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Children's Literature

Week Five: Captain Marryat, The Children of the New Forest (1847) (Wordsworth Classics, 1993).

NB: Essay hand-in date: Monday 16 November 2009.

1. Childhood in novels/poems of Victorian period (1837-1901).
1.1 'Dickens is conventionally credited with having imported into a central role in the novel the figure of the innocent child – often suffering and orphaned, abandoned, or simply neglected – from Romantic poetry ... Dickens has, via such characters as Oliver Twist, Little Nell, Tiny Tim, Paul Dombey, and a host of others, made an enormous difference in the way our culture thinks about children'; 'he was ... as adept at imagining wicked children as spotless ones – for example, the Artful Dodger and the boys in Fagin's gang, or ... Tom Gradgrind in Hard Times, a veritable "monster" of selfishness who grows into a young man given to "grovelling sensualities"' (Robert Newsom, 'Fictions of Childhood', in John O. Jordan, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Charles Dickens (CUP, 2001), pp.92-105 [92-3]).
1.2 In Dickens' early novels especially, 'children ..., far from being revered, ... are often objects ... of an abuse that is active and sadistic' (Newsom, p.94).
1.3 Oliver Twist (1837-39): Oliver's unmarried mother dies giving birth to him in workhouse; he will 'be cuffed and buffeted through the world, - despised by all, and pitied by none' (Oliver Twist, ed. Peter Fairclough (Penguin, 1985), p.47); Oliver's adventures take him into underworld of Victorian childhood, where innocence and innate goodness help him survive; followed by a number of novels with children as central characters - not always good.
1.4 Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre (1847): decisive shift in narrative technique; Dickens followed suit: David Copperfield (1849); Great Expectations (1860); children's experience of school in Hard Times (1854) echoes Jane Eyre.

2. Victorian period a 'golden age' of children's literature; key texts established conventions of several important genres; focus here on first decade (1837-1847).
2.1 Sara Coleridge: poems for children; plus Phantasmion (1837); 'remarkable pioneering fantasy' (Children's Literature, p.92).
2.2 Catherine Sinclair, The Holiday House (1839).
2.3 Robert Browning's 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin' (1842).
2.4 R.H. Horne, Memoirs of a London Doll (1846).
2.5 Edward Lear, A Book of Nonsense (1846).
2.6 Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales first translated in 1846 - 'triumph of the fairy-tale' (Children's Literature, p.100).
2.7 Walter Scott's and James Fenimore Cooper's novels (e.g., The Pioneers (1823), The Last of the Mohicans (1826)) avidly read by children: growing interest in adventure stories – including 'Robinsonnades' and tales of shipwreck, etc; British imperialism?

3. Captain Frederick Marryat (1792-1848): novels of the 1830s and 1840s 'played the decisive role in establishing the adventure story as a dominant form in nineteenth-century children’s books' (Children's Literature): e.g., Masterman Ready (1841-2) (Robinsonnade) and The Settlers in Canada (1844) – life on the frontier.
3.1 Children of the New Forest (1847) – 'first historical tale for children to remain popular up to the present day' (Children's Books in English); 'in the figure of Edward Beverley, a fiery, arrogant, gallant, persevering, sympathetic teenager, we may say that the nineteenth-century juvenile hero had arrived' (Children's Literature).

4. Adventure stories: 'Narratives about action or events involving danger and conflict and developing with speed and urgency. The protagonist at the centre of the action is a child, or youthfully-minded adult, who struggles to meet a challenge and achieve the required happy ending. The protagonists characteristically display more than ordinary abilities in single-mindedly pursuing a moral cause, and in the best stories they are changed and enriched by their adventures. ... The modern adventure story has two principal origins, one of which is Robinson Crusoe (1719). In Robinsonnades the challenge is survival and taking possession of a remote, often exotic place. ... The second strand derives from the Romanticism of Sir Walter Scott's historical works' (Children's Books in English).
4.1 Does Children of the New Forest meet these criteria?

5. Historical fiction: 'A historical novel is not merely a story set in the past but a story which attempts, with the aid of scholarly research, to reconstruct and bring to life the events, culture and Zeitgeist of the period. Generally, historical novelists for children are less concerned with depicting major historical events and figures than those who write for adults; more frequently, they emphasise what it was like to live and grow up in another era, the cultural differences between past and present, and the living continuity between them. Sometimes well-known historical figures will make an appearance, but they are rarely the central characters. ... Scott invented the historical novel in the process of writing Waverley, or 'Tis Sixty Years Since (1814). His Ivanhoe (1819) and The Talisman (1825) were read enthusiastically by young people throughout the 19th century' (Children's Books in English).
5.1 Does Children of the New Forest meet these criteria?

