Humane Ideology

Ideology is what those who disagree with us believe; what we believe ourselves is the way things are. So it is claimed by those who object to what they derisively call politically correct approaches to literature—the wide variety of feminist, Marxist, and New Historicist analyses of the ideological content of literary texts. These objectors are convinced that reality as they view it themselves—in almost every case, as it has been traditionally understood and described by white upper-class and middle-class males of European extraction and their female companions—is all the reality there is. Worthwhile literary texts, particularly those in the canon of great literature, do nothing more than reflect the essence of that one true and truly universal reality. These texts are, therefore, above the transience and silliness of ideology—they are not political at all. And any texts that do have ideology in them are just ephemeral trash—propaganda for bad ideas.

But as John Stephens points out in this important and persuasive book: "Ideologies . . . are not necessarily undesirable, and in the sense of a system of beliefs by which we make sense of the world, social life would be impossible without them" (8). No living human being is or ever was separate from the ideology of a specific time and place and culture, and that includes Shakespeare and Milton—and Beatrix Potter and Lloyd Alexander: "a narrative without an ideology is unthinkable" (8).

Indeed, Stephens insists that "if you read a book and discover that it is utterly free of ideological presuppositions, what that really means is that you have just read a book which precisely reflects those societal presuppositions which you yourself have learned to subscribe to, and which are therefore invisible" (50). Stephens's major purpose in Language and Ideology in Children's Fiction is to render that invisibility visible, to reveal the extent to which the children's books of our time confirm and sustain specific societal and cultural presuppositions.

His enterprise is timely; despite the impressive progress that critics of adult literature have made in recent years in uncovering and understanding the ideological implications of literary texts, far too many commentators on children's literature prefer to remain blind to its societal and cultural presuppositions. Most reviews in such popular organs as the Horn Book and even a surprising proportion of the articles in professional journals devoted to children's literature (including this one) work from the unstated assumption that children's literature—or, at any rate, worthwhile children's literature—exists outside ideology. Stephens offers a powerful corrective to the unconsidered, somewhat egocentric, and far too common habit of believing that the children's books that most accurately reflect an adult commentator's own unacknowledged vision of reality are the good ones.

I expected a book with the word ideology in its title to concentrate on issues of gender, race, and class. But Stephens has surprisingly little to say about any of them; instead, he focuses on the assumptions that underlie those matters—on the essential vision of reality that so many children's books and so many commentators on children's literature (including, I have to admit, myself) take for granted.

As scholars, educators, and librarians, as believers in the power of ideas to change lives, we tend to assume the liberal humanist view that reality is a place in which individuals have the power to define and control their lives. We love children's books in which characters must make choices that define their existence and its meaning. We particularly admire those in which the choices have to do with the rejection of socially conformist values or pressures and the assertion of individual self-governance, especially in the face of political repression or bleak economic conditions. When poor black or oppressed Jewish characters find the courage within themselves to believe in their individual integrity despite massive attempts to undermine and destroy it, we cheer like crazy and throw handfuls of Newberys and Carnegies and Governor-General Awards at the books describing them.

But...