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The Evangelical Image of the Child in Mrs. Sherwood's The History of the Fairchild Family 1 The revival of Evangelicalism which occurred in the later decades of the eighteenth century and which soon came to suffuse the Church of England played a dominant role in the molding of various aspects of English society during much of the next century. Not least of the influences exerted by this revival revolved about its very distinctive view of childhood, a view prominently revealed in the vast outpouring of Evangelical juvenile literature. Often regarded as the doyenne of that particular genre was the Church of England Evangelical Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood (1775-1851) whose more than 350 books, tracts, chapbooks rendered her one of the most prolific and influential of Evangelicalism's writers for children. Her popularity was tremendous and lasted long after her death in 1851. Particularly successful was the three-part The History of the Fairchild Family, with its alternative title The Child's Manual: Being a Collection of Stories Calculated to Shew the Importance and Effects of a Religious Education. Indeed, this story of the day-to-day life of a closely knit and devout Church of England Evangelical family of five-Mr. and Mrs. Fairchild and their three young children, eight-year-old Lucy, seven-year-old Emily, and little Henry who was between five and six-was one of the best-selling children's books of the nineteenth century, and for decade after decade was read by great numbers of English children of all social backgrounds.2 Over the next few pages I wish to discuss the image of the child as represented in this work, indicating that it is particularly expressive of early nineteenthcentury Evangelicalism's unbending puritanical dispositions towards the young, their education and upbringing. I am almost solely concerned with Part I, written in India when Mrs. Sherwood was at the height of her Evangelical vigor. Parts Il and III, published in 1842 and 1847 respectively, are milder with regard to mood, religious intensity, and theories of child rearing. Moreover, any notoriety which the Fairchild Family possesses today is almost totally due to the fierce Evangelicalism of Part I. Perhaps the most outstanding characteristic of Evangelical writers for juveniles was their unanimity in maintaining that children were evil; they held it as one of their main objectives to help parents banish the evil from their offsprings' souls. It is also a characteristic which Mrs. Sherwood displayed over and over: "'there is no child that can be said to have a good heart,'" she has Mrs. Fairchild declare. (96) The first stanza of Hymn Vl in the Fairchild Family is most indicative: Lord, I am vile, conceiv'd in sin And born unholy and unclean; Sprung from the man whose guilty fall Corrupts his race, and taints us all. (44) For the nature of the child, Mrs. Sherwood was convinced, was thoroughly depraved by original sin. At the funeral service for Charles Truman, a poor friend of modest background of the Fairchild children and a most obedient and God-fearing boy who had died a saintly death, Mr. Somers, the clergyman, points out that "through the sin of Adam, every one of his children had become unfit for heaven, and were by nature children of wrath and heirs of death and hell; having inherited from their father hearts so wholly and entirely filthy and corrupt, that they could not of themselves turn unto any good, or so much as wish to do well" (299). Charles himself had declared shortly before he died "'that by nature there is no manner of good at all in any man's heart: nay, that sin is so strong in us that we can no more stop from sinning than we can from breathing'" (292). Elsewhere, Mrs. Sherwood was quite ,explicit in her conviction that "[a]ll children are by nature evil, and while they have none but the natural evil principle to guide them, pious and prudent parents must check their naughty passions in any way that they have in their power, and force them into decent and proper behaviour and into what are called good habits" 251 (Darton, Children...

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