The figure of the child, and the nature of childhood, as seen in the works of Lewis Carroll and Beatrix Potter

University Degree Linguistics, Classics and related subjects

JOHN BOLTON

BA Childhood Studies yr. 2

Something detrimental happens to literary criticism when children's literature is separated into a wholly disconnected genre. It is detrimental because there is such richness, meaning, and insight in children's literature which mostly will go unnoticed. An unsurprisingly small amount has been written about children's books compared with the broader spectrum that constitutes 'grown-up literature'. This, perhaps, is because children's books are not seen as academically important, the works are not of scholarly interest. An ideology of childhood where literature pertaining to it would be considered important has not, perhaps, been in existence for sufficiently long.

Beatrix Potter's contribution to children's literature is unquestionable. She wrote about "feelings and adventures that are part of every child's imagination (Tucker, 1981, p.57). Her tales are timeless, whether detailing exciting escapades or "eventless catalogues of animal domesticity" (Ousby, 1988, p.740). Of equal importance and interest is Charles Dodgson (hereafter referred to by his pseudonym, Lewis Carroll). Writing at a time when society's ideologies of childhood were realising the rights of children as individuals, Carroll opened the door to whimsical child literature; fun for fun's sake.

When one analyses a children's book using adult concepts and rationalisations, there is the inherent risk of missing something vital. This is perhaps because adults are too far removed from the fantasy and imagination of their childhoods. One somewhat spurious reading of Through the Looking-Glass contends that

Perhaps realising that adults might frown on the idea of multiply

connected spaces, he wrote the book under a pseudonym and wrote

it for children…The Looking-Glass is in fact a wormhole. (Kaku, 1998, p.340)

This certainly detaches itself from the more popular convention of Wonderland as a metaphor for the imagination and fancy of childhood. However, there is something different about Looking-Glass, almost as if someone else wrote it. It is as though the enthusiasm and flair has gone, the writer has grown up. Charles Dodgson was, after all, a mathematician.

In keeping with this mathematician side to Carroll, there are some elements of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland which seem out of place. Alice is aware that she is existing in a fantasy; that Wonderland is not real. "When I used to read fairy tales, I fancied that kind of thing never happened," she says, "and now here I am in the middle of one!" (Carroll, 1998, p.46) She goes on to say, rather abstractly, "There ought to be a book written about me, that there ought!" (ibid.) Alice often thinks in a way perhaps too abstract for her age, at which times Carroll's mathematician is more in control than is his 'inner-child'. When Alice first shrinks, she ponders disappearing like a candle (ibid., p.11). This is unlikely lateral thinking for a child, but a simplistic metaphor for a grownup. And finally, Looking-Glass ends with a question, rather more philosophical than is fitting for a children's story. Whose dream was she in, her own or that of the Red King? This is a stunning contrast to the closing lines of Wonderland, which we will come to later.

There are stark differences between Wonderland and Looking-Glass. While both meander somewhere between ingenious fantasy and incoherent folly, the 'sequel' never quite follows the standards set by its predecessor. Wonderland is at times brilliantly witty and charged with a kind of energy that makes it all at once slowly paced but utterly manic. The chapter with the Mock Turtle (chapter nine) is marked particularly by some adept and thoroughly entertaining word play, the likes of which is attempted throughout Looking-Glass with nothing like the success. The characters in Looking-Glass are all essentially the same; there is none of the characterisation ...

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Significantly, Potter herself said,

I often think that that was the secret of the success of Peter Rabbit,

it was written to a child - not made to order. (Linder, 1971, p.110, cited in Tucker, p.58)

Looking-Glass lacks those romantic beginnings. Alice Liddell was one of the daughters of the Dean of Christ Church College, where Carroll received a first-class honours degree in Mathematics; Wonderland has its roots in a fairy tale Carroll told to Alice. After it was published, the closeness he had with the Liddell children ran dry for reasons one could only possibly trace in Carroll's diary. It so happens these reasons are not featured therein. Whatever the reason was, the magic that existed between them died. Accordingly, the magic in Wonderland simply is not present in Looking-Glass.

In the same way reality crossed over into fiction with Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell, so a similar union occurs with Beatrix Potter's work. Many of Potter's best-loved characters have their origins in the real world, as Potter's childhood pets. Her first pet rabbit, Benjamin Bouncer, was one day to be immortalised as Benjamin Bunny. Peter Piper was another rabbit, while Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle was a pet hedgehog (http://www.peterrabbit.co.uk/prbiogra/index2.html).

In the introduction to his book on children and their literature, Tucker (1981, p.10) explains how there is a desire for children's stories to end happily with justice exacted. It is difficult to assess whether this can be said of Wonderland. There is a great deal of what is at times quite surreal mayhem, episodes of fanciful bedlam held together only by a few steady characters. The plot, what can be discerned of it, links these episodes in only the most tenuous way. Aside from being confusing for younger readers, Tucker goes on to say that they might find Wonderland frightening; because of its "moral anarchy, where events are always so arbitrary and unpredictable" (1981, p.10).

Tucker later remarks that Alice is a disturbing book (1981, p.192). At times it can be just that; we see Alice grow so large she faces being crushed by the very room she is in (Carroll, 1998, p.44), and she shrinks such that she nearly drowns in her own tears (ibid., 24). These are distressing scenes. Another disturbing scene is when the baby in the Duchess's arms turns into a pig (ibid., p.88). At the same time, however, they are absurd and, to some degree, comical; two things that children adore.

