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This is not a Wikipedia article: It is an individual user's work in progress page, and may be incomplete and/or unreliable.
Victorian Childhood
editTalk about a Victorian Childhood and how it affected Children's literature
Imperialism in Upbringing
editThe imperialist ideology that the physically and economically powerful are morally superior is reflected in the upbringing of a Victorian child though parental and school systems. As there is a colonized and colonizer relationship, there is a similar relationship between child and adult. In 1834, the Reverened Jacob Abbot in Parental Duties in the Promotion of Early Piety describes the ideal relationship as one where the child submits and obeys an adult not because of reason, but because the adult's authority over a child is unlimited and unqualified. Children are to do what an adult commands and do not do what an adult forbids. Abbot claims the nature of disobedience is irreligion and immorality.[1] A child should moderate his emotions and refrain from emotional outbursts for fear of humiliation, rejection, or corporal punishment. This distinction between child and adult is furthered with parental physical distancing, and thus emotional distancing, by the use of baby bottles, pacifiers, bassinets, cribs, and nannies. The school and church systems mirrored the parental systems establishing a status quo of imperialist ideology and social hierarchy on behalf of the education of culture and morality.
Authors
editFor now, discussing specific authors. Later, merge into general themes.
Charlotte Mary Yonge
editCharlotte Yonge wrote historical talesa and stories about large families growing up with Victorian childcare and schooling.b The families were typical of the era being self-contained and self-sufficient in its interests, entertainment, and hopes. These close-knit families were centred around discussions and were also deeply religious. Religious fascinations included not only belief, but its traditions, its culture, and its entertainment. Yonge's stories, unlike previous era, were not primarily religious or moral but rather combined elements of Christianity with daily life.c Christian fortitude and religious faith were principles in moral standing. Typical of Victorian times, Yonge believed that women were inferior to men, "that there is this inequality there is no reasonable doubt. A woman of the highest faculties is of course superior to a man of the lowest: but she never attains to anything like the powers of a man of the highest ability."[2]d A woman may be allowed to think for herself but if there is a disagreement then should accept the man's side.e
Yonge's works are very honest because she wrote much of her life into her books. Her observations of people living, working, and playing together helped in her characterization. f. She sometimes transcribed actual conversation into her stories.[3] The attitudes of the Victorian era are mirrored as well, for example, sensibility during deathbed scenes and the disregard towards hygiene and the invalid. Overall, Yonge's works are rarely recalled and are mostly out of print.
Margaret Scott Gatty
editMargaret Scott Gatty wrote similar books to Yonge but focused on other interests than Christianity. Yonge emphasized Christian living with the church as the centre of the family. Gatty's Parables of Nature is a moral lesson written with clarity and grace. Children enjoyed these talking animals whose life experiences were often very accurate for she was a scientist and had a touch of drama.[4]a She also wrote stories realistic stories about large groups of boys and girls entertaining each other with private theatre, storytelling, games, and jokes. b
Juliana Horatia Ewing
editJuliana Horatia Ewing stories combined reality and fantasy.a Ewing stated, "My aim is to imitate the old 'originals' and I mean to stick close to orthodox traditions. . . One of my theories is that all fairy tales should be written down as if they were oral tradition." [5] b Her themes deal with those which do not change; childrenc , flowers, animals, and the countryside.
Mary Louisa Molesworth
editMary Louisa Molesworth's wrote two kinds of books, realistic tales of girls and boys in a natural and lifelike way, and, fanciful tales which combine magic and reality with warmth and gentle humoura . Her talent was in creating realistic characters who could cross from the everyday world to a believable wonderland. [6]b She was gifted in revealing the enchantment of ordinary occurrences and objects.
Foreign Settings
editSome books had foreign scenes with familiar elements of nature. Many of these were of peasant life and introduced hardship as well as pleasures.a In England, one familiar setting was the schoolhouse for boys were actually taught in them. There is a realistic portrayal of a schoolboy's thoughts and feelings, as well as nearly-priggish moral teachings and excessive sentimentality.b Christian Socialists like Thomas Hughes and Charles Kingsley believed that a personal ideal existed in bodily strength, manliness, readiness, eagerness, to fight for a just cause, resistance to bullying, sympathy and help for the weak, warmth and loyalty of friendship, and a religious belief that meant turning to God.[7] While Hughes wrote school stories, Kingsley wrote historical romance and fantasy stories.c Kinsley thought, "There are no fairy tales like these old Greek ones for beauty, wisdom, and truth" and, when writing fairy tales, one should "translate the children back into a new old world, and make them, as long as they are reading, forget the present."[8] The Water-Babies is a fantasy story of adventures with sea-creatures and fascinating characters.
