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  • Ideologies in Children's Literature:Some Preliminary Notes
  • Ruth B. Moynihan (bio)

Stories told or written for children are often indicators of the dominant values within a society. Various times and cultures reveal various attitudes, not only towards children but also toward life and society. As a Swedish specialist in children's literature recently said,

Every age has felt the need to provide new instructions in its children's books on how life is to be lived. Thus children's books do not merely reflect the contemporary social scene and the problems of adult life; the simplified manner in which they treat their subjects also makes them something of magnifying glasses.1

The number of such magnifying glasses in our modern world is greater than ever before in history. An adequate discussion even of a particular era in one society could well be a major study. The purpose of this brief essay is merely to point out a few examples and to indicate some possibilities for further investigation.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published in 1900 by Lyman Frank Baum, is one of the best known of American children's stories, but few have given much thought to the way in which its characters and plot reflect the political and social situation of the time. However, an article by Henry M. Littlefield recently described in detail the way the book serves as a populist parable. The Scarecrow, for example, represents Midwestern farmers, while the Tin Man represents the honest laborers bewitched by Eastern industrialists (personified in the Wicked Witch of the East). The Cowardly Lion is a parody of William Jennings Bryan. The Wizard, says Littlefield, "might be any President from Grant to McKinley. He come straight from the fair grounds in Omaha, Nebraska, and he symbolizes the American criterion for leadership—he is able to be everything to everybody."2 But Dorothy's innocence and her loving kindness, along with the brains, heart, and courage of her friends (which were within them all along though they didn't know it), are sufficient to unmask even the formidable Wizard and to achieve Dorothy's goals—the freedom of her friends and her own return to reality among her hard-working relatives in Kansas.

If we compare The Wizard of Oz to the English classic for children, Winnie the Pooh, the contrast is startling. A. A. Milne's story takes place in a sheltered circumscribed world, the easy-going world of the English upper classes, where one lone child might live on a huge green estate with a dozen stuffed animals for playmates, and in a fantasy world where he himself was in complete control. Baum's book, on the other hand, reveals a world full of conflict and [End Page 166] danger where the heroine lives in a harsh grey world with only a little dog for a playmate (but a live dog, not a stuffed one) and can only escape into fantasy by being hit on the head in a tornado. Furthermore, even the fantasy world is full of dangers and harrowing experiences. Dorothy and her friends must deal with events as they occur, while Milne's characters generally frame or manipulate events according to their own expectations.

Winnie the Pooh, published in England in 1926, has been tremendously popular in America as well, though perhaps not as influential as The Wizard of Oz. It is better known to the intelligentsia, probably, while Oz is better known to the "common man." Pooh reflects a disillusionment with the pre-World War I world and its leadership. It is a sustained low-key spoof on official bureaucracies, the adult world in general, and the adventure and travel tales of nineteenth century imperial Britain. Where many earlier fairy tales were full of seriousness and took pretentiousness for granted as necessary and good, A. A. Milne's tales are all humor—especially in regard to pretensions. The ideology is that of a bumbling imperfect world, though a generally kind-hearted and not at all dangerous one.

Let us look at one chapter as an illustration. Chapter VIII, called "In Which Christopher Robin Leads an Expotition to the North Pole," reveals even through its...

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