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“Adult Fear and Control: Ambivalence and Duality in Clive Barker’s The Thief of Always” Gabrielle Kristjanson November 12, 2013
To Cite this Article: Kristjanson, Gabrielle. “Adult Fear and Control: Ambivalence and Duality in Clive Barker’s The Thief of Always” Imaginations 4:2 (2013): Web (date accessed) 91-117. DOI: 10.17742/IMAGE.mother.4-2.5
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ADULT FEAR AND CONTROL AMBIVALENCE AND DUALITY IN CLIVE BARKER’S THE THIEF OF ALWAYS
GABRIELLE KRISTJANSON, UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE
This article considers the relationship Cet article analyse le rapport entre le between the text and accompanying texte et les illustrations dans le livre illustrations in Clive Barker’s children’s pour enfants de Clive Barker intitulé novel The Thief of Always: A Fable. The Thief of Always: A Fable. Barker a This tale of abduction was published écrit cette histoire d’enlèvement dans le in the social background of fear contexte social de la peur du prédateur around the child predator of the d’enfants au début des années 90. Il y early 1990s and incorporates ideas of a mis en scène les idées d’un méchant monstrous villainy, loss of childhood monstrueux, de la perte de l’innocence innocence, and insatiable desires. As a enfantine, et des désirs insatiables. fable, Thief is a cautionary tale that not En tant que fable, le livre est un conte only teaches that childhood years are de mise en garde, qui non seulement precious and are not to be wished away enseigne que l’enfance est précieuse, or squandered in idle leisure, but also étant nécessaire pour chaque enfant qui of the dangers that some adults pose to ne doit pas la gaspiller paresseusement, children. Problematically, an honest and mais aussi qu’il existe un danger que frank discussion of adult sexual desires certains adultes peuvent poser face aux toward children would despoil the very enfants. Une réflexion sincère sur les innocence that is trying to be protected; désirs sexuels adultes face aux enfants thus, a lesson such as this must be étant problématique parce qu’elle sublimated within the story. Yet, it is dépouille l’innocence qu’on cherche à the illustrations, and more specifically protéger. Barker a donc dû sublimer une the way in which the illustrations telle leçon dans le récit. Ce sont alors corroborate and contradict the plot of les illustrations et leur rapport au récit this story that reveals an underlying à la fois corroborant et contractif qui ambivalence toward the figure of the révèlent une ambivalence cachée du child and an echoing duality present in personnage enfant, ainsi qu’une dualité both the child and the child predator. présente dans les deux personnages : l’enfant et le prédateur d’enfants.
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This article undertakes an analysis of exercise. O’Sullivan clarifies that the relationship between the text and “this new literary children’s literature illustrations in Clive Barker’s children’s is distinguished by insecurity and novel The Thief of Always: A Fable. ambivalence instead of certainty, linear By considering not only the plot and rather than circular narratives and characterization presented in Thief, but diversity instead of simplicity” (28). With also the accompanying illustrations, the inclusion of his own illustrations, drawn by Barker himself, an interesting Barker achieves a permeating under- dynamic is revealed. While illustrations current within his linear narrative in are included in children’s literature which either textual or visual forms are to enliven the work and increase its at times complementary, supplemental, appeal for the young reader, these or oppositional. As he admits, his additions also serve to supplement the images precede his texts: “my image text, introducing and incorporating making and story making are associated new information into the work. When [...]. My sketches act as notes” (qtd. in the author is also the illustrator, it Burke ii). Because Barker writes about would be expected that the text and his images, using them “as notes” as image would work in tandem toward he says, his work can be categorized a common hermeneutical outcome, yet as ekphrastic. Stephen Cheeke asserts when attempting to convey a complex that on its most basic level, ekphrasis relation with the potential for danger, constitutes “‘literary’ prose descriptions ambiguity, and ambivalence, like that of artwork” (4). The text and the images between the adult and child, conflicting are inextricably linked, each explaining ideas can infiltrate a seemingly and referencing each other and, in cooperative process. The significance in the process, amplifying the “the gap the text-image relationship at work in between language and the visual image” Barker’s Thief can be best summarized (Cheeke 2). Writing and illustrations by Joseph H. Schwarcz, in his book The create representations; hence, it is not Ways of the Illustrator, who writes that the image or the text itself that carries “the pictures let us in on a secret” (17), meaning but rather the signifier to which and given that most secrets are meant the text, image, or their ekphrastic to be just that, Barker’s illustrations “gap” points. Barker is both author and partner with as well as betray the illustrator of Thief, a rare combination written word in what hidden secrecies in which multiple threads of meaning they expose. become embedded in the literature. When discussing the composite of Barker’s approach to children’s literature text and image in literature, Schwarcz reflects a modern trend described affirms that “the combination of the by Emer O’Sullivan in her book two forms of communication into a Comparative Children’s Literature, common fabric where they complement which treats children’s literature as each other creates conditions of literature as opposed to mere didactic dependence and interdependence”
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(4). Barker’s illustrations are highly of a child predator. The fantasy realm, connected with the narrative, creating while it promises fun, magic, and food, what Schwarcz calls a close “partnership is essentially a prison, and predictably, with the written word,” one that is Harvey must defeat Hood to free not necessarily complementary (11). himself, as well as all the children Through their ekphrastic relationship, that Hood has imprisoned within this the text and the illustrations in Thief fantasy realm over the years. expose underlying issues of childhood not explicitly expressed in the text. As a fable, Thief is a cautionary tale that not only teaches that childhood Thief is the story of ten-year-old Harvey years are precious and are not to be Swick who dreams of a life free from wished away or squandered in idle the tedium of childhood. He wishes to leisure, but also tells of the dangers that exchange his chores and schoolwork some exploitative or predatory adults for the leisure and freedom of adult life. may pose to children. This second Barker thrusts his child protagonist into lesson is far less explicit than the first a predatory realm that threatens both and likely only readily accessible to Harvey’s childhood and life, leaving the adult reader, yet it is one that him thankful upon his escape for the discourses around child protection re-establishment of his childhood and claim is necessary to be conveyed to grateful for the time he has to grow up the child in order to reduce harm and under the watchful eye of his loving preserve innocence.1 Problematically, parents. Barker imparts this lesson via to participate in an honest and frank a child abduction narrative. Enticed by discussion of adult sexual desires a smiling stranger, Harvey leaves home for children would despoil the very to enter a fantasy world that promises innocence that is trying to be protected; endless fun. The fantasy world is thus, a lesson such as this must be off-set from reality by a concealing sublimated within the story. However, as fog and can be imagined as an estate my analysis will reveal, it is not only this with a large house surrounded by lesson that becomes embedded within a field, a wooded area, and a pond. the text-image relationship, but also The fantasy world is orchestrated by feelings of adult ambivalence and fear Barker’s villain, Mr. Hood, who detains toward the child as a figure, effectively children with promises of abundance, calling into question the very notion indulgence, and endless leisure, but of childhood innocence. By dissecting then uses them to maintain his own the camouflaging effects of magic and immortality. Appearing in two forms, monstrosity, the anxieties ingrained in first as the house itself and then later— some of Barker’s key illustrations are after the house is destroyed—as a brought to the fore, revealing their humanized form of a man comprised contained dualities and contradictions of debris from the ruined house, Hood when considered in tandem with the is a veritable monstrous representation text.
