Children's Literature and British Identity: Imagining a People and a Nation by Rebecca Knuth (review)

This book initially raised my hackles. In her preface, the author asserts that she is exploring terra incognita: the "role of children's stories in teaching worldviews and supporting identities" (v). As a children's literature scholar, my response was surprise, as I thought that particular piece of ideological ground had been pretty regularly trodden. She follows up, "I had a hunch that a common consciousness infuses (or is encouraged by) a nation's children's literature in so natural a way that it is virtually invisible" (vi). Yes, I thought, there's a word for exactly that concept ("interpellation," however, doesn't appear even once in the text). These warning signs immediately sent me to the bibliography, which is broad and includes a great deal of social history and developmental psychology. It is rather lighter on studies of children's materials, but does include the venerable Harvey Darton (1982), Geoffrey Summerfield (1984), and Humphrey Carpenter (1979); Allison Lurie is the newest entry (1990). While this might seem shoddy scholarship, Knuth does assert that she is not writing "a narrow historical or literary study," nor is she writing for experts (vii). However, even from the first few pages, I was left wondering who the intended audience was. This question continued to nag at me throughout, especially when Knuth defines terms like "public school" (something any Anglophile would know) and "bildungsroman" (something that a literary person would know, even nonexperts).

Knuth's overall argument is found in chapter one, "Introduction": "the development of English children's literature can be seen, in retrospect, as part of the project of constructing a modern society and the identities that would support it" (5). This strikes me as uninspired at best. That particular phenomenon is not unique to British children's books, nor does it explain the appeal of such books to those outside the UK. As chapters progress, the analysis of how children's identities support British society falls away in favor of descriptions of those identities. For example, in chapter eight she writes: "The major achievement of twentieth-century children's authors was the development of the genre to encompass fully fleshed out literature for children that incorporated compelling models of virtue based on autonomy and internal development" (140).

This short book (190 pages) is divided into ten chapters. They begin with the mid-eighteenth century and move through about 1990, ending with Harry Potter: 1. "Introduction"; 2. "Creating 'Good' Children"; 3. "Socialization: Loyalty, Duty, and Self-Sacrifice"; 4. "Creating Manliness and the Boy Hero"; 5. "Romanticizing Childhood and England"; 6. "Being Playful and Emotionally Alive"; 7. "Small Adventures and Happiness"; 8. "Autonomy and Affirmation"; 9. "Into the Story-Pot: Harry and Heroism"; and 10. "A Modern English Folklore." Throughout, the historical idea being traced is of more importance than the chronology, so some texts don't appear where one might expect them. Treasure Island is a prime example. I expected this be in chapter four, alongside Ballantyne and Henty, but rather it appears in chapter six, which also features Kipling and E. Nesbit, the latter writing in a different century.

The earlier chapters are more narrowly focused both in time and concept. Each begins with a summary of a particular historical movement or moment in British society, then demonstrates how those ideas are represented in materials for children. Multiple authors are discussed in each chapter, and no single book is given a close textual study. In chapter three, for example, Knuth notes a shift to a more secular worldview, then moves to a discussion of Charles Dickens and how books came to focus on the heart rather than the mind. She credits Dickens with changing national ideas about children, then starts her discussion of children's books: "[they were] novels written with determined social agendas but agendas heavily camouflaged by entertaining plots and endearing characters" (34). The remainder of the chapter is separated by gender: Charlotte Yonge's...