Telling Children's Stories: Narrative Theory and Children's Literature

10. The Identification Fallacy: Perspective and Subjectivity in Children’s Literature

187 10 { The Identification Fallacy Perspective and Subjectivity in Children’s Literature maria nikolajeva In Winnie-the-Pooh, chapter 3, “in which Pooh and Piglet go hunting and nearly catch a Woozle,” the two characters, one of which is a Bear with a Very Little Brain, follow some tracks in the snow. They think they are hunting first a Woozle, then two Woozles, then “two Woozles and one, as it might be, Wizzle, or two, as it might be, Wizzles and one, if so it is Woozle” (Milne 35). As usual, Christopher Robin the Almighty comes to the rescue, saying: “Silly old Bear [. . .] what were you doing? First you went round the spinney twice by yourself, and then Piglet ran after you and you went round again together, and then you were just going round a fourth time—” “Wait a moment,” said Winnie-the-Pooh. (37–38) Let us consider the reading competence that is necessary to understand this chapter. For unsophisticated readers Pooh books are about the teddy bear called Winnie-the-Pooh. As critics we can develop other, sophisticated interpretations (Kuznets 47–53; Nikolajeva, From Mythic to Linear 93–103), but for the young 188 } The Identification Fallacy reader Pooh is the only option. The world is presented through Pooh’s eyes, through a naive, curious, and inquisitive view that all children possess until we adults impose our own clever ideas on them. A young reader will be engaged with Pooh, feel his joys and sorrows, his fear of Heffalumps, and his admiration for Christopher Robin. Yet, in chapter 3 young readers have a problem . If they entirely share Pooh’s perception, they will, together with Pooh and Piglet, believe that the two friends are tracking fierce and dangerous animals. On hearing Christopher Robin’s comment, they will feel as “Foolish and Deluded” (38) as Pooh. Naturally, there are illustrations to help; a reader still needs to feel at least slightly superior to Pooh to appreciate the scene. In my thirty-year career in children’s literature, I have repeatedly and in various situations encountered the firm belief that young readers should be encouraged to “identify” themselves with one of the characters, normally with the protagonist. A teacher may express this urge by asking: “Who would you like to be in this story?” Students of children’s literature warmly embrace texts that offer identification objects. This perplexing phenomenon can be called “identification fallacy,” in analogy with the famous “intentional fallacy” of New Criticism (Wimsatt and Beardsley 1954). Perhaps more than any other critical stance, identification fallacy reveals a striking inconsistency between children’s literature research and literacy education. The conviction that young readers must adopt the subject position of a literary character is, however, totally ungrounded and in fact prevents the development of mature reading. Contemporary scholarly studies, especially those leaning on narratology and reception theory, emphasize the importance of the readers’ ability to liberate themselves from the protagonists’ subjectivity in order to evaluate them properly (see Stephens 47–83). This ability is an essential part of reading competence, which enhances sophisticated readers’ ideological and aesthetic appreciation of the text. Interestingly enough, identification compulsion is seldom, if ever, discussed in general literary studies. How could we possibly read Dostoyevsky if we were supposed Maria Nikolajeva { 189 to identify with Raskolnikov? Yet teachers and even critics insist that young readers must necessarily find an identification object in the text, while children’s book reviews often include in their evaluation something like: “This book is very good because it is easy to identify with the main character.” There is no empirical research about how and at what age identification fallacy is surmounted, yet young readers must be extremely resistant to teachers’ pressure to be able to switch from object to subject, from the passive acceptance of the literary character’s fixed subjectivity to an independent and flexible one. Similarly, children’s writers must apparently develop intricate strategies in order to deceive adult critics, teachers, and librarians and, behind their backs, subvert identification compulsion. Moreover, writers certainly teach their readers how to feel empathy with other people (cf. Keen). Yet to be able to feel empathy, young readers must separate themselves from literary characters , just as they in real life must learn to abandon solipsism and start interacting with other individuals. It is therefore essential to understand how subjectivity is constructed in literary texts and how children’s writers...