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Barker is best known for his work Real Fears of the Child Predator in adult horror film and literature. Beginning in 1984, Barker has published As with his adult novels, Barker uses the eleven adult horror and fantasy novels2 invulnerable space of fantasy to explore and four children’s novels, The Thief of real-world adult fears, as he describes Always (1992), and a recent five-book rather carnivorously, treating “the real children’s series called Abarat (2002, world [as] raw material to be devoured 2004, 2011).3 His literature is pluralistic, and transformed within the belly of falling under multiple genre and includes my imagination” (qtd. in Burke 55). In great diversity in characterization, yet Thief, this true-to-life adult fear is of an overall obsession for Barker could child abduction, yet while the text may be described as the aesthetic of the create an exploratory haven, the real- perverse juxtaposed with rhetoric to life existence of child predators denies protect the innocent. Further, many of any such protective claims, intensifying his narratives focus on the excess of these anxieties within the text. As Paula carnal desire. Dissatisfied with mundane Fass maintains in Kidnapped, adult everyday life, his characters frequently desires “to inflict pain on children, to get travel to secondary worlds in search pleasure from their bodies, or to exploit of augmentation: unearthly pleasures them materially are not a product of our or mystical powers. With a taste for imaginations. Each story of a child lost debauchery, Barker incorporates to a predator (however that is defined) violence, horror, and sexuality in his is a true horror story” (262). Published literature with his characters sometimes in the early 1990s, Thief appears in becoming physically monstrous, the wake of some highly publicized arguably as punishment for seeking and extremely vicious cases of child and experiencing the limits of corporeal abductions, which caused widespread excess.4 Realms of the real and the social anxiety for child safety. imaginary frequently collide, confront or integrate each other and surviving Historian Philip Jenkins describes characters emerge with enhanced self- the 1980s and 1990s as a climate of awareness. Barker generally imagines fear wherein the conception of the his literary work as fantasy with an child predator in the American public infusion of horror, what he describes imagination changed into an abstract as a sanctuary for the reader, a space notion of a relentless, sexual force that to safely indulge the darker sides of the endangered every child. This newly imagination in the assurance that “the conceived notion of child predators as real world is always there to be gone “extremely persistent in their deviant back to” (qtd. in Burke 56-57). His careers [... and] virtually unstoppable” children’s books are no different. captured the public imagination and instilled an acute sense of fear for the safety of children in public spaces that is present in this literary narrative (Jenkins
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189). It is against this social backdrop of and a notorious child predator of concern for the preservation and sanctity the time, Westley Alan Dodd. Public of childhood that Barker’s villain can opinion of Dodd was that he was and should be read. Indeed, Mr. Hood essentially a monster: “the epitome of abducts Harvey via a secondary agent the merciless and unapologetic predator named Rictus who entices Harvey to of small children. [...] evil personified, accompany him to Hood’s Holiday the ultimate human predator” (Jenkins House while Harvey is on his morning 193). Hood may or may not have been walk to school (Thief 7). However, based on Dodd, but Dodd’s pervasive like the abstracted conception of the presence in the media, combined with predator, Hood is initially presented not subsequent coverage of child predators as a tangible person but as the magic of in the years following publication the realm itself, granting all of the child’s of Thief, grounds Barker’s fantasy wishes without expecting anything in narrative in reality. Such grounding return. Yet, as the narrative reveals, instils a sense of immediacy for the the Holiday House is not a fantastical anxieties raised by Barker in this text, anomaly that exists of its own accord, echoing the social concerns of the time but rather, a house run by a man who and permeating the experiences of seduces, controls and confines children parents who might be reading Thief in order to feed on their life-force to to their children.6 Of course, as Peter extend his own life, much like a vampire. Hunt explains, in “children’s books, it More explicitly stated, Hood deceives, is easy to read against the implications,” kidnaps, holds captive, and ultimately providing a quasi-protective mechanism consumes children. Metaphorically and for naive readers (4). This sinister metonymically, Barker represents Hood narrative is loosely disguised within the as a monster in both text and image. text, granting reader-denial if desired. However, a close reading of the text, Monster scholar Jerome Cohen explains in conjunction with an analysis of in Monster Theory that fictional Barker’s accompanying illustrations, representations of monsters need “to makes it near impossible to ignore the be read against contemporary social predatory subtext, compromising the movements or a specific, determining appropriateness of this text for a child event” (5). He further describes the readership. monster as embodying “those sexual practices that must not be committed, There are a number of similarities or that may be committed only through between the media portrayal of Dodd the body of the monster” (14). While and Barker’s characterization of Hood Hood’s interest in the children is not that emphasize the paralleling that explicitly sexual,5 such desires can be I speculate is at play in Thief. Hood read as implicated by his predatory and seeks children of ignorance, ones who consumptive nature, particularly given can readily be duped into entering his the similarities between his character realm and who will enjoy his seductive
95 • ISSUE 4 - 2, 2013 • IMAGINATIONS ADULT FEAR AND CONTROL offerings without questioning them, identify the danger of this man. Dodd’s rather than a specific gender.7 Yet, intentions to harm, it would seem, were Barker focuses his narrative around veiled to officials just as Hood’s realm Harvey and another boy that he and the actions therein are concealed befriends within the fantasy realm, by the magical fog barrier. Wendell. Likewise, Dodd targeted both male and female children, but he is most The Role of Magic in Deception and infamous for the murder of three boys, Denial aged four, ten, and eleven (Jenkins 193). Hood’s realm is concealed from view As if to proclaim its autonomy, the by a shroud of fog with the entrance text would have the implied reader only visible to the children chosen to believe that the illustrations are mere enter the realm. In this way, the magic supplementation, filling in what Barker fog shields, keeping him invisible and claims to be an inevitable linguistic “protecting [Hood] from the laws of lacuna. As if to demonstrate this the real world. Safe behind the mists deficiency in communication remedied of his illusion” (Thief 130). Adults by an illustration, Barker presents a within the reality realm cannot see poignant scene which follows Harvey’s the house, and the children within the escape from the fantasy realm wherein realm only see the house; they cannot he attempts to explain his capture to his see Mr. Hood. The mask of the House parents. When interrogated about his amplifies the villainy of Hood; it is both escape from Hood’s house, Harvey fails his camouflage and his transgression to find the words to describe the house against children and adults alike. of his captor to his parents, so he draws Similarly Dodd, prior to his