The Depiction of Social Inequalities in British School Stories of the 1940S and 1950S
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University of Bath PHD The Depiction of Social Inequalities in British School Stories of the 1940s and 1950s Sampey, Philip Award date: 2017 Awarding institution: University of Bath Link to publication Alternative formats If you require this document in an alternative format, please contact: [email protected] General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 24. Sep. 2021 University of Bath PHD The Depiction of Social Inequalities in British School Stories of the 1940s and 1950s Sampey, Philip Award date: 2017 Awarding institution: University of Bath Link to publication General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 23. May. 2019 THE DEPICTION OF SOCIAL INEQUALITIES IN BRITISH SCHOOL STORIES OF THE 1940s AND 1950s Philip Christopher Sampey A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Bath Department of Education December 2017 COPYRIGHT Attention is drawn to the fact that copyright of this thesis rests with the author. A copy of this copy thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that they must not copy it or use material from it except as permitted by law or with the consent of the author. This thesis may be made available for consultation within the University Library and may be photocopied or lent to other libraries for the purposes of consultation with effect from ........................................ Signed on behalf of the Faculty/School of Education .......................................................................... Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Andrew Stables for his initial input and guidance in my research. My gratitude is extended to Dr.Katie Dunworth and Elisabeth Barratt Hacking for taking up the baton and providing the necessary support and encouragement to complete the thesis. My research would not have been possible without the unflinching team work of the Inter-Library Loan office at the University of Bath whose dedication to the retrieval of the most obscure references over several years has been wholly admirable. I am also indebted to the courteous assistance of the library staff at the Roehampton Institute, London; the British Library at Boston Spa, Yorkshire and the Bodleian Library, Oxford. My thanks also go to Karen Dyde, Librarian at Monkton Prep School, Bath, for sharing her widespread knowledge of children’s literature so generously. The thesis is dedicated to my late parents, my late brother, Peter, and my late sister, Gillian. Finally, I should like to express my thankfulness to my wife and daughter who have been most supportive throughout the time that it has taken me to complete my research. Abstract My thesis is based on a study of British school stories which were published between 1940 and 1960. I have chosen discourse analysis as a strategy to extract the elements of the genre which give an insight into the social inequalities that existed in Britain during that time. In the study I analyse a selection of boys’ and girls’ school stories in order to gain a balanced view of the social issues that are inherent in the novels and compare how the authors created their individual characters who represent a cross-section of British social classes and cultures. Issues such as class snobbery and the inequalities with regard to educational opportunities that are enacted by the fictional characters are examined based on evidence from a wide range of primary and secondary sources. My research has provided sufficient evidence for me to propose a close correlation between the school story texts and the social consequences of the tripartite system introduced by the 1944 Education Act. An exploration of children’s literature forms the basis of the thesis from which the school story genre emerges as a separate entity. Whilst other related research on the school story has touched upon aspects that include feminism, masculinity and relationships in general, the focus on social class and elitism has not been as prominent although it is a central feature of the genre. Through the selection of boys’ and girls’ stories, I have been able to evaluate how the school story represented a contemporary literary document whose language, both spoken and narrative, portrayed the social inequalities in a manner that was equally overt and covert. Figure 1.The Class Divide: Eton College pupils Figure 2. Woodwork class in a Secondary Modern School - i - CONTENTS Page Preface 1 Chapter One Methodology 1.1 Introduction 8 1.2 Aims of the research – research questions 9 1.3 The Sample 11 1.4 An approach to critical discourse analysis 14 1.5 The methodology 17 1.5.1 Dialectical-Relational Approach (DRA) 18 1.5.2 Stages and procedures of the analysis 18 1.5.3 Procedure of the analysis 20 1.5.4 Social Class – a definition 26 Chapter Two The Nature of Children’s Literature – the place of the school story genre 1.1 Introduction 32 1.2 A working definition of children’s literature 33 1.3 The Constitution of Children’s Literature 37 1.3.1 Story Plots 39 1.3.2 Characters 44 1.3.3 Names 45 1.3.4 Description and Appearance 46 1.3.5 Thought and Speech 47 1.3.6 Placement in a specific setting 47 1.3.7 Settings 48 - ii - Page 1.3.8 Style, Language and Vocabulary choice 49 1.3.9 Assessment and comment made by other characters 50 1.4 The author’s personal assessment and comments 52 1.4.1 Style – Individual writing styles 54 1.5 Aspects of Children’s Literature – Social Realism 56 1.6 Common Genres in Children’s Literature Historical Fiction 57 Fantasy 59 Time-slip stories 60 Science Fiction 60 Utopia and Dystopia 62 Post-apocalypse 62 1.7 The School Story and its relationship within children’s literature 63 1.8 The Role of the Children’s Authors 70 1.8.1 Writing to entertain 71 1.8.2 Writing to instruct 73 1.8.3 The issue of authorial intention 74 1.9 Topical Issues 79 1.9.1 Subjects 79 1.9.2 Themes 80 2.1 The Child Reader 84 2.2 Identification 85 3.1 Reader Response Theory 87 3.1.2 Interacting with the text 88 4.1 Gadamer and Hermeneutics 95 5.1 Moral and social issues as part of the reader response 98 6.1 Literary Ideology 101 7.1 Concluding Remarks 105 - iii - Chapter Three The Development of the School Story in Britain before 1940 Page 1.1 Introduction 108 1.2 The emergence of the school story 111 1.3 Victorian Morality 112 1.4 The Christian element of the school story 113 1.5 The School Story ‘Formula’ 117 1.6 The portrayal of reality in the public school story 120 1.7 The Gem and the Magnet 123 1.8 The issue of Class and the school story 125 1.9 Girls’ School Stories 128 1.9.1 The Girls’ Own Paper 131 1.9.2 The historical accounts of children’s literature and their relationship to social class 133 2.1 Concluding Remarks 136 Chapter Four The publishing of children’s popular literature, 1940 – 1960. 1.1 Introduction 139 1.2 The Relationship between the Author and Publisher 142 1.3 British Society and the School Story 146 1.4 Children’s Magazines and their Publishers 152 1.4.1 What do boys and girls read? The need for new methods 154 of education 1.5 The role of the Public and School Libraries and children’s 159 reading choices 1.6 The Hulton Readership Survey, 1950 169 1.7 The Publishers’ tactics for attracting readers 174 1.8 Concluding Remarks 177 - iv - Chapter Five The depiction of social inequalities in British school stories of the 1940s Page 1.1 Introduction 181 1.2 The British Educational System in the 1940s 182 1.2.1 The 1944 Education Act 184 1.3 Post-War Society in Britain and British Values in the 1940s 189 1.4 Education and Social Opportunity, 1940 – 1949 192 1.5 The School Story and Social Class in the 1940s 193 1.6 Novels relating to day-schools 196 1.7 Using the Dialectical-Relational Approach (DRA) for critical discourse analysis 199 1.7.1 Critical Discourse Analysis – Stage One 201 1.7.2 Critical Discourse Analysis – Stage Two 208 1.7.3 Critical Discourse Analysis – Stage Three 213 1.7.4 Critical Discourse Analysis – Stage Four 217 1.8 Concluding Remarks