INSIDE THE RING: VICTORIAN AND EDWARDIAN FANTASY FOR CHILDREN by Marjorie N. Weir .B.Ed., University of British Columbia, 1962 M.A., Simon Fraser University, 1983 THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in the Department English 0 Marjorie N. Weir 1989 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY May, 1989 All rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without permission of the author. APPROVAL PARTIAL COPYRIGHT LICENSE I hereby grant to Simon Fraser University the right to lend my thesis, project or extended essay (the title of which is shown below) to users of the Simon Fraser University Library, and to make partial or single copies only for such users or in response to a request from the library of any other university, or other educational institution, on its own behalf or for one of its users. I further agree that permission for multiple copying of this work for scholarly purposes may be granted by me or the Dean of Graduate Studies. It is understood that copying or publication of this work for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Title of Thesis/Project/Extended Essay Author : (name) (date) Abstract 11 For me, there is no such thing as a book for children," wrote Pamela Travers. "If it is true, it is true for everyone. 11 Many children's fantasies of the Victorian and Edwardian periods possess this quality of truth, a mythic universality which is as potent for the adult as for the child reader. These fantasies have become classics, not only because they express positive truths about human goodness, but also because they demonstrate painful truths about human blindness and error. John Fowles connects the desire of English writers to create imaginary worlds with the idea of retreat; thus, fantasy worlds provide a refuge within which the writer feels free to express his "private realities." George MacDonald, Beatrix Potter, Rudyard Kipling, James Barrie, Kenneth Grahame, and "Lewis Carroll" were six writers who found this freedom in the fantasy worlds they created for children. Children's fantasy offered a protected position from which they could strike out at a society from which they felt alienated; at the same time, they avoided exposing their deepest feelings to the possible scorn of an adult audience. Barrie, Grahame, and Carroll utilized children's fantasy to express ideas and emotions subversive of the religious, intellectual, and social consensus of the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. Fantasy offered George ii i MacDonald an alternative pulpit from which to express both his imaginative religious vision and his frustration at the I selfish materialism of his fellow man. Rudyard ~ipling's experiences as a child engendered an exaggerated fear of authority in the man; fantasy allowed him the exhilaration of rebellion and defiance. Beatrix Potter's tales for children result from her determination to fulfill her potential in spite of the constraints her society placed upon women. Writing for children allowed these writers to remain "inside the ring" of the fantasy world, protected from a sense of inadequacy to the adult world from which all six writers, in different ways, suffered. The universal longing to remain in the golden world of childhood is at the heart of these works; the impossibility of the fulfillment of this desire imparts a sense of the tragic which renders the stories It true for everyone. tl The magic, you see, lies in the ring or fence that you take refuge in. Kipling: Something of Myself Table of Contents Approval ................................................ii Abstract ...............................................iii Quotation ................................................v Table of Contents .......................................vi Abbreviations ..........................................vii Chapter 1: Victorian and Edwardian Fantasy for Children ..l Chapter 2: George MacDonald: Poet and Preacher ..........64 Chapter 3: Beatrix Potter: Flying on Her Own ...........127 Chapter 4: Rudyard Kipling: Inside the Ring ............178 List of Works Cited ....................................233 Abbreviations , Chapter Two: George MacDonald: Poet and Preacher -us George MacDonald: Unspoken Sermons, Book 2 -ADO 11 ----A Dish of Orts -Phan 11 Phantastes -Lil tl Lilith -PC 11 -The Princess & Curdie -PG 11 -The Princess and the Goblin -WW lt Weighed Wanting -TLP 11 -The Light Princess and Other Stories -BNW 91 -----At the Back of the North Wind -TWW I1 --The Wise Woman GMHW Greville MacDonald: George MacDonald and His Wife Chapter Three: Beatrix Potter: Flying On Her Own -JBP Leslie Linder, ed.: The Journal of Beatrix Potter -TBP Margaret Lane: The Tale of Beatrix Potter -MBP 11 -The Magic Years -of Beatrix Potter Chapter Four: Rudyard Kipling: Inside the Ring -JSS Rudyard Kipling: --Just So Stories -TJB 11 -The Jungle Book -SJB -The Second Jungle -Book Stalky Stalkv and Co. -SM Somethinq of Mvself Works -The ~andalapEdition of the Works -of