Children Without Childhood

Children Without Childhood... 95 ACTA NEOPHILOLOGICA UDK: [821.111.09:821.111(71).09]:2-185.2-053.2 DOI: 10.4312/an.50.1-2.95-135 Children Without Childhood: The Emotion- ality of Orphaned Children and Images of Their Rescuers in Selected Works of Eng- lish and Canadian Literature Irena Avsenik Nabergoj Abstract This article deals with literary depictions of social, political, cultural and religious circumstances in which children who have lost one or both parents at birth or at a later age have found themselves. The weakest members of society, the children looked at here are exposed to dangers, exploitation and violence, but are fortunate enough to be rescued by a relative or other sympathetic person acting out of benevolence. Recognizing that the relationship between the orphaned child, who is in mortal danger, and a rescuer, who most frequently appears unexpectedly in a relationship, has been portrayed in narratives throughout the ages and that we can therefore speak of it as being an archetypal one, the article focuses especially on three novels by Charles Dickens – Oliver Twist (1837–1839), David Copperfield (1849–1850) and Great Expectations (1860–1861) – and in Fugitive Pieces (1996) by Canadian writer Anne Michaels. Charles Dickens earned the reputation of a classic writer through his original literary figures of orphaned children in the con- text of the rough capitalism of the Victorian era of the 19th century. Such originality also distinguishes Anne Michaels, whose novel Fugitive Pieces portrays the utterly traumatic circumstances that a Jewish boy is exposed to after the Germans kill his parents during the Holocaust. All the central children’s lives in these extreme situations are saved by gen- erous people, thus highlighting the central idea of both selected authors: that evil cannot overcome good. Rescuers experience their selfless resolve to save extremely powerless and unprotected child victims of violence from life-threatening situations as a self-evident Acta_Neophilologica_2017_FINAL.indd 95 13.11.2017 10:14:56 96 IRENA AVSENIK NABERGOJ moral imperative. Through their profound and deeply experienced descriptions of memories of traumas successfully overcome by central literary figures in a spirit of compassion and solidarity, Charles Dickens and Anne Michaels have left testaments of hope against hope for future generations. Keywords: Charles Dickens, emotions, memories, Anne Michaels, holocaust, orphaned children, rescuers, trauma, adoption, the victory of good. INTRODUCTION In recent decades, the number of academic studies on the nature, role, education, and social position of children throughout history has increased, and there has been a parallel increase in fiction about children and about childhood. The history of children and childhood has birthed a new research area that offers critical insights into the human past by aligning itself with the global emphasis on interdis- ciplinary aspects as well as on contemporary social experiences. Thus, historians, beginning in the early 1960s, began to be interested in life experiences of the past, as revealed by family relations, religious experiences, various forms of education, along with experiences from working life, sports and leisure, and other areas. Add- ing their voices to historians’ have been scholars from especially anthropology and sociology. Children and adolescents who, with rare exceptions, were excluded from active politics have become visible in studies focusing on family, school, as well as children working in factories and fields. Investigating the presence of children in history became an exciting area for new social research in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the fruits of which studies were first extensively unveiled in the three books of the Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood: In History and Society (2004). Edited by Paula S. Fass, this monu- mental work includes no less than 445 expert articles dealing with childhood un- der various aspects in both historical and social terms; it has significantly changed the vision of history, while providing insights into how our ancestors thought about children in the past. Some other recent studies are relevant.1 Such research has turned to extremely diverse material that had previously been overlooked, including registers and wills, in poetry, novels and other works of literary fiction, in the thoughts of various philosophers and psychologists (from Plato and Aristotle through Erasmus, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1 Cf. Coveney 1967; Pollock 1983; Cunningham 1995; Banerjee 1996; van der Geest 2004; Immel 2006; Stearns 2006; Georgieva 2011. A particularly crucial aspect of childhood is gender, and many new insights into childhood were made in terms of gender in the 1970s and 1980s. Cf. Prim. Fass 2004, Volume 1, xi–xv (Preface). Acta_Neophilologica_2017_FINAL.indd 96 13.11.2017 10:14:56 Children Without Childhood... 