American Children's Literature and the Construction of Childhood. Written by Gail Schmunck Murray. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1998. ISBN 0-8057-4107-0. 276 pages.
In an insightful essay published in 1973, R. Gordon Kelly lamented the fact that the history of American children's literature had received comparatively little serious, systematic study. Observing that the significance of children's literature as a historical source “had long been recognized by students of the field but rarely demonstrated,” Kelly argued that more than any class of literature, children's books “reflect the minds of the generation that produced them. Hence, no better guide to the history and development of any country can be found than its juvenile literature” (pp. 89-90).
Fortunately, the years following the appearance of Kelly's essay have seen a marked increase in scholarly attention across disciplines to all aspects of literature for young people. Gail Schmunck Murray's American Children's Literature and the Construction of Childhood exemplifies the growing body of scholarship that takes seriously the need to “understand the critical connection between the creative work of fiction and the social and cultural reality of which an author is a part” (p. xv). Historical work of this sort also further challenges the stance, taken by many children's literature specialists, that a clear distinction exists between a literary text's aesthetic properties and its social, political, historical, and cultural values. The distinction derives from the belief that literature, and art in general, exists for its own sake -- that it occupies a realm beyond politics and ideology, even beyond history itself. Readily apparent in the last several decades, this view is perhaps best exemplified when socially conscious critics protest race and gender stereotypes in books, only to be criticized for politicizing discussions that many see as concerned solely with aesthetic considerations such as personal response or the development of plot, theme, and character (Taxel, 1991).
American Children's Literature and the Construction of Childhood and other scholarship published during this period (see, e.g., Adkins, 1998; Christian-Smith, 1991; Harris, 1993; MacCann & Woodard, 1985; Sims, 1982; Taxel, 1997) make it clear that claims for literature's special status are untenable and that in all writing, especially in writing for children, consideration of issues related to morality, politics, ideology, cultural preference, and affinity are simply unavoidable. As Peter Hunt (1992) noted, not even the “most apparently simple book for children can be innocent of ideological freight” (p. 18).
Murray's overriding thesis is that though society never has spoken with a single unified voice, a dominant culture has prevailed in every era except for the present. “Books written for children reveal this dominant culture,” and in so doing reflect and legitimate society's “behavioral standards, and reinforce its gender-role expectations” (p. xv). Williams (1989) termed this dominant culture a “selective tradition,” and research (e.g., Adkins, 1998; Christian-Smith, 1991; Overstreet, 1994; Taxel, 1981, 1992) has shown that the history, literature, world views, cultural perspectives, and values of society's dominant groups often are seen as the legitimate history, literature, world views, perspectives, and values.
Children's literature is a “conservative medium” (Murray, p. xvi) that is “produced by and sold to adults to teach, persuade, convince, and solidify social values and establish mores for the rising generation” (p. 2). Murray here makes the crucial distinction between the values and ideals that certain adults want children, families, and society to aspire to and those that actual children, families, and societies live out in their day-to-day existence. About the latter, Murray says little. Nor does she have much to say about the relation between her readings of the many texts discussed in the volume, those of the numerous critics she liberally and effectively cites, and actual readings by the generations of American children for whom the books were intended. Indeed, references to the burgeoning and critically important theory and research in response to literature (e.g., Beach, 1993; Möller & Allen, in press; Rogers & Soter, 1997; Rosenblatt, 1978) are conspicuously absent. Nevertheless, Murray's thesis that children's literature furnishes a “window into the culture,” albeit in “distilled [and] simplified” form (p. 2), from which we can infer the changing beliefs about ways childhood has been constructed over time is convincing and the volume compelling.
Murray, an assistant professor of history at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, relates the literature of each era to the changing sociopolitical, cultural, and intellectual milieu of the period that gave rise to it. The didactic, deeply religious, “pious and somber” (p. 6) Anglo-American children's literature of the colonial period, for example, mirrors the Puritan hegemony of its time. Despite the availability of more engaging, imaginative works like King Arthur and His Knights of the Roundtable, much of this early literature consisted of advice manuals, most of which were rigidly gender specific. Interestingly, the bestselling works of the Colonial period were the primers and catechism that were not gender specific.
Murray's tracing of the construction of gender throughout the book is one of its strengths, and the importance of this theme is indicative of the attention given to it by scholars who are quoted at length throughout the volume. On the other hand, Murray's treatment of race and, especially, class issues is not as well developed or integrated. There is a stand-alone chapter covering “Race, Ethnicity and Religion from 1850-1930.” This very organization perhaps underscores America's inability to develop a consistent and coherent discourse related to race -- as Nobel laureate Toni Morrison (1992) has observed, "in matters of race, silence and evasion have historically ruled literary discourse” (p. 9) -- and to social class (see, e.g., Taxel, 1981). Significantly, Murray does make the critical point that the “cultural establishment” always has conceived of children's literature as “a buttress for the dominant society's hierarchies of race, class and gender” rather than as a site for challenging them (p. 49).
