rights, and had it killed by knife
(Varga "Teddy's Bear" 100). The meat was consumed over the next
few meals ("Quiet Day" 1). Details of the hunt and bear's demise were
published in the Washington Post of November 15, 1902. Clifford K.
Berryman, cartoonist for the Washington Post, depicted the event with
a drawing of a large bear pulling strongly against the rope wrapped
around its neck ("Drawing the Line in Mississippi" 1).
Cultural coding of the teddy bear as innocent child resides in displacement of the brutality of the hunt and Berryman's sardonic iconography of Roosevelt's predilection for excessive animal slaughter,
with four mythological events (Varga "Gifting the Bear" 72—75).
Firstly, that Roosevelt refused to kill a (variously ill, sick, starved,
female, or young) bear and ordered the animal released. Secondly,
that Berryman's cartoon depicted the bear as a small, quivering animal. Thirdly, that this cartoon immediately inspired the creation and
selling of a soft cloth bear toy simultaneously by American storekeepers Rose and Morris Michtom, and Germany's toy manufacturer
Margarete Steiff. Fourthly, that the public's reverence for Roosevelt,
love of Berryman's cartoon bear, and adoration of the toy's features
sparked an instantaneous exultation of the teddy bear as representative of childhood. This sentimentalizing of the teddy as being borne
out of the humane grace of Roosevelt becomes a tool of racial innocence, explained by Berenstein as a means "of deflection, a not-knowing or obliviousness" (41), through which the character's pairing with
racialized African persons is a means of refuting claims of perpetuating racism.
Contrary to the myth, American interest in soft cloth bear toys
only occurred after Roosevelt's 1905 spring Colorado hunting trip.
Widely described in newspaper stories during its occurrence, Roosevelr also provided an account in a 22 page Scribner's article ("A Colorado Bear Hunt"). Illustrated with photos of treed and dead bears,
Roosevelt enthusiastically detailed his bear killings, including of
yearlings. In December of that year a German made soft cloth bear
toy, with features similar to wild bears, became a popular seller. Its
attraction for children, especially boys, was at least in part attrib-
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Donna Varga and Rhoda Zuk
uted to a desire to emulate Roosevelt as hunter ("Teddy Bear Hunter" D6; "Teddy Bear Craze" l4). The toy's popularity grew exponentially over the next two years as an outcome of Seymour Eaton's
Roosevelt Bears cartoons and books, a refashioning of the character
from wild animal to protohuman bear cub in Berryman's cartoons
and by toy manufacturers, and the character's association with emotional markers of white childhood innocence (Varga "Babes in the
Woods" 200-02).
Early on the teddy bear, depicted as a young boy, was racially
paired with the golliwog in children's book culture. In "The Cautious
Golliwog" (70) the teddy bear, who is collecting apples from a tree,
drops one on the golliwog's face, flattening his nose. The tale is etiological, intended as an explanation for why some African persons have
wider nostril bridges than some whites. The "different species" paradigm that holds persons of African descenr as having thick skin,
means physical atrocities such as breaking their noses are rendered in
white racist culture as humor, nor violence. The teddy's act as boyhood hijinks makes it, for uncritical readers, mischievousness not
racist.
The teddy's childlike personae became a fixture of stories, enabling
rhe commonplace characterization of unknowingness in his relationship to the golliwog. While the Uptons' golliwog initiates adventures,
as the teddy's "friend" he is cast in the role of helpmate. He usually wears the minstrel/ butler outfit and follows behind the teddy
bear. Their association could be "read" by whites as a normative
portrayal of themselves and African persons. The 1909, "A rainy
day story" makes this clear. Jack's toys come alive and Jack queries
the golliwog on his tolerance of abuse: '"Don't you ever get cross,"
said Jack, "when I push and throw you about?" The golliwog tells
him, "no," because "I'm so used to it, you see'" (np). Two images
accompanying the story mark out the golliwog's relationship to the
teddy bear as being parallel to that of African persons to white
humans. One shows an adult golliwog as nursery caregiver, pushing
a pram filled with teddy bears and dolls. Another shows an African
male adult who wears a butler's uniform running behind, and
almost beneath, the tail of a wooden horse on which a white child
is astride (Figure 3).
