Language and Control in Children's Literature

Murray Knowles, Kirsten Malmkjaer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134884346
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This study examines the work of children's writers from the 19th and 20th centuries in order to expose the persuasive power of language. Looking at the work of 19th century English writers of juvenile fiction, Knowles and Malmkjaer expose the colonial and class assumptions on which the books were predicated. In the modern teen novel and the work of Roald Dahl the authors find contemporary attempts to control children within socially established frameworks. Other authors discussed include, Oscar Wilde, E. Nesbit, Lewis Carroll and C.S. Lewis.

1 Children’s literature in England

INTRODUCTION

It is often felt that it is right and proper to begin the discussion of a particular subject area by providing a definition, and commentators on literature written for children have provided a host of definitions over the years. John Rowe Townsend is one of the best known of those commentators and assigns responsibility to the publisher in deciding what is a children’s book:

In the short run it appears that, for better or worse, the publisher decides. If he puts a book on the children’s list, it will be reviewed as a children’s book and will be read by children (or young people), if it is read at all. If he puts it on the adult list, it will not—or at least not immediately.

(1980:197)

Aidan Chambers also addresses himself to the question and makes the point that obviously some books are intended for children while others which are not attract child readers. Chambers goes on, however, to point out that it is not so much definitions that are needed but the development of a critical method ‘which will take account of the child as reader’ (1980:250–1). In this study we are concerned with linguistic description rather than literary criticism but we take note of Chambers’ point because we believe that an understanding of linguistic patternings in texts will help in taking account not only of the child reader but the (usually) adult author who produces the text.

The consideration of literature written for children from a linguistic perspective is a comparatively new field of study. The critical study of language, however, has acquired considerable impetus in the last twenty years and a focus on such a large and important area of social life as children’s fiction in this country seems long overdue. The history of children’s literature, in terms of publishing, is relatively short, with the bringing out of A Little PrettyPocket Book by John Newberry (1713–67) in 1744 as the generally agreed starting point. Modern children’s literature has its roots in the mid nineteenth century as authors turned to writing for entertainment and publishers realised there was a considerable market waiting to be tapped. But the evolution of children’s literature should not simply be considered in crude economic terms, important though capitalism is as a controlling principle. We feel that Zohar Shavit makes an important point when she says (1992:2): ‘Children’s literature evolved from the convergence of and interaction among several cultural fields or systems.’ It seems to us that to make any sense of this ‘convergence and interaction’ account must be taken of the linguistic structures of the texts and their importance in realising author/reader relationships. In children’s literature this is highly significant as it is a ‘more than unusually balanced power relationship’ (Hunt, 1988:164). It is, therefore, a relationship which raises questions about domination or authorial control. After all, children’s books are controlled by adults in that they can determine what children read and, in the main, produce what children read. As Julia Briggs states:

Children’s books are written for a special readership but not, normally by members of that readership; both the writing and quite often the buying of them, is carried out by adult nonmembers on behalf of child members.

(1989:4)

In this chapter we wish to consider the evolution of children’s literature and to comment on its traditions or ‘strands’ which have resulted in the late twentieth century in such a diverse and creative range of publications for young readers. We shall also consider the nature of the author/reader relationship referred to above. For us children’s literature is any narrative written and published for children and we include the ‘teen’ novels aimed at the ‘young adult’ or late adolescent reader, very much a tradition of the last three decades of the twentieth century. In our considerations we shall refer to two surveys of children’s reading habits. The first, carried out in 1884, was published by Edward Salmon (1865–1955) in 1888 and the second was compiled as part of an ongoing research project initiated by Murray Knowles in 1989–90 to establish a part-computerised corpus of children’s literature. Neither survey is regarded as being absolute in its findings but they should be seen as providing useful points of location as we proceed with our discussions.

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: TRADITIONAL JUVENILE FICTION

It is in the nineteenth century that we witness a proliferation of literature written for children and the beginning of the modern age. In the early years of the century authors began to write for entertainment and we see the advent of what became a mass output of popular juvenile fiction. This fiction was first characterised by the adventure story, which, while it did not exclude female readers, was located in a particularly male world or what the authors of this type of fiction perceived as a male reality. Thus, the 1800s gave us the types of stories contained in magazines like The Boys’ Own Paper and in books by writers such as R.M.Ballantyne (1825–94), W.H.G.Kingston (1814–80), Captain Marryat (1792–1848), T.Mayne Reid (1818–83), G.A.Henty (1832–1902) and a host of lesser-known authors such as Gordon Stables (1840–1910). With the school story we have the two interlocking wings of what we shall refer to hereafter as traditional juvenile fiction. Before we discuss that tradition in more detail it is useful to take note of the background from which it eventually emerged.

