The Orphan Figure in Latter Twentieth Century Anglo-American Children's
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The University of Southern Mississippi The Aquila Digital Community Dissertations Spring 5-1-2016 In Absentia Parentis: The Orphan Figure in Latter Twentieth Century Anglo-American Children’s Fantasy James Michael Curtis University of Southern Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons, and the Modern Literature Commons Recommended Citation Curtis, James Michael, "In Absentia Parentis: The Orphan Figure in Latter Twentieth Century Anglo- American Children’s Fantasy" (2016). Dissertations. 322. https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations/322 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by The Aquila Digital Community. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of The Aquila Digital Community. For more information, please contact [email protected]. IN ABSENTIA PARENTIS: THE ORPHAN FIGURE IN LATTER TWENTIETH CENTURY ANGLO-AMERICAN CHILDREN’S FANTASY by James Michael Curtis A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School and the Department of English at The University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Approved: ________________________________________________ Dr. Jameela Lares, Committee Chair Professor, English ________________________________________________ Dr. Eric Tribunella, Committee Member Associate Professor, English ________________________________________________ Dr. Charles Sumner, Committee Member Associate Professor, English ________________________________________________ Dr. Alexandra Valint, Committee Member Assistant Professor, English ________________________________________________ Dr. Karen S. Coats Dean of the Graduate School May 2016 COPYRIGHT BY JAMES MICHAEL CURTIS 2016 ABSTRACT IN ABSENTIA PARENTIS: THE ORPHAN FIGURE IN LATTER TWENTIETH CENTURY ANGLO-AMERICAN CHILDREN’S FANTASY by James Michael Curtis May 2016 Childhood development theory tells us that there are certain psychological processes that we all undergo during childhood, regardless of our national or cultural background. These developmental struggles can include regression—which can be both a positive and negative phenomenon—but can also include some of the more beneficial processes like overcoming separation anxiety and creating and establishing a sense of self. One figure that is often marginalized in discussions of childhood development in children’s fantasy fiction is the orphan. In fact, book-length studies on the orphan figure in children’s literary fantasy are virtually non-existent; however, I believe that attention to this recurring figure in children’s fantasy is crucial to a better psychoanalytic understanding of children’s literature. Childhood developmental psychologists insist upon the influence of the mother and the father as critical to the healthy psychological development of the child. In a comic genre like children’s literature, the orphan—an inherently tragic figure—must still progress normally through the stages of psychological development to ensure the comic narrative. One way that these developmental processes are negotiated is through the intervention of conventions of the fantasy genre. In this study, I will be using childhood developmental theory in order to show how orphan figures in children’s literature—like Harry Potter—demonstrate these developmental dilemmas from various stages of childhood. Furthermore, by drawing on Brian ii Attebery’s definition of fantasy as both formula and mode, I endeavor to demonstrate how conventions of the fantasy genre—like magic, for instance—help to create a narrative that walks the orphan protagonist through these psycho-developmental stages, thereby allowing those characters the opportunity to process fundamental psychological processes in the absence of the parental influence that childhood developmental psychologists claim is vital to the child’s normalizing progress to adulthood. Ultimately, what I offer in this study is a nuanced analysis of the orphan figure in children’s fantasy, one that draws upon childhood development theory and theories of the fantasy genre in order to show how the fantasy orphan figure models successful resolution of crucial childhood developmental processes through hyperbolic externalizations of those psycho- developmental dilemmas. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The successful production of this project would not have been possible without the continued diligence of Dr. Jameela Lares, Dr. Eric Tribunella, Dr. Charles Sumner, and Dr. Alexandra Valint, all of whom have enabled me to create the best possible study. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT………………………………………………………………………………ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………………..iii CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………...1 Psychoanalysis and Fantasy Methodology The Orphan in Literature: A Critical Background The Orphan in Children’s Fantasy: A Sample Case Study II. SEPARATION ANXIETY IN DIANNA WYNNE JONES’S CHARMED LIFE AND ROALD DAHL’S JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH……..32 Separation Anxiety and the Orphan Figure Breaking the Spell of Codependency in Charmed Life Regression and Re-integration in James and the Giant Peach Conclusion III. FANTASY AND THE TRAUMA NARRATIVE IN J. K. ROWLING’S HARRY POTTER SERIES……………………………………………...67 Harry Potter, Family, and Post-war Trauma Narrative Harry Potter’s Magical Salvation Aetonormativity and the Oedipal Conflict The Carnivalesque and the Loss of Innocence Neither Can Live While the Other Survives Phantasy and the Trauma Narrative Conclusion IV. THE FAMILY ROMANCE IN PHILIP PULLMAN’S HIS DARK MATERIALS…………………………………………………………...109 His Dark Materials and the “Virtual Orphan” Northern Lights and Lyra’s Family Romance Will’s Own Family Romance in The Subtle Knife Will and Lyra’s Identities “Settled”: A Note on The Amber Spyglass Conclusion V. RESOLVING IDENTITY ISSUES IN LLOYD ALEXANDER’S CHRONICLES OF PRYDAIN………………………………………...142 v Oedipus and Psychoanalysis Chronicles of Prydain as Modern Mythopoeic Foundling Tale The Foundling Orphan and Individuation Aetonormativity in The Chronicles of Prydain Conclusion VI. ID AND INDIVIDUATION IN URSULA LEGUIN’S A WIZARD OF EARTHSEA……………………171 Psycho-developmental Threads in A Wizard of Earthsea Fantastic Individuation in Earthsea The Abject and the Self Conclusion VII. CONCLUSION………………………………………………………....203 Fantasy and the Orphan: Some Clarifications Future Directions Closing Remarks WORKS CITED………………………………………………………………………..215 vi 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION In the opening lines of his seminal work on American children’s literature, Audacious Kids: Coming of Age in America’s Classic Children’s Books, Jerry Griswold recalls a student’s question about the commonality shared among several “Golden Age” children’s texts. His student asks: “Why are the children, in so many [. .] childhood classics, orphans?” (3). Although Griswold does acknowledge this common feature, he does not pursue his student’s query beyond labeling the phenomenon as a sort of narratological trope inherent in the life of the fictional child-hero. Indeed, the problem with much of the existing scholarship on the orphan figure is that many children’s literature scholars—like Griswold— have passed over these types of characters as mere recurrent tropes, devoid of any real substance beyond their being narrative fixtures or staples of nineteenth-century social reform.1 However, I maintain that a deeper analysis of the function of the orphan figure is fundamental to a more comprehensive understanding of the fields of children’s literature and childhood studies. Furthermore, I believe that the narrative workings of the orphan character in children’s fiction are perhaps best understood through the lens of psychoanalytic theory. One reason for this connection is that so much of the prevailing research on childhood psychological development revolves around the child’s relationship to his or her parents, especially the mother. In fact, Anna Freud tells us that “failure of the mother to play her part as a reliable need-fulfilling and comfort-giving agency will cause breakdowns in 1For discussions of orphans in nineteenth-century literature, see, for example, Eileen Simpson’s Orphans: Real and Imaginary (1987), Diana Pazicky’s Cultural Orphans in America (1998), Laura Peters’s Orphan Texts (2000), Claudia Nelson’s Little Strangers (2003), Lydia Murdoch’s Imagined Orphans (2006), and Joe Sutliff Sanders’s Disciplining Girls (2011). 2 individuation” (67). Anna Freud’s fellow ego psychologist Erik Erikson—another of the earliest childhood developmental theorists—also discusses the importance of parental influence in the early development of children: “the basic intolerances, fears, and resulting anxieties [of children] arise from the mere fact that human life begins with a long, slow childhood and [. .] with an attachment to parental figures” (411). Melanie Klein, another important early thinker in child development theory who would later depart from Freud’s ideas and form her own “object relations” school of child development, emphasizes the essential role of the parents in early childhood when she asserts that “Because our mother first satisfied all our self-preservative needs and sensual desires and gave us security, the part she plays in our minds is a lasting one,” and that “the very important part in which the father plays in the child’s emotional life also influences all later love relations, and all other human associations” (Love, Guilt, and Reparation 59). Even