Murray is at her best when discussing the literature of the late seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, periods usually given only cursory treatment in the textbooks used in children's literature courses taken by preservice and inservice teachers. Much of this literature is didactic in nature and reveals with striking clarity the evolving conception of childhood and the virtues dominant groups sought to transmit to American youth as the country itself was transformed from an isolated group of colonies to a world power. The years following the Revolution, for example, were marked by a patriotic fervor tempered by anxiety that the “noble experiment in republican government might not succeed” (p. 23). Thus, the widely read works of Jacob Abbott and William Holmes McGuffey, author of the ubiquitous readers that bear his name, focused on inculcating republican virtue along with the Protestant evangelism that was a carry-over from the preceding century (p. 26). Similarly, Noah Webster and Mason Locke Weems, whose Life and Memorable Actions of George Washington included the entirely fabricated tale of Washington and the cherry tree, wove historical tales that were designed to “inspire young citizens by example and to provide models for life” (p. 30).
Murray provides illuminating readings of the works of Samuel Goodrich (author of the popular Peter Parley books), Jacob Abbot Goodrich (author of the widely read Rollo books), as well as those of Catherine Sedwick and Lydia Marie Child. The last two are especially interesting in that they are representative of authors whose fictive worlds construct distinct spheres for girls and young women. The message of nineteenth-century children's literature that girls and women inhabit a separate and quite unequal realm from boys and men was massively reinforced by the textbooks of that century, as Elson's (1964, p. 303) comprehensive review of the most widely used textbooks of the nineteenth century vividly demonstrates:
By the middle of the nineteenth century, the United States had undergone a thorough transformation. It was a “fully modern nation, embodying individuality, creative energy, and a solid moral core” (p. 51). Disparities among economic groups had increased, and the poor, who increasingly were concentrated in urban centers, became more visible. The dispute over slavery, especially as it related to its expansion into the territories, was leading the nation inexorably toward the Civil War. In addition, the conception of childhood had undergone a change. “No longer did society view the child as the corrupted product of original sin, redeemable only through God's ineffable grace” (p. 53). There was a growing belief that salvation was achievable through human action in conjunction with divine grace. These, and other factors, led to a new children's literature -- one that romanticized childhood innocence and the child's role in the “conscious improvement of adult moral character” (pp. 53-54).
The pronounced gendering of children's literature in this period is illustrated in the domestic literature for girls, exemplified by the work of writers such as Susan Warner, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and especially Louisa May Alcott, and the “bad boys” literature intended for boys. Segel (1986) notes that “children's literature until the mid-nineteenth century had, without exception, depicted obedience as the most important childhood virtue” (p. 172). That, however, changed with the advent of the books containing the “good bad boys,” characters who signaled a “radical change in what adults expected of children” or what adults defined as the “ideal child.”
This also is the period of Horatio Alger's quintessentially American fiction -- books that gave voice to the understanding that character alone no longer was sufficient for success in the United States after the Civil War. Alger's formula fiction made it clear that skills such as assertiveness, persistence, and charm, the ability to take advantage of people and situations, and a measure of good luck were also needed to succeed in the country's often harsh, even brutal, capitalist system.
Space does not permit a full detailing of Murray's account of the many shifts in the construction of childhood as evidenced in the literature written for American children. However, certain themes Murray highlights deserve special notice because they cast long shadows on current debates about children's literature. One of these relates to the often conflicted and contradictory ways our country has struggled with issues of race. Even as late as the 1920s, Murray observes, the America reflected in its children's literature was “culturally, ethnically, religiously and racially extremely narrow. The original inhabitants of America and all people of color appeared...only as stereotypically hostile Indians, as slaves or as black domestics.” Murray notes further that the stories taught “prevailing middle class values” and, despite “a few subversive subtexts,” race and class distinctions were “thoroughly and deeply taught” as well (p. 116).
