Discipline and (Dis)order: Paternal Socialization in Jacob Abbott's Rollo Books

A child is a person who is going to carry on what you have started. He is going to sit where you are sitting, and when you are gone, attend to those things which you think are important. You may adopt all the policies you please, but how they are carried out depends on him. He will assume control of your cities, states, and nations. He is going to move in and take over your churches, schools, universities, and corporations . . . the fate of humanity is in his hands.

—Abraham Lincoln

A century and a half ago, Jacob Abbott, New England educator, minister, and children's author, instructed boys in desirable character traits and behavior through his Rollo Books.¹ More didactic than artistic, this series consistently promotes the virtues of obedience, industry, duty, and order. Abbott's paternal presence and kindly authoritarianism permeate his work from his prefaces, in which he instructs parents on the proper use of his books, to the narrator's moralistic commentary on characters and events throughout the series.² The author's patriarchal stance is mirrored within the stories by that of Mr. Holiday, Rollo's father, who devotes considerable time and effort to training his son to become a successful man. Throughout the Rollo books, Rollo's literary creator, Rollo's father, and other authority figures socialize Rollo (and the boy reader) so that he might take his proper place in an orderly society and become, as an adult, a replacement for his father.

Although seldom read today, the Rollo books were the first popular American children's series. Not only did they enjoy large sales and numerous printings, they were distributed through Sunday School libraries, the only free circulating libraries available to most children of the time (Mott 98; Kensinger 13, 36; MacLeod 22). Contemporary reviews attested to Abbott's popularity and usefulness in teaching proper values to his young readers. In 1852 the Methodist Quarterly Review commented: "Probably no other writer in this country has so many readers, or is doing so much to form the taste and character, as well as to inform the intellect, of the rising generation" (qtd. in Boles 513). A study of the Rollo books therefore suggests which characteristics middle-class Americans promoted in their endeavors to mold their children into responsible adults able to carry on American democracy.

The central function of the Rollo books, the only real plot, is the training of Rollo. The content of his educational program is intellectual (reading, natural philosophy, and the customs of other lands) and moral (obedience, industry, and order). As the boy grows and completes his early lessons, the nature of his instruction changes. The first Rollo series (1835-43), the primary focus of this essay, begins with Rollo Learning to Talk (1835), a picture book written for, rather than about, the young Rollo. Continuing the series, Rollo Learning to Read combines overt instructions from Abbott on the proper way to read, stories for the five-year-old Rollo to read to improve his reading skills, and stories about Rollo that emphasize obedience. The next eight books in the series describe Rollo and his activities from ages five to nine, and they emphasize morality and good citizenship. The final four books in the early series, the Rollo's Philosophy books, focus on intellectual rather than ethical development, though the latter is still a concern. The ten-year-old Rollo learns natural philosophy and scientific principles through observation and discussions with his father, his older sister Mary, and the farmhand Jonas.³ A later series, Rollo's Tour of Europe (1853-1858), which follows Rollo from his thirteenth through his sixteenth year, emphasizes information rather than ethical precepts because Rollo has already developed the foundation of good character. Practical concerns of travel arrangements, luggage, foreign languages, currency exchange, and hotel accommodations are prominent features. Nevertheless, some moral issues are still important, and a portrayal of the evils of gambling and other snares is included, but Rollo is not in danger of falling prey to the temptations that trouble his peers. After Rollo demonstrates...