4710 English Undergraduate Research: Children’s Literature

Victorian Influence on Beauty and the Beast

Elizabeth Stone — Fri, 10 May 2013 10:46:11 PDT

This essay examines a unique publication of the well-known Beauty and the Beast fairy tale. W.B. Conkey Company’s adaptation of Beauty and the Beast demonstrates the influence of Victorian culture on children’s literature (1897). An in-depth analysis of the cultural and historical context of the publication uncovers new meaning in the lost text. This three-part analysis discusses norms of Victorian courtship, explains Victorian literary elements, and applies these cultural contexts to textual analysis. This lens highlights W.B. Conkey Company’s tailored message to a young Victorian audience.

Analysis of a Colonial Alphabet Book

Zoha Khatoon — Tue, 07 May 2013 08:50:30 PDT

This essay analyzes a non-canonical alphabet book written in the nineteenth century. The Colonial Alphabet For The Nursery was written for the child audience during the Victorian era. It associates a word with each letter of the alphabet, and the word is used in a sentence describing its corresponding illustration. This paper explains how the book portrays Great Britain as a world superpower by showing the other countries as poor and insignificant. Much of this alphabet book teaches children the various stereotypes about numerous ethnicities. This allows for them to grow up with misconceptions about diverse racial groups. This essay describes how the text encompasses the theme of nature to educate the child reader on the dominance of Britain.

Tootle

John Norbert Lemerond — Fri, 25 May 2012 13:30:36 PDT

Tales of artificially animated characters, alternatively known as “it-tales”, are among the more interesting stories written for young children. Although the psychosocial attributes of such characters are as timeless as those found in animal and human characters, they are especially interesting historically since they are a product of the state of technology extant at the time the story was written or in which the story events are located. Thus they reflect both the technology of the characters and the attitude toward such technology, both those of the reader or child and of the caregiver who transmits such tales to the child. The story of Tootle is described and discussed as an example of the steam-engine tales that were especially popular in the early to middle part of the twentieth century, and analyzed in the light of the author’s personal experience, prevailing gender role stereotypes, dynamics of heroic characters, potential impact of such stories on children’s creativity and relevant pedagogical viewpoints such as authoritarian vs. learner-initiated approaches to teaching. Critical approaches based on ideological (especially Marxist) and Jungian perspectives are also discussed. Comparisons are made between Tootle and tales of other steam-engine and similar characters. Potentially negative aspects of the Tootle story are elaborated and a hypothetical alternative ending to the Tootle story is offered.

Into the Doll’s House: Understanding Presumed Female Housekeeping in Children’s Literature

Jacqueline F. Rammer — Tue, 22 May 2012 13:37:20 PDT

This essay analyzes Edith and Milly’s Housekeeping (1866), written anonymously by Laura Valentine, a general editor for Frederick Warne & Company Publishing. The essay considers the book in the context of gender roles and class in Victorian England. Part of the “Aunt Louisa’s London Toy Books” collection, Edith and Milly’s Housekeeping reflects common nineteenth-century lessons for young girls in regards to housekeeping, morals, maturity, and class consciousness. The essay also suggests that the reason for the book’s failure to remain popular over centuries is that the notion of the doll’s house has been transformed in westernized countries from a tool to help young girls learn how to keep a house into a play toy with which girls are encouraged to use their strong imaginations and not restrict themselves to traditional notions of gender roles, including housekeeping.

Analysis of The Black Fairy by Fenton Johnson

Crystal Tolbert — Mon, 21 May 2012 11:12:26 PDT

This essay examines a rare early twentieth-century children’s story about and geared towards African Americans: “The Black Fairy” by Fenton Johnson. “The Black Fairy” was published in The Upward Path (1920), an anthology designed as a “Reader for Colored Children” that contained poetry, essays, short stories, folklore, biographical sketches, and drawings by prominent African American writers, educators, and other personalities of the time. Through a four -part analysis, including how the story fits into literary history, the ways in which the story responds to its historical and cultural context, the “cultural work” of the text, and an exploration of the way that the culture regarded children, the essay shows how this fantasy story helped children of this era to understand the history of slavery and encouraged feelings of brotherly love among all races.

“The Boys’ Club”: A Lost Story

Rebecca Bradley — Mon, 21 May 2012 11:08:50 PDT

An interesting example of “lost” children’s stories is Charles Bernard’s “The Boys’ Club,” published in Volume 12, Number 6 of the popular American children’s periodical St. Nicholas Magazine. This story, which possesses many of the qualities of children’s literature of the Victorian period, conveys lessons in an attempt to teach young readers how to behave in society. Although books for boys are typically thought of as stories filled with adventure and freedom from rules, “The Boys’ Club” highlights how clubs for young and underprivileged boys could be used for socialization of the lower classes and to maintain social control.

The Peril of the Princesses: How Gender Stereotypes Affect Young Readers

Brianna Basta — Mon, 21 May 2012 11:07:35 PDT

The stories of three well-known princesses are told in Three Fairy Princesses, written by Caroline Patterson around 1890. These fairy tales—“Snow White,” “Sleeping Beauty,” and “Cinderella”—present subtle stereotypes that send distinct messages about what women meant to society at the time in terms of their roles and the ideas about gender. Each princess’s tale in this text offers a different view as to what a proper woman should be engaging in, which would ultimately reflect how these texts were understood when they debuted. Three Fairy Princesses has a lot to say about the type of gender stereotyping that was common in the 1890’s, which ultimately influenced the young children who read these stories.