"The What's O'clock Speaks," of 1914 vividly confirms this affiliation. In the story the nursery toys are giving a party, but there is a
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659
FIGURE 3. "A Rainy Day Story." Holiday Times. Ed. Eric Vredenburg. London:
Raphael Tuck & Sons, 1909. np. Print. (Image courtesy of the Osborne
Collection ot Early Children's Books, Toronto Public Library, Canada)
crisis: no striped cinnamon balls. The teddy is in charge; wearing a
coachman's hat and coat he leads the other toys in a horse-pulled cart
to find some. Jinkles, the golliwog footman, who wears carpet slippers rather than shoes, accompanies them because "he had to carry
the basket" (np). He is the one who alights in order to open a gate,
but he must be rather slow as he is ordered by the teddy to "hurry
up." Knowing his presumed cultural place, he does so with alacrity,
"jump[ing} up in a great hurry." When the cart gets stuck, the golliwog is back behind the horse to push the animal, teddy and company
up the hill (Figure 4).
Through the 1920s and 1930s there are few pairings of the golliwog and teddy bear in children's stories. This might be contributed
to by an overall decline in teddy bear stories with its popularity temporarily eclipsed by the Winnie-the-Pooh character. When the teddy
bear and golliwog do appear together they are mostly featured singularly and in illustrations, and neither as primary characters. But
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Donna Varga and Rhoda Zuk
FIGURE 4. The "What's O'clock Speaks." Blackie's Children's Annual. London:
Blackie & Son, 1914: 64-66. Print.
differentiation still exists, with the golliwog's wide-eyed stare blank,
his exaggerated smile fixed while the teddy bear smiles in response to
hugs from a child or otherwise has agency and plays with human
children. In Mary Tourtel's Rupert the Bear stories, initiated as newspaper cartoons in 1920 and then published in storybook form, the
golliwog first appears in 1922. "Golli" is an adult, but only comes up
to Rupert's shoulder in height. He wears the minstrel costume, his
lips are extremely enlarged, his hair wildly spiked—he is grotesque.
His continued singular status is evident in his not being referred to
as a "coon" as are other black characters in the stories — a detail that
enables Rupert supporters to deny the golliwog as being a racialized
character.
In children's popular culture of the 1940s the golliwog returns,
along with the teddy bear, with stereotypical features intact. The golliwog and teddy bear are also the main protagonists of a series of
Embodied Racism
Constance Wickham's titles published by Collins {Golliwog Picture
Book; Teddy Golly and Bunny; Teddy Bear's Circus). Reproduced by
Racine in the U.S., Spain and France, in which the golliwog's role as
adult supervisor is more fully emphasized; he acts as the teddy's
waiter, valet, and chauffer. Like the Uptons' golliwog, "Golly" is
loyal, cheerful, and always attentive to the teddy bear's needs — and
again finds himself at animal's butt end (Figure 5). In the Rupert
books and these, the teddy bear is a young child who displays the
egocentrism of this developmental period, whereby external events
are interpreted in telation to the self, permitting him to be even less
responsible than in earlier periods for his behavior toward the golliwog. This devolution makes it acceptable in Eurocentric culture for
the teddy to be seemingly unaware that the golliwog is anything
other than an aid for achieving his own desires.
FIGURE 5. The Golliwog Picture Book. 111. A. E. Kennedy. London: The Children's
Press, nd. c. 1940: np. Print.
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Donna Varga and Rhoda Zuk
In these stories the golliwog is devoid of threat, so that the representation constitutes mimicry of the racial etiquette expected of African persons. Elements of his incompetence persist, in that he is still
not a good enough guardian to prevent the teddy, as with the Uptons' Dutch Dolls, from engaging in play that results in mishaps.
However, in the world of white childhood innocence all ends well for
the teddy, and only the golliwog, true to his not-too-smart stereotypical origins, is hurt.
Including the golliwog in adventures with the teddy bear and
with "real" white children functions to dilute criticisms of racism
since these children (and their teddy beat counterparts) are considered as being free of racist ideas and intent even as the racism is
reified in and through the stories (Figure 6). For instance, in Maxie
and the Gollybear (Myers) a dog carries home a headless teddy. The
blonde haired, blue eyed and short-skirted Maxie looks for a solution to the toy's condition. She finds a discarded golliwog head
amongst her other toys — his lesser status communicated by Maxie
FIGURE 6. "Is Anyone at Home?" The Jack and Jill Annual Book. London:
Amalgamated Press, 1959: 71. Print.
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never having been concerned about his disembodied figure. She
affixes the teddy's body to the head, but it is an unsatisfactory
solution. Instead of the story being an elucidation of interracial harmony mediated by the child's actions, her creation is treated as if a
monster, albeit benign rather than menacing. Maxie travels to the
Toyland Hospital where "GoUybear" is reconstructed "to make him
look like a golly should" (np) in a complete minstrel outfit. The
teddy's contrasting nakedness denotes his innocent status. The golliwog's place behind the teddy, rather than as part of him, is cheerfully reasserted through illustration, and white hegemony
maintained (Figure 7).