6. Children of the New Forest set 200 years prior to date of publication (1647-1660): after 1st Civil War (1642-46); Charles I's escape to Isle of Wight (Nov. 1647) and conspiracy with Scots (Dec.); 2nd Civil War (1648) – Royalist forces defeated by Cromwell's New Model Army; king brought to trial by Commons and executed January 1649.
6.1 Cromwell (1599-1658): set up Puritan republic,1649-53; 1653-58: ruled England as Lord Protector backed by Army, 'trying in vain to devise a form of Gov. which would be based on popular consent, and which would nevertheless desire only the reforms he approved of' (E.N. Williams, Penguin Dictionary of English and European History).
6.2 Charles II (1630-85): fought in 1st Civil War; 'From 1645 he was a refugee in Jersey, France and the Netherlands until he landed in Scotland (June 1650) to head a Presbyterian rising against England'; 'Cromwell was victorious at Dunbar (3 Sept 1650); and then, luring the Scots into England, he defeated them at Worcester on the same day a year later' (Williams). After defeat at Worcester, 'Charles fled abroad again, having hidden for 6 weeks in the oak tree at Boscobel and other refuges. During the vacuum created by the death of Cromwell ... Charles's chief minister, Clarendon, negotiated the Restoration with Monck, the commander of one of the republican armies' (Williams).
6.3 Levellers: 'secular radical movement [which flourished] in the City and the Army towards the end of the English Civil War and during the post-war negotiations (c.1645-9) ... Consisting mainly of shopkeepers, artisans, apprentices and yeomen, they represented the grievances and aspirations of social groups who had supported Parliament against the King, but who by this stage resented the fact that neither the Long Parl, nor the Rump, nor Cromwell and the generals would pay attention to their programme as it threatened the rights of the property-owners. ... the execution of the King (30 Jan 1649) merely substituted one tyrant for another in Leveller eyes' (Williams); NB the Levellers did not advocate levelling property (though the 'Diggers' did).

7. How does Children of the New Forest represent these events and issues to its 'juvenile readers' (p.5)? Why set a children's novel in this period? What 'message' does the novel's account of 1647-60 convey to children of 1847?
7.1 Novel's concern with restoration of class distinctions and property rights (does sojourn in New Forest represent Edenic suspension of these concerns?).
7.2 In 1847 several developments appeared to threaten class distinctions and property rights: Great Reform Act (1832); Chartism (late 1830s-early 1850s); rise of international socialism; imminence of various revolutions in Europe (1848).

8. Early chapters (initial focalisation on Jacob; later shifts to boys).
8.1 First-person omniscient narrator seeks to control readers' political sympathies: 'What's a Leveller?' thought Jacob. ... the Puritans' (p.11); 'We may here observe that, bloodthirsty as many of the Levellers were ...' (p.25).
8.2 Neglect of the children (pp.13-14).
8.3 'I will teach them to be useful; they must learn to provide for themselves' (p.26) – forester provides children of gentleman with practical education; Jacob as Rousseauean tutor? Puritan work ethic? (C17/C19); 'It was astonishing how much the children could do, now there was no one to do it for them' (p.40).
8.4 Distribution of work and adventure according to age and gender (pp.32-33).

9. Issues.
9.1 Representation of childhood? release from parental and (later) adult supervision; self reliance; childhood is rural? arcadia in forest? (Rousseau?); childhood set in past? childhood gendered?
9.2 Representation of C17 childhood or of C19 childhood?
9.3 Politics (C17 politics or C19 politics?): suspension of social hierarchies (with Jacob? with Pablo?); re-imposition of social hierarchies? Victorian (Puritan) work ethic imposed on aristocratic children? race (Pablo); the conclusion?
9.4 Implied assumptions about child reader? gendered?

10. Contemporary responses? Review on Cool-Reads by Elizabeth Collingwood, aged 13 from Herefordshire, England (3 out of 5 stars):

How easy was it to get stuck into this book?
'It is fairly easy to get into, but the old-fashioned language can be a bit offputting at first. For about four fifths of it, the book is interesting and never boring but the last section is really does [sic]. I recommend that you stop reading at this point'.

Who are the main characters?
'The four children's parents are both dead - their father was killed fighting in the civil war for the Roundheads. An old forester called Jacob took the children to his cottage in the forest to prevent them from being at risk from Roundheads, and this is where they grow up. The oldest boy is Edward and is pretty annoying because he is all noble, and determined to fight for the King, and brave. Then there is Humphrey, my favourite, who is practical and is always inventing things. Alice is the third one who is the little housewife (also very annoying!) and cook. The youngest is Edith and she is the most annoying of all because the author has obviously never met an eight-year-old. She can't even talk properly and is always referred of as "Little Edith"'.

What's the storyline?
'It is about the four children growing up in the New Forest and how they survive and learn about the ways of the wood. Quite a lot happens, for instance, Humphrey catches a Gypsy boy in his pitfall trap and catches a wild cow through an extremely clever trick. You also learn a lot about the Civil War because that's when it is set'.

How's it written?
'It is old-fashioned because it was written over 150 years ago, but despite this I first read it when I was nine. I think I enjoyed it a lot more then, for some reason'.

Other books by the same author that Elizabeth Collingwood knows about?
'None, I don't think'.

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