THE THEMATIC DEVELOPMENT OF THE MAGICAL CHILD IN FIFTEEN RECENT NEW ZEALAND NOVELS A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY from UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG by JENNIFER M.CRAWFORD BCA (Hons) Faculty of Creative Arts 2004 Crawford 2 CERTIFICATION I, Jennifer M. Crawford, declare that this thesis, submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy, in the Faculty of Creative Arts, University of Wollongong, is wholly my own work unless otherwise referenced or acknowledged. The document has not been submitted for qualifications at any other academic institution. Jennifer M. Crawford 16 April 2004 Crawford 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Abbreviations and Maori Words 6 Abstract 8 Acknowledgements 10 1. Introduction 11 1.1 Argument 11 1.2 Context 14 i. Critical 15 ii. Historical 16 1.3 Definitions 19 i. The Child 19 ii. Magic 21 1.4 Scope and Limitations 26 1.5 Thesis Structure 27 i. Chapter Summary 28 2. The Child in Literature: Theory and History 34 2.1 Overview 34 2.2 Early Literature 41 2.3 The Romantic Child 49 2.3.1 The Deconstruction of the Romantic Child 53 2.3.2 The Romantic Child, Maternal Absence and the Menacing Child 56 2.4 Psychoanalysis and the Post-Romantic Child 59 Crawford 4 2.5 The New Zealand Child 68 3. Representations of the Child in New Zealand Literature, Mansfield to Frame 80 3.1 Katherine Mansfield 80 3.2 Robin Hyde 90 3.3 John A. Lee 96 3.4 James Courage 99 3.5 Ian Cross 106 3.6 Sylvia Ashton-Warner 114 3.7 David Ballantyne 118 3.8 Janet Frame 125 4. The Saviour Child and the Sea 137 4.1 Overview 137 4.2 The Children, Magic and Christ 139 4.3 The Children, Maui and the Sea 148 4.4 The Children and their Parents 155 4.5 Community, Identity and Environment 159 4.6 Child Sacrifice 163 4.7 The Child and the Author 167 4.8 Conclusion 173 5. Saving it for Later: Postponed Redemptions 176 5.1 Overview 176 5.2 The Child and Magic 178 5.3 The Nature of Childhood 184 Crawford 5 5.4 Parentage, Opposition and the Void 201 5.5 Adulthood, Sacrifice and Social Detachment 208 6. Te Kore and the Wheiao: The Child Under Threat 219 6.1 Overview 219 6.2 Construction of Child Characters 221 6.3 Construction of the Void 237 6.4 Te Kore and the Mother 244 6.5 Conclusion 249 7. The Endangering Child 253 7.1 Overview 253 7.2 Conceptions 256 7.3 Gestation and Birth 266 7.4 The Child and Language 276 7.5 The Child in Society 287 7.6 Conclusion 299 8. Conclusion 302 Works Cited 316 Crawford 6 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND MAORI WORDS Abbreviations: DS The Dream Swimmer M The Matriarch RPL Revolution in Poetic Language Maori Words: (Compiled in consultation with The Reed Dictionary of Modern Maori and Cleve Barlow’s Tikanga Whakaaro: Key Concepts in Maori Culture.) iwi: tribe, people kaitiakitanga: guardianship kehua: ghost kihikihi: cicada mana: integrity, charisma, esteem marae: meeting area of whanau or iwi mauriora/mauri: consciousness, life spirit or principle Maoritanga: Maori culture mokopuna: grandchild taniwha: water monster, powerful person tapu: sacred, forbidden taumau: arranged (marriage) Te Ao Maori: the Maori world Te Kore: the Void potiki: last born, youngest Crawford 7 poupou: carved posts whangai: adopt child wharekai: dining room, eating area wheiao: a liminal state between the worlds of darkness and light whenua: ground, country, afterbirth, placenta Crawford 8 ABSTRACT Fifteen New Zealand novels, published between 1983 and 2000, are considered with regard to their representation of the magical child figure. The child is a benign and regenerative figure in the earlier works in this period, with its magical qualities used to heighten its role in a redemptive progression towards the reform of social structures depicted as damaging of cultural and environmental heritage. Later in the period the regenerative possibilities offered by the child diminish, as the relationship between the individual child and adult society diversifies. Where a clear adult/child dichotomy in the early works renders the child as essentially positive and life-giving, the later, more complex field renders the child as less symbolically powerful, more individually threatening and less physically and characteristically distinct from the adult. The novels examined are Keri Hulme’s the bone people, Patricia Grace’s Potiki, Cousins and Baby No Eyes, Witi Ihimaera’s The Whale Rider, The Matriarch and The Dream Swimmer, Rachel McAlpine’s The Limits of Green, Fiona Farrell’s The Skinny Louie Book, Elizabeth Knox’s Treasure, Sue Reidy’s The Visitation, John Cranna’s Arena, Anne Kennedy’s A Boy and His Uncle, Anthony McCarten’s Spinners and Peter Hawes’s A Dream of Nikau Jam. The novels are considered within the context of the history of the child character in literature, and particularly of the thematic traditions surrounding child characters throughout