School of Culture and Communication - Theses
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 2 of 2
-
ItemInspired recklessness and spirited perversity: transformations of the wilful child in neo-Victorian literature( 2015)Though Victorian fiction is rife with doomed wilful children, the same cannot be said of neo-Victorian fiction. Taking this narrative difference as my point of departure, my thesis investigates the transformation of the Victorian figure of the wilful child in neo-Victorian fiction, through a detailed examination of the ways in which wilfulness manifests, or fails to manifest—through spatial practices, thoughts, speech, and self-narrative. Using Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda (1986), A.N. Wilson’s A Jealous Ghost (2005), A.S. Byatt’s The Children’s Book (2005), Carol Birch’s Jamrach’s Menagerie (2010) and John Harding’s Florence & Giles (2010) as case studies, I examine differences in wilful and will-less children’s responses to various forms of adult control, and what impact these responses have on the characters’ narrative trajectories. By drawing attention to repeated narrative patterns of resistance and oppression in the neo-Victorian genre, I track a significant shift in contemporary textual responses to the wilful child, alongside a reverse response to the will-less child. I argue that while the wilful child in Victorian fiction is depicted as a wretched figure of excess, neo-Victorian fiction displaces this abjection onto the child with a lack of will. In neo-Victorian fiction it is will-lessness, not wilfulness, that has severe repercussions. Drawing on Turner’s model of liminality and Kristeva’s concept of abjection, I argue that will-lessness, as it is experienced by children in neo-Victorian fiction, is linked with negative liminality and subsequent troubled identity. Ultimately, I contend that wilfulness plays a pivotal role in the survival of the child who occupies the liminal physical and emotional spaces of neo-Victorian fiction. The neo-Victorian fictional child must cultivate strength of will if he or she is to flourish. In neo-Victorian fiction, wilfulness enables children to plot different pathways for themselves, and allows them to actively manipulate adult regimes of control for their own gain. As a direct result of their drive to will their own way, I contend that wilful children in neo-Victorian fiction repeatedly engage in “surreptitious creativities” and “tactics,” which develop in spite of “networks of surveillance” (de Certeau 96) put in place by adults. In this way, they actively engage with—and manipulate—the socially coded rules of childhood. This thesis seeks to demonstrate that in contrast to Victorian fiction, neo-Victorian fiction reinterprets wilfulness as a positive, enabling trait. I argue that the authorial manipulation of character tropes, point-of-view and narrative sequencing in neo-Victorian fiction ultimately underscore children’s right to exist wilfully.
-
Item'Gay, innocent and heartless': the ideal child in The Secret Garden( 2013)This thesis argues that the ideal child in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s novel, The Secret Garden (1911), is ultimately not a child but a young man capable of leading Britain into the future. It examines the figure of the ideal child within the context of the late Victorian and Edwardian period. My methodology involves the use of J. M. Barrie’s Peter and Wendy (1911) to identify the investments that were made in the ideal child figure, and to identify what threatens these investments. These investments reveal the ‘adult-child dynamic’, or the power relationship between adult desires and constructions of children. The thesis investigates the influence of the adult-child dynamic in the condemnation of particular kinds of children. I then apply these insights to analyse the narrative representation of Mary Lennox, Burnett’s female protagonist, comparing it with that of Colin Craven, her sickly cousin. The thesis also applies Michel Foucault’s study of the panopticon to the novel to reveal the function of the child in the adult-child dynamic, examining how Mary, a failed child, is transformed through the English, adult gaze into an acceptable child. By revealing who is given the authority to use the adult gaze, the thesis connects the adult-child dynamic with national and imperial discourse of early twentieth-century England. An examination of the meanings of food and air in the mental and physical transformations of the two children is also included. The narrative use of food and air is studied for its support of imperial values and discourses, as seen in the difference between Mary and Colin’s transformed bodies and attitudes. This reveals the ways in which the expectations of the two children differ: while Mary merely becomes more pleasing, Colin comes to embody hope for his community at Misselthwaite Manor. This, I argue, demonstrates that the novel’s primary concern is not Mary but Colin. It is Colin who, like the Lost Boys in Peter and Wendy, is freighted with the responsibility of representing the English nation and its future.