Gross notes that children's books in the mid-eighteenth century developed based on parents' desires to offer instruction in imagination, information, and morals (30). How might these children's books differ from English children's books, I wonder? Did children's books contribute to the call in the 1830s to establish a real national literature? As a child, reading books like The Secret Garden and Little House on the Prairie, I never really thought of either book according to its author's nationality. I do believe that children's identities are shaped by the books they read, but I'm not sure to what extent their sense of "national" identity is shaped. In both those books, as well as my favorite Little Women, as I have mentioned, I was transported to other worlds, whether they be in a mystical garden in Kent, England or the wild, Midwest of America or Concord, Massachusetts. These places all became familiar to me, though they were not my own.
Gross highlights in this introduction the great diversity within the early republic created by the separation of region and space. He says that this distance and localization of the press contributed to an "increasing familiarity" which "bred growing conflict," while still creating a more democratic reading public (only to a certain extent, as Larisa points out in her blog.) I wonder, though, how looking at the development of identity of characters in children's books might affect the way even the regions developed their own identities. I got a good dose of the Yorkshire dialect in The Secret Garden without even knowing what I was reading at the time. I knew these characters were different than me--from a different time, place, culture--yet, I could see through their eyes as I read. A part of me may have grown to appreciate the simple, nature loving family in the book as representatives of the whole Yorkshire community. I wonder if this was happening, intentionally or unintentionally, in American book culture in the early republic. Of course, the idea of regionalism and the technique of writing in the regional vernacular became even more popular in the late 19th century with writers like Mark Twain, but what were children being trained to think about their nation or their region at this time? Did a child from the south read about life in Boston as being as foreign as life in London? Were children being trained to respect and reify regional differences through literature? Just some interesting thoughts that could be explored if we studied more of the children's literature from this early national period.
Just out of curiosity, I did a basic google search for Sandford and Merton and read the short synopsis of it on wikipedia. Of course, I would do more thorough research if I were really critically studying the book, but I was was reminded how children's literature is often so tightly bound to a social, moral code. Davidson made arguments that the novel can be subversive becomes it responds as a voice, as a perspective, not necessarily represented by the government or the Constitution. How could children's books, then, not just deliver moral messages, but be subversive as well? Would it depend on who was reading, again, like Davidson might say? Gross sees the children's novel as existing within the dictates of mainstream American morality. But what determined morality? Gross says that many parents were influenced by Lockean ideas of education, but this popular book by Thomas Day was influenced by Rousseau (according to wikipedia). Perhaps even in children's literature, there were multiple voices, competing with each other and constructing new ideas of morality. Children's literature seems to be an excellent, almost innocent genre in which to explore these questions, quietly under the guise of imaginative literature.
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