Characters on the Couch

In Narratives of Love and Loss: Studies in Modern Children's Fiction, Margaret and Michael Rustin undertake to analyze the psychological, sociological, and literary aspects of twenty-nine children's books. Not all the prongs in their three-prong approach are equally sharp. Of the three, the psychological prong is by far the sharpest and most effective. The sociological prong is also quite sharp but is used only on occasion, whereas the literary prong, though serviceable, is rather dull. Although the book does not quite measure up to the Rustins' ambitious goals, it contains many keen psychological insights.

The Rustins have a strong background in contemporary psychoanalytic theory and make frequent reference to the works of Melanie Klein, Donald Winnicott, and the other British psychoanalysts of the object relations school. Margaret Rustin also has extensive clinical experience. She is a psychotherapist at the famous Tavistock Clinic in London, where she specializes in training other professionals in the techniques of child psychotherapy. The Rustins' familiarity with psychoanalytic theory and practice is reflected in practically every page of their book. Unlike many psychoanalytic critics, however, they generally use language that can be understood by people who are not trained in this field.

Much of the book is devoted to analyzing individual characters from children's books. The Rustins delve into the characters' psyches in an attempt to explain what motivates their behavior. This form of psychoanalytic criticism has often been attacked for straying from the actual texts being examined. The Rustins are well aware of this controversy and address it in their introduction. They defend their approach by comparing themselves to actors: "The method which we adopt in thinking about these stories may be similar to that which actors and producers seem to adopt in thinking about the text of a play. In order to imagine what it is like to act a part, it seems to be necessary to imagine what that person would be like, to fill in, so to speak, the spaces which the author has left. . . . We are attempting to do no more than fill in such spaces, in order to clarify how these representations correspond to more general truths of childhood experiences" (15-16).

Most of the characters the Rustins analyze come from well-known fantasy books, including Philippa Pearce's Tom's Midnight Garden, C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, E. Nesbit's Five Children and It, E. B. White's Charlotte's Web, Russell Hoban's Mouse and His Child, and Mary Norton's Borrowers series; but they also look at characters from three of Paula Fox's realistic books and from Nina Bawden's Carrie's War. Before discussing a character from a particular book, the Rustins briefly summarize the book's plot and assess its literary merits. For The Mouse and His Child and a few other books, they examine sociological themes as well. Although their analyses all follow a similar pattern, those that deal with fantasy books are the strongest. Fantasy is clearly their preferred genre, and their enthusiasm for this type of literature comes through.

The book is a collection of related essays, each about one or more books by a particular author; hence, each essay can stand by itself. In their conclusion, the Rustins try to tie the book together by arguing that all the works they analyze deal with the experience of loss. But they define loss so broadly as to include practically anything that can be missed, from one's vacationing parents to a sense of security in childhood. Under this definition, practically all children's books deal with loss. Although I would have preferred a more unified book, the Rustins' approach makes the book more useful to readers who are interested in only a few of the titles covered.

Those readers who do decide to read the book in its entirety will be amply rewarded. In each chapter, including those about characters from lesser known books, the Rustins have something worthwhile to say about children's...