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The Power of Public Opinion: Constructing Class in Agnes Strickland's The Rival Crusoes
- Children's Literature
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 35, 2007
- pp. 1-26
- 10.1353/chl.2007.0013
- Article
- Additional Information
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Using Agnes Strickland's noncanonical but once-popular 1826 robinsonnade as a test case, this essay takes issue with earlier critical work arguing early British children's literature functions to construct middle class subjectivites. Rather than embracing a tripartite vision of class, Strickland's text co-opts middle class ideologies of sentimentalism and meritocracy to reform and reinscribe a binary construction of class, a construction which leaves the upper class firmly in control of the reins of power.