‘Betwixt-and-Between’: Liminality In Golden Age Children’s .

texts become especially significant. As I discuss below, liminality refers to ananthropological concept popularised by Victor Turner, regarding the social andsymbolic importance of the middle (or liminal), transitional stage of rites of passagein traditional societies. Just as Peter Pan (and his Golden Age contemporaries) areimbued with images of the ‘“Betwixt-and-Between”’, Turner importantly utilisesthe term ‘betwixt and between’ to discuss the liminal (Forest of Symbols 97, 110;Ritual Process 95).Michael Joseph asserts that ‘[l]iminality describes the quality of beingsocially segregated, set apart and divested of status, and relates to associatedcharacteristics and qualities: indeterminacy, ambiguity, selflessness, andbecomingness’ (138). This quality is especially pertinent in discussions ofchildhood (as Joseph notes) as childhood itself is liminal. Liminal childhood is alsocentral to literary studies: Joseph suggests that ‘literary children dismayinglybreach boundaries, and in their passage into adulthood (Turner’s phrase), theysymbolize both chaos and order, antistructure and structure’ (139). Indeed, theanthropologist Edith Turner (Victor Turner’s spouse and collaborator) also positsthe centrality of the liminal in literary studies, noting (Victor) Turner’sindebtedness to literature as the foundation for some of his theories (163). EdithTurner importantly notes Turner’s identification of the liminal in Tolkien, C. S.Lewis, the Mary Poppins texts (167), works by Robert Louis Stevenson andCharles Kingsley (168), and ‘countless children’s stories with the theme of passageto adulthood’ (167). As I will discuss below, this thesis does not adopt a rigidTurnerian theorisation of the liminal in its interpretation of Golden Age texts – thesettings of these texts differ markedly from the traditional societies Turnerdiscusses – but instead utilises pertinent aspects of Turner’s theory to elaborate onthe significance of repeated evocations of the betwixt-and-between.The repeated evocations of liminal spaces (which necessarily advert toliminal characterisation) in Golden Age texts are profoundly significant in terms ofour understanding of those texts. Consequently, each chapter of this thesis focusesin detail on five spatial (and increasingly abstract) domains: domestic space,domesticated natural spaces (such as gardens), pedagogical space, empire and,finally, fantastic spaces. Not surprisingly, given the inherent fluidity and ambiguityof the liminal condition, each of these spatial domains are marked by some form ofanxiety associated with their attendant ideologies. The liminal spaces and3

characterisation represented in Golden Age texts function as a means throughwhich cultural anxieties are addressed, explored and, in many cases but not all,resolved. Just as the Turnerian liminal functions as a phase during which the liminalsubject departs from structure and gains insight about the originary culture beforereturning to (uphold) structure once again, depictions of liminal space (and liminalcharacterisation) in Golden Age children’s literature act as virtual spaces in whichvarious anxieties and problematics regarding particular spatial domains can be‘played out’ in the relative safety of the ultimate liminal space of the text.The Golden Age of Children’s LiteratureIn a thesis discussing the Golden Age of children’s literature, it is important tooutline existing scholarship in the field. Roger Lancelyn Green utilised the term‘Golden Age’ to discuss children’s texts in the 1962 issue of Essays and Studies.His article ‘The Golden Age of Children’s Books’ represents ‘an attempt to chartsome of the more or less definite islands off a portion of the mainland of our moregenerally recognized literary heritage’ (36). However, it is worth noting that, asPeter Hunt asserts, Green’s article focuses largely on ‘biography and description’(35). Angela Sorby notes that, since Green’s intervention, the term ‘Golden Age’has ‘spread and morphed to become a designation of generic excellence’ (96).Sorby posits that ‘[t]he first Golden Age of children’s literature began, moreor less, with Alice in Wonderland (1865) and ended with Winnie-the-Pooh (1926),although some would start earlier, with Catherine Sinclair’s Holiday House (1839),or end earlier, with Peter Pan (1911)’ (96). This thesis locates the Golden Agebetween the years of 1865, with the publication of Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures inWonderland, and 1914, with the advent of the First World War. In discussing theGolden Age of children’s literature, it is important to note Humphrey Carpenter’s1985 text Secret Gardens: A Study of the Golden Age of Children’s Literature.Carpenter’s biographical readings are largely reductive, attributing Golden Ageliterary production to authorial immaturity and a tendency to produce ‘“escapist”literature, aimed ostensibly at children’ (19). Laura C. Stevenson asserts that‘[Carpenter’s] heavily Freudian interpretations stop short of saying that there was4

