Читать книгу A Companion to Children's Literature - Группа авторов - Страница 50

As children’s literature established an identity for itself separate from adult literature, both fantasy and realism played important roles. The two genres served somewhat as transatlantic national markers during the nineteenth century, with George MacDonald and Lewis Carroll exemplifying the British side, and Louisa May Alcott and Mark Twain the standard-bearers for the United States. However, 1900 saw the publication of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which helped to give homegrown fantasy more of a foothold in the United States (see Clark 2003 for an extended analysis of Baum’s status and influence as a children’s author). In addition, early twentieth-century fantasies often included elements of the domestic, linking them with a traditionally feminine mythos and blurring the line between fantasy and realism; Gates et al. (2003) refer to this subgenre as “mixed fantasy” (p. 49) and discuss multiple popular categories. At the beginning of the century, for example, E(dith) Nesbit won acclaim and popularity for both genres, with her fantastical tales such as the Psammead novels (Five Children and It 1902, The Phoenix and the Carpet 1904, The Story of the Amulet 1906) and realistic stories like those about the Bastable siblings, begun in 1899 with The Story of the Treasure Seekers and continued with The Wouldbegoods (1901) and The New Treasure Seekers (1904). While the Bastable series lacks the mystical plot devices of the Psammead books, and in fact resolutely undermines even the young protagonists’ dime-novel dreams of adventure, the two groups of middle-class siblings could easily be exchanged for each other – as could their high spirits, grand plans, and resultant scrapes. Gates et al. comment of Nesbit’s influence on children’s literature that she “mixed [realism and fantasy] so consistently, entertainingly, and significantly that other authors … followed her direction; eventually mixed fantasy became established as the dominant form of children’s fantasy” (p. 50). Beatrix Potter’s animal stories, published during the first two decades of the century, represented one of many variations on the combination of quotidian life and magical whimsy. It seems generally acknowledged that Nesbit’s closest imitator was the American Edward Eager, who began his series of novels with Half Magic in 1954. Fantastic literature during this era challenged other boundaries as well; Brian Attebery (1980) argues that fantasy contravenes the twentieth-century division between children’s and adult literature: “It seems that once fantasy was established as a legitimate mode for children’s fiction and for adult[s], the distinction between the two began to break down” (p. 135). Attebery, as well as Levy and Mendlesohn (2016), thus names such well-known authors as Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.P. Lovecraft, James Thurber, and Ray Bradbury as being popular with children, especially older ones. Mixed fantasies remained dominant through the first half of the century, at which point the approach typed by Gates et al. as “heroic-ethical” (2003, p. 111) began to reassert itself. In this case, the United States and Britain contributed equally to the tradition, with authors on both sides creating richly detailed worlds and indelible characters that have continued to bear influence not only within the field of children’s literature, but in the wider cultural milieu as well. While J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit appeared in 1937, Levy and Mendlesohn contend that C.S. Lewis is the true initiator of the new brand of fantasy, claiming, “Under his influence, the local, secular fantasy took a back seat, yielding to an understanding that much children’s fantasy would be otherworldly, either physically or spiritually” (2016, p. 106). Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (1954–1955) has become the exemplar of crossover fantasies, drawing readers of all ages; Daniel Hahn, however, suggests that “it is best read early” (2015, p. 357). In the United States, Ursula K. LeGuin began her Earthsea series in 1967, while Lloyd Alexander wrote his first children’s novel, Time Cat, in 1963 and published the five-volume Prydain Chronicles from 1964 through 1968. Other notable authors who began their fantasy-writing careers in the 1950s and 1960s include Alan Garner (The Weirdstone of Brisingamen [1960]) Madeleine L’Engle (A Wrinkle in Time [1962]), Susan Cooper (Over Sea, Under Stone [1965]), Australia’s Patricia Wrightson (The Rocks of Honey [1960]), and New Zealand’s Margaret Mahy, who had her first picturebooks published in 1969. All went on to be distinguished and prolific contributors to children’s fantasy literature.

Just as fantasy from the earlier portions of the century integrated varying doses of familiarity, many realistic texts depicted fictional worlds that differed significantly from the circumstances of their readers. This was particularly true, as noted in the previous section, for readers who did not fit within the white, heteronormative, middle-class ideal audience imagined by publishers. Like many heroic-ethical and mixed fantasies, realistic fiction during this period tends to be grounded in a distinct sense of place. Elizabeth Enright’s The Saturdays (1941) immerses the four Melendy siblings in the noise and activity of New York City; Maud Hart Lovelace’s Betsy-Tacy series (1940–1955) memorializes small-town life in the Midwestern United States; Noel Streatfeild’s “career novels” such as Ballet Shoes (1936) provide an insider’s perspective of the backstage world in various entertainment fields; and working farms constitute the background of Mary Grant Bruce’s A Little Bush Maid (1910), the first of her Billabong series, and Esther Glen’s Six Little New Zealanders (1917). These texts vividly evoke their distinct physical environments, and some integrate sympathetic storylines involving economic challenges and European immigrants; for example, one of Betsy’s friends must drop out of high school to work after the death of his father in Lovelace’s Betsy Was a Junior (1947), and the plot of Eleanor Estes’s The One Hundred Dresses (1944) revolves around the cruelty of the main characters to a girl of Polish descent. However, these novels tend to leave out or stereotype people of color and members of Indigenous groups who formed a part of the communities they depict. In addition to the unrealistic nature of their identity politics, genres such as the family story and the orphan story often included a range of fantastical elements, from the eerie episodes included in L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables (1908–1939) and Emily of New Moon (1923–1927) series to the fictionalizing of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s personal history in Wilder and Rose Wilder Lane’s “Little House” series (1932–1943). As indicated by the titles I have listed here, twentieth-century realistic stories centered around the family provided outlets for female characters, many of whom exercise a level of professional and personal autonomy that some have seen as fantastic; late twentieth- and twenty-first-century critics have debated the extent to which these texts support feminist ideals (Cadogan and Craig 1976; Foster and Simons 1995; Moran 2010).

In addition to enabling the separation of children’s and adult literature as the twentieth century progressed, aetonormativity also encouraged many (though certainly not all) children’s authors to restrict their topics, shying away from issues of cruelty, sexuality, and mortality that came to be defined as “adult.” Hunt (2001) encapsulates the critical consensus that throughout the 1960s, “mainstream (middle-class) children’s books were (broadly) a reflection of the innocence that adults wished to impute to childhood” and that the more explicit novels of the 1970s “were judged against the background of a protective century” (p. 16). During the later decades of the century, then, fantasy and realism converged once again, unraveling the mythical separation of adult and child interests and suggesting that children can influence the adult world while being inextricably enmeshed in it.