Flowers in the Attic

In every domestic novel we’ve read, we get a glace at a different type of relationship between parents and children, mother and child. One thing that I found particularly odd about the Hidden Hand was the relationship between Traverse and his mother, Marah. Although no one can deny the fact that Traverse loves his mother, one must question just exactly in what way does he love his mother. For instance, when he first walks into the room and greets his mother and she asks if he’s outgrown his childhood, he replies, “Yes, dear little mother; in everything but the privilege of fondling you” (Southworth 196). This struck me as odd, so I wrote creepy in the margin of my book and continued reading. The two continue their conversation and it appears normal. I didn’t think more about it, until the last chapter of the selection.

Before Marah and Traverse receive the letter containing the bad news, the two are once again talking and the subject of Traverse’s father comes up. This “greatly bewildered the mind of Traverse and agitated him with the wildest conjectures” (212). Surely, I thought, he’s merely agitated with not knowing who is father was and not by the fact that his mother did have a lover at one time. I continued reading, once again writing the word ‘creepy’ in the margin. By the next page I failed to come up with and adequate excuse for the language represented in relationship between Traverse and his mother; I believe that he is in love with her.

Marah is crushed with the news that there is no fortune coming to save them and trying to comfort her, Traverse says “I love you more than son ever loved his mother, or suitor his sweetheart, or husband his wife! Oh! Is my love nothing, mother?” (214). Woa now, those are two very different types of love, how can he feel both for the same woman or even compare them to each other? The awkwardness continues when he paints a picture of how they will prosper in the end and tells Marah that, “you are not much older than you son; and we two will journey up and down the hills of life together-all in all to each other […] and we will pass out and go to heaven together” (215). This is the sort of dream that a husband wishes for him and his wife, not that of a young man and his mother…

A Little Princess

Although there are some definite similarities between girls of yesterday and today, one main difference stood out more to me.  In the show, Anna mentioned that girls shouldn’t try and act a certain way for people to like them, they should act like themselves.  This is the exact opposite of how young girls were raised in the nineteenth century.  For instance, Gerty is an awful little girl with a mean streak and a temper that often gets her in trouble, but when she runs into Emily Graham, she’s told “you can be good and then everybody will love you” (Cummins 63).  This implies that if Gerty was to act like herself, no one would like her and we can’t have that!  The same applies to young Ellen, who unlike Gerty, is quite well mannered, but is told by her mother that, “If you are a good child, and make it your daily care to do your duty, she cannot help liking you” (Warner 13).  Being human beings, it would be impossible for one to be ‘good’ all the time, yet we still find people who like us for ourselves.   But it makes me wonder if this ideology was around in the nineteenth century and it was simply ignored or is this merely a new way of thinking that has come across in the past couple centuries?

 

If young Gerty had appeared on Amy Pholer’s show, she probably would have said that her favorite thing to do would be to light candles or look at the stars, perhaps clean the house and make toast for Uncle True.  It’s probable that she might has told Amy that she loved her because she was so nice to her and might have yelled or had a tantrum if they asked her dance.  I could also see her saying that she didn’t know what either a rainbow or a butterfly was seeing that she had never been to school and where she lived seemed quite gloomy.  In answer to the question how she would “even herself out”, I can see Gerty saying something along the lines of trying to pray to God (because she is trying to learn) or talking with Emily, Mrs. Sullivan, or Uncle True.  

Dazed and Confused

One of the things that I find that challenges what we’ve talked about in class is the fact that this book wasn’t written for children, or even about children. Stowe uses children as reasoning behind “Christian slavery”, but children were not the target audience for this book nor are they the main focus. That being said, the children that Stowe does portray have a large impact on the novel, but not in the way that typical children’s literature of the nineteenth century often did. There are several incongruencies between Uncle Tom’s Cabin and common children literature of the time.

For example, according to MacLeod, many children’s literature pieces were filled with children “who were for the most part good but who were possessed of one great fault” (93). In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, it could be argued that The Shelbys were for the most part good, yet their fault would be the fact that they’re slave owners. However, the Shelbys are not the main focus of the novel and the didactic lesson comes from Tom, not the Shelbys. There is also the huge red flag that slavery should be seen as more than just a simple fault incomparable to sneaking into the kitchen for sweets.

Children in this novel don’t get enough ‘page time’ for one to accurately asses their personalities, however, it appears the main fault of Eliza’s baby Harry is that he loves his mother and is acting out selfishly by staying by her side. If we are in fact supposed to go along with the belief that selfishness is wrong, then Harry should run away from his mother and allow himself to be enslaved and treated miserably by Mr. Haley so that at least, he’s not being selfish and thinking of himself first. What kind of a message is that? On the other hand, if he did work for Mr. Haley, it would hurt his mother terribly and children’s literature does mention that we shouldn’t hurt others, for what kind of morality would that be? So where does this leave us? Either way you want to look at Harry’s or his mother’s actions, they’re in the wrong. “To look to one’s own advantage was always suspect in children’s stories” (95) yet for these characters, their ‘advantage’ is their way out of a terrible life not worth living. The audience, who's been trained to look at literature a certain way this whole time, is thrown for a loop. Who’s way of thinking is right, the Children’s literature of the time, or Uncle Tom’s Cabin?