During the 1950s the golliwog and teddy bear were regularly featured in Enid Blyton's output. Apart from the Noddy books, in which
they rarely interact, they are included as toys co-engaging in various
banalities at picnics and play, where the golliwog reveals a selfish and
impulsive personality. In The Golliwog Gru?nbled, he runs away from
home because the other toys will not let him be a mean tease. They
are happy he is leaving; "'We're all tired of him. It will be very, very
now their usual s
and Golly were just
"Was it a dream?'
"Yet before I went
bear and now i i
Te
DC
\-
if
T(
it
a
th;
FIGURE 7. Myers, Alys. Maxie and the GoUybuir. 111. Maxwell. London: Birn
Brothers, nd, c. 1950s: np. Print.
664
Donna Varga and Rhoda Zuk
FIGURE 8. Wickham, Constance. "Teddy's Funny Sums." Teddy, Golly and
Bunny. 111. A. E. Kennedy. London: Collins, nd. c. 1940-1950s: np. Print.
peaceñjl without Golly'" (np). But he finds life on the outside even
less welcoming and, chastised, returns.
Other authors exploit the Eurocentric fear of the African male as
dangerous that gained momentum in reaction to civil rights activism. In "Forty Winks" (1950) the teddy bear, Jimmy Bruin, is
awoken by "Golly" throwing a brick at him for snoring. Golly
challenges Jimmy ro a brawl, "but Bruin was sleepy and did not
enjoy the fight" (np). He jumps on a rocking horse to get away
and Golly pursues him in a wind-up car. However, this dangerous
African still retains the stereotypical quality of indolence, for he is
too lazy to continue the chase, deciding instead to take a nap. But
the portrayal of golliwog violence against white civility is most
pronounced in Blyton's notorious 1951 Here Comes Noddy Again! In
this story the victim is the defenseless white elf-child Noddy, who
is kidnapped, stripped naked, and left behind by a gang of golliwogs who steal his car.
The teddy bear and other representatives of white childhood,
unencumbered by adult vices and knowledge, can be called upon to
figuratively cleanse such stories of racist meanings or intent. To
think otherwise requires imbuing the teddy bear with negative
qualities, as well as the childhood and children he is intended to
symbolize. His white childhood innocence frees him to blithely
wave on characters of the despicable Ten Little Niggers verse as they
Embodied Racism
665
march, blissfully ignorant, toward their deadly fates (Figure 8)
(Wickham np.).
The Innocent Past
Disentangling the discourse of white childhood innocence from racist
representations in imagery and text reveals how hearkening back to
"innocent" times is more than a remembering of an idealized childhood when things were "better" because one did not have adult knowledge. It is a discursive strategy through which racist images and texts
can be transmuted into nostalgic memories of an imagined age and
time innocent of racism — an assertion of racial power to reinstate a
hierarchical order of human values that serves white interests. While
intense civil rights activism helped diminish the production of racist
children's book culture, new editions of original versions of such
stories are available on library shelves accessible to children and
available for purchase from bookstores and on-line publishers. Blyton's
racist stories have not prevented her from being designated Britain's
best-loved author by a 2008 poll conducted by Costa Book Awards.
The organization's website proclaims that "many a childhood was
brightened by the company of Enid Blyton's famous characters and fascinating story lines. And now it seems that those memories last well
into adulthood" ("Revealed"). In addition, toy collectors through their
magazines and Internet sites have attempted to recuperate racialized
story characters on the grounds of Eurocentric tradition. Dishearteningly, British souvenir shops now commonly stock golliwog paraphernalia—figurines, key chains, soft toys, and other commodities. In
2008, the Duchess of Cornwall, the wife of Prince Charles, was caught
off guard after she was seen carrying a golliwog key chain at a public
function (Barkham). In the following year, the Queen of England
removed golliwog dolls from a shop on her Sandringham estate only
after a national scandal that arose when a BBC announcer referred to
an international tennis star as a golliwog (English).
In 2011, two prospective town councilors in Britain were suspended from the Conservative Party after they posed online with golliwogs {The Telegraph). In 2012, a member of a brass band apologized
for wearing a "golliwog-style mask" during a performance of "Hello
Dolly" {BBC News).