capture, a picture: “He did just that, and though had encountered and successfully he wasn’t much of an artist his hand deceived a number of representatives seemed to remember more than his from the justice and mental health brain had, because after a half hour he communities, “most of whom failed had drawn the House in considerable to detect his lethal potential” (Jenkins detail. His father was pleased” (Thief 193; emphasis added). Between 1991 129). Harvey’s reliance on the drawing and 1993, as Jenkins recounts, “Dodd to say what he is unable to say can was at the height of his national also be read as a metanarrative that notoriety, [...] boasting of the ruthless implies the same for the illustrations quality of his crimes and warning that that Barker included to accompany his the justice system could never control words in the novel. Acknowledging his him should he be released” (193; inability to fully articulate his narrative emphasis added). Not only was Dodd through text alone, Barker relies on uncontrollable by the justice system, he his illustrations to provide additional was undetectable by adults in positions information to his readers, information of authority; capable judicial and of which he may not be fully cognizant. psychiatric professionals were unable to Like Harvey, who is able to remember
IMAGINATIONS • ISSUE 4 - 2, 2013 • 96 KRISTJANSON more through the act of drawing, Barker how illustrations reveal a hidden—or is able to convey more through his perhaps suppressed—secret. In that illustrations. Conversely, this reliance Barker is both author and illustrator, on illustrations also reveals a lingering he is free to indulge either or both distrust in language’s ability to describe personas,9 allowing them to corroborate traumatic experiences. or delineate, even to the extent that “text and illustration counterpoint each other” (Schwarcz 16-17). Like the extrapolated image of the House from Harvey’s subconscious, Barker’s drawings reveal “a secret.” “The two media reinforce each other’s message” (Schwarcz 94), yet the message they reinforce may not be apparent, a secret to both author and reader, waiting to be revealed
The inclusion of magic in this narrative creates a willingness to disbelieve and allows the text to portray itself as a fun story in which a young child defeats his captors and in which the captors’ motivations for the abduction is the pursuit of the fantastical aspiration of Fig. 1 Harvey’s drawing of the Holiday immortality. The fantastic elements, House (Thief 130).8 both textual and visual, like the magic within the tale, appease adult fears by Through the necessity of Harvey’s concealing the realness of the narrative. drawing, the text “reflects on its Adult anxieties and fears of abduction own literary nature,” concluding can be momentarily forgotten just that the presence of illustrations in as easily as one could dismiss magic. children’s literature accounts for the Just as the abduction content can linguistic and experiential deficiency be suppressed by the reader, so too in childhood knowledge to create an can the abduction-like experience of unassuming image that pleases adult reading. While most readers would not authority (O’Sullivan 28). However, describe the immersive act of reading Harvey’s illustration is far more sinister as being held captive (although, many in subject and genesis. The allusion would likely describe a good book to the suppression of memory that as captivating), Barker himself has follows an abusive and traumatic identified this analogous relation. experience is evident but is made more Reflecting upon Thief, Barker likens the explicit with Schwarcz’s theory of interaction between author and reader
97 • ISSUE 4 - 2, 2013 • IMAGINATIONS ADULT FEAR AND CONTROL to abduction: as real or imaginary, complicating the distinction between reality and fantasy. Writing the stories is a power trip— Problematically, the narrator repeatedly and the trip is that you’re actually refers to the fantasy realm as “a place possessing people for a little bit. [...] of illusions,” trickery, and mirage (Thief You’re actually putting this page in 59). However, Harvey faces devastating front of them and saying, “Right, consequences after escaping from the I’m going to get hold of you and not House, revealing magic’s ability to create let go. And you don’t know me, but true change and loss in the real world. when you’re done, you’re going to After spending a month in the fantasy know some very intimate part of me.” realm, Harvey and Wendell suspect (clivebarker.info n. pag.) that they are trapped and, together, escape through the fog barrier. While The mere creation of a fantasy realm both re-enter reality still in child form, is indicative of forced abduction for they find that 31 years have passed and Barker. Moreover, the addition of magic that Hood has stolen their childhood enhances the fantastical nature of this from them (Thief 117-19). Still a child, narrative, as well as imposes a false Harvey returns home but has lost the sense of fictionality onto real stories opportunity to grow up with his parents of abduction portrayed in the media, and his community (Thief 120). The allowing adult fears of child abduction deadly truth behind Hood’s illusions or worse to be controlled and denied is first revealed to Harvey when he by the text. Such relief from reality crosses the fog-threshold in his escape has twofold consequences. First is the with Wendell, where he finds that his creation of space for parental denial keepsakes from the house turn to dust of the realities of child abduction via in his pocket (Thief 117). Yet, while an increased distinction between the these physical objects reveal themselves untouchable child reader and the child as ephemeral, the temporal difference victim in the media. The second is that between the inside and outside of the space is created for the child reader fantasy realm, marked by the wall of to equate abduction with adventure, fog, is affirmed rather than unmade as resulting in potential desire for such an a real consequence of Harvey’s time adventure and the heroism promised in the House. Here lies the difficulty at the end, or in an undermining of the of this text. While the narrator would potential dangers of the child predator have the implied reader believe that all by filtering the abduction through a the effects of the House are illusions magical encounter that takes place and tricks, the temporal difference is in exclusively in a fantasy realm. fact very real.
The existence of the fantasy realm, and Having learned the truth of Hood’s everything within, is explained by magic. trickery while in the realm of reality In Thief, magic is depicted at times and empowered by this new knowledge,
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Harvey returns to the House. His newly- In the illustration, the pie remains in acquired defense against the mirages pie form, yet the skull-shaped steam of the House is foregrounded in an signifies that this pie is not food, and encounter between him and a tempting belief in this pie will bring only death. slice of pie offered as a distraction meant Harvey’s loss of innocence, acquired to lull him back into the rhythms of the during his return to reality, removes his house. However, the false-image fails veil of naivety and allows him to see past and Harvey, armed with his new ability the illusion to the death (the dust) that to see truth, recognizes the façade as lingers beneath.10 Harvey is empowered the pile of dust that is its true nature: by his loss of innocence, able to see more “He looked back at the pie, and for a and to know more than other children. moment it seemed he glimpsed the truth From this example of the pie, it becomes of the thing: the gray dust and ashes clear that truth is embedded within the from which this illusion was made” illustrations, a secret adult truth made (Thief 161). available to Harvey by entering his adult reality while still a child.