something sexually askew with all important children’s writers He does,however, firmly attach their works for children to their “warped lives”’ (428).It is important to note the print culture out of which the Golden Age ofchildren’s literature emerged. The increased literary production and consumptionthat characterises this period did not emerge from a vacuum but was the result ofeconomic and social factors. Laura C. Stevenson’s 2011 article “Literary Laddersin the Golden Age of Children’s Books” resists readings (like Carpenter’s) thatattribute the existence of Golden Age children’s literature to authorial innocenceor escapism. Instead, Stevenson attributes the advent of the ‘Golden Age’ tochanging conditions in the late-Victorian literary marketplace: Stevenson positsthat ‘[t]he literary marketplace in which [Golden Age authors] had to establishthemselves was hardly one in which innocence could survive; it was changing withunprecedented speed determined by technological developments and a newgeneration of entrepreneurial editors’ (429).These technological advances are particularly pertinent as Stevensonasserts that children’s texts emerged in response to the growing demands of a massaudience with increasingly high access to print culture (433). Stevenson notes thatBetween 1850 and 1885 a combination of cheap paper, high-speed presses,inexpensive engraving, and the increasing literacy of an expandingpopulation brought about an explosion of printed matter. Book productionquadrupled, and so did the number of weekly, monthly, and quarterlymagazines, which rose from 643 in 1875 to 2,531 in 1903, paralleled by arise in newspapers from 1,609 in 1875 to 2,504 in 1914. During the lateVictorian era, readers of all social levels had regular access to literary andvisual stimulation inconceivable to their grandparents. (430)Stevenson posits that the Golden Age of children’s literature – which she proposesbegan in 1865 with Macmillan’s initial publication of Carroll’s Alice’s Adventuresin Wonderland and the publication of Kingsley’s The Water-Babies (1862) in5

single-volume form (439) – signalled a departure from the separate ‘ladder[s]’1 ofadults’ and children’s fiction and awarded children’s literature (and its prevalentauthors) a place in the literary mainstream.While Stevenson’s discussion focuses chiefly on the technological andeconomic conditions that enabled the production of (Golden Age) children’s textsto flourish, Kimberley Reynolds highlights social factors that played a significantrole in the production of children’s literature in the late-Victorian era, with a focuson readers’, as opposed to authors’ and publishers’, views of contemporary texts.While Reynolds’ Girls Only? Gender and Popular Children’s Fiction in Britain,1880-1910 (1990) doesn’t explicitly situate discussion of the increased literaryproduction and consumption in the late-Victorian and Edwardian eras in terms ofa ‘Golden Age’, the text highlights significant cultural factors in the developmentof children’s literature. Reynolds places greater emphasis on the periodical pressthan Stevenson, citing the inaugural issues of the Boy’s Own Paper and the Girl’sOwn Paper in 1897 and 1880 respectively as ‘confirmation of an established massaudience for juvenile publishing’ (xvi). While the term ‘Golden Age’ implies anemphasis on canonical texts (and, indeed, this thesis discusses canonical texts), itis also important to note the ubiquity of the periodical press in the late-Victorianand Edwardian eras.Reynolds posits an inextricable relationship between changing educationalpolicies in Britain and the widespread production of children’s texts. She assertsthatThe phenomenon which is juvenile fiction can largely be viewed asoriginating in Britain in the 1880s. The publication of children’s books andperiodicals of late-Victorian and Edwardian England was essentially a newenterprise, arising in tandem with the educational reforms of 1870 and1880, and the advent of new printing technology which made it possible toproduce cheap books and periodicals on a large scale. (xv-xvi)1Stevenson engages with the metaphor of the separate ‘literary ladder[s]’ of adults’ and children’sliterature outlined by Mrs Molesworth in the May 1893 issue of Atlanta (428).6

The production of (chiefly inexpensive) popular reading material served a socialfunction, disseminating ideologies pertaining to class differences, and enforcinghegemonic power structures, as literature intended for consumption by workingclass child readers differed greatly from that intended for middle- and upper-classchild readers. Reynolds asserts that these differences in reading material wereinformed by, and in turn reflected, class-based differences in models of education.While both working- and middle-class children received a ‘utilitarian’ (13)education, children of the upper classes ‘received a largely classical education’(14). However, it is important to note that the ‘utilitarian’ education received byboth working- and middle-class children differed in emphasis, as working-classchildren received an education that instilled lessons of ‘frugality’ and ‘obedience’(13), and ‘insufficient knowledge of political economy to enable them to interferein the decision-making of their masters’ (13); the curriculum intended for middleclass children ‘emphasis[ed] skills such as accountancy, which would be requiredby small businessmen’ (13).While Reynolds notes that working-class literacy had initially representeda threat (8-9) to the social hierarchy, universal education and the attendantintroduction of institutionalised language (17-18) served to mitigate this threat byentrenching linguistic hierarchies: the ‘“natural” language of the working classes’(17) differed from the ‘literary’ (18) language offered as part of the curriculum insecondary schools (18) frequented by the middle classes2. Different models ofliterature reflecting these hierarchized distinctions developed (and, indeed, weremarketed) in turn. Indeed, Reynolds states that ‘[t]he social pressures influencingthe teaching of English divided readers into two categories: the elementary orconcrete, and the cultured’ (20). Importantly, anxieties about a ‘literate workingclass’ were addressed by ‘policies which made it more attractive for publishers toprovide low-status, popular fiction on a grand scale’ (20). Reynolds posits that thisproduction of inexpensive, easily accessible reading material aimed at workingclass child readers served a dual purpose: it enforced (social) passivity through2Needless to say the utilitarian, ‘“natural”’ (18) language included in curriculums for working-classstudents also differed greatly from language featuring in the curriculum intended for upper-classstudents.7