Parenthood

Although The Wide, Wide World was written for adults, let’s hope that parents of the nineteenth century were not getting parenting tips from the Montgomery’s. It’s hard for me to give either one of the adult Montgomery’s credit for their parenting skills. While it’s understandable that Mrs. Montgomery is sick and quite care for her child in the physical sense, she doesn’t seem to care for her emotional needs either. When told that she will be separated from her mother indefinitely, Ellen begins to break down. Although her mother lets her cry for a small amount of time, she tells Ellen that, “’I cannot bear this much longer’” (Warner 6). The fact that “Ellen was immediately brought to herself by these words” leads the audience to believe that not only is the word of the parent final and children must bend to them, but that emotional displays weren’t customary and in fact, were considered quite lowly. Captain Montgomery is also quick to sidestep any emotion when he forbids his wife to tell his daughter about how soon she is leaving. He feels that, “’In the hurry and bustle of getting off, she will not have time to think about her feelings; and once on the way, she will do well enough; children always do’” (52). You would think that since he doesn’t take care of Ellen emotionally that he would physically and even that is somewhat of a question for he leaves his daughter with his sister without a second glance. Therefore, young Ellen becomes her own parent in a sense. By taking care of her mother, the parent-daughter relationship has flipped and it’s Ellen who’s making the tea and reading from the bible for her mother. It’s Ellen who is sewing her own clothing and Ellen who is writing the thank you notes. It seems the only roles that the actual parents fill are those of providing shelter, food and love.

In The Wide, Wide World, the mother’s role is to stay in the home and raise the children. As Ellen looks out her window and sees the poor deformed, orphan boy, she says, “’He’s a great deal worse off than I am. His mother is dead’” (9). This shows the audience that his position is so lowly not because of his disability, but because of the fact that his mother is dead. Notice that Ellen thinks nothing about the young boy’s father, for surely he can’t be an orphan if he still has a father. Perhaps this is because Ellen so rarely sees her father, or maybe it’s because Fathers were not very involved in child rearing. Captain Montgomery, who always seems to be at work, has only one role in Ellen’s life, to provide money. The fact that he’s gone for work so often leads the audience to believe that most of the parenting roles fall upon the mother while all of the financial support comes from the father. Even this is something Captain Montgomery can’t seem to get down for he gives Mrs. Montgomery “a sum barely sufficient for [Ellen’s] mere clothing” (21).

Since I mentioned earlier that I believe Ellen to be her own parent, I think she looks to her mother for spiritual advice. When she asks her mother “what does that mean, ‘He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worth of me?’” (31) Ellen is looking to her mother be a good Christian. When her mother tells her that she loves God more than her daughter and then proceeds to tell her daughter not to cry, it seems to me that Mrs. Montgomery is simply there to teach Ellen about Christianity. Ellen perception of her father is simply that of the man who is going to take her away from her beloved mother. When she hears his steps outside of her room, all she can think of is “He is coming to take me away!” (56). When he takes Ellen and puts her in the carriage “she did not feel the touch of her father’s hand, nor hear him when he bid her good-bye […] She knew nothing but that she had lost her mother” (57). This passage shows that it bothered her next to nothing to lose her father, but that the loss of her mother was too devastating to even notice the fact that her father was taking her away.

Little Children

“For the nineteenth century, childhood is better understood as a status or idea associated with innocence and dependency than as a specific development or biological period” (Sanchez-Eppler xxi). This idea presented in Sanchez-Eppler's introduction to Dependent States: The Child's Part in Nineteenth-Century American Culture that childhood isn’t an age thing so much as a maturity thing is one of the main factors that sets children’s literature of that time period apart from children’s literature in any other era. The fact that a twenty year old could theoretically be considered a child if his maturity level was that of a ten year old dramatically effects the way that you would present literature to them or about them.

For example, a main theory seen through out childhood literature is the idea that “they were written to teach, and specifically, to teach morality” (MacLeod 89). Although people of all ages can certainly take something away from a speech about morality, the effect is greater on one who is still testing those boundaries, a.k.a, people with lower maturity levels. When we’re younger, we’re more likely to grow and adapt to changes going on around us then when we’re old, therefore why not imprint the message on as many young minded people as you can to help shape the person you want them to become.

This idea of using children’s literature to mold their future leads me to my second theory that “children are incapable of defining their own terms and grounds of power and meaning” (Sanchez-Eppler xviii) and therefore we [be the older, wiser, more mature ones] must spell that out for them. How is it that we learn what’s right or wrong? Someone tells us. Someone is there to hold our hands and explain the world and how we should act in it in their eyes. Thus, it’s impossible to expect a child to know their own meaning and we must explain to them through stories and morals what their meaning truly is.

Another theory that stems from the idea that someone is teaching us meaning and power is the fact that many of these stories were told at home and therefore “if a child was to acquire firm moral principles, he must do so early, in the brief years before he left home” (MacLeod 96). Parents are essentially growing their own kids in the privacy of their own homes with no one there to guide them except perhaps the additional relative or two. How is it then that the basic morals are almost universal through the community? Society, yes, but what has an impact on society? Literature. We’re essentially giving them “the principles which wisdom and truth sanction are not those which govern society” (96) but which we desperately want them to have before they leave the home and join society as individuals.

A further look into children’s literature of the time leads me to the contradiction that although literature says children were supposed to stay in the home and obey their parents, at the time, children were in fact employed through out the factories. This leads to the theory that “fiction [was written] to counter the growing materialism and the rampant competitiveness of American society”(MacLeod 96) to turn children away from the factories [growing materialism] and towards a brighter, more moral light, such as education.

The last theory that I wish to discuss is the question about “whether [literature is there] to prepare children for adult worries and responsibilities or to protect and cherish them in a freer world of imagination and play” (Sanchez-Eppler xviii). The children are our future, we’re trying to teach them morals in the home, and mold them into the positive figures we want them to be but are telling them these stories because we want them ‘hurry up and grow up already’ or because we want them to enjoy the world around them while they can? The phrase, “youth is wasted on the young” isn’t a new idea, but were we seeing this theory as early as in nineteenth century children’s literature? The world will never know…