Framing Childhood in Eighteenth-Century English Periodicals and Prints, 1689-1789 (review)

Framing Childhood is an admirable study. Informed by the theoretical and methodological paradigm shifts of the past forty years (especially Foucauldianism), it shows, by its consistent lucidity, that scholarship can be theoretically sophisticated without being impenetrable or opaque. The study is also helpful in its exposition of the full range of traditional historical learning relating to its topic.

Ms. Müller views childhood as a construct or a dispositif (which she elects not to translate) in order to examine how this construct was represented, discussed, disseminated, and popularized between the Glorious and the French Revolutions. I must confess that I was initially (and afterwards occasionally) skeptical about her yoking together eighteenth-century literary periodicals and satiric prints. She makes a strong case for periodicals as sources; their audience and authors are clear, they have been neglected in favor of novels by scholars of early English childhood, they are homogenous, and they are also widely viewed as genres shaping middle-class manners, morals, and ideologies, especially among women. They are easy to select because they are sharply canonized and widely available in excellent editions, and they have been comprehensively studied. She chooses for treatment the Tatler, Spectator, Guardian, Female Tatler, and Female Spectator. Satiric prints are not so easy to deal with, as Ms. Müller admits, and limiting herself to the prints in the Lewis Walpole Library is but a mechanical solution to this problem (I cannot come up with a better way of limiting scope). However, she is still faced with reading childhood in prints belonging to many different genres: the allegorical, the political, the sentimental, the reproductive engraving, like the print of Hayman's oil titled Quadrille (Figure 5.3)—for which neither print seller nor copper scratcher are named and the plate, as reproduced, seems cropped of publication data.

That said, I found her treatment of prints consistently deft, lively, and persuasive. And I also admired her initial framing of mass media, in the book's Introduction, where she views these genres not so much as reflections of history and mentalities, but rather as creators of tastes and engines of collective ideas. She sees periodicals as vehicles for circulating ideas and creating concepts, while she views satirical prints as attracting large publics by which they became powerful icons that embedded themselves in English consciousness. In this way, they entered into the imaginary museum all of us constitute and carry around in our heads. Evidence for this view is everywhere in eighteenth-century culture, notably in Fielding's evocation of Hogarth's characters, such as Bridget Allworthy in Tom Jones.

Framing Childhood's Introduction begins by locating its narrative in the history of recent scholarship on children, pointing out that such research has neglected the portrayal of young people in the visual arts (especially in prints), while also focusing on youths in the Romantic period but skirting the eighteenth century. "Most studies on topics pertaining to childhood in eighteenth-century literature reconcentrate on two major issues (education and the family) and incorporate their statements on childhood into these larger frameworks without making it—childhood—the first and foremost concern."

After an account of her own critical approach (she names Foucault and Butler), Ms. Müller offers chapters on children's bodies (Chapter 2), minds (Chapter 3), ties to their family (Chapter 4), and what she called "Public Children" (Chapter 5). Her chapters are divided into two large general sections, the first devoted to periodicals and the second to prints, each with its own theme. These are then subdivided into sections addressing smaller, more concrete topics. So "Fashioning Children's Bodies" includes an initial section treating children's physicality in periodicals and a second section on sexualizing and politicizing young people in prints. These are divided into such topics as child care, illness and sexuality, education, sexuality and the child's body. Her treatment of the latter topic, a difficult and sensitive issue, is particularly rewarding for how...