666
Donna Varga and Rhoda Zuk
In this article, white anxiety concerning African Otherness has been
discussed in relation to the production of the teddy bear as innocent
white child, and of the golliwog, which, despite being in possession of
the accoutrements of civilization, never attains full humanness. By
situating the golliwog and teddy bear stories within the nursery
setting with and as toys their relationship is turned into one of childhood play, muting recognition that these materials reproduce racist
social relations. Their pairing in children's culture has enabled contemporary adult supporters of racialized characters and of such books
to espouse a personal, emotional connection to a childhood self that
they do not associate with racism, and to deny a socio-cultural relationship between such books and the history of racism against African
persons. Vociferous arguments to this effect are regularly posted on
Amazon.com "reviews" and other Internet discussion forums.
For the contemporary "innocent" reader, books that include the
golliwog or other racialized characters might be recognized as demonstrating the "bad taste" of an earlier time when "that is just how
things were" but not as having enduring racist qualities and not as
intending to teach racism. The claim of being untainted by preformed racist or literary knowledge enables the declaration of oneself
as having a child-like and thus authentic understanding of the meaning of racialized characters. An insistence that no one should see as
tacist the content of such stories because they were intended for children, or because of their "innocent" characters, imposes authority over
interpretation by positioning the idealization of the childhood self as
the morally legitimate claim. A fan of Rupert has responded to the
decision by its publisher to not teproduce the most insidious of the
Annuals, by accusing their critics of perpetuating racism:
The i960 annual sees Rupert land on a tropical island where
friendly black children welcome Rupert with a meal of exotic
fruits. The island is called Coon Island, and the inhabitants are
called Coons. To censor this is to give support to and condone the
name Coon used in a racist pejorative manner. The name was used
innocently, and should be back to being an innocent name. If people want to be racist or nasty, they will twist original meanings.
(Derwent)
It is possible for young children to be unaware of racist meanings
in stories, and enjoying such books as a child does not necessarily
Embodied Racism
lead to being an unreconstructed racist. However, when adults call
upon the personal childhood self in order to deny social knowledge
of racism, they engage in a display of white cultural power. The
argument that racism is a personal manifestation rather than a
systemic social injustice confuses meaning with intent and allows for
the recuperation of racialized characters as long as associated with
acceptable contemporary circumstance, for instance selling newly
designed golliwog "badges," including pairings with Rupert, to raise
money for medical research ("Richard Burton"). Benevolent use of
golliwog imagery does not turn racism on its head, but fortifies it
by making it seemingly immune to criticism. Thus, when partnered
with the teddy bear, the golliwog and other black stereotypical
characters become, for white adults, a source of comfort in challenging times.
Notes
1. Teddy Bear and Friends is a collector's magazine that has been promoting golliwogs as teddy
bear's best friend in articles, set pieces and advertisements since 1985.
2. Florence Kate Upton invented the name "goUiwogg"; storywriters, illustrators, and doll
manufacturers soon adapted the figure and changed the spelling to "golliwog." By the
1920s, the diminutive "golly" was in common use, especially in storybooks. This article uses
the most popular spelling of "golliwog." The dolls of the story's title were modeled after
jomted turned wooden figures that were mass produced as children's toy figurines in the
nineteenth century, often produced in Germany (thus the reference to 'Dutch,' from Deutsch).
3. Florence Upton's first biographer refers to the toy as "a nigger doll" (Lyttelton 9).
4. D. Barton Johnson explains the effect of the original children's books imagery on Vladimir
Nabokov; Greta Little and Marilynn Olson comment on Sir Kenneth Clark's childhood
attachment to the books; Olson as well as Norma Davis focus on Upton's contributions to
art; Claude Debussy, having read Upton's books to his young son, composed "The Golliwog's Cakewalk" as part of his Children's Suite. Two exceptions are articles by MacGregor
and Pilgrim, each of which is concerned with the origins and development of the golliwog
figure as manifestly racist.
5. Eric Bhgh and Sir Kenneth Clark each praise the energy and originality of the Uptons' golliwog books in the recounting of his Edwardian childhood (Bligh 164-74; Clark 6-7). Both
Davis and Olson present persuasive analyses of Upton's contributions to children's book
illustration and narrative lines.
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Donna Varga is Professor in the Department of Child and Youth Study,
Mount Saint Vincent University, Canada. Her research areas include the
sociocultural histories of childhood, children's media cultures, and culture
beliefs of child development.
Rhoda Zuk is Associate Professor in the Department of English, Mount
Saint Vincent University, Canada. Her research areas include children's litetature, women's litetary tradition, and theories of representation.
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