The Child Reader and American Literature, 1700-1852
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THE CHILD READER AND AMERICAN LITERATURE, 1700-1852 DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Courtney Anne Weikle-Mills, M.A. * * * * * The Ohio State University 2007 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Jared Gardner, Adviser Professor Elizabeth Hewitt ____________________________________ Professor Roxann Wheeler Adviser English Graduate Program Professor Susan Williams Copyright by Courtney Anne Weikle-Mills 2007 ABSTRACT As the large numbers of children’s books published in early America indicate, child readers played a major role in the spread of literacy and the rise of print culture in the new nation. Even more strikingly, the most popular American literary texts, from Susanna Rowson’s Charlotte Temple to Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, were primarily addressed to a child audience. Even texts that were not originally addressed to children, such as Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, quickly became the province of young readers, leading to later arguments that, in the words of D.H. Lawrence, “the old-fashioned American classics” are “children's books.” Yet, while much work has been done on particular kinds of early American readers, such as the female reader, the child reader has often been overlooked by critics perhaps eager to counter age-old claims that American literature, and hence the study of it, is “childish.” My dissertation tells the story of how and why children came to be central figures in the formation of the American reading public, focusing on key historical moments in which the figure of the child reader instigated larger shifts in the cultural understanding of literature and citizenship. In particular, I argue that children’s reading practices played a crucial role in narratives about the origins, activities, and limitations of American citizenship, suggesting that the ideal American citizen and reader was, first and foremost, a child. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A dissertation is the culmination of an intellectual adventure that is shaped by a number of wonderful people. I would like to thank my committee—Elizabeth Hewitt for her enthusiastic belief in the timeliness of the project, her exacting critical eye, and her influence on the way I think as a scholar; Susan Williams for her generosity in working with a new student, her wisdom about writing as a professional activity, and her unfailingly correct intuition about how to make an argument as direct as possible; and Roxann Wheeler for her brilliance at combining historical accuracy and ambitious ideas, her encyclopedic knowledge of literary criticism, and her part in calling my attention to the child as a subject of study. I owe particular gratitude to my advisor, Jared Gardner, for more qualities than I can possibly list, but among them his seemingly inexhaustible and unconditional enthusiasm, his playful approach to literary analysis, his compassion and gentleness in criticism, and his willingness to share his memories of some of the more vulnerable moments in this whole crazy process. While dissertating, I was fortunate to receive generous support from my program and university. For a year of uninterrupted writing on a Presidential Fellowship, I would like to thank the Ohio State University Graduate School. I am also grateful to the English Department for summer fellowship funding, which gave me the time to travel to Indiana iii University’s Lilly Library and to explore the rare book room of Ohio State’s own Thompson Library. Dissertation writing can be a solitary endeavor and I was happy to meet with some companionship as I was nearing the end of my writing. I would like to convey my appreciation to my fellow dissertation seminar participants, Shannon Thomas, Kristin Hartman, Marisa Cull, and Ivonne Garcia, for their thoughtful readings of my second chapter and expressions of excitement about the project as a whole. I would also like to acknowledge Martha-Lynn and Jason Corner, Merry Guerrera, Christy Minard, Glenda Insua, and Natalie Giannini who were there from the beginning and provided insight, perspective, and distraction when I needed it. For unconditional encouragement, I express my appreciation to Betsy Greer (who first taught me to “love my book”), Robert and Linda Weikle, Marsha Mills, and Randy and Roxanne Mills. Last, but not least, I would like to thank my husband, Ryan Mills, for giving me the confidence to continue in academia and the conviction that scholarship is a creative and mindful practice. His own successes and struggles have kept me honest about the courage, persistence, and humility that writing always entails, and for that, this dissertation is dedicated to him. iv VITA September 19, 1978 . Born – Somerset, PA 2002 . M.A. English, The Ohio State University. 