NEWSLETTER

Society for the History of Children and Youth

SHCY Conference and Children’s Literature

Margot Hillel, Australian Catholic University

As was appropriate for a conference of this sort, there were delegates and speakers from many disciplines. I was lucky enough to be the discussant for a session entitled Childhood in the fictional world of literature which had four presentations on children’s literature. Linking all the papers was an understanding of the importance of the value of literature as a way of considering constructions of childhood. In the spirit of the conference, each of the speakers considered this idea in rather different ways and discussed literature from different places and very different times. All the books discussed can be used, especially by the literary historian, as a valuable source of ideas on childhood.

It was intriguing to hear Lotta Paulin (of Stockholm University) discussing James Janeway’s puritanical and, to modern eyes at least, quite terrifying book A Token for Children and to find that it was translated into Swedish in 1746. (Janeway’s work was first published in 1671 and 1672). Somewhat problematic to a contemporary audience is Janeway’s declared intention of bringing joy to children through his stories which dealt with the death of children. Such an intention indicates for us a number of changes in the constructions of childhood since then and an indication too, of the reality of infant mortality in the lives of many families. There was, for them, a certain comfort, as Janeway intended, in contemplating a holy death and the certainty of resurrection. Janeway, as Lotta points out, regarded children as ‘a gift from God’ who, on their deaths, were returning ‘home’. Lotta, through her paper, showed us how Janeway’s rhetoric was designed to bring children to this understanding. He was, as she points out, also quite willing to use threats along the way. The importance of children’s literature in cultural and social formation was clear from Lotta’s paper as she gave us an insight into how Janeway’s particular construction of the pious child, was designed to inspire readers to emulate it.

The influence of children’s literature was highlighted by Maria Sundquist from Malmo University who examined children’s books published in Swedish in 1955. She argued that the depictions of childhood in books published for children then strongly influenced the attitudes of the children who read them. She convincingly indicated the ongoing effects such reading had as it influenced readers who grew up to be influential themselves in the areas of childhood. She demonstrated how a whole generation of readers encountered a number of stereotyped constructions of family, childhood and gender roles in their reading. Mothers stayed at home, fathers were the breadwinners and families without two biological parents were seen as outside the norm and therefore problematic. Middle-class children still predominated as did the ethnic Swedish majority; any character outside these groups was constructed as ‘other’ to the norm. The apprehension of what childhood is, was for many of those now in positions where decisions are made regarding children and childhood, Maria argued, shaped by the literature they read when they were young and by the forms of childhood depicted there.

A new look at some of Walter de la Mare’s work came through Shane McCorristine’s paper on the supernatural place of children and childhood in de la Mare’s fiction. Shane, who has recently completed a doctorate at University College Dublin, again asked us to consider the constructions of childhood in literary works. I was particularly intrigued by de la Mare’s differentiation between ‘boyhood’ and ‘childhood’, states which would normally be seen as synonymous. He also explored the construction of aunts in de la Mare’s work and showed how they could often be construed as ‘monster mothers’. The importance of the mother is societal constructions of the child is also elucidated through such a discussion. (One aunt he discussed in detail was, he showed, less sympathetic to childhood than puppyhood!). Some of the stories examined challenged ideas of what is meant by a ‘children’s’ story . Further, Shane described a sort of ‘juvenalisation’ of de la Mare’s work, a belittling attitude which would have resonances with many contemporary authors for children and young adult who are still frequently asked when they are going to write a ‘real’ book, a statement which itself reveals an interesting ‘othering’ of children and childhood.

The late Mitzi Myers demonstrated how close readings of texts in context can give us new ways of re-visiting and re-evaluating the works of writers such as Maria Edgeworth. Nina Christensen did a similar thing in her paper entitled ‘Fictive Source: Discussions of fact and fiction in relation to children’s literature and concepts of childhood in the 18^th century’. She gave us new ways of reading eighteenth-century texts for children which allowed for these works to be read in the context of a pre-romantic time. Current reception theory could also be applied to the books Nina discussed as a way of understanding the lives of children reading them in the eighteenth century. Nina’s way of looking at the books challenged the education/entertainment dichotomy which is often applied to texts of that time and suggested that the lines are rather more blurred than that.

Another thread which ran through these papers is the idea of what is deemed suitable for children to read. Kim Reynolds from Newcastle University UK, was unable to present her paper but it is still available on the website. She also considers this question, particularly in the light of books for young adults about despair, depression and self-harm. In her conclusion, Kim reminds us that children’s literature is one of the ways in which ‘children and young people receive stories about how the world works and ways of thinking about themselves and the things they do’. Books for young adults about self-harm may thus ‘prove a valuable antidote to the current conditions that lead young people to harm themselves’. Arguments about what books are suitable for young readers also reveal societal constructions of children and young people as innocent and in need of protection and may well avoid the realities of the lives of many young people.

Kim’s paper was part of a panel on ‘children at risk’ which included the papers of two Australian colleagues, Shurlee Swain and Belinda Sweeney, discussing the construction of childhood and concerns for children in the child rescue literature of the mid nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Britain and Australia. My own paper examined the way writers for children constructed children at risk through their description of clothing and the child’s body. Such constructions were designed to evoke responses of pity and charity from young readers and supported the constructions written for an adult audience. Young readers were expected to reflect on their own lives and to see themselves as young helpers in the fight to rescue children from lives of poverty, degradation and ignorance of Christianity.

It was great to see the interest shown in all the papers on children’s literature and to see this as quite a strong stream in a SHCY conference. May it continue (and grow!)