twentieth century New Zealand literature. The simultaneous vitality and vulnerability of the child figure, and the transcendent qualities of the magical child, are found to be critical to its construction. These qualities are examined through the Crawford 9 novels’ representations of filiation, nationhood and in the persistent construction of a symbolic relationship between the magical child and various manifestations of a metaphysical void. Crawford 10 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many family members and friends have supported me during the creation of this work and I offer each of them my deepest thanks. In particular I would like to thank those who have offered in-house support: my parents, as well as Lisa Oxman, Lucy Alexander, Bill Pitt and Nic Brown. Special thanks are also due to Dr John Hawke for his patience, good humour and critical intelligence. I am very grateful to the University of Wollongong for the financial support of a University Postgraduate Award, without which this work would not have been possible. Crawford 11 1: Introduction 1.1 Argument The premise of this thesis is that the magical child has been a major figure in recent New Zealand novels for adults, and that the use of this character may be examined to reveal a developing range of expressions of personal and cultural identity. Fifteen New Zealand novels, published between 1983 and 2000, are studied; each features a child or children distinguished by a supernatural quality or ability. The prominence of these figures suggests that they have an archetypal resonance in the national literature, representing those aspects of a collective identity that may be embodied in the simultaneous fragility and vitality of the child, and in the transcendent qualities of the magical child. As their portrayals shift between idealism and ominous strangeness, so too do the readings of cultural circumstance that they collectively represent. There is a remarkable consistency both to the characteristics ascribed to the children of these books, and to the themes that surround them. Very few grow up in the care of both biological parents, and often there are several dislocations of parentage and genealogy in the child’s history. At times they suffer physical trauma or disability, and many also suffer significant emotional trauma. They are loners, rarely depicted in school settings; some are aphasic. Their limitations in the mundane world are countered by each child’s possession of qualities or abilities that expand the boundaries of reality itself. Some are distinguished by Crawford 12 magical talents; they read minds, heal, access magical realms or have superhuman physical prowess. Some are magical in their origins; their conception or gestation evades realist explanation. Others exist entirely outside the bounds of the physical world. In each case, the child is connected to the numinous in such a way that it is an essential aspect of their identity. The narrative utility of the child’s magical associations is not consistent throughout these books, and it is in this area that distinct patterns are discernable within the period discussed. There appears to be a loose chronological basis to these patterns; broadly speaking, those novels published earlier in the seventeen years covered by this thesis are more likely to employ their child characters in redemptive roles, and to construe their sufferings as sacrificial. The magical characteristics or experiences of these children are presented as real, often integrated without question into an otherwise familiar reality. These children are written in opposition to figures and institutions of damaging and restrictive authority; in that opposition, they represent forces of individualism, creativity, and personal and cultural survival. Books written later in the period are more likely to question the redemptive investment made in the child character, and the assumption of their healing or even benevolent tendencies. The appearance of the child’s magic may be questioned, as is the assumption of childhood vulnerability. The potential for malevolence is admitted into the construction of the child figure. Crawford 13 Throughout these books, the children are frequently depicted in close connection to a void- like entity, present in the texts either as a metaphysical reality or a prominent symbol, to the degree that it becomes a defining feature of the thematics that these children invoke. Consideration of the relationship between the child and the notion of a void is thus an organising principle of this thesis, as this relationship reveals key aspects of the child’s magical nature and its function in these narratives. As might be expected for any fifteen novels written by different authors within two decades, a logical development of themes does not occur in strict accordance with the chronology of publication.