The narrative is clear in its message: adult knowledge is the only weapon against the child predator. This conclusion is rather problematic for a genre that assumes the ignorance of the child. According to children’s literature scholar Perry Nodelman, the imperative of this genre is to mediate, wherein “both children’s literature and fantasy place the implied reader in a position of innocence about the reality they describe” (Hidden 201). With the child reader confined to ignorance and the child hero’s success contingent on the acquisition of knowledge that is distributed by adulthood—for Harvey, this knowledge is controlled by the adult author—not only is the child reader stripped of any potency, but he or she is also positioned hierarchically below the child character, who is similarly subordinate to the author. O’Sullivan asserts that children’s literature is Fig. 2 Jive holding the illusion of pie predicated on an “unequal partnership” (Thief 158). between author and child in terms of
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“their command of language, their fate that awaits Harvey and Wendell experience of the world, and their if they stay at the Holiday House too positions in society,” with the scales long: of knowledge and experience tipped toward the author (14). When combined “Why would Mr. Hood have fish like with the contention that “children’s that? I mean, everything else is so literature is literature that leaves things beautiful. The lawns, the House, the out,” this hierarchy implies the presence orchard ...” of an inherent subtext embedded within any children’s literature text, one that “Who cares?” said Wendell. the author (or another adult reader) may follow but that the child may not “I do,” said Harvey. “I want to know (Nodelman, Hidden 198). This complex everything there is to know about this idea is fully explored by Nodelman, place.” who concludes that “the texts represent as much of the truth about the world “Why?” as adults assume children are capable of knowing,” which is reduced to “the “So I can tell my mom and dad about simplicities of a text in terms of the it when I get home.” more complex knowledge that sustains it and makes it comprehensible” to an “Home?” said Wendell. “Who needs adult reader (Hidden 199, 205). The it? We’ve got everything we need paradoxical nature of Thief is thus here.” exposed: as a protective fable, it is at once expected to present real-world “I’d still like to know how it all problems and solutions for children works.” and to shield the child reader from the [...] graphic and disturbing realities of the threat it attempts to warn against. “Don’t be a dope, Harvey. This is all real. It’s magic, but it’s real.” This ambiguity is foregrounded in Thief in both its employment of the “You think so?” (Thief 43) dual realness and unrealness of magic, as well as its emphasis on curiosity. In This scene serves multiple purposes. the fantasy realm controlled by Hood Most obviously, it establishes the through magic (and Barker), Harvey contrast between Harvey and Wendell. and Wendell discuss the mysteries of the While each boy asks questions, Wendell’s realm, beginning with the pond around questions are dismissive rather than the back of the house which they have inquisitive, questions that perpetuate discovered is full of large, ugly fish. ignorance and rebuff truth as opposed to These fish are in fact the transformed Harvey’s knowledge-seeking questions bodies of Hood’s previous victims, a that request understanding.
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Furthermore, this scene demonstrates of Harvey, presented even before the the displacement of knowledge with title page for the book; it is one of clear magic; when Wendell’s “who cares?” division and duality within the child: leaves Harvey unsatisfied, “magic” takes its place as the answer to “how it all works.” Magic, a child’s answer for the unexplained, satisfies Wendell; it provides “everything we need,” since his needs are childlike: childhood knowledge and childhood desires. Wendell is content with attributing the “real” to magic, but Harvey continues to question right to the end of the discussion, finally asking “You think so?” Within the fantasy realm, something tantalizes the children and intrigues the reader, prompting this reflective scene. The realness of magic, and not the monster behind it as Cohen would argue, elicits the responses of curiosity and desire (16-7). Of course, the element of transgression underscores the experience of Hood’s fantasy realm; every aspect of the fantasy—right down to the knowledge that it is a fantasy— initiates a cycle of desire and inquisition in the children. However, by soliciting questions from both Harvey and Wendell despite the lack of answers, magical realness complicates Cohen’s Fig. 3 This image appears on the monster, adding intellectual intrigue to third page of the book, prior to any its appeal. numbering.
Doubling the (Child) Monster Harvey’s face is the image of childlike innocence, appearing complacent, The doubling effect of Barker’s banal, and even melancholic; he sits in illustrations begins to reveal itself in a passive stance, hands calmly resting the dual expression of life and death, in his lap while his head is devoured food and dust. Yet, it is the depictions by a hideous monster. Yet, Harvey has of Harvey that are the most revealing also chosen to wear the costume of the of the embedded ambivalences within monster and to adopt this frightening, this narrative. Consider the first image monstrous persona. He appears
101 • ISSUE 4 - 2, 2013 • IMAGINATIONS ADULT FEAR AND CONTROL monstrous, magnified by the shadow dual illustrations that frame the chapter he projects that looms larger than it in which Harvey is transformed: should behind him and shows Harvey’s ears, which should not be affected by the costume, as pointed like a creature’s. Moreover, the shadow is both cast by Harvey—a projection of his body—yet it also looms over him in a threatening way. The monster costume—or perhaps more appropriately, the act of donning or embracing monstrosity—is dangerous to Harvey; it threatens and changes him; it conflates him with the monster. He is at once innocence and monstrosity combined, needing adult protection but also visibly frightening—the monster’s eyes demanding or inducing fear. Schwarcz’s secret contained within the illustrations of the narrative is this ambivalence: the dual conception of the child (and childhood) as both innocent and monstrous.10
Barker revisits this idea mid-way through the narrative, when Harvey is magically transformed into a vampire as a Halloween treat. Through the magic of Hood’s Holiday House, Harvey is transformed into a vampire: he grows fangs, his ears extend into points, his arms become wings, and he acquires the taste for blood (Thief 78- 85). He flies from the roof and swoops down to attack Wendell, remembering his humanity at the last minute and refusing to “Bite him. [...] Drink a little of his [Wendell’s] blood” (Thief 86). Interestingly, in this representation, the predator turns childhood against itself by filling Harvey with the desire to attack another child: Wendell. Barker’s illustrations of Harvey as a vampire are
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(Previous Page) indicated by the closing image of Harvey Fig. 4 Idealized (Thief 72). plummeting to the ground with a dark shadow behind him, actual childhood, Fig. 5 Actual (Thief 82). in need of protection.
