Dedication. to My Mum and Dad, Lydia and Tom Redford, In
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Dedication. To my mum and dad, Lydia and Tom Redford, in celebration of their lives and the culture we shared. Acknowledgements. I am greatly indebted to my supervisor, Celia Keenan, for her guidance, scholarship and humanity, to Mary Shine Thompson for her invaluable opinion and advice, to Patrick Crotty for his interest and expertise, to Ann Fitzpatrick, Valerie Coghlan, Rosemary Hetherington and Amanda Piesse for the loan of books, to Maureen Redford for the location of otherwise unobtainable novels, to Dominic Dunbar for overseeing the printing, to Derek Darlington, Graham Darlington and Dominic Dunbar for their computing skills and their readiness to use them, to Grainne Darlington for the initial binding of the thesis, to D. and G. for their blessed refusal to take this work or its author too seriously, and to P. for his unwavering love, support, interest, characteristic tolerance, and for my réintroduction “into the wonderful world of books for young people.” The Other Nation - an examination of the depiction of the poor in the children’s fiction of Mrs Molesworth, Mrs Ewing,Silas Hocking and Frances Hodgson Burnett. by Carole Dunbar S.R.N. B.A (Hons.) A thesis submitted to Dublin City University in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD in Children’s Literature at the English Department of St. Patrick’s College, Drumcondra, a college of Dublin City University. Supervisors: Dr. Patrick Crotty and Celia Keenan September, 2001. ii ì I hereby certify that this material, which I now submit for assessment on the programme of study leading to the award of PhD in Children’s Literature, is entirely my own work and has not been taken from the work of others save and to the extent that such work has been cited and acknowledged within the text of my work. Signed: Student Number: 97200010 Date: 19/9/01 in Contents page Dedication and Acknowledgements i Title Page ii Declaration ill Abstract V Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Nouveau Pauvre 19 Chapter 2: Children of the English Savage 48 Chapter 3: “Not always very refined” - the depiction of the working classes in the children’s fiction of Mrs Molesorth 94 \ Chapter 4: “Reformatory, Progressive, Experimental” - the depiction of the working classes in the fiction of Mrs Ewing 142 Chapter 5: Cities and Sinfulness - the depiction of the working classes in the children’s fiction of Silas Hocking 240 Chapter 6: From Rats to Royalty - the depiction of class In the work of Frances Hodgson Burnett 289 Chapter 7: Summary and Discussion of Findings 357 Bibliography 387 Thesis Abstract The Other Nation - an examination of the depiction of the poor in the children’s fiction of Mrs Molesworth. Mrs Ewing. Silas Hocking and Frances Hodgson Burnett. This thesis examines the depiction of the poor in the children’s fiction of four nineteenth century authors. All of these had strong links with the north of England, where the swift and radical transformation precipitated by the Industrial Revolution was most profoundly felt. The region’s ensuing social problems and class conflict were highlighted in contemporary adult fiction and in sociological investigations. It is with these works in mind that an analysis of the portrayal of the working classes in fiction written largely for middle class children is presented . This thesis illustrates not merely the notion of the poor which each author wishes to convey, but also demonstrates how childhood was perceived in that context, and the role that literature for children was seen to fulfil. The criteria in the selection of the four specific authors - Mrs Molesworth, Mrs Ewing, Silas Hocking, and Frances Hodgson Burnett - are discussed. Available historical accounts of the lives of working class adults and children in Lancashire and Yorkshire in the nineteenth century and contemporary thinking relating to poverty are examined. In the light of this examination, four separate chapters analyse the relevant works of each of the authors, the principal concern being to ascertain the authorial attitudes which underpin the depiction of the poor. In the concluding chapter a summary and discussion of these investigations affords evidence of how the characterisation of the urban poor reflects the fear and suspicion the English middle classes felt towards the members of the working classes who lived in towns and cities. It also demonstrates how the conventions inherent in nineteenth century children’s literature contributed to the way the poor were portrayed. Carole Dunbar 1 st. May, 200f . v Introduction The phrase “spirit of the age,” used by Shelley in his essay “A Defence of Poetry,” written in 1821, encapsulates the nineteenth century need to examine and define society. William Hazlitt used the phrase as a title for a book four years later and so general was its acceptance that in Disraeli’s Coningsby, published in 1844, it appears as the focus for a conversation between two strangers at an inn. Some thirty years later Matthew Arnold captures the same preoccupations in his use of the German word ‘Zeitgeist.’ This emphasis on capturing the essence of an era suggests the elusiveness of the quality about to be defined and the underlying insecurity and confusion of those who need to seek their sociological bearing in a well turned phrase. Discussing the concept in the first of his series of articles for The Examiner, John Stuart Mill suggests that “it is an idea essentially belonging to an age of change.” (1) Arguably the most dramatic and far reaching of the changes during the nineteenth century was the growth of industrialisation. Begun in the dying decades of the eighteenth century, mass production in factories and mills transformed the demographics of England forever. Queen Victoria’s reign saw a continuation of the movement of workers from their rural environment to the towns, resulting in England for the first time in history becoming predominantly urban. 1 This phenomenon, taking place over a relatively short period, was felt nowhere more strongly than in the cotton and woollen producing towns of the north of England. It was largely as a result of the wealth engendered in this region that England in the 1850s was the richest country in the world. It was not, though, a wealth that was reflected in the conditions endured by the workers employed in the region’s industries whose products formed the basis of that prosperity. In some respects, the north of England, represented in this thesis by Lancashire and Yorkshire, can be seen as a microcosm for the country as a whole, and the tensions of industrialisation as a metaphor for the changing relationships amongst the classes. Whilst the factory system was based on an almost feudal regime, the amassing of working people both in places of employment and in high density living conditions encouraged amongst the poor a pooling of discontent manifested in widespread militancy. With the memory of social revolution still reverberating around Europe, public demonstrations of working class vexation unnerved the English upper classes, even at the highest level. On 17 August, 1842, Lord Melbourne sent a grim report to Queen Victoria in which he wrote: Lord Melbourne hopes that these tumults in the manufacturing districts are subsiding, but he cannot conceal from your majesty that he views them with great alarm - much greater than he generally thinks it prudent 2 to express. (2) This concern, and a certain fascination that accompanied it, is reflected in a number of the adult novels of the 1840s and 1850s, many of which used as their backdrop the industrial north of England. Charlotte Elizabeth’s Helen Fleetwood (1840), Mrs Gaskell’s Mary Barton (1848) and North and South (1854/5), and Charles Dickens's Hard Times (1854) all dealt with the relationship between the classes, a preoccupation of fiction that was to last throughout the century and well beyond. Such a theme necessitated the creation of credible working class characters whose role was not perceived merely as that of servants to their betters. Gaskell, especially, depicts the poor in a manner that mirrors their complexity and diversity. She features them prominently and treats them with a sympathy that had not been afforded them previously. A changing society precipitates a literary shift to reflect the evolving mores. (There are a mere thirty-two years between the publication of Jane Austen’s Emma and Mary Barton.) The nineteenth century, in terms of books for children, Is characterised by its diversity. Whilst, as Hunt suggests, the century began with children’s literature acting as “a bastion of conservatism” in “revolutionary times,” (3) with largely religiously based, didactic texts, the century as a whole is inextricably linked to what are regarded as the classics of the genre, renowned for their imaginative scope. It was an age which saw fiction become an acceptable entertainment for children. 3 Fantasy blossomed both in children’s fiction and verse. Into this multifaceted literary arena in the latter decades of the century came the work of the authors featured in this thesis. The literary influence that informs their writings originated much earlier. Amongst the publications issued by the chapbook merchants in the eighteenth century were modern reprints of religious material produced for children, John Bunyan’s Divine Emblems, and Isaac Watts’s Divine Songs, for instance. (4) Alongside the Puritanism of such publications were the more common chapbooks, the popular literature of the masses throughout the country. Increasingly amongst these pamphlets there were ones specifically for the pleasure and entertainment of children. In 1744 A Little Pretty Pocket Book, published by John Newbery, was sold with an accompanying ball or pin cushion. (5) These twin strands of amusement and religious and moral inculcation were to vie for supremacy in children’s books for the next century.