‘closely monitored’ reading material that did not challenge the existing socialhierarchy, and produced texts with perceived lower literary merit to ‘reinforce thecultural superiority of those who condemned [them]’ (21).However, while Reynolds discusses the presence of texts aimed at workingclass child readers, she nevertheless situates children’s literature as a firmlymiddle-class phenomenon. Reynolds posits that ‘while there are stratificationswithin children’s literature as a genre it has always been almost entirely middleclass in subject matter and values’ (30). The middle-class nature of the genre ofchildren’s literature reflects the predominant image of (middle-class) childhood.Reynolds writes thatA final, related, factor which contributed to the middle-class nature ofjuvenile publishing came from the dominant, bourgeois, notion ofchildhood being elaborated at the end of the nineteenth century. The needfor a special literature for children could only be perceived when childrenwere recognised as being different from adults By the late nineteenthcentury, not only did a fully-formed middle- and upper-class notion ofchildhood exist, but surrounding it there had also evolved an idealised,highly sentimental aureole. (31)Importantly, Gavin and Humphries assert that this idealised image of (middleclass) childhood continued in Edwardian texts, as ‘[t]he predominant textualportrayal of childhood is of middle-class children living generally pleasant lives’(2-3). For Gavin and Humphries, the ‘tendency to idealize childhood’ (3) was acentral tenet of the Edwardian era, with an unprecedented cultural emphasis placedon the figure of the child (1). As I will discuss below, changes in the perception ofchildhood (both in textual worlds and in the process of literary production), areemphasised in recent scholarship discussing Golden Age texts. The technologicaland social factors outlined above – changes in the literary marketplace, increasedliteracy, and an idealisation of (middle-class) childhood – converged to allow theadvent of the Golden Age of children’s literature.Marah Gubar’s 2009 text Artful Dodgers: Reconceiving the Golden Age ofChildren’s Literature marks a significant intervention in studies of Golden Agechildren’s texts. Gubar resists the ‘critical commonplace that Golden Age8

children’s authors latched onto and popularized the most sentimental and disablingstrand of Romantic discourse about childhood’ (10). Significantly, Gubarchallenges the perception of Golden Age child characters (and, by extension, childreaders) as ‘primitive naïfs’ (6), instead reading them as ‘artful collaborators’ (6).Gubar asserts thatclassic Victorian and Edwardian children’s books do not represent youngpeople as untouched Others, magically free from adult influence. On thecontrary, they generally conceive of child characters and child readers associally saturated beings, profoundly shaped by their culture, manners andmorals of their time, precisely in order to explore the vexed issue of thechild’s agency Golden Age authors often take a strikingly nuancedposition, acknowledging the pervasive and potentially coercive power ofadult influence while nevertheless entertaining the possibility that childrencan be enabled and inspired by their inevitable inheritance. In doing so, theyresist the Child of Nature paradigm, which holds that contact with civilizedsociety is necessarily stifling, in favour of the idea that young people havethe capacity to exploit and capitalize on the resources of adult culture(rather than simply being subjugated and oppressed). (4-5)In resisting the ‘Romantic primitivism’ (4) that characterises some scholars’assessments of Golden Age child protagonists, Gubar’s reading of Golden Agetexts suggests that child protagonists (and other child characters) are able toexercise autonomy and benefit from their contact with adult culture.Like Gubar’s Artful Dodgers, Victoria Ford Smith’s Between Generations:Collaborative Authorship in the Golden Age of Children’s Literature (2017) alsoaddresses questions of children’s agency while highlighting the collaborativenature of literary production. While Gubar reads child characters as ‘canny’collaborators (5) rather than ‘primitive näifs’ (6)3, Ford Smith reads children as3Gubar’s discussion of children’s theatre in chapters five and six of Artful Dodgers, and herreferences to the subjects of Lewis Carroll’s photography, provide exceptions in which shediscusses the position of “real” children. Ford Smith acknowledges her indebtedness to Gubar’sdiscussion in general (16), but in particular, to her discussion of children’s theatre (16-18).9

literal (and oft-neglected) collaborators in the production of Golden Age texts.Ford Smith highlights the many child collaborators in works by authors such asRobert Browning (3-6)4 and J. M. Barrie5, and posits thatAdults’ partnerships with young writers, illustrators, and co-conspiratorsreveal that the agentic, creative child was not only a figure but also an actor,vital to authorial practice; the texts that adult writers produced withchildren, and their accounts of working with young people, revised modelsof childhood and authorship in material as well as figurative ways. (8)Rather than a passive consumer of texts produced by adults, the child is, for FordSmith, a significant collaborator in their production. Through a close examinationof Golden Age texts and their accompanying ‘composition narratives’ (21), whichdetail the creative process of literary production, Ford Smith highlights the seminalrole child collaborators play in ‘fictive, real, and hybrid partnerships’ (22). Childcollaborators exi

After the eponymous Peter Pan flies from his home (13) in J. M. Barrie’s 1906 text Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, he is never the same again. Having left his mother and flown to Kensington Gardens after Lock-out Time (15), Peter soon realises that he is shunned by all of the ot