In Absentia Parentis: Confronting the Uncanny Orphan in Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach

Since the publication of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, there has been tremendous growth in the adult readership of children’s literature. Despite the tendency of some critics to scorn children’s literature as adult fare, I believe that the adult reading experience of children’s texts can have deep-rooted psychological benefits. Using both childhood developmental theory and Freud’s concept of the uncanny, I show how orphan figures in children’s literature uncover these developmental dilemmas from our childhood and how conventions of the fantasy genre create a narrative that allows adult readers the opportunity to reprocess fundamental psychological processes left behind in childhood.