The images represent an idealized and Like the pre-emptive illustration of actual reality. In the idealized reality, Harvey’s costumed duality, the shadow Harvey relishes in his metamorphosis, both results from and threatens the child, untroubled by his enactment of a yet this dark shadow has its own legs boyhood dream come to life, while in and appears to be a shape independent the actual reality, Harvey is a victim of Harvey, one that is outside of his of this dream, fearful of his ability to control. This shadowy figure is either harm and to instil fear in others. The chasing or perhaps pushing Harvey duality of the child as both monstrous to the ground, or it is symbolic of the and innocent—a devilish victim of an true threat to his innocence: the burden imagined childhood ideal—is unveiled. of the idealized adult conception of childhood monstrosity imposed upon The idealized image of Harvey as a him. The title next to this illustration vampire is countered by the chapter title reads “Falling From Grace” (Thief “What Do You Dream?” (Thief 73). The 83), which evokes the fallen angel question appears to address Harvey, yet who is expelled from heavenly grace, it can also be read in two ways: first, indicating a failure to live up to some to question the aspirations of childhood higher (adult) expectation of divine and second, to question how childhood innocence. Through his embrace of the is conceived by adults. The illustration adult fantasy in the previous picture, thus serves to answer both questions. Harvey becomes monstrous and The presence of the adult imaginary is fearful in his embodiment of the actual augmented by an earlier conversation rather than the idealized results of this between Wendell and Harvey, wherein fantasy. However, Harvey is already the adult voice of Mrs. Griffin, an old conceived of as monstrous prior to woman who lives at the Holiday House the commencement of the narrative, and acts as caretaker to the children, indicating adult ambivalence toward affirms the normalcy of boyhood morbid the conception of childhood that interests: “‘You’re monsters,’ she replied predicates and infiltrates Thief. with the hint of a smile. ‘That’s what you are. Monsters’” (Thief 48). This Barker’s illustrations, in conjunction affirmation suggests that monstrosity with his use of the monstrous in both is the (fantasized) fundamental nature his villains and his protagonist, create of boyhood. Harvey’s “dream” of being a complex but not surprising duality, a murderous vampire is confirmed as contingent on the modern construction an adult conception of the idealized of childhood. Nodelman explains: child. The reality of this conception is They [children] are necessarily double
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and divided—both that which they Fig. 6 Harvey as duality, white and mimic, childhood as envisaged and imposed on them by adults, and that which underlies and survives and transgresses that adult version of childhood. The adult impulse [...] requires that children be both controllable and uncontrollable, both what adults want them to be and incapable of being what adults want them to be. [...] The divided child is the only possible child constructed by children’s literature. (Hidden 187)
O’Sullivan conceptualizes children’s literature as “a body of literature into which the dominant social, cultural and educational norms are inscribed” (13), while Nodelman envisions it as “a means by which adults teach children black, body and shadow, saviour and how to be childlike” (Hidden 203). witness of death (Thief 142). The didactic imperative of Barker’s fable, while it may be well-intended, According to Margarida Morgado is unavoidably confused, formulating in “A Loss beyond Imagining: Child conflated and contradictory notions Disappearance in Fiction,” works that of “childlikeness,” evident in his visual engage in the discourses on childhood, like representations of Harvey (Hidden Barker’s Thief, simultaneously address 191). Thief reflects and constructs a “the absence and presence of children: conflated social and cultural conception their absence in adult’s recollections of childhood. [i.e., imagination] of childhood and their presence as real individuals who Despite this ambivalence toward either differ from or resemble adults” childhood or perhaps because of it, adult (245). In this statement, Morgado fears of child abduction underscore juxtaposes the imagined child and the every aspect of this narrative. Harvey real child with one conceptualized is simultaneously victim and saviour, and constructed by the adult, and the beacon of childhood vibrancy and other separate and knowable to the bearer of death, attacking the idea of adult only by comparison. She stresses immortality in both adulthood and the adult’s ambivalence toward their childhood. conceptions of childhood, which results in a dual status of the child as either an ideal or an actual—but in both cases,
IMAGINATIONS • ISSUE 4 - 2, 2013 • 104 KRISTJANSON paradoxically, an imagined figure. She Adults are aware of the taboo sexual claims that “adults nurture childhood as desires of some adults toward a dimension of infinite and immutable children, yet divulging that knowledge, time, an idea of innocence, and a propagating that adult-known fear, locus of affective investment” (246; would result in a corruption of the very emphasis added). Adults construct innocence in need of protection. Child the child as immortal innocence, protection discourses contend that a indisputably ignorant of both mortality revelation of the sexual desirability and sexuality,12 a figure who acts as a of the child would despoil the child receptor of adult affection (acceptable by initiating it into adult knowledge in the form of protection and familial prematurely, but such a revelation love, unacceptable in the form of would equally taint the adult since it is captivity and sexual love). in the adult that this desire originates. Thus, stories such as Barker’s, which It is this idealized memory that adults place the threat to childhood outside bring as readers or authors to children’s of the realm of familiar and realistic literature, and this desire that Barker adulthood, prevents both the child and exposes as sinister by applying the the adult from corruption. Bronwyn childhood notions of immortality and Davies clarifies that “constructing the innocence (as a non-sexualized yet danger as coming from the unknown insatiable adult) onto Hood, his adult Other, the stranger, saves those who are villain. Barker creates similarities closest to the children from thinking between Harvey and Hood and, by doing about what dangers they themselves, so in combination with the duality of or their loves ones, might be exposing Harvey as monstrous and innocent, he children to” (ix). Hence, the child is frees Harvey from what Morgado refers expected to know without knowing, to as the prison of “fictions of innocence” expected to be able to identify an or what David Gurnham has dubbed unknowable threat, because of the adult the “disabling and disarming discourse decision to withhold knowledge and of innocence” (246; 116). Once freed, perpetuate ignorance, leaving the child Harvey may be used “to articulate to maneuver through a dangerous and [adult] fears and wishes,” including unknowable adult world in an idealized the contradictory desire for and fear of state of perpetual innocence. immortal childhood (Morgado 247). The ambivalence toward the nature of Yet, this ignorant, unsuspecting child, childhood, this conflict between what in his trusting innocence and total is desirable in children and what is dependence, is at his most vulnerable. achievable in actuality, is of particular His susceptibility opens the door for relevance to the narrative of child what Morgado contends adults fear abduction. most: the monstrous child. According to Morgado, adults fear for children who, through a loss of innocence, will
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“re-emerg[e] as monsters or victims of a (“Generalizations” 178). To achieve ruthless society,” revealing the inability this end, such texts “sublimate or keep to control “the innocent, pure, passive, present but leave unsaid a variety of and dependent child” (251). Such fears forms of knowledge—sexual, cultural, spur the creation of literary works historical—theoretically only available meant to educate (but not too much) to and only understandable to adults” and protect, preventing this monstrous (Nodelman, Hidden 206). Similarly, transformation. Barker, as has been “monsters must be examined within shown, allows this narrative to play the intricate matrix of relations (social, through to the cautionary hindsight at cultural, and literary-historical)” its end. Given Harvey’s loss of innocence, (Cohen 5). In reading Thief as a child Cohen would concede the naturalness abduction narrative, each of these forms of the monstrous child in the presence of knowledge is suppressed: the “sexual” of the fictional monster (Hood): “The implications of child abduction, the monster prevents mobility (intellectual, “cultural” understanding of the threat geographical, or sexual), delimiting the of a child predator and, the “historical” social spaces through which private pattern of passed abductions and their bodies move. To step outside this official consequences. Hence, the knowledge geography is to risk attack by some of the world and its dangers remain monstrous border patrol or (worse) silent, unknown, sublimated in order to to become monstrous oneself” (12). preserve the innocence of the idealized Ultimately, Harvey transgresses these child. intellectual, geographical, and sexual boundaries guarded by the monster During their escape, which is a direct and gains the knowledge necessary to result of Wendell’s confrontation with defeat the predator via his encounter the (sexualized) vampire-Harvey, the with reality. boys are chased by Carna, Hood’s winged beast, who crosses the fog Reading between the Sublimated Lines boundary in its blood-lust for the boys and then immediately begins to Ironically, monsters are frequently deteriorate. The parallel to Harvey’s employed to depict situations that adults vampire metamorphosis, in which he fear will create monstrous children. lets out a blood-curdling scream as he According to Nodelman, “children’s flies through the sky before swooping literature is frequently about coming down to trap Wendell and suck his to terms with a world one does not blood, is illuminating. Like Carna, who understand” and camouflaging lessons begins to deteriorate once beyond the on harmful adult intentions would fog barrier and outside of the fantasy serve to prepare without corruption realm, Harvey’s vampiric qualities by maintaining the “world one does dissipate when he refuses to follow not understand” through literary through with the fantasy of penetrating metaphor, analogy or hidden subtext Wendell’s neck and drawing his blood
