No.81 - The Hundred and One Dalmatians

I will begin with a word of warning, never, I repeat, NEVER trust a Disney film! As we’ve previously discovered in my post about Mary Poppins, Walt Disney changed everything! The characters you thought you knew are totally different when you read the book, even the story itself can be hard to recognise once you strip back the perky animation, catchy songs and overly polished storylines. So if you’re reading this humming “Cruella De Vil” (which I am!) then stop right now! There are no jazzy tunes in this story, just a tale of bereft doggy parents and the extent of their love!  Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Dodie Smith’s The One Hundred and One Dalmatians, a classic of children's literature, not just a Disney film!

Now, I'm not criticising the Disney film, in fact it's one of my favs, but reading the book just makes you realise how many liberties Mr Disney took when he made his films. So let me start by telling you a few of the differences between the book and the beloved film.

Firstly, Perdita is not the mother of the puppies, this is instead a lovely dog called Missus. When Missus has 15 puppies and can't feed them all at once Perdita is brought in as a surrogate mother to half the pups. But her story is not a happy one. She is found starving on the side of the road, after setting out to find her puppies who have been stolen. So when Missus and Pongo's puppies are stolen too she goes through the grief all over again! You can see why Disney chose to leave this out of his film!

Secondly, the story is told mainly from the dogs point of view, in fact the humans barely even feature, and when they do they are referred to as the dogs 'pets', rather than the other way around. This is a nice touch, which gives the book a very different feel to the film. The animals in the book are cleverly anthropomorphised so that you follow their journey, and feel their emotions just as you would a group of human characters. My only complaint would be that, although written by a woman, the book is a little lacking in its portrayal of its female characters. Poor old Missus is as ditsy as they come!

One thing that doesn't differ from the film however, is the evilness of Cruella De Vil (I can't type her name without singing the song!)! She is horrid! In the book we are introduced to her long suffering husband, who is a furrier ( he makes furs), and we learn that she forces him to make furs out of anything she fancies! Unlike Cruella, he is not an evil mastermind, but stuck under the reign of his nasty wife! Another strange fact about Cruella is that she loves pepper, as one of the puppies finds out when he bites her and she tastes hot and peppery! Everything about her is vile and cruel, as her name suggests!

It turns out that Cruella is hoarding Dalmatian puppies at her ancestral home, Hell Hall. She is keeping them well fed and happy until they get big enough to be killed and skinned!! Using their own doggy communication system, the Twilight Barking (which you may remember from the film), Missus and Pongo discover that there puppies have been taken to the hall, and they set out to rescue them.... but come back with a lot more than they set out for!

This is a delightful book, and I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone! The characters are beautifully written and the language and tone is in no way condescending to it's young audience. It is quite a grown up book in many ways, but the story has all the appeal of a children's classic. And what's more, there's a sequel!

Thanks for reading, L x

Next up is a collections of poems, something new to the blog. I will be looking at Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T.S Elliott.