Obidience in Children's Literature During the Victorian Era
Obedience in Children’s Literature during the Victorian Age
Table of Contents 1. Introduction 3 2. Teaching Obedience through Text - Historical Development 3 3. The Victorian Age - a time of change 6 3.1 Broad themes of change 6 3.2 changes in society 6 3.3 Interim Conclusion 7 4. Obedience in Children’s Fiction - Tradition and Change 7 4.1 Kingsley’s The Water Babies 8 4.2 Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and what Alice found there 10 5 Conclusion 14 5. Bibliography 15
1. Introduction
Lewis Carroll’s stories about Alice and her adventures in Wonderland and in the Looking-Glass-World are children’s stories almost everyone nowadays knows from Walt Disney. During my studies I had the chance to get a closer look at the literary works of Carroll; on the one hand in a seminar on children’s literature of the Victorian era and on the other hand during a theater performance, where the literary piece provided the basis for the play. When encountering the works of Carroll in such ways, one notices the frequency of nonsensical rules Alice has to obey in order to get along in the fictitious world. Due to the rules the main character of the story – a child – does not understand but obeys anyway the question emerged what role obedience played in children’s literature during this period. Since the Victorian era was a time of change the main approach of this paper is a cultural one with a focus on how education changed from Puritan times to Victorian. The stories mainly focused on in the course of this paper are Charles Kingsley’s The Water Babies and Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Concerning these literary works, a close reading in matters of obedience and consequences of being disobedient, expresses in what way children were educated during these times.
The paper is structured as follows: first of all, a brief overview of the historical development
Table of Contents 1. Introduction 3 2. Teaching Obedience through Text - Historical Development 3 3. The Victorian Age - a time of change 6 3.1 Broad themes of change 6 3.2 changes in society 6 3.3 Interim Conclusion 7 4. Obedience in Children’s Fiction - Tradition and Change 7 4.1 Kingsley’s The Water Babies 8 4.2 Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and what Alice found there 10 5 Conclusion 14 5. Bibliography 15
1. Introduction
Lewis Carroll’s stories about Alice and her adventures in Wonderland and in the Looking-Glass-World are children’s stories almost everyone nowadays knows from Walt Disney. During my studies I had the chance to get a closer look at the literary works of Carroll; on the one hand in a seminar on children’s literature of the Victorian era and on the other hand during a theater performance, where the literary piece provided the basis for the play. When encountering the works of Carroll in such ways, one notices the frequency of nonsensical rules Alice has to obey in order to get along in the fictitious world. Due to the rules the main character of the story – a child – does not understand but obeys anyway the question emerged what role obedience played in children’s literature during this period. Since the Victorian era was a time of change the main approach of this paper is a cultural one with a focus on how education changed from Puritan times to Victorian. The stories mainly focused on in the course of this paper are Charles Kingsley’s The Water Babies and Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Concerning these literary works, a close reading in matters of obedience and consequences of being disobedient, expresses in what way children were educated during these times.
The paper is structured as follows: first of all, a brief overview of the historical development
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