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(Thief 111, 87-8). Thus, it is the denial Carna’s significance lies in its function of fantasy that dissolves the monster. within the narrative as representative guard of the fantasy realm. Carna is what Cohen calls the “monster of prohibition,” the monster who patrols the border created by monstrosity, maintaining the integrity of the boundary between normativity and monstrosity (13). Bodily appetites can, of course, concern food, of which there are copious amounts within Hood’s realm, but it can also apply to more sensual desires for pleasure. Contradictorily, while Carna limits, it also elicits exploration and begs for understanding: “The monstrous body is pure culture. [...] [T]he monster exists only to be read: the monstrum is etymologically ‘that which reveals,’ ‘that which warns’” (Cohen 4). The monster has a dual function, warning and also revealing that which it warned against in the same token. Fig. 7 Carna with mouth agape, ready to receive (Thief 108). Revealed at the end of Thief, however, Carna is “kept alive not by any will of The destruction of Carna when it its own but because Hood demanded encounters reality is symbolic of its service” (Thief 170). In that Carna is the boundary maintained by its Hood’s agent and driven entirely by his monstrosity. Carna, “the devourer,” is will, in effect, Hood is the true monster appetite incarnate, and its emaciated of prohibition, who “exists to demarcate body reveals the insatiability of this the bonds that hold together that appetite as well as the insubstantiality system of relations we call culture, to of its objects of desire (Thief 111). This call horrid attention to the borders that idea is reflected in Harvey’s revelation cannot—must not—be crossed” (Cohen that the food that is meant to sustain 13). Cohen explains further: “From its him is in actuality merely dust, as position at the limits of knowing, the well as in the fish transformation of monster stands as a warning against the children who are meant to sustain exploration of its uncertain demesnes” Hood’s immortal life, leaving only an (12). Carna reveals and warns against ugly fish when the child’s essence is taboo corporeal desires on behalf of spent. Hood, desires either experienced by
107 • ISSUE 4 - 2, 2013 • IMAGINATIONS ADULT FEAR AND CONTROL children (the children’s desires—their wishes—granted by Hood) or targeted toward children (Hood’s desire for children). Of particular relevance to this extension is Nodelman’s comment that, given its power to construct notions of childhood, at its core “children’s literature may have the unacknowledged purpose of teaching children not to reveal their sexuality to adults” (Hidden 201). For Harvey, the boundary that Carna demarcates is dualistic—at once the horrid border of adult sexual desire for children as well as the uncertain demesnes of childhood sexual desire. The presence of the monster foregrounds and forbids these Fig. 8 Harvey travels through the wall twofold desires. of fog (Thief 10).
Magic obstructs this truth, making it unbelievable, even within the narrative. The path, in that it is a “Hidden Way,” The predator’s hide-away is a magical as indicated by the chapter heading, is house hidden behind a mystic shroud of uniquely reserved for children (Thief fog, a wall whose “misty stones seemed 11). This is the chapter in which the to reach for him [Harvey] in their abduction of Harvey takes place, in turn, wrapping their soft, gray arms which Harvey willingly follows his around his shoulders and ushering him captor to a stranger’s house, a promise- through” (Thief 16). This romanticized, land, a “place where the days are always fantastical image of a child being sunny [...] and the nights are full of welcomed into a magical realm, when wonder” (Thief 8). The chapter opens seen through the suspicious eyes of with this image of the fog yielding to an adult gaze, is a threatening image Harvey and closes with a transitional of a child willingly accompanying his illustration of his waiting reward, a abductor to an unpleasant fate. The flowering meadow to contrast the illustration of Harvey passing through dreary February day he left behind the wall serves this same purpose. No (Thief 16-7). monstrous arms reach to grab Harvey and pull him through, but rather the fog dissolves into a yielding wall of mist that easily allows for Harvey’s passage to the other side where a field of flowers awaits.
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Fig. 9 A field of flowers materialized The Predator in Two Images across the two final pages of the chapter (Thief 16-7). Hood strives for concealment throughout the narrative, using the The text that accompanies his crossing magical elements of his lair—the house, the border between reality and fantasy the fog, the pond, and the wind—to points to the first of many sexual disguise his true nature. Hood is illusive subtexts that charge Harvey’s visit to to the children, appearing once as a the Holiday House with the threatening whispered voice carried by the breeze presence of a child predator. As Harvey or a faint question from the shadows. approaches the fog, “within three steps Harvey forces the encounter between of the wall a gust of balmy, flower- himself and Hood when he returns scented wind slipped between the to defeat him and save the children shimmering stones and kissed his cheek” confined as fish in the pond. Harvey (Thief 16; emphasis added). The use of demands to meet Hood, at which point “slipped between,” most commonly Rictus would have Harvey (and the followed by the sheets, amplifies the reader) believe that “He is the house” sexual suggestion of Harvey’s kissed (Thief 187). Yet, the illustration and the cheek, but this kiss is perceived—if it text conspire against the description, is acknowledged at all—as innocent depicting Hood not as the house but of because its source is magical and the the house, a voice that resounds with knowledge that supports it is childlike. the house as its source and a voyeuristic Because children’s literature positions eye that spans the attic ceiling. the implied reader in a state of childlike innocence, the sexual subtext of the wind’s kisses, made more disturbing in the knowledge that Hood controls everything in the fantasy realm, wind included, can easily remain concealed within the text. 109 • ISSUE 4 - 2, 2013 • IMAGINATIONS ADULT FEAR AND CONTROL
the nose of an enormous bat; his mouth was a lipless slit that was surely ten feet wide, from which issued a voice that was like the creaking of doors and the howling of chimneys and the rattling of windows. (Thief 170-71)
The description of Hood’s face—its distorted formation, grotesque and bat- like—is countered by the illustration, which reduces Hood to a single eye, as if his only crime against the children he captures is as a voyeur. The illustration of Hood portrays his very disposition: a seeing eye that hides from his object of focus, a coward, camouflaged by the house, and then again by this reductive representation. Yet, this eye, when considered with the text, does more than see Harvey. The significance in this encounter is that Harvey sees the eye and not the other way around. Harvey uncovers the truth behind his Fig. 10 Hood as voyeur (Thief 166). abductor, but only by placing himself in a most vulnerable position: “sprawled Despite actively seeking him out, Harvey on the hard boards” beneath Hood’s finds Hood only be accident. gaze (Thief 170). Hood’s raping eye is violated by Harvey, through his [...] he took little care where he discovery of it, just as it violates Harvey walked. He stumbled, fell, and ended in this most symbolic positioning. up sprawled on the hard boards, staring up at the roof through a red Furthermore, Barker’s depiction of haze of pain. the threat of a child predator as a house rather than a man makes the And there above him was Hood, threat inherently fantastic, removing in all his glory. its association from normative society, while also problematically distancing His face was spread over the it from society’s control. Through his entire roof, his features horribly manipulation of time Hood achieves distorted. His eyes were dark pits immortality (the unrelenting and gouged into the timber; his nose was persistent predator that adults fear), and flared and flattened grotesquely, like through his use of magic he conceals
IMAGINATIONS • ISSUE 4 - 2, 2013 • 110 KRISTJANSON his acts, making him undetectable returns, rising from the rubble to take and thus unstoppable. The home, and the form of a man. by extension the parents, offers no protection for the child against the threat of abduction. Harvey’s parents dismiss going to the police for help as absurd because of the fantastic nature of the tale:
“And what do we tell them?” his father said, raising his voice.
