Adventures Into Otherness

ADVENTURES INTO OTHERNESS M R ARIA LASSÉN-SEGE adventures into otherness CIP Cataloguing in Publication Lassén-Seger, Maria Adventures into otherness : child metamorphs in late twentieth-century children’s literature / Maria Lassén-Seger. – Åbo : Åbo Akademi University Press. 2006. Diss.: Åbo Akademi University. ISBN 951-765-332-8 © Maria Lassén-Seger 2006 Cover image: Catharina Nygård Holgersson Layout: Alf Rehn ISBN 951-765-332-8 ISBN 951-765-333-6 (digital) Ekenäs Tryckeri Aktiebolag Ekenäs 2006 MARIA LASSÉNSEGER ADVENTURES INTO OTHERNESS CHILD METAMORPHS IN LATE TWENTIETH-CENTURY CHILDREN’S LITERATURE ÅBO 2006 ÅBO AKADEMIS FÖRLAG – ÅBO AKADEMI UNIVERSITY PRESS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Writing a thesis is a very personal metamorphic experience, albeit not a lonely one. From the very first letter on that threateningly empty page to the final arrangement of chapters and ideas, a multitude of voices have been woven into that which eventually lies before you as the most curious of objects: the finished thesis. I am delighted to have this opportunity to thank some of you who helped me transform that empty page into this book. Over the years, my supervisor Prof. Roger D. Sell of Åbo Akademi Uni- versity has taken a constant interest in my work, and for this I am most grateful. His critical eye on both form and content helped me disentangle my thoughts and sharpen my arguments. Without his efforts to make me do better, this thesis would, no doubt, have been much poorer. Prof. Maria Nikolajeva of Stockholm University was also with me from the very begin- ning, offering expert advice and sparing no personal effort in commenting on numerous versions of the manuscript. Her generosity and constant support has been invaluable. My warm thanks also go to Prof. David Rudd of University of Bolton and Prof. Roberta Seelinger Trites of Illinois State University for providing heartening and useful advice in the final stages of writing. They say that it takes a village to raise a child. To transform me into a doctor, it certainly took (at least) two departments, plenty of seminars, some projects and a network. I am deeply indebted to all my past and present colleagues at the English department; and to Prof. Clas Zilliacus and Prof. Roger Holmström for giving me a second home at the department of Comparative Literature. Room for growth was also provided by the Faculty of Humanities’ ChiLPA (Children’s Literature: Pure and Applied) vii project – later continued as the EnChiLPA project – led by Prof. Roger D. Sell, where I began my research in 1999. Among my fellow “chilpas” Lydia Kokkola, Yvonne Nummela, Janina Orlov, Kaisu Rättyä, Lilian Rönn- qvist and M(ar)ia Österlund, in particular, contributed to early drafts with sound criticism and much-needed encouragement. Later on, the Compara- tive Literature department’s children’s literature seminars continued to be a vital forum for the exchange of ideas within our subject area. Thanks to junior colleagues Elin Fellman-Suominen, Rebecka Fokin-Holmberg, Mia Franck, and Anna-Maija Koskimies-Hellman for carrying on the torch. Led by Maria Nikolajeva, the NordForsk-network Norchilnet was yet another invaluable forum for presenting work-in-progress and for receiving hands-on experience in arranging workshops and doctoral courses. Many thanks to all the senior colleagues, in particular Prof. Jean Webb of Univer- sity College Worcester, for your enduring support and to my fellow Nordic colleagues Nina Christensen PhD, Elina Druker, Sirke Happonen, and Sara Pankenier PhD for your enthusiasm for sharing ideas and collaborating in joint projects. With all of you colleagues – near and far – I have shared many stimulating literary conversations, as well as life-saving banter on the agonies and joys of doctoral studies. Among the many of you who took the time to read and en- gage with my work, I want, however, to give special thanks to two persons: FD Lydia Kokkola, without whom I would never have begun this project, and FD M(ar)ia Österlund, without whom I never would have finished. You most gorgeous of women are my pillars of strength. But a doctoral student cannot live on intellectual stimulation alone. For providing the financial support that allowed me to think, write, receive secondary supervision and travel in order to gather research material and present my research at conferences, workshops, doctoral courses and research seminars, I am indebted to the H.W. Donner Fund and the Research Institute of the Åbo Akademi Foundation; Rector and the Jubileums- fond of Åbo Akademi University and Norchilnet. Much practical help was also needed and offered to complete this book. Again, it is a blessing to have talented friends. My warm thanks to Catharina Nygård Holgersson for designing the cover of my dreams and to Alf Rehn for taking layout matters into his expert hands. My colleagues at the Åbo Akademi Library