Fairy Tales
editnot actually Victorian England, but related
Some fairy tales had human royalty and human characters talented with magic and the paranormal. Some other stories were of mythical and legendary creatures and of talking animals. And some others had inanimate objects which could think and talk with human-like personality and individuality.
Nonsense
editLewis Carroll's Alice books were written by both pleasure of the author himself and for pleasure for the children to read. [9] He drew his inspiration from his young friend Alice Liddell who, in 1932, when 80, was presented an honorary degree (Doctor of Letters) with the citation, awakening with her girlhood's charm the ingenious fancy of a mathematician . . . the moving cause . . . of this truly noteworthy contribution to English Literature.[10] Not only did his writing include everyday speech, his writings are now included in everyday speech. His characterization are clear and direct and the personalities are distinct and individual. In the Alice books there are parodies of many poems: Southey's The Old Man's Comforts as You are old, Father William, Resolution and Independence as A-Sitting on a Gate, and Taylor's The Star as Twinkle, twinkle, little Bat! He also wrote other nonsense poems such as The Hunting of the Snark (1876) and Phantasmagoria (1869). Carroll's only other book for children, Sylvie and Bruno (1889), combined a weaving setting of fantasy and reality with insights into philosophy, religion, arts, and science. Unlike his other works, it is not well known, well read or had an significant impact. [11]
Edward Lear was another writer whose books A Book of Nonsense (1846) and More Nonsense (1872) were of a variety of rhymes and pictures. His works created a world of its own, different from the logic of the real world but with a "logic" consistent of its own fantasy world of nonsense.[12] His works are very influential, original, creative, and humorous.a
Contemporaries such as George MacDonald, Jean Ingelow, Dinah Maria Mulock, Mary de Morgan, and Oscar Wilde, wrote fairy tales set in a realistic atmosphere with a spiritual or magical quality.[13] b
Local Setting
editA simple homely fashion with everyday life appealed to many of the time. It was a clear and realistic story for young people. To note, the girl heroine was steadily growing more human and natural. In Louisa Alcott's works, such as Little Woman (1868), she gave girls truth and warmth. Her writing provides both positive and negative sides to character. Works such as hers gave a true lifestyle. and human characterization. A lifestyle of hopes and successes and of mistakes and failures. These universal features span across time, place, culture, and people.
Adventure
editBooks progressed from instrumental works into the free world of creativity, imagination, and expression where there were no obvious morals. They became pure entertainment. In the genre of adventure, Captain Fredrick Marryat wrote of the naval life of a youth. He did not romanticize the hard life where inexperienced boys were to learn by overcoming adversity and hardship. However, there were successes and some scenes of humour.
Stories served an escape from Victorian life. Even with the benefits from the Industrial revolution, life still had many slums, poverty, and ignorance.
Illustrators
editSteel engraving reached its height at the quarters around the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. However, by the mid-19th century, woodcut practically replaced it.
Sir Henry Cole stated, "[Children's Literature] will be illustrated but not after the usual fashion of children's books, in which it seems to be assumed that the lowest kind of art is good enough to give the first impressions to a child. In the present series, though the statement may perhaps excite a smile, the illustrations will be selected from the works of Rafaelle, Titian, Holbein, and other old masters. Some of the best modern artists have kindly promised their aid in creating a taste of beauty in little children."
Non-Colour
editGeorge Cruikshank illustrated Grimm's Fairy Tales when they were translated into English in 1823. Richard Doyle also drew of the fairy world but his works had a gentler touch and he preferred elves to giants. Arthur Hughes's illustrations, mostly associated with George Macdonald, are not figures of fun but suggest the spiritual qualities of the tales. Alternatively, Eleanor Vere Boyle's pictures had a naive simplicity which made them nearly tangible. John Tenniel illustrated Alice's Adventures in Wonderland with such superb ingenuity, humour, imagination, and harmony with the story that without his illustrations and the story are nearly synonymous.
Colour
editEdmund Evans had pioneering work in the field of colour printing.
Walter Crane had ornate designs which he stated, "all sorts of subsidiary detail that interested me and often made them the vehicles for my ideas in furniture and decoration." Such detail, but sometimes difficult for children. Randolph Cadlecott's animals come to life in his The Complete Collection of Pictures and Songs, with a preface by Austin Dobson. His works are a good example of true gentle humour.
Kate Greenway loved nature's flowers, gardens, fields, and hedgerows. She later said, "You can go into a beautiful new country, if you stand under a large apple tree and look up to the blue sky through the white flowers. I suppose I went to it very young before I could really remember and that is why I have such a wild delight in cowslips and apple-blossom - they always give me the strange feeling of trying to remember, as if I had known them in a former world."[14]
Gallery of Authors
editVictorian Children's Literature authors and a famous selected work.