Alice features that device which typifies much children's literature, animals that speak and think like people. As Tucker says, children aged 7-11 may be past the age when they imagine animals possessing human emotions and characteristics. However, "this idea often persists at fantasy level" (1981, p.100). It is an obvious feature of Beatrix Potter's work, of course. Aside from the fact that most of her lead characters are animals, most of them are given human qualities. The Tailor of Gloucester sends his cat out to do the shopping (1901, p.21), and most characters dress like human beings. Peter Rabbit is the typical little boy, out making mischief, and when he loses his clothes to a scarecrow, he and his cousin Benjamin Bunny embark on a daring adventure to retrieve them.

Alice is painted as being a wise and inquisitive child. Carroll's use of repetition when Alice falls "down, down, down" the rabbit hole (Carroll, 1998, p.4) is a device employed by Beatrix Potter; we see it at the end of The Tale of Little Pig Robinson, where he grows "fatter and fatter and more fatterer" (undated, p.112). Potter often invented words such as this, and "rabbit-tobacco" at the end of The Tale of Benjamin Bunny (undated, p.59). But the context surrounding their use if perfectly lucid, which is perhaps how she got such words past her publishers. Carroll was also keen on inventing words, in particular the famous "curiouser" neologism from Wonderland (Carroll, 1998, p.15). Learning to speak is an essential part of growing up, and at times we all end up inventing words because our grasp of the actual word isn't sufficient.

One criticism that might be made of Potter is that her use of language is at times too precocious for the presumed audience. In her delightfully funny The Tale of Tuppenny, she uses the words 'insidious' and 'libellous' (1973, p.15). Defending herself from this reproval, Potter stated, "Children like a fine word occasionally" (Linder, 1971, p.146, cited in Tucker, 1981, p.58). That remains a contentious point. Beyond contention, however, is the assertion that the content of some of her work is unsuitable for younger children. The Story of a Fierce Bad Rabbit is a didactic tale, preaching that theft will bring severe consequences. In the story, the eponymous rabbit steals from a 'good rabbit', and as a result is shot by 'a man with a gun' (undated, pp. 18 and 28).

It is interesting that no matter what size Alice becomes, she is at all times the same person. When she is huge and is trapped inside the house, at no point does she associate likely new-found strength with her gigantic proportions (Carroll, 1998, p.44). Equally, when she is big, she is not intimidated when she plays with the puppy (ibid., p.54). More than that, she gradually becomes something of a heroine figure. Tucker says Alice "stands up to all the would-be authoritarian figures" (1981, p.99) in Wonderland. While everyone else cringes at the very name of the Queen of Hearts, Alice is unperturbed.

The Queen turned crimson with fury, and…began screaming, "Off with

her head! Off with-"

"Nonsense!" said Alice, very loudly and decidedly, and the Queen was

silent. (Carroll, 1998, pp. 117-118)

A fitting ending would seem to be the closing lines from Wonderland. Each of us can remember the books we read as children, and no literature makes a deeper impression than those books that we remember for the longest. The most significant difference between the work of Beatrix Potter and the work of Lewis Carroll is this; the former wrote for childhood, and the latter wrote about it. Potter recognises what it is to be a child, and what one enjoys at that time in life. She is able to tell stories children can relate to, and invents characters impossible to resist. The world she writes about is a world all children imagine is real, a world where animals keep pet humans and naughty little rabbits have misadventures with similarly naughty cousin rabbits.

Lewis Carroll, on the other hand, writes about childhood. Wonderland is a curious place full of bizarre characters. Everything is extraordinary in one way or another. This factor alone typifies childhood, and how strange life must seem to children as they attempt to grasp some understanding of the world around them. More than that, Carroll writes about a magical world, a place where anything can happen (and usually does). It is a world of fancy and wonder and bewilderment. The very fact that Alice stumbles upon it is a symbol of the imagination associated with the human mind's most creative and freely expressive time; childhood.

She would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart

of her childhood…remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer

days. (Carroll, 1998, p.192)

Adults can drop their defences and play as children. Perhaps the same is true of literature and its writers.

Bibliography

Carpenter, H. & Prichard, M. (1995) The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Carroll, L. (1998) Alice - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass, Macmillan and Co. Ltd., London.

Kaku, M. (1998) Visions, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Linder, L. (1971) A history of the writings of Beatrix Potter, Warne; cited in Tucker, 1981.

Ousby, I. (1988) The Wordsworth Companion to Literature in English, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

(The dates given for Beatrix Potter's work are the original publication dates, since the editions I used did not have any indication of their year of print.)

Potter, B. (1902) The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Frederick Warne & Co. LTD, London.

Potter, B. (1904) The Tale of Benjamin Bunny, Frederick Warne & Co. LTD, London.

Potter, B. () The Tale of Miss Tiggy-Winkle, Frederick Warne & Co. LTD, London.

Potter, B. () The Tale of Timmy Tiptoes, Frederick Warne & Co. LTD, London.

Potter, B. () The Story of Miss Moppet, Frederick Warne & Co. LTD, London.

Potter, B. (1971) The Tale of Tuppenny, Frederick Warne & Co. LTD, London.

Potter, B. (1903) The Tailor of Gloucester, Frederick Warne & Co. LTD, London.

Potter, B. () The Story of a Fierce Bad Rabbit, Frederick Warne & Co. LTD, London.

Tucker, N. (1981) The Child and the Book, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Internet

http://www.peterrabbit.co.uk/prbiogra/index2.html