“That we think there’s a House out there that hides in a mist, and steals children with magic? It’s ridiculous.” (Thief 130)
This dismissal also affirms the fantasies of childhood wherein children are able to protect themselves: in Thief, no adult can save the children; only Harvey can redeem and reclaim the notion of childhood to save not only himself, but all the children. In the end, each child is restored to his or her original time period. Childhood is affirmed within the realm of reality, with Harvey’s Fig. 11 Hood as a man (Thief 206). parents unconvinced as to the crucial role he played in this adventure (Thief By individualizing the predator in 227-28). the form of a single man, his threat to children becomes manageable. He Yet, Barker complicates his narrative by becomes identifiable, traceable, and doubling Hood’s representation with susceptible to the laws of society, all a second form. Like the contradictory qualities that did not apply to him representation of magic being both real in house form. This transformation and illusion, Hood is oppositionally confirms his demise within the text: represented as both an extremely “In the high times of his evil, Hood powerful villain, able to control and had been the House. Now, it was confine children without detection or the other way around. The House, intervention, and a fragile adult easily what was left of it, had become Mr. destroyed by a child. After Harvey Hood” (Thief 204). The illustrations succeeds in destroying the house, Hood humanize Hood, piecing together a
111 • ISSUE 4 - 2, 2013 • IMAGINATIONS ADULT FEAR AND CONTROL man’s tenuous face from the debris, yet in its attempt to give a human shape to the text denies this human identity and this illusion, counters this nothingness obliterates this last attempt to construct that the text proclaims. Like the the predator from the remains of his linguistic lacuna remedied by Harvey’s disguise. Harvey tells Hood “You’re drawing, Barker’s illustration of Hood dirt and muck and bits and pieces indicates the emptiness that language [...] You’re nothing!” (Thief 212). No imposes onto the child predator. In the longer hooded by the house, Hood is public imagination, the predator is little stripped of all protective concealment. more than discourse: an impossible Near naked and vulnerable, the child to control force that “arose not from predator is defeated when Harvey pulls any temporary or reversible weakness the last remaining scrap of fabric off of character but from a deep-rooted his body to reveal his empty core (Thief sickness or moral taint” (Jenkins 189). 211). As Harvey proclaims, the predator Harvey defeats Hood by exposing the is nothing but an empty construction, void that replaces his heart, a symbolic an impotent nothingness, defeated by a gesture that could also be interpreted as child. an unveiling of the emptiness that lies at the core of his construction. Final Thoughts Yet, this final conclusion unnervingly Ultimately, Harvey is empowered by leaves the predator as an illusion the acquisition of knowledge. He is able himself, calling into question the reality to defeat the child predator because he of his perceived threat. This doubt is understands the operation of the House reinforced by the return to reality at and the logic of the fantasy realm. By the end, wherein all of Hood’s captives performing this knowledge by returning have been returned to their respective to the House to destroy Hood and release times and parents unharmed, effectively the captive children, Harvey vanquishes erasing their parent’s experience of loss magic from the fantasy realm and and negating the act of abduction save dissolves the realm into reality. While in the child’s mind. In this way, Barker’s the narrative places Harvey as the hero text continues to locate the abduction in of this tale, victor over the impotent the realm of the imaginary, the fantastic, predator, the illustrations reveal another seeming to deny the existence of harm interpretation: the constructed notion of in monstrous desires. This comes as no the child predator ultimately terminates surprise, given Barker’s other depictions Hood. When Harvey unmasks the of monstrous plurality and pleasure- emptiness inside Hood, the text informs seeking in his other works. For Barker, that “there was no heart at all. There was our appetites, whatever they may be, only a void—neither cold nor hot, living are nothing to fear because of their nor dead—made not of mystery but of impotence in reality: nothingness. The illusionist’s illusion” “One of the extraordinary things about (Thief 211). The illustration, however, monsters is that they are over and
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over again our appetites caricatured,” social impulses to eroticize the child he says. “They’re our appetites—our (94; 124). Following public discourse, sexual appetites, our literal appetites: Thief presents a story in which the our desire to eat more, feel more, see uncontrollable and unidentifiable more. [...] They have all the physical predator can be defeated, perpetuating attributes of things that want to have the idea that dangers for children are more sensual experience than people found outside the familiar. However, with small eyes, small noses, small in that the predator is represented as teeth, small ears, small dicks.” (qtd. in a house, one that replaces the child’s Burke 98) familial home through his displacement into the fantasy realm, Barker moves To caricature, as Barker promotes, this threat into the home. Perhaps there monstrous desires is to ridicule through is another embedded message within representation ad extremum. While this complex and layered narrative, this idea might be appealing in theory, one that I have not yet considered: such representations in children’s the potential for harm is not limited text minimize the realities of sexual to the predator. Cohen relates that, desires for children and the potential through the conflict “between Monster for harm therein. Likewise, Barker’s and Man, the disturbing suggestion comments are not limited to the adult arises that this incoherent body, realm, and while he may claim that the denaturalized and always in peril of monster represents our appetites, his disaggregation, may well be our own” use of Carna to police the boundaries (9). This statement brings to mind of desire forbids such appetites in the dual depictions of Hood as both children. Conflicts and contradictions, monster and man, but perhaps this as has been demonstrated, contaminate is not where the tension within this Thief yet are frequently revealed by the narrative rests. With the establishment illustrations. Like Hood, it seems, the that the child reader cannot identify text hides its true nature. with the child hero in Thief because of his subordinate positioning and lack All these contradictions emerge in this of adult knowledge, identification can narrative because the story that Barker only be possible for the other reader— attempts to tell in this children’s novel the adult reader. Ideally, the adult is not a children’s story. The crimes of reader would empathize with Harvey’s the child predator are, in all actuality, parents, touched by their loss of a child, stories that adults tell to each other and yet Hood’s final exposure and raw to themselves in the media and within vulnerability may evoke identification communities. Within this children’s with a monster hidden within all of us, story, Hood’s representation conjures one that is feared and, thus, must be arguments made by James Kincaid controlled. and Gurnham that the child predator is the cultural manifestation of greater
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Image Notes Boundaries and Their Transgression in Clive Barker’s Imajica. Munich: AVM, 2009. Print. All images are publically available to view online in the Thief of Always gal- Davies, Browyn. “Foreward.” leries provided by Lost Souls at www. Robinson, Innocence, ix-xii. clivebarker.com/html/visions/gallery/in- dex.htm. Dean, Tim. “The Erotics of Transgression.” Gay and Lesbian Writing. Ed. Hugh Stevens. Cambridge: Works Cited Cambridge UP, 2011. Print.