The great change in the way that people of color and women, as well as a host of other critical social issues and themes, are represented in books for young people began in the tumultuous 1960s and continued in the decades that followed. The civil rights' and women's movements, the Vietnam War, the dramatic shifts in values and lifestyle, the culture wars, the radical changes in the publishing industry resulting from mergers, buyouts, and downsizing all are discussed briefly and their influence on emerging trends noted. We learn, for example, how the upheavals of the sixties contributed to the rise of the new realism that constituted a dramatic break from the fiction of previous generations. This fiction presents a striking contrast to the literature of the fifties which, Murray notes, was “remarkable for its silences and was exceptionally unrevealing about the anxieties of its time” (MacLeod, quoted by Murray, p. 176). Murray refers to the period 1950 to 1990 as one of “child liberation,” and she shows how this period led, “for perhaps the first time in American history,” to writers of young adult literature having to choose “between creating stories mirroring traditional values and showing the consequences of antisocial behavior” (p. 184). Writers also were being challenged to “produce stories that accepted the teen subculture at face value and challenged adult prohibitions and mores” (p. 184). The truth of this claim is born out by the presence of violence, drug abuse, and sexuality of all kinds in books for children and young adults.
According to Murray, the fictional worlds of S.E. Hinton, M.E. Kerr, Louise Fitzhugh, Norma Klein, Judy Blume, and others no longer have unambiguously defined rules. The family no longer is a haven and, indeed, “adults do not make the world better or safer for children; children themselves shoulder the responsibility for learning how the world works and finding a way to adapt to it” (p. 191). In short, the construction of childhood posited by the new realism sees children as “neither innocent nor sinful.” They need no protection from reality because they can develop “the ego strength to overcome alienation and pain. Experiencing life is the best preparation for adulthood” (p. 194).
Murray's broad outline of these crucial decades includes a brief discussion of the development of multicultural literature and the rise in prominence of the growing cadre of “parallel culture” authors (Cai & Sims Bishop, 1994; Hamilton, 1989) who finally were accorded the opportunity to tell and to publish their own stories. Among the small number of authors mentioned are Mildred Taylor, Virginia Hamilton, John Steptoe, and Julius Lester. Regrettably, the discussion of multicultural literature omits mention of many other authors and illustrators who have done so much to enrich the children's literature of today. Murray does delineate some of the ongoing controversies surrounding multicultural children's literature, including the perennial and “sometimes bitter debate over who can and should write about 'the black experience'” (p. 202). Today's debates on this issue (see, e.g., Taxel, 1997) are effectively foreshadowed by Murray's informative review of the controversies surrounding such classics as Carol Ryrie Brink's Caddie Woodlawn and Joel Chandler Harris's Brer Rabbit stories. The discussion of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series, for example, reveals that these enormously popular books continue to be revered for their engaging depiction of the indomitable “pioneer spirit,” while they are harshly criticized for the pejorative treatment of Native Americans and their implication that “women need have no political interests” (p. 149). Murray also gives much-deserved credit to the now defunct Council on Interracial Books for Children for “stirring debate over feminist and multicultural perspectives.” She highlights the emergence of Asian, Hispanic, and Native American literature.
Murray's unfortunately brief treatment of the present period consumes the last two chapters of the book. Clearly, an adequate discussion of the trends and developments of even the last 20 years could fill several volumes. The brevity of this discussion is perhaps a function of the author's interests; she does seem most in her element when discussing the literature of early periods. Nevertheless, to discuss the present period of American children's literature and to make no mention of such important authors and illustrators as Katherine Paterson and Chris Van Allsburg, to mention just two of those omitted, is a serious oversight that weakens what is otherwise a very strong and useful book.
Murray concludes by making clear a number of points that are readily apparent to those cognizant of the amazing range of literature being published today. The first is that adults will continue to seek to perpetuate the cultural values that matter most “through what they write, say, or do” (p. 212). Further, it is obvious that we live at a time when there is no consensus on what these values are and that “even within the political power structure that usually speaks for the dominant culture, opinion is divided or ambivalent” (p. 212). Indeed, Murray is convinced that children and childhood “have become pawns in an ideological war between those who advocate individual responsibility for families and social problems and those who would give government and institutions broad powers over what happens to children” (p. 212). It is clear that this issue is of fundamental importance to our society and that it will be among the critical issues confronting us in the new millennium.
Despite a few reservations, I wholeheartedly recommend American Children's Literature and the Construction of Childhood for its skillful demonstration of ways that literature for children can illuminate the changing beliefs, values, principles, and assumptions that structure and give meaning to the visions of life and living powerful groups in our society hope children will affirm and make their own. Murray helps us to see that while children's literature can be a source of pleasure, stimulation, inspiration, and imagination, it is never far above or removed from the influence of contentious, often conflicting, political pressures.
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Joel Taxel is a professor in the Department of Language Education at the University of Georgia (125 Aderhold Hall, Athens, GA 30602-7123, USA). He can be reached by e-mail at jtaxel@coe.uga.edu.