The beginnings

Narratives of adventure were appearing in England from round about the fourteenth century and while they were not written specifically for children they became popular with a young readership. They belong to the Romance tradition, usually rooted in French or other European sources, and were invariably in verse. Later, prose narratives appeared in the form of chapbooks, the first cheap printed books for a popular market. Few chapbooks before the late eighteenth century were written or printed with children in mind but towards the century’s end reading material was being produced in some quantity for children. This ‘consisted of a cheerful medley of old tales from the chapbooks, and lively new ones which stated how good children were rewarded and naughty ones were punished with frightful fates calculated to satisfy the most bloodthirsty infant mind’ (Avery, 1975:15).

By the end of the eighteenth century a new element had entered the world of children’s books. Three books written at this time have been described by Avery as ‘the foundation stones of the nursery library of the next hundred years’ (1965:13). These were Thomas Day’s (1748– 89) The History of Sandford and Merton, Mrs Trimmer’s (1741–1810) Fabulous Histories and John Aikin’s (1747–1822) and Mrs Barbauld’s (1743–1825) Evenings at Home. Each was published many times in the next hundred years, most likely an indication of their popularity with adults as suitable reading for the young. It is worth commenting briefly on these narratives as they reflect strongly the prevailing belief, best summed up by Mrs Trimmer herself, that children’s literature should be comprised of works ‘by which curiosity was gratified at the same time that religion, loyalty, and good morals were inculcated’ (Salway, 1976:20).

In Sandford and Merton (1783–9) Day’s intention was to present Rousseau’s Emile to English children. He wrote a series of stories, some of which were based on classical myths while others were tales with a moral such as ‘The Good-Natured Little Boy’ and The Ill-Natured Little Boy’. The stories were connected by a linking narrative centred upon three main characters: Harry Sandford, the sturdy, honest son of a poor farmer, Tommy Merton, the spoilt, snobbish son of a rich merchant and Mr Barlow their clergyman teacher. It was this narrative that gave the book its reputation as a major work for children.

Mrs Trimmer’s Fabulous Histories (1786) later published as TheHistory of the Robins was described by her in the introduction as providing for her young readers ‘a series of Fables, intended to convey moral instruction applicable to themselves’ (see Darton, 1932/ 1982:158). The aim of the stories was, by encouraging kindness to animals, to promote moral behaviour as perceived by Mrs Trimmer. This meant that the emphasis was on the dutiful. Writing a century later, Edward Salmon saw her style as being characterised by ‘the pomposity of its tone’ and considered that in the book there ‘is nothing unusually meritorious’ (1888:163).

Evenings at Home (1792–6) was a collection in six volumes (eventually published in one volume) of a miscellany of facts, stories and moral and religious teaching.

There was now a moral, indeed didactic, flavour as children’s books were seen as a necessary part of children’s education and while the moral tale as exemplified above reached its zenith in the early decades of the nineteenth century its influence never completely died out. This is important, as we shall see in Chapter 3, when we consider the linguistic features of traditional juvenile fiction.

The adventure story

In the first years of the nineteenth century there were a few writers producing less overtly didactic texts for young readers. There was not, though, an identifiable collection of books written for children which presented more ‘entertaining’ narratives than the types of works we have just considered. By the early 1840s, however, there was a major addition to the types of books available to older children, especially for boys. It is in this decade that there commenced the writing and publishing of what became known as the adventure story, the genre which lays the foundations of modern children’s fiction.

The adventure story has its tradition firmly rooted in Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe published in 1719. What are known as the ‘Robinsonnades’ became, for a time, ‘the dominant form in fiction for children and young people’ (Carpenter and Prichard, 1984:458). One of the best known of these writers—indeed we can regard him as the ‘founding father’ of the adventure story—was Captain Marryat, whose Peter Simple was published in 1834 and Mr. Midshipman Easyin 1836. The latter work is regarded as one of the most popular of nineteenth-century children’s stories and was indeed widely read by boys. It was not, however, written for children. As Avery comments:

It is innocent enough, but Marryat’s racy humour is given full rein and we get a picaresque novel (of a refined sort), a purged Roderick Random, with breezy jokes about debagging midshipmen masquerading as the devil, and using female disguise to get access to young ladies’ apartments.

(1965:140)

We note also the references to Mrs Easy’s pregnancy:

It was at the finale of the eleventh year of their marriage that Mrs. Easy at first complained that she could not enjoy her breakfast. Mrs. Easy had her own suspicions, everybody else considered it past doubt, all except Mr. Easy; he little ‘thought good easy man, that his greatness was ripening’; he had decided that to have an heir was no easy task, and it never came into his calculations, that there could be a change in his wife’s figure.