97 Sigmund Freud, John Dewey and Jean Piaget); in diaries, pictures and photo- graphs; in games and in many other material and immaterial forms from the past. Researchers are striving to understand children around the world, and their research thus extends to various parts of the world, all the way to Africa, Latin America, China, India and Australia; they also take into account great religious traditions, such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam, but also the early church fa- thers and the innovations of Protestantism, even as they pay attention to inter- cultural perspectives when it comes to names, sexuality, adolescence, and so forth. In the West, childhood is presented in an in-depth manner that dates from an- cient Greece and Rome, through the Middle Ages, through early modern Europe and European colonialism, right up to the modern world. Also considered are historical circumstances that are strongly reflected in fiction about children and childhood, including revolution, oppression and war.2 In this article, we proceed from the image of the child and childhood as an important literary theme, albeit while limiting ourselves to the image of the orphaned child in modern English and Canadian literature. Two authors who de- picted orphans in particularly trying socio-political circumstances are the focus of this article – namely, Charles Dickens, who depicts children given over to crimi- nals in poor parts of London, and Anne Michaels, who depicts the trials and trib- ulations of a young Jewish boy who experienced the violent death of his parents during the Holocaust. THE CHILD AND CHILDHOOD AS A LITERARY THEME In the last decades of the 19th century, researchers increasingly discovered the crucial role childhood plays in defining and shaping culture. In 1960, the French his- torian Philippe Ariès, in his work L’Enfant et la vie familiale sous l’Ancien Régime, published in English in 1962 as Centuries of Childhood, encouraged historians to think about childhood (“as an invention, a historically driven phenomenon, not a transcendent category”). He argued that before the 17th century childhood was invisible and that European society gave shape to childhood as part of a wider process of social differentiation.3 This raises the fundamental question of what the concept of childhood actually means. In dealing with different aspects of childhood, researchers usually define this word in relation to its opposite, adulthood. 2 The main research direction of looking various aspects of childhood is determined by attempts to answer the question of what childhood means. Researchers have most often defined this word in relation to its opposite, adulthood. Some have tackled the question of the essence or nature of childhood. 3 See Fass 2004, Volume 1, xi–xii; Georgieva 2011, 10. Acta_Neophilologica_2017_FINAL.indd 97 13.11.2017 10:14:56 98 IRENA AVSENIK NABERGOJ By “childhood” they denote an earlier period of human life in which we acquire experiences and adopt behaviours that prepare us for the adult period of “active” life. Though the duration of childhood is not fully defined, it is also known that the concept of childhood has changed over the centuries – a change that also literary fiction has documented. From the treasure trove of world literature this article looks more closely at works of English and Canadian literature. Childhood has long been one of the central themes in English literature. We see its presence in lyric poetry of the Elizabethan period, in such Shakespeare plays as Richard III, King John, Macbeth, The Winter’s Tale, 4 and in John Dryden and Alexan- der Pope. The importance of the subject of childhood greatly increased with the rise and development of the novel, gaining prominence through the 18th century; in the 19th and 20th centuries it has stimulated seminal works that have proven crucial for a critical understanding of the literary production of individual periods. In the 19th and 20th centuries, also literature aimed at children was produced. From the 18th century forth, the child was either a subject or an object of popular writing. This writing mirrored the dichotomy of childhood, which was a symbol of growth and development on the one hand, and of the regression and ignorance of the world on the other. Authors such as James Janeway (A Token for Children, 1671–72), disseminated the doctrine of original sin through the 17th century. They created a moralistic, religiously-oriented vision of childhood that was based on the theory of man’s “Fall” and original sin, and looked on children with pessimism. At the same time, childhood was seen as the most decisive period in shaping the foundations of spirituality and constructing true faith. In contrast to this type of thinking, 18th-century thinkers promulgated intellect and ratio as the highest of virtues. This century became a period of transition in which childhood became the highest symbol of the purity of nature, reason and the soul, as well as of the triumph of human congenital delicacy. Contrary to the thinking of previous centuries, childhood was perceived more positively and soon became a popular subject of the sentimental novel.

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