Childrens in the Victorian Period - Literature review Example

Children’s Literature There have been a great number of changes in the way in which children’s literature is presented during the past one hundred years, due largely to a changing social idea of childhood and what it means. Early Victorian books written for children display a great deal of emphasis on educating children in the strict moral lessons of the day. Regardless of the subject matter being discussed, such as simple mathematics or the alphabet, these ideas are usually brought together with ideas of religion, moral and ethical ‘correctness’ and obedience to elders. Images depicted were generally formalized. Children are dressed like small adults and are frequently seen to be busily engaged in some sort of learning activity – whether it is being chastised by an adult, engaged in employment or working about the house in housekeeping-type duties. Despite the fact that these are children’s books, they feature very detailed drawings, sophisticated flourishes and are highly artistic. Children’s literature as a recognized genre didn’t truly begin until sometime around the mid-1800s. This was during what is now termed the Victorian period and was a period largely characterized by a shift in every element of society. Not only were people’s livelihoods changing from primarily rural to primarily industrial, but long-term social organization was shifting as business replaced nobility. Science was beginning to explain some of the great mysteries of life in a way that didn’t depend upon the church and political structures throughout the world had seen significant changes within living memory. Women began to slowly make their voices heard as an oppressed gender and philosophers were beginning to gain a greater understanding of the workings of the human mind. The child, often considered either a sinful and wild creature or a miniature adult, was beginning to be recognized as something still developing. There was a “veritable explosion of information about this period of physiological and cognitive development in human beings” and literature became “a central vehicle for expressing ideas about the self and its history” (Steedman 5). Written as this societal shift was taking place, books such as Little Women by Louisa May Alcott and Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson reflect a changing attitude regarding ideas of growing up. It is impossible reading these books today to separate modern understanding of child development, particularly as relates to the teen and young adult phases of life that these books present, from interpretation of the story. Today, we understand that while teens obviously possess better thinking skills than younger youth, they are not necessarily fully capable of adult understanding. These advances in thinking include better reasoning skills and the ability to mentally conceptualize multiple options and possibilities (Huebner, 2000). This includes a furthered logical thought process and the ability to reason hypothetically. It involves asking and answering the question, ‘what if?’ Teens also develop abstract thinking skills (Huebner, 2000). Abstract thinking means thinking about concepts, things that cannot be seen, heard, or touched such as faith, trust, and spirituality and a heightened level of self-consciousness, yet are still likely to believe that everyone else is as concerned with their thoughts and actions as they are. They also believe that no one else could have ever experienced similar feelings and emotions as they do and may become overly dramatic in describing situations that are disconcerting to them. Teens are quick to point out to friends and peers behaviors that are and are not acceptable, to mention inconsistencies between adults’ words and their actions and have difficulty appreciating an opposing opinion (Huebner, 2000). Adolescents have a universal need to ‘fit in’. Four major recognized psychosocial issues that teens deal with during their adolescent years are establishing an identity, autonomy, intimacy and general need for achievement. Though adolescents spend increasing amounts of time with their friends, they still are inclined to make decisions regarding values, education and long-term plans based on the ideals they learned at home. Young Adulthood is usually more concerned with social and cognitive development than the physical development that dominated the earlier stages. The developmental tasks of this phase of life as defined by Robert Havighurst take on the form of determining and obtaining an occupation, marriage, having children, managing a home and achieving social success through civic and other roles (Craig & Baucum 2001). The transition between adolescence and young adulthood is often considered to be the focus of the hero’s journey. The hero’s journey has been called by a number of different names, perhaps the most accurate of which was employed by psychologist and theorist Carl Jung. Terming the process ‘individuation,’ Jung separates the concept of the journey from the concept of the hero. Individuation is the three stage process by which Jung indicated we matured into full adults. The first of these stages is when we become aware that some kind of action is required. “Some kind of shock occurs that makes one aware of the self” (Garbis, 2002). This shock initiates the maturation process typically around the early teen years and is an essential element of the hero journey. The second stage is termed the initiation stage and it usually takes place during the teen years as individuals begin separating from their parents. It is during this phase of the individuation process in which the primary action of the hero myth occurs. “Jung says that unless we pass through this second stage the individual can’t really become an adult. The function of the hero myth is to develop a