(Marryat, 1836:6)

The lack of explicit moralising is further exemplified by the nurse’s defence of her illegitimate baby with the words, ‘If you please Ma’am it was a very little one’ (ibid. 10). The discourse hardly seems compatible with the work of Mrs Trimmer or the lack of humour and the moral intent that Thomas Day delivered to his young readers in Sandford and Merton. Marryat, however, had two styles of writing and, as Avery points out (1965:140): ‘one can make a direct comparison of his official style for boys with the sort of book that was spontaneous Marryat’. Certainly, there are very distinct differences in the styles of narrative between Mr. Midshipman Easy and MastermanReady, which was published in 1841 as the first of his books written specifically for young readers.

In Masterman Ready we have the typical ‘Robinsonnade’ structure fashioned on Robinson Crusoe and its best-known imitator SwissFamily Robinson. Indeed, Marryat’s children had asked their father for a story which was a continuation of this latter work (Carpenter and Prichard, 1984:344). The Seagrave family are voyaging to Australia and are shipwrecked on an island with an old seaman, Masterman Ready. Ready provides long didactic passages in which there is much reference to thanking God for His mercies and the comfort to be found in the Bible. Mr Seagrave also contributes substantially to the moral and pious flavour of the book. Thus, although we now have a narrative in which dangers threaten and in which ‘adventures’ clearly occur, the opportunity for moralising on a range of activities and behaviour is not lost. The elements of moral instruction à la Trimmer and Barbault have by no means disappeared. Indeed, Tommy, the six-year-old of the family, is responsible, through his thoughtless behaviour, for Ready’s death. Ready, however, dies murmuring, ‘Poor little Tommy, don’t let him know that he was the cause of my death’ (Marryat, 1841/1889:325).

Overall, though the moral earnestness of the 1780s is still present—Mr Seagrave’s didacticism is particularly manifested ‘by haranguing his children about reasoning power in animals, the history of the British colonies, and economics’ (Avery, 1965:141)— Marryat does present a story with interesting details about strange places and, while a writer ‘of moral purpose’, wished also to ‘excite and amuse’ as well as ‘instruct’ (see Leeson, 1985:76). Marryat’s example was soon followed by a number of writers who from the start aimed at the adolescent boy. By 1888 Marryat was listed (see Salmon, 1888:14) as one of the three most popular boys’ writers along with W.H.G.Kingston and R.M.Ballantyne. There was not in England a similar pioneering movement in creating a lasting body of fiction for girls. It is also worth noting that while ‘harangue’ Marryat did, he ought also to be remembered, as we shall see in chapter 3, for his rather untypical views on colonisation and empire.

R.M.Ballantyne, like Marryat an ex-naval officer, drew upon his real-life experiences as a trapper and fur trader in North America in some of his story-telling. He is probably best remembered for The Coral Island (1858), which was to become one of the most popular children’s books ever written and a strong influence on the young Robert Louis Stevenson. Again we note the debt owed to Defoe, the story being centred upon the adventures of three friends who are shipwrecked on a desert island and who survive because of their initiative. According to Avery, Ballantyne’s contribution as a writer for boys was that he was able to combine ‘instruction and moral and religious precepts with an exciting plot’ (1965:229).

W.H.G.Kingston was one of the most prolific writers for a juvenile readership and, according to Salmon (1888:14), the most popular. Kingston’s best-known works are Peter the Whaler (1851) and The Three Midshipmen (1873). Peter the Whaler is a story very much in the Marryat tradition. The narrative concerns the adventures of the son of a Church of Ireland clergyman who goes to sea and survives fire, piracy and being marooned on Arctic ice. Avery states, ‘like Ballantyne, his heroes were pious, and this piety pervades all his adventure stories’ (1965:145). Actually, in our view, Peter is not really pious until the end of the story (see chapter 3). According to Salmon (1888:15) The Three Midshipmen was the most popular adventure story book written for boys, and this nearly forty years after being published.

Kingston, Marryat and Ballantyne are the most prominent of the early adventure story-writers. According to Carpenter and Prichard, they were responsible for taking a stage further the ‘Robinsonnade’ format in that they

introduced another motif into the adventure story, that of the young Englishman (often a mere boy) who goes out into the wilds, mingles with natives and hunters, and comes back toughened, having learnt their ways.

(1984:6)

This motif should be borne in mind as a salient feature of the adventure story at this early stage in its development as it absorbed other f...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Children's literature in England
• 2 Literature as a carrier of ideology: children's literature and control
• 3 Traditional juvenile fiction
• 4 Today's young reader
• 5 The fairytale
• 6 Fantasy fiction
• 7 Last thoughts
• References
• Index