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Not included (no pics on wiki) Henry Cadwallader Adams, Christabel Rose Coleridge, Evelyn Everett-Green, Agnes Giberne, L. T. Meade, W.H.G. Kingston, Mary Louisa Molesworth, William Brighty Rands Charlotte Maria Tucker
Not included (no books on wiki) Anna Maria Hall, Richard Jefferies, Elizabeth Missing Sewell, Flora Annie Steel Hesba Stretton Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna Charlotte Mary Yonge Eleanor Vere Boyle
Sources
editSee Also
editNotes
editCharlotte Mary Yonge
- ^a: The Chaplet of Pearls (1868), The Little Duke (1854), The Lances of Lynwood (1855), The Prince and the Page (1865), Two Penniless Princesses (1891), The Dove in the Eagle's Next (1866), The Caged Lion (1870), A Book of Golden Deeds (1864).
- ^b: Heartsease (1854), The Daisy Chain (1856), The Pillars of the House (1873), Magnum Bonum (1880).
- ^c: The Heir of Redclyffe (1853).
- ^d: Henrietta's Wish (1850), Womankind (1877).
- ^e: The Clever Woman of the Family (1865).
- ^f: Countess Kate (1862)
Margaret Scott Gatty
Juliana Horatia Ewing
Mary Louisa Molesworth
Foreign Settings
- ^a Flora Shaw's Castle Blair (1878), Harriet Martineau's The Playfellow (1841), Jane Andrew's The Seven Little Sisters who live on the Round Ball that floats in the Air (1861), Mary Maple Dodge's Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates (1865), Johanna Spyri's Heidi (1880)
- ^b Thomas Hughes's Tom Brown's School Days (1857), Thomas Hughes's Tom Brown at Oxford (1861), Harriet Martineau's The Croften Boys (1841), Frederic Farrar's Eric, or Little by Little; A Tale of Roslyn School (1858)
- ^c Historical romance: Hereward the Wake, Westward Ho! (1855). Fantasy: The Heroes, or Greek Fairy Tales for my Children (1856), The Water-Babies; A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby (1863)
Nonsense
- ^a Edward Lear's Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany and Alphabets (1871) and Laughable Lyrics (1877).
- ^b George MacDonald's At the Back of the North Wind (1871), The Princess and the Goblin (1872), and The Princess and Curdie (1883). Dealings with Fairies (1867) and Phantastes (1858). Jean Ingelow's Mopsa the Fairy (1869). Dinah Mulock's The Adventures of a Brownie (1872) and The Little Lame Prince (1875). Mary de Morgan's On a Pin-cushion, and Other Fairy Tales (1876). Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888) and A House of Pomegranates (1891)
References
edit- ^ Abbot, Jacob. Parental Duties in the Promotion of Early Piety. Thomas Ward, 1834, p. 37.
- ^ Yonge, C. M., Womankind London, Macmillan, 1877, p. 1-2.
- ^ Meigs, Cornelia, Elizabeth Nesbitt, Anne Thaxter Eaton, and Ruth Hill Viguers. A Critical History of Children's Literature. New York: Macmillan, 1953, p. 156.
- ^ Meigs, Cornelia. p. 167.
- ^ Garry, H. K. F., Juliana Horatia Ewing and Her Books London, S.P.C.K., 1885, p. 5.
- ^ Meigs, Cornelia. p. 173.
- ^ Meigs, Cornelia. p. 178.
- ^ Kingsley, Charles., His Letters and Memories of His Life London, Kegan Paul, 1877, Vol 1, p. 354.
- ^ Meigs, Cornelia. p. 194.
- ^ Lennon, Florence., Victoria Through the Looking-Glass, The Life of Lewis Carroll New York, Simon and Schuster, 1945, Introduction, p. ix-x.
- ^ Meigs, Cornelia. p. 196.
- ^ Meigs, Cornelia. p. 198.
- ^ Meigs, Cornelia. p. 199.
- ^ M. H. Speilmann and G. S. Layard, Kate Greenway London, Black, 1905, p. 189.
Bibliography
editBibliography and Further Reading
- Meigs, Cornelia, Elizabeth Nesbitt, Anne Thaxter Eaton, and Ruth Hill Viguers. A Critical History of Children's Literature. Macmillan, 1953.
- Zornado, Joseph L. Inventing the Child: Culture, Ideology, and the Story of Childhood. Routledge, 2001.
External Links
editChildren's Literature as a Victorian Genre (The Victorian Web)