person’s awareness of his strengths and weaknesses in order to face life’s problems” (Garbis, 2002). Within this myth, the death or near-death of the hero functions as a key to the concept that the individual has gained maturity and has been reborn into the image of the father or mentor. This third stage of the individuation process is known as transcendence and is that stage in the maturation process in which the unconscious and the conscious minds merge to enable the person to experience their full potential as an adult. With these modern understandings of child development, it is particularly interesting to note the differences in how well these ideas were perceived by the authors and reflected to the community. Both authors focus on the ‘coming of age’ period of a child’s life in the form of Jung’s concepts of individuation, but they are necessarily different as Treasure Island discusses the idea of a boy’s growth while Little Women obviously focuses on girls. Jim Hawkins goes on a dangerous adventure involving pirates and instances in which his actual life hangs in the balance. His call to action comes as he suddenly realizes the harshness of life. “I had certainly never liked the man, though of late I had begun to pity him, but as soon as I saw that he was dead, I burst into a flood of tears. It was the second death I had known, and the sorrow of the first was still fresh in my heart” (Stevenson 27). He begins Jung’s stage two, the initiation process, when his mother faints upon leaving the inn, effectively leaving Jim alone to face the pirates that are approaching their home. From this point forward, he makes his own decisions about the direction he goes, becoming increasingly bold as he embarks on a treasure-hunting voyage with men he suspects are pirates and takes proactive measures to secure his safety and the safety of the honorable men he’s with. By the end of the story, he’s reached the third stage of the hero journey, transcendence, after going through the near-death experience of facing down the pirates. At this point, he is able to take a more philosophical approach to events, reflecting that the men aboard the Hispaniola “were all pleased to be so cheaply quit of” John Silver and hoping that the old pirate had “met his old negress, and perhaps still lives in comfort with her and Captain Flint” because “his chances of comfort in another world are very small” (Stevenson 296-297). The action of the journey involved in Little Women is different not only because it attempts to focus on the growth of four characters rather than just one, but also because these characters are girls who were expected to live under different conditions and fulfill different expectations. Jim’s call to action in Treasure Island was largely based on his need to fulfill his new role as the family’s protector and provider, but the four girls of Little Women are expected to find suitable husbands and become good wives. The physical journey of each of the girls is vastly different from those of her sisters, yet none even remotely as adventurous as Jim’s. The sister to travel furthest is Amy. Her call to action is when she is sent away to her Aunt March’s home to avoid Meg’s scarlet fever. Her initiation period takes place while she learns ladylike behavior serving Aunt March, while she struggles to find dignity among her peers and during her trip to Europe. In many ways, her near-death experience comes as she hovers on the brink of marrying Fred, who is the wrong man for her. “I’ve made up my mind and, if Fred asks me, I shall accept him, though I’m not madly in love. I like him and we get on comfortably together” (Alcott 327). She achieves transcendence when she stops placing such value on money and marries a man that she loves. Jo also goes on a lengthy physical journey as a means of growing up as she leaves for New York to try to help her sister Beth find a husband. Her major initiation period takes place as she struggles to balance her desire to support her family through sensationalist writing or to pursue her interest in creating more meaningful literature. She eventually finds transcendence in her success as a writer and independent woman but must also marry and settle down before she is considered successful. Meg’s journey is much less obvious, but no less real and marks the predominant difference in emphasis between the two authors and poor Beth never survives her near-death experience to achieve full adulthood. While it is necessary for the primary protagonists to take a physical journey in order to grow up in both books, the nature of these journeys as well as the internal development emphasized is much different. Today’s books might have boys and girls taking relatively similar journeys, there remained a sharp gender divide during the Victorian period causing each book to place different emphasis on different aspects of the tale. Stevenson seems to have recognized the importance of the hero’s journey to the process of growing up, but focuses most of his efforts on developing the action of the story while spending very little time working to overtly analyze the mental development of his character. This development does take place, as in the reflective tone found as Jim hides in the forest overhearing Silver and Tom: “now I began to feel that I was neglecting my business; that since I had been so foolhardy as to come ashore with these desperadoes, the least I could do was to overhear them at their councils; and that my plain and obvious duty was to draw as close as I could manage, under the favorable ambush of the crouching trees” (Stevenson 114). However, in most instances, Stevenson describes the action and trusts it to the reader to interpret the underlying lessons being learned. This is different from the tone used in Little Women, which is more directly instructive. Rather than allowing the reader to imagine