The Golden AgE of Childrens literature

1
The Golden AgE of Childrens literature

• The Victorians and the Cult of the Child

2
Predecessors to the Victorians

• Puritans
• Understanding the Bible was essential to
  salvation
• Children thus had to read
• Education essential
• Children were born full of sin

• Locke
• Children were a blank slate and needed a moral
  education
• They were corrupted by society and people, they
  werent born that way

3
The Romantic influence on Victorians

• Rousseau
• Man not inherently evil
• Imagination, individuality, originality
• Child as innocent and childhood a sacred time of
  life

4

• The evangelical view was that children were
  tainted by original sin and must be closely
  controlled in order to save their souls. Those
  influenced by Rousseau subscribed to a more
  romantic view of childhood and saw children as
  innocent and spontaneous (Lesnik-Oberstein 54).
• From the Puritans to the Victorians the view on
  children flip flops.

5
the Victorian cult of the child

• Children are born angelic
• Children were innocent and untouched by the
  wickedness of the world (Kane 47).
• Must be protected
• With increasing technological advances and
  industrialization children needed to be protected
  from these, they wanted to go back to a simpler
  time to keep the children free from the evils of
  the world and science and industry (A.W.)

6
Childhood a sacred time of life

• God has given us each our own Paradise, or own
  childhood, over which the old glories linger to
  which our own hearts cling, as all we have ever
  known of Heaven upon earthEarths weary
  wayfarers..and poor speculatorsturn back in
  thoughtto that old time of peace that village
  church that child faith which, once lost, is
  never gained again (Froude qtd. in
  Lesnik-Oberstein 55).
• Once children lose their innocence it can never
  be regained. Victorians wanted to keep children
  children as long as possible in order to retain
  their angelic selves.

7
The Victorian Era

• 1832-1901 approximation

• Need for democratic reform (American and French
  revolutions)
• Increase of the middle class
• Modern Capitalism and Industrialization
• Imperialism
• Spread of superior Anglo-Saxon civilization and
  Christianity throughout the world
• Ideology
• Emphasis on self-denial and conformity
• Giving in to external authority
• (Larson)

8
Victorian Childhood

• Penny Kanes Victorian Families in Fact and
  Fiction

• Increase in child population
• Middle class children
• Being educated for years
• Lengthened childhood for them
• Parents
• Fully responsible for the upbringing of their
  children. Rearing a child properly had now
  become so challenging and significant that only
  the finest and most dedicated mothers could hope
  to be successful (51).
• Limited contact with parents at the start of the
  era
• Governesses, servants, boarding schools
• obedience was expected to be unreasoning (43)
• Toward the later part of the era parents were to
  be spending more time with their children
• Quality time reading and buying material goods

9
Child Labor

• Disparity in classes
• Upper and middle class children were the ones
  being protected by the Victorians
• Lower class children were used for labor in
  factories
• Not until the later part of the Victorian Era is
  there child labor reform as they begin to see
  what is happening
• They begin reform to protect ALL children, not
  just some
• With industrialization there was need for work,
  children as young as 4 would be put to work in a
  factory
• We see the plight of the lower class child in
• Dickens work, as well as the failing of
• Victorian parents.

10
The Victorian child
11
Images

• Pictures often had children dressed in white,
  frills and lace, looking innocent and angelic. As
  Lesnik-Oberstein writes, we may associate
  idyllic images with that world (53).
• Kate Greenaway depicted children in a
  pre-industrial age which is classless and
  utopian childhood is thus linked with the
  pastoral (55).
• Remember that Victorians wanted to protect
  children from progression in technology and
  science, keeping them innocent from the evils of
  the world.
• Victorian schools had gardens attached to the
  classroom.
• This emphasized the importance of nature,
  communal games, and simplicity (veering away from
  industrialization and progress) (Gargano 89).
• Think of the garden as a schoolroom (93)
• The Secret Garden

12
Depictions of child in literature

• Throughout the eighteenth century and well into
  the nineteenth, childrens books took on the
  focus of Lockes philosophy and tasteLocke and
  his followers transformed the child into a
  product of his or her education (Lerer 105).
• These texts revealed the child responding to,
  absorbing, or reacting against things or actions
  (105).

13
A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh

• From Winnie the Pooh Chapter VIII in which
  Christopher Robin Leads an Expotition to the
  North Pole
• Christopher Robin
• Leads his friends
• Helps save Roo
• Comforts Eeyore
• Makes silly mistakes in understanding concepts
• The North Pole
• Didacticism
• In this tale we see Pooh being educated by his
  friends.
• Christopher Robin explains an exposition and
  provisions
• Owl explains an ambush
• Eeyore exclaims A little Consideration, a little
  Thought for Others, makes all the difference
  (Zipes 1663)

14
J.M. Barrie

• Peter Pan
• The parents are asking Wendy to grow up
• The children leave in response to this
• The parents are saddened at this loss
• This representation shows the reverence of
  Victorian families for their children
• The Victorians want to extend childhood as long
  as possible and when Mr. Darling is asking that
  Wendy grow up he is going against this concept
  and so is punished
• Peter is the ideal Victorian child, he will never
  grow up, he will perpetually remain a child

15
Dickens

• Oliver Twist
• Karin Lesnik-Oberstein writes that in some
  Victorian novels, even canonical ones such as
  Oliver Twist, institutions and people
  representing them terrorize and oppress children
  (53).
• Children in this text are taken advantage of.
• Not until Oliver is helped by a benefactor, Mr.
  Brownlow, can we see the Victorian Cult of the
  Child at work.
• Oliver is then cared for and protected removed
  from the life of crime and poverty he knew
  without parents

16
Children vs. Adults

• Lewis Carroll
• Alices Adventures in Wonderland
• None of the adults in Wonderland make any sense,
  and are all depicted as crude.
• Only Alice makes sense and is depicted
  positively.
• Adults are corrupt from society, Alice is still
  angelic and innocent.

• L.M. Montgomery
• Anne of Green Gables
• Mrs. Rachel Lynde offends Anne by labeling her
  ugly (Alston 32).
• Anne, although full of shortcomings, is still
  depicted as the victim. Victorians would have
  seen Anne as not having parents to raise her
  properly, and its societys fault, not Annes
  for her shortcomings.

It is common to find children who are more
polite than adults in modern childrens
literature (Alston 32).
17
Influencing the Child

• Daniel Defoes Robinson Crusoe

• Rousseau
• Its hero represents man in a state of nature,
  outside the boundaries of civil society,
  unaffected by what others do or think. He teaches
  children to imagine themselves in potentially
  real situationsRobinson does not foster a
  fantastic or imaginative place for the child
  (Lerer130)
• Problems
• Sarah Trimmer
• Worries about childs imagination and desire for
  adventures based on the texts natural adventure
  theme
• Response
• Change ending in a new edition to protect
  children and control them
• Now as many of my readers, from a wild
  inclination of their own, or from the advice of
  bad children, may wish to ramble from one country
  to another, they may rest assured by me, that it
  will only bring them into distress, for every
  word of my fathers advice, when he called me
  into his chamber, I fatally found strictly to be
  true.
• Chapbooks changed the narrative style from
  crazed family fantasyinto bald declaratives
  (Lerer 137).
• Meant to tone down the adventure aspect and focus
  on independence and industry (Lerer)

18
The Golden age

• Peter Pan
• Alice in Wonderland
• Tom Sawyer
• Treasure Island
• Wizard of Oz
• The Secret Garden
• The Jungle Book
• Wind in the Willows