Barker, Clive. “Clive Barker: Be Egoff, Sheila et al., eds. Only Connect: Careful What You Wish for, It Just Readings on Children’s Literature. Might Come True….” The Official 3rd ed. Toronto; New York; Oxford: Clive Barker Website. n.d. n.p. Web. Oxford UP, 1996. Print. 5 November 2011. n.pag.
Burke, Fred. Clive Barker: Illustrator. Gurnham, David. Memory, Imagination, Ed. Steve Niles. Forestville, CA: Justice: Intersections of Law and Eclipse, 1990. Print. Literature. Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2009. Print. Cheeke, Stephen. Writing for Art: The Aesthetics of Ekphrasis. Manchester; Hunt, Peter. “Defining Children’s New York: Manchester UP, 2008. Literature.” Egoff, et al., 2-17. Print. Jenkins, Philip. Moral Panic: Changing Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome, ed. Monster Concepts of the Child Molester Theory: Reading Culture. Minneapolis; in Modern America. New Haven; London: U of Minnesota P, 1996. London: Yale UP, 1998. Print. Print. Kincaid, James R. Erotic Innocence: The Daumann, Christian. Wonderlands in Culture of Child Molesting. Durham: Flesh and Blood: Gender, the Body, Its
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Duke UP, 1998. Print. ---. “In the Name of ‘Childhood Innocence’: A Discursive Exploration Kristjanson, Gabrielle. “Predatory of the Moral Panic Associated with Realms: To Admire and Desire the Childhood and Sexuality.” Cultural Child in Portal Fantasy.” Monsters and Studies Review 14.2 (September the Monstrous 3.1 (Summer 2013): 53- 2008): 113-29. 64. Schwarcz, Joseph H. The Ways of the Mendlesohn, Farah. Rhetorics of Illustrator: Visual Communication Fantasy. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan in Children’s Literature. Chicago: UP, 2008. Print. American Library Association, 1982. Print. Morgado, Margarida. “A Loss beyond Imagining: Child Disappearance in Winter, Douglas E. Clive Barker: Fiction.” The Yearbook of English The Dark Fantastic. New York: Studies. 32 (2002): 244-59. HarperCollins, 2002. Print.
Nodelman, Perry. The Hidden Adult: Endnotes Defining Children’s Literature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2008. 1. See Robinson, Kerry. Innocence, Print. Knowledge and the Construction of Childhood: The Contradictory Nature ---. “Some Presumptuous of Sexuality and Censorship in Chil- Generalizations about Fantasy.” Egoff, dren’s Contemporary Lives. London: et al., 175-78. Routledge, 2013; Robinson, Kerry, “In the Name of ‘Childhood Innocence’: O’Sullivan, Emer. Comparative A Discursive Exploration of the Mor- Children’s Literature. Trans Anthea al Panic Associated with Childhood Bell. Abingdon, Oxfordshire; New and Sexuality.” Cultural Studies Re- York: Routledge, 2005. Print. view 14.2 (Sept, 2008): 113-29; Bond Stockton, Kathryn. The Queer Child, Prout, Alan, ed. The Body, Childhood or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth and Society. New York: St. Martin’s, Century. Durham: Duke UP, 2009; or 2000. Print. Prout, Alan, ed. The Body, Childhood and Society. New York: St. Martin’s, Robinson, Kerry. Innocence, 2000, among others. Knowledge and the Construction of Childhood: The Contradictory 2. The Damnation Game (horror, Nature of Sexuality and Censorship 1985), The Hellbound Heart (horror, in Children’s Contemporary Lives. 1986), Weaveworld (fantasy, 1987), London: Routledge, 2013. Print. Cabal (horror, 1988), The Great and Secret Show (horror/fantasy, 1989),
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Imajica (fantasy, 1991), Everville (fan- 8. All images are publically avail- tasy, 1994), Sacrament (horror/fantasy able to view online. See Image Notes 1996), Galilee (horror/romance 1998), for information. Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story (horror/fantasy 2001), Mister B. 9. According to Schwarcz, in a text Gone (horror, 2007). like Thief, “the illustrations are more than a decorative item or a mere ex- 3. The fourth and fifth books in tension of the text. The text, to be the series have yet to be published as of sure, dictates the framework, guides September, 2013. the illustrator and limits him to an ex- tent, but the illustrator is quite free to 4. This interpretation has been ar- interfere where and how he wishes to gued in Daumann, Christian. Wonder- do so.” (11). Barker is both author and lands in Flesh and Blood: Gender, the illustrator, so he both limits and inter- Body, Its Boundaries and Their Trans- feres. gression in Clive Barker’s Imajica. Mu- nich: AVM, 2009. 10. In Barker’s The Damnation Game (1985), dust or rather dirt and 5. Both Joseph Schwarcz and Per- muck are also signifiers of death and ry Nodelman maintain that children’s decay. literature always contains sublimated sexual references. The same can be said 11. See Kincaid, James R. Erotic In- for the portal quest fantasy, wherein nocence: The Culture of Child Molest- the passage through the portal is said to ing. Durham: Duke UP, 1998. represent a passage into sexual knowl- edge. See Mendlesohn, Farah. Rhetorics 12. See Bond Stockton and Robin- of Fantasy. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan son, Innocence. UP, 2008; and Dean, Tim. “The Erot- ics of Transgression.” Gay and Lesbian Writing. Ed. Hugh Stevens. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2011.
6. See Gerrig, Richard J. Experienc- ing Narrative Worlds: On the Psycho- logical Activities of Reading. New Ha- ven; London: Yale UP, 1993 for more on the information that readers bring to the text during the act of reading.
7. See Kristjanson, Gabrielle. “Pred- atory Realms: To Admire and Desire the Child in Portal Fantasy.” Monsters and the Monstrous 3.1 (Summer, 2013): 53- 64.
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Bio
Kristjanson, Gabrielle is a PhD Gabrielle Kristjanson est doctorante candidate in the School of Culture à l’Université de Melbourne en and Communication at the University Australie (à l’école de la culture et de of Melbourne, Australia. She holds a la communication). Elle est titulaire Bachelor of Science and a Master of d’un baccalauréat ès sciences et d’une Arts in Comparative Literature, both maîtrise ès arts de l’Université de obtained at the University of Alberta, l’Alberta au Canada. Elle mène des Canada. Her research revolves around recherches dans les domaines de la the manifestation of moral panic manifestation de la panique morale and criminal monstrosity in Western et de la monstruosité criminelle dans literature, and her dissertation is la littérature occidentale. Sa thèse on fictional representations of the se concentre sur les représentations child predator in adult and children’s fictives du prédateur d’enfants dans la literature. littérature adulte et de jeunesse.
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