the kind of work that had gone into Jo’s book that Amy burned, Alcott devotes an entire paragraph to an analysis of where Amy was in the wrong: “Jo’s book was the pride of her heart, and was regarded by her family as a literary sprout of great promise. It was only half a dozen little fairy tales, but Jo had worked patiently, putting her whole heart into her work, hoping to make something good enough to print. She had just copied them with great care, and had destroyed the old manuscript, so that Amy’s bonfire had consumed the loving work of several years. It seemed a small loss to others, but to Jo it was a dreadful calamity, and she felt that it never could be made up to her. Beth mourned as for a departed kitten, and Meg refused to defend her pet; Mrs. March looked grave and grieved, and Amy felt that no one would love her till she had asked pardon for the act which she now regretted more than any of them” (78). This difference in tone reflects a societal difference of expectations between girls and boys. While each were expected to develop along relatively similar internal paths of development, boys were felt to be better able to recognize the deeper lessons without explanation. Both authors also recognize the psychosocial issues today’s studies have identified that teens deal with in these years – the need to ‘fit in’, the need to establish an identity, the need to achieve autonomy, the need to develop intimacy with another and a general need for achievement. Jim in Treasure Island is less concerned with ‘fitting in’ than he is with simple survival, but his ability to get along with others is important to his ability to survive the journey. He develops his own identity as he struggles to determine whether he wants to be more like the pirates or like the gentlemen who act like pirates under a polite veneer, finally settling on something in between and uniquely him. As soon as his mother faints at the approach of real pirates, he begins working toward autonomy. He achieves intimacy with the good doctor, from whom he accepts a gentle rebuke. “As for you, Jim … it went against my heart, but I did what I thought best for those who had stood by their duty; and if you were not one of these, whose fault was it?” (Stevenson 285). From his start in the story with the tendency to run to his mother when things go wrong to taking proactive steps toward securing his future, Jim achieves the achievement that marks him as a full adult. Among the girls of Little Women, Meg and Amy have the greatest interest in finding a means of fitting in, both with harsh effects. Meg’s decision to let the girls dress her up to fit in at Annie Moffat’s party results in profound disappointment as she first encounters Laurie’s disapproval and then overhears Major Lincoln’s disappointment in her as he speaks to his mother. “I wish I’d been sensible and worn my own things; then I should not have disgusted other people or felt so uncomfortable and ashamed myself” (Alcott 96). Amy’s tea party, with only one guest despite all her expense and efforts, is similarly instructive about the relative merits of trying too hard to ‘fit in.’ However, all of the girls struggle with developing their identity, trying to determine whether to marry for comfort or love in the case of Amy, to focus on the self or others in the case of Meg or to appeal to the masses through sensationalist literature or to reveal the thoughts of her heart in more literary works for Jo. As they work through these issues, all of the girls are able to achieve autonomy in that they have each found a man to love and accepted a role in life in keeping with their individual personalities. This also meets their need to develop intimacy with another and contributes to their sense of achievement. the need to ‘fit in’, the need to establish an identity, the need to achieve autonomy, the need to develop intimacy with another and a general need for achievement. Although adolescence was officially recognized as a unique stage of life only recently by the time of the publication of these novels, it is clear from these two very different books that the major issues teenagers face and the primary task of this phase of life was well recognized. Although the means through which the process took place and the expected end results were obviously different for boys than they were for girls, the internal processes of a call to action, internal initiation into the adult sphere and transcendence into a more adult, abstract way of thinking remained largely the same. Expectations seemed relatively low that girls would intuitively understand these ideas to the same degree as boys as evidenced by the internal inclusion of so much direct instruction in Alcott’s novel as compared to brief statements found in Stevenson’s. Both authors recognize one of the major challenges faced by youth in their quest for full development is combating a natural urge to fit in with their peers. This struggle both helps to define the individual as they choose who to emulate, as shown in Treasure Island, and forces the development of the individual’s uniqueness as they determine to what degree they wish to conform, as seen through both Meg and Amy in Little Women. Both stories remain relevant today because of their adherence to these seemingly universal truths about human development yet each exposes its cultural biases regarding gender roles and social expectations. References Alcott, Louisa May. (1868). Little Women. New York: Little, Brown and Company (1994). Craig, G & Baucum, D. (2001). Human Development (9th Ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc. Garbis, Michelle R. (2007). Archetypes. Huebner, Angela. (March 2000). “Adolescent Growth and Development.” Family and Child Development. Virginia: Virginia Tech. Stevenson, Robert Louis. (1868). Treasure Island. New York: Barnes & Noble Books (2001). Read More