Curious--not Colonized--George

Sometimes a monkey is only a monkey

H.A. Rey, who created Curious George with his wife, Margret, grew up in Hamburg, Germany, where he enjoyed going to the zoo. He loved animals, had a few pet marmosets, and seems to have been friendly with a chimpanzee.

Might this nicely dressed chimp be a substitute for the child he and his wife Margret never had? That seems not unreasonable. A book is an author’s child, and he and his wife worked together, writing just what pleased them, Margret Rey said. No critic seems to take seriously her remarks, although she went on to say her husband “would have these ideas. He'd say, ‘I have to have a monkey in a museum, in a spaceship.’” This speaks to a preoccupation with escape, and no wonder: The Reys’ story—being forced, in 1940, to flee Paris in a hurry because they were Jewish—adds to our understanding of their most famous children’s story. Unwillingly displaced—like George, who was perfectly happy in that tree eating his banana—they managed to get out of Nazi-occupied France, riding bicycles to Orleans, taking a train to Bordeaux, bikes to Biarritz and finally to Hendaye, at the French-Spanish border. Friendly strangers housed them in a barn and fed them; they were technically safe from Hitler after crossing the border from Lisbon into Spain, but they had Brazilian passports, which took them through Spain and Portugal and back to Brazil. A few months later, they came to New York, the manuscript about a little monkey one of the few things they’d salvaged. George, unlike his creators, enjoyed a pleasant journey in first class, good food and entertaining adventures. Why not see the book as the Reys’ preferred version of their own displacement? If only they’d had George’s experiences! If only some nice man with a yellow hat had offered them the pipe, the good meal, and the glass of wine enjoyed by lucky George! That man with the yellow hat, they’d say, he always had our back.

Instead, many contemporary critics interpret the story as an allusion to the transatlantic slave trade. A typical comment: “In several striking ways, the children’s book Curious George (1941) recalls the accounts of capture and enslavement undergone by Africans during the slave trade.” The author invites us to “position” George “as a colonial subject, and his relationship with his captor, the Man in [sic] the Yellow Hat, brings to mind parallel relationships, notably slaves to masters and children to parents.”

There is no parallel. Unless the parents are abusive.

This writer misquotes:  It’s the man “with” the yellow hat. Not “in,” because that hat is not an article of clothing from George’s point of view, but a toy, one the man lets him borrow.

Not a behavior I’d associate with a slaver.

“I was surprised by the story’s upfront and unapologetic allusion to the transatlantic slave trade,” writes another critic. An essay in The New Yorker asserts, “The text seeems oblivious to the resonances with the Middle Passage, and those resonances now feel at once buried and overwhelming.” No reason is given for this extraordinary assertion. There exists no connection between this delightful story and the Middle Passage, in which Africans were crammed like sardines into the hold of the ship, and if even half survived, the owner made a profit.

Sometimes a little monkey is just a little monkey.

The three main justifications for associating Curious George’s story with Africa and the slave trade are the following:

(1) George lives in Africa.

(2) He is captured by the man with the yellow hat, who, because he’s European and dresses safari style, represents white supremacy. (Maybe he just enjoyed shopping at Abercombie and Fitch, where my grandfather bought his camping gear?)

(3) George travels via ship, diving into the water, something enslaved Africans did to escape their terrible fate.

The following points should at least be considered:

(1) George lives in Africa because that’s where lots of monkeys live.

(2) The man with the yellow hat, clearly living a life of leisure, decides he’d enjoy George’s company, and offers him adventure and luxury. If George had remained in the jungle, he’d never have ridden in a space ship, exercised his artistic talent painting jungle scenes in a New York apartment, sailed away on a bunch of balloons or infiltrated a circus.

(3) George’s ocean dive is no act of desperation but an expression of a desire to fly. He is rescued immediately.

I find myself wondering whether anyone’s bothered to notice that the Reys were not telling the American story of the slave trade because they were not Americans. They were German Jews. George is more French than American, Paris being the Reys’ favorite city; they arrived with a completed manuscript that went through a few changes, the publisher wanting a less French name—so now the monkey is called George.

The reading parent’s attitude is typically transmitted to the child. My husband—like many Germans of a certain age—had fond memories of sitting in his mother’s lap while she read him Der Struwwelpeter, (“Shock-Headed Peter”). This German rhymed story about children who disobey their mothers tells of punishments; all involve extreme bodily injury. A gigantic “scissors-man” vaults in with shears and snips off the fingers of thumb-suckers, and a girl who plays with matches burns right up.

Shortly into his reading of the tale to our two-year-old, my husband said, “hey, let’s choose a different story.”

“Read, Daddy!” yelled the kid, tapping the book, already puffing up for a tantrum. My husband gave in, and worried our son would have nightmares. But our boy slept soundly. The next afternoon as he played in our garden with a friend, we heard him yell, “Better do what I say or I’ll cut your penis off!” We rushed out, but both children were laughing, so we left them alone. Clearly the castration imagery hadn’t disturbed our son.

I suspect it might have bothered him if my husband had made a big deal about images sure to disturb adults when they read this book. Children suss out what their parents are thinking. One mother, the very first sentence of Curious George freaking her out since she thought it referred to the slave trade, stopped reading every few sentences to ask her young daughter leading questions. How did the daughter think George felt? Did her daughter think the man with the yellow hat should take George home? The poor kid ended up telling her mother the book was “sad” and acting out (with her teddy bear) putting George in a sack and bringing him to the zoo.

There are those who assume white boys will identify themselves with the man with the yellow hat, feeling like they, too, could capture brown-furred animals or dark-skinned people. There are those who think dark-skinned children would identify with George as a captured monkey.

If that’s not racism, it’s very farfetched.

I am somebody who read her kids Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Who said stories should never be scary? Who said stories can never include beliefs I shun? Who got the idea stories could turn children into racists or colonialists?

I leave it to my readers to answer. Meanwhile, make sure your child enjoys the Curious George books. For those who still think little George represents “Colonialism and US Exceptionalism,” part of the actual subtitle of an actual book devoted to him, check out this latest from the Curious George industry, which, at last count, consisted of 203 books: