Читать книгу The Art of Story-Telling - Marie L. Shedlock - Страница 13

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Elements to Avoid in Selection of Material.

I am confronted, in this portion of my work, with a great difficulty, because I cannot afford to be as catholic as I could wish (this rejection or selection of material being primarily intended for those story-tellers dealing with normal children); but I wish from the outset to distinguish between a story told to an individual child in the home circle or by a personal friend, and a story told to a group of children as part of the school curriculum. And if I seem to reiterate this difference, it is because I wish to show very clearly that the recital of parents and friends may be quite separate in content and manner from that offered by the teaching world. In the former case, almost any subject can be treated, because, knowing the individual temperament of the child, a wise parent or friend knows also what can be presented or not presented to the child; but in dealing with a group of normal children in school, much has to be eliminated that could be given fearlessly to the abnormal child: I mean the child who, by circumstances or temperament, is developed beyond its years.

I shall now mention some of the elements which experience has shown me to be unsuitable for class stories.

I.—Stories dealing with analysis of motive and feeling.

This warning is specially necessary to-day, because this is above all an age of introspection and analysis. We have only to glance at the principal novels and plays during the last quarter of a century—most especially during the last ten years—to see how this spirit has crept into our literature and life.

Now, this tendency to analyse is obviously more dangerous for children than for adults, because, from lack of experience and knowledge of psychology, the child's analysis is incomplete. He cannot see all the causes of the action, nor can he make that philosophical allowance for mood which brings the adult to truer conclusions.

Therefore we should discourage children who show a tendency to analyse too closely the motives of their actions, and refrain from presenting in our stories any example which might encourage them to persist in this course.

I remember, on one occasion, when I went to say good-night to a little girl of my acquaintance, I found her sitting up in bed, very wide awake. Her eyes were shining, her cheeks were flushed, and when I asked her what had excited her so much, she said:

“I know I have done something wrong to-day, but I cannot quite remember what it was.”

I said: “But Phyllis, if you put your hand, which is really quite small, in front of your eyes, you could not see the shape of anything else, however large it might be. Now, what you have done to-day appears very large because it is so close, but when it is a little further off, you will be able to see better and know more about it. So let us wait till to-morrow morning.”

I am happy to say that she took my advice. She was soon fast asleep, and the next morning she had forgotten the wrong over which she had been unhealthily brooding the night before.[18]

II.—Stories dealing too much with sarcasm and satire. These are weapons which are too sharply polished, and therefore too dangerous, to place in the hands of children. For here again, as in the case of analysis, they can only have a very incomplete conception of the case. They do not know the real cause which produces the apparently ridiculous situation: it is experience and knowledge which lead to the discovery of the pathos and sadness which often underlie the ridiculous appearance, and it is only the abnormally gifted child or grown-up person who discovers this by instinct. It takes a lifetime to arrive at the position described in Sterne's words: “I would not have let fallen an unseasonable pleasantry in the venerable presence of misery to be entitled to all the Wit which Rabelais has ever scattered.”

I will hasten to add that I should not wish children to have their sympathy too much drawn out, or their emotions kindled too much to pity, because this would be neither healthy nor helpful to themselves or others. I only want to protect the children from the dangerous critical attitude induced by the use of satire: it sacrifices too much of the atmosphere of trust and belief in human beings which ought to be an essential of child-life. If we indulge in satire, the sense of kindness in children tends to become perverted, their sympathy cramped, and they themselves to become old before their time. We have an excellent example of this in Hans C. Andersen's “Snow Queen.”

When Kay gets the piece of broken mirror into his eye, he no longer sees the world from the normal child's point of view: he can no longer see anything but the foibles of those about him—a condition usually only reached by a course of pessimistic experience.

Andersen sums up the unnatural point of view in these words:

“When Kay tried to repeat the Lord's Prayer, he could only remember the multiplication table.” Now, without taking these words in any literal sense, we can admit that they represent the development of the head at the expense of the heart.

An example of this kind of story to avoid is Andersen's “Story of the Butterfly.” The bitterness of the Anemones, the sentimentality of the Violets, the schoolgirlishness of the Snowdrops, the domesticity of the Sweet-peas—all this tickles the palate of the adult, but does not belong to the plane of the normal child. Again I repeat that the unusual child may take all this in and even preserve its kindly attitude towards the world, but it is a dangerous atmosphere for the ordinary child.

III.—Stories of a sentimental kind. Strange to say, this element of sentimentality often appeals more to the young teachers than to the children themselves. It is difficult to define the difference between sentiment and sentimentality, but the healthy normal boy or girl of—let us say ten or eleven years old seems to feel it unconsciously, though the distinction is not so clear a few years later.

Mrs. Elizabeth McKracken contributed an excellent article some years ago to the American Outlook on the subject of literature for the young, in which we find a good illustration of this power of discrimination on the part of a child.

A young teacher was telling her pupils the story of the emotional lady who, to put her lover to the test, bade him pick up the glove which she had thrown down into the arena between the tiger and the lion. The lover does her bidding, in order to vindicate his character as a brave knight. One boy, after hearing the story, at once states his contempt for the knight's acquiescence, which he declares to be unworthy.

“But,” says the teacher, “you see he really did it to show the lady how foolish she was.” The answer of the boy sums up what I have been trying to show: “There was no sense in his being sillier than she was, to show her she was silly.”

If the boy had stopped there, we might have concluded that he was lacking in imagination or romance, but his next remark proves what a balanced and discriminating person he was, for he added: “Now, if she had fallen in, and he had leapt after her to rescue her, that would have been splendid and of some use.” Given the character of the lady, we might, as adults, question the last part of the boy's statement, but this is pure cynicism and fortunately does not enter into the child's calculations.

In my own personal experience (and I have told this story often in the German ballad form to girls of ten and twelve in the High Schools in England) I have never found one girl who sympathised with the lady or who failed to appreciate the poetic justice meted out to her in the end by the dignified renunciation of the knight.

Chesterton defines sentimentality as “a tame, cold, or small and inadequate manner of speaking about certain matters which demand very large and beautiful expression.”

I would strongly urge upon young teachers to revise, by this definition, some of the stories they have included in their repertory, and see whether they would stand the test or not.

IV.—Stories containing strong sensational episodes. The danger is all the greater because many children delight in it, and some crave for it in the abstract, but fear it in the concrete.[19]

An affectionate aunt, on one occasion, anxious to curry favour with a four-year-old nephew, was taxing her imagination to find a story suitable for his tender years. She was greatly startled when he suddenly said, in a most imperative tone: “Tell me the story of a bear eating a small boy.” This was so remote from her own choice of subject that she hesitated at first, but coming to the conclusion that as the child had chosen the situation he would feel no terror in the working up of its details, she began a most thrilling and blood-curdling story, leading up to the final catastrophe. But just as she had reached the great dramatic moment, the child raised his hands in terror and said: “Oh! Auntie, don't let the bear really eat the boy!”

“Don't you know,” said an impatient boy who had been listening to a mild adventure story considered suitable to his years, “that I don't take any interest in the story until the decks are dripping with gore?” Here we have no opportunity of deciding whether or not the actual description demanded would be more alarming than the listener had realised.

Here is a poem of James Stephens, showing a child's taste for sensational things:—