Rudyard Kipling, 12 vols. (Cited by volume and -page - number.) Green: Kiplinq and the Children Green, ed.: Kipling: The Critical Heritage Chapter One , Victorian and Edwardian Fantasy for Children [Tlhe desire to create imaginary worlds other than the world that is the case . has always been strongly linked, at least in my own experience, with the notion of retreat, in both the religious and the military sense; of the secret place that is also a redoubt. And for me it is here that the Robin Hood--or greenwood--myth changes from merely symbolizing folk- aspiration in social terms to enshrining a dominant mental characteristic, an essential behavior, an archetypal movement of the English imagination. (John Fowles, Daniel Martin) It seems paradoxical that at a time when the English middle-class was preoccupied with the attainment of political power to match its material wealth, Victorians and Edwardians should have witnessed a flowering of fantasy literature centering on childhood and children. But when we look closely at these children's fantasies, we find they reflect this very paradox: reality rubs shoulders with romance, practicality with idealism, the mundane with the visionary. Turning their backs on the intellectual ferment of a society in transition, certain Victorian and Edwardian writers retreated to fantasy worlds in which religious belief was not under attack, moral standards and codes of behavior were not mere contingencies, and order was not disrupted by constant change or, worse still, threatened by chaos. Safely within these worlds created for children, and thus unlikely to be taken seriously by the critics, these writers were freed to express ideas which were at variance with the accepted wisdom of the age, and emotions for which they could find no other acceptable outlet. Paradoxically, then, these writers generated fantasies for children in an attempt to express their feelings about the 1' real" world and maturity. Perhaps this very paradox accounts for the fact that a century later, these children's stories are numbered among the great works of literature written for readers of any age. The fact that (with the exception perhaps of the Tales of Beatrix Potter) these were book-length works of fiction for children instead of short tales was something new. So was the fusion of the instructive and the entertaining which was characteristic of all of them. Before mid-nineteenth century (if we take Edward Lear's Book of Nonsense published in 1846 as a starting point), children's fiction had tended to emphasize either the utile or the dulce. The rise of Evangelicalism led to a proliferation of moral tracts designed to promote the Horrors of Hell or the Rewards of Hard Work. At the same time, the little chapbook, scorned and suppressed by the moralist, survived to provide pure entertainment in the form of the beloved tales of Tom Thumb, Robin Hood, and Jack the Giant-Killer. A few classics managed to combine interest with instruction; Robinson Crusoe, ~esop's Fables, Pilgrim's Progress, and suitably edited versions of Gulliver's Travels retained their popularity over the years. By 1850 the fortunate child might have these on his nursery shelf, along with the Arabian Nights and the , fairy tales of Grimm, Andersen, and Perrault. And if he were especially lucky, he might also have Lear's recently published nonsense limericks and comic drawings to delight him at bedtime. With very few exceptions (Catherine Sinclair's Holiday House, 1839, is one example), full-length fiction exploring the child's world and written for the child-reader was non- existent. Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist and David Copperfield, and George Eliot's The ---Mill on the Floss, were all published between 1840 and 1860 and deal with childhood and the experiences of children, but these novels were aimed at an adult audience. As late as 1869, in an article on literature for children, Charlotte Yonge complained that girls were sent from "simple, easy stories" to "the unexplored recesses of Mudie's boxes. (1 While deploring the lack of "good novels" for young people, however, Yonge still inclined to the instructive: Perhaps there have been three really original fairy- tales (we call them so for want of a better name) produced within the last twenty years--we mean the "Water-Babies," "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," and the "Light Princess," though we hesitate in naming the latter because it dwells in the hackneyed world of kings and princesses and fairy god-mothers; while the other two have the mark of originality--they deal with creatures of our own day, and just dip them into the realms of Dreamland. Of these two, we confess that the latent though not consistent meanings that run through the "Water-Babies" seem to us to render it more attractive than the exquisite bits of fun in "Alice." (452) By the last quarter of the century, however, the figure of the child in the English literary imagination had changed.