have my deepest gratitude for never grumbling when I left on yet another period of research leave. They are also to be commended for their outstanding efficiency in locating even the most obscure reading matter for me from all over the world. viii I extend my deepest thanks to my mother and father, who have always been there for me, and to all my wonderfully supportive friends who keep reminding me that a thesis is just another part of life. Finally, when it comes to thanking the two most important persons in my life, I am at a loss for words of my own. Fortunately, there is a world of literature (in this case Zadie Smith) to borrow from. To my beloved husband and son, Robert and Arthur Seger, who keep showing me that “time is how you spend your love” I dedicate this book. Without you, I would indeed be lost, not only for words, but in time. Åbo, October 2006 Maria Lassén-Seger ix CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 Aims and material 2 Children, adults, and power 10 Literary metamorphosis 20 Terminology 21 Earlier scholarship 23 Myth, fairy tales, and fantasy 27 WILD AND UNCIVILISED CHILD METAMORPHS 32 Animal imagery in children’s literature 32 Dionysian/Apollonian children in coming-of-age stories 39 When girls become women and boys become men 45 Negotiating femininity 47 Negotiating masculinity 53 The unpleasures of child-beast metamorphosis 59 Taming the beast within 65 Exposing the beastly child 70 Metamorphoses from subject into object 79 Petrification as crisis and rebirth 81 Abusive and perverted doll fantasies 88 Summary 96 INNOCENT, PLAYFUL, AND REBELLIOUS CHILD METAMORPHS 98 The pleasures of metamorphosis 98 Metamorphosis as “power over” or “power to” 101 Constructing the innocent child 112 Adult characters and the horrors of metamorphosis 118 Ludic metamorphs 123 Imaginary role-play 125 Transgressive playful fantasy 133 Carnivalesque metamorphs 144 Metamorphic displacement 148 Beyond innocence 155 Adventures into adulthood 161 Affirming and subverting child/adult relations 169 Summary 172 VICTIMISED AND LOST CHILD METAMORPHS 175 Finding refuge in metamorphosis 176 Withdrawing into animality 176 Imagining monsters 182 Immortalising grief 193 Girls merging with nature 201 Images of female entrapment 205 Breaking with tradition through irreversible metamorphosis 214 The return of the eternal child 215 The feral teenage metamorph 223 Uncanny metamorphs 231 Choosing hybridity 239 Drawn between socialisation and subversion 247 Summary 253 CONCLUSION 257 Wild and uncivilised child metamorphs 257 Innocent, playful, and rebellious child metamorphs 258 Victimised and lost child metamorphs 260 Metamorphic (un)pleasure and power 261 Towards ambiguity and complexity 263 Classical and contemporary metamorphs 264 Metamorphosis continued 267 Epilogue 269 BIBLIOGRAPHY 271 APPENDIXES 292 Appendix 1: Primary texts 292 Appendix 2: Primary texts in chronological order 296 Copyright acknowledgments 299 INDEX OF NAMES 300 INDEX OF TITLES 307 INTRODUCTION Have you read the hilarious picturebook in which a young boy left at the dinner table to finish a healthy meal he finds repulsive decides to change into a series of monsters to spice things up a bit? Or the one in which a mother and father refuse to fulfil their daughter’s wish and she works out a way to transform herself into the horse she wants? Maybe you have already shared the longing and the grief that turns a lonely girl orphan into a doll, or marvelled at the turn of events when immanent danger results in a hasty wish that changes a youngster into solid rock? Perhaps you have already shared the thoughts and feelings of distraught teenagers who find an irresistible appeal in the carefree life of a wild fox and a stray dog? If not, you are in for a treat. In fantasy literature, protagonists travel in time and space to experience the past or the future, other worlds and other universes. But the fascination of literary metamorphosis is that it enacts an adventure that takes the protagonists, not necessarily out of this world, but out of their human bodies. What is it like to become someone or something else? The idea is both thrilling and threatening. And so are the stories that place human-other metamorphosis centre-stage. These stories take the fictive human self where it cannot go except in the imagina- tion, whether it be into the body of a wild animal or into the deaden- ing clasp of cold and lifeless rock. Metamorphosis stories always negotiate what it is to be human. When protagonists become an Other through a radical physical trans- formation, they literally experience the essence of empathy – what it is –1 – like to put themselves in the place of another – as well as the anxiety of alienation as their minds are separated from their own human bodies. Displaced into the shape of someone or something else, they experience a radically new outlook on life.

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