2006 . Presidential Fellow The Ohio State University 2005 . English Department Summer Fellow The Ohio State University 2000 – Present . Graduate Teaching Associate The Ohio State University PUBLICATIONS Research Publication 1. “Sentiment and Economic Exchange in Early Nineteenth-Century Children’s Fiction.” Journal for the Liberal Arts and Sciences. 8 (2004): 37-42. FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field of Study: English Specializations: U.S. Literature, Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century Children’s Literature and Culture, The History of the Book and Reading, The Novel, Transatlantic Studies, Eighteenth-Century British and Colonial Literature v TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………....ii Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………..iii Vita………………………………………………………………………………………...v Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapters: 1. ‘How Art Thou Affected, Dear Child, in the Reading of this Book?’: Puritan Children’s Literature, the Catechism, and Closet Readership.…………………..23 1.1 Child Readers and Late Seventeenth-Century Spiritual, Civic, and Literary Culture……………………………………………………………………………26 1.2 The ABC and the Catechism…………………………………………………33 1.3 ‘The Bible is a Letter unto You’: The Religion of the Closet……………….44 1.4 ‘Let That Be Theatre Enough’: The Problem of Affectation………………...65 2. ‘Learn to Love Your Book’: Eighteenth-Century Playbooks and Affectionate Citizenship……………………………………………………………………….74 2.1 ‘Freedom without the Exercise of it’: Locke’s Unstable Relationship between Child and Citizen……………………………………………………….78 2.2 Innovations in Teaching Love and Literacy: Embodied Letters and Bibliophagia……………………………………………………………………...88 2.3 ‘Love Makes for the Happiness of All Societies’: The School Story and the Governess as Book……………………………………………………………….95 3. Readers Who Love Too Much: The Early American Novel and the Childish Citizen…………………………………………………………………………..116 3.1 ‘How Dangerous is the Company of Books’: The Child Reader and the Perils of Seduction……………………………………………………………..121 vi 3.2 ‘The Rights of Babies’: The Bad Child Reader as Rebel…………………..133 3.3 Kiddie Quixotism: The Adult-Child Reader………………………………..143 3.4 ‘Stories for Children by a Baby Six Feet High’: Irving’s Sketches and Child Readership………………………………………………………………..155 4. ‘Nothing but Baby Faces’: The American Renaissance and the Natural Child Reader…………………………………………………………………………..169 4.1 A Game of Blindman’s Bluff: The Transcendentalist Rejection of the Child Reader……………………………………………………………………175 4.2 ‘Infancy Conforms to Nobody’: The Child Reader Reinvented……………187 4.3 Hawthorne: Taming the Natural Child Reader……………………………..197 4.4. ‘Feel Right,’ Read Right: The Sentimental Child Reader…………………208 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………226 Notes……………………………………………………………………………………247 vii INTRODUCTION In 1845, children’s book author Samuel Goodrich presented his readers with a new edition of the first children’s book that he had ever published, The Tales of Peter Parley about America. In his preface to this final revision, Goodrich looks back upon the history of the work’s reception and, in the process, makes a compelling statement about children’s position in the American republic: “It is now several years since this little work was given to the public . The public—I mean the world of children—have bestowed upon it their favor, and I ask no more.”1 In this passage, it is unclear whether Goodrich’s assertion that not only his readership, but also the larger public, is composed of children is a clarification or a slip. Either way, his link between the public and “the world of children” suggests that young readers were important to the early American imagination of its populace, both in terms of the reading public and the broader national community of citizens. Peter Parley itself goes on to corroborate the child’s importance to America’s foundations by narrating the nation’s political origins not from an adult point of view, but from that of a child. Goodrich, in the voice of Parley, suggests that children are not merely witnesses to American history and governance, but figures for citizenship in general; he explains that the president is “like a father, and the people are like his children. He watches over them . and he takes care that the laws are obeyed and the 1 people protected.”2 In his Recollections of a Lifetime (1857), Goodrich grants children a more active role as citizens by claiming that his aging narrator, Peter Parley, was nominated for president on the “children’s ticket.”3 While it is tempting to dismiss these images as oversimplifications for children, my research suggests that they draw their significance from