Repositioning Roald Dahl: Morality and Fantasy in Dahl’S Life and Writing for Children
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Repositioning Roald Dahl: Morality and Fantasy in Dahl’s Life and Writing for Children being a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Click or tap here to enter text. in the University of Hull by Pojana Maneeyingsakul, BA, MLitt January 2021 Acknowledgements This thesis has taken over five years in the making and it was conceived in mid 2014 when my son was five years old and we were growing together as this thesis progressed. First of all I would like to acknowledge the love of my heart, my son, Natthan Maneeyingsakul, who inspired me to research the values of Dahl’s children’s books for my own child and to reappraise the renowned author and his morality. I am hugely grateful to my beloved parents, Mana Maneeyingsakul and Banphen Sutthiprapha, who instilled in me the value of education and steered me toward this academic perseverance. My deepest affections go to my mother for her unconditional love, kindness, and moral support, and my sisters for their encouragement. Their guidance taught me to be tough and resilient, especially during the most difficult and vulnerable time of my PhD journey. But above all, this thesis has benefited from careful scrutiny by my dedicated supervisor, Professor Valerie Sanders, to whom I owe so much gratitude. She has inspired and guided me both academically and personally, her invaluable supervision, corrections and suggestions for revision have made this work as a whole stronger. I would like to thank also my co-supervisor, Dr Bethan Jones, and Professor Veronica O’Mara, for their sage advice and beneficial comments during my annual progress review meetings every year. I am also grateful to so many people who supported me during this challenging and wonderful experience, including my family, teachers, colleagues and friends both in Thailand and in the UK, a vibrant Thai student community at the University of Hull, the staff of Brynmor Jones Library, and the Doctoral College. Most of all my thanks are due once more to OCSC for awarding me a scholarship to pursue this highest level of degree; the Department of English, Faculty of Arts, Silpakorn University who granted me leave of absence to study overseas; and the staff at OEAUK for fully supporting my period of study in the UK. I wish also to express my sincere gratitude for the teachings of the Buddha, whose discourses and enlightenment guide me to mindfully practise meritorious deeds and spiritual development. Such mistakes and omissions that remain are, of course, my sole responsibility. i Abstract This thesis aims to reposition Roald Dahl and his children’s fiction in the evolution of the morality debate in other popular children’s writers. His works for children, which were written during the last three decades of his life, have been frequently attacked by critics on grounds of violence, racism, and sexism. Dahl’s narrative treatment of his characters and his moral outlook are seen as problematic since his texts often feature amoral adult enemies of the child characters, and an unsentimental and subversive view of families. They have equally been subject to debate over their ‘suitability,’ and some have been challenged and banned. The author himself denies preaching morality, yet his child characters become moral crusaders and there are moral undertones and overt moral messages in his books. As a non-Western reader, I discovered that Dahl’s stories fire the imagination of both adults and children, but there remains a contradictory treatment of social decency in the texts. Dahl criticism drives my investigation of the relationship between morality, reading, and interpretation in his fiction. Throughout the thesis, I apply close reading techniques to examine the way in which Dahl engages with moral issues in his works. Chapter One examines Dahl’s exceptional life through his autobiographies, and children’s and adult biographies to uncover Dahl’s contradictory personality. Several of his tragic experiences inform the issue of psychological trauma which is discussed in Chapter Two where Dahl appears briefly to acknowledge trauma but minimises the impact on his protagonists who subsequently become more resilient and optimistic. Chapter Three interrogates gender bias and negative representation of men and women, while Chapter Four focuses in detail on how humour, wordplay, and neologism play crucial roles in his comic fantasy. Chapter Five explores the case of his continuing posthumous popularity as evidenced by his endorsement by marketing campaigns, culminating in his 2016 centenary celebration, while the phenomenal success of the Harry Potter series poses a new challenge to his dominance of the market. The thesis as a whole, therefore, reappraises Dahl’s works, the significance of his moral position, and his ongoing impact in the twenty-first century. ii Contents Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................ i Abstract ......................................................................................................................... ii Contents ........................................................................................................................ iii List of Figures .............................................................................................................. vi Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 1 Dahl’s place in children’s literature criticism ............................................................... 5 Dahl, at first glance ..................................................................................................... 11 Chapter Summaries ..................................................................................................... 17 Chapter 1 : Fantastic or Fanatic Mr Dahl?: Dahl’s persona as constructed by his auto/biography................................................................................................................. 22 Roald Dahl’s autobiographies ..................................................................................... 25 The adult biographies: Treglown versus Sturrock and Solomon ................................ 30 Biographies for Children ............................................................................................. 43 Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 50 Chapter 2 : Trauma, Violence and Bullying in Roald Dahl’s Books for Children ......... 52 On trauma and its overcoming .................................................................................... 54 Children’s moral perception ........................................................................................ 60 Types of bullying in Dahl’s texts ................................................................................ 64 Kindness or cruelty? .................................................................................................... 72 From Charles Dickens to Dahl’s Chickens ................................................................. 74 Optimistic, humorous but sadistic? ............................................................................. 77 Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 84 Chapter 3 : Gender in Dahl’s Texts................................................................................. 85 Feminist movements .................................................................................................... 87 Dahl’s letters to his mother ......................................................................................... 90 Female representation .................................................................................................. 96 The Witches: Misrepresentations of women in the eighties. ....................................... 97 iii Mrs Wormwood vs Miss Honey: the myth of true feminine fulfilment.................... 103 Matilda, Sophie and the magic finger girl: liberal feminists against injustice .......... 105 The absence of a mother figure and a family ............................................................ 114 Rewriting woman: Dahl’s reconstruction of female roles from the classics ............. 117 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 120 Chapter 4 : Comic Fantasy and Fantastic Characters in the Dahlian Magical World ... 123 Modern Fantasy, and the Fantastic ............................................................................ 126 Dahl’s comic fantasy world ....................................................................................... 130 Major influences: Charles Dickens and Hilaire Belloc ............................................. 133 Children being eaten .................................................................................................. 145 Animal fantasy .......................................................................................................... 149 The giants and witches .............................................................................................. 156 The Witches: the unnamed boy vs the mythical creature .......................................... 160 Revolting Rhymes: Dahlesque reinterpretations of six well-known fairy tales ........