Ventures Into Childland Victorians, Fairy Tales, and Femininity
- Binding: Hardcover
- Edition: 0226
- Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr
- Publish date: 06/01/1998
As Knoepflmacher shows, male and female constructions of childhood in these fairy tales differed radically. Male writers -- John Ruskin, William Makepeace Thackeray, George MacDonald, and Lewis Carroll -- often displayed an uneasy relation to adult gender roles. By privileging a special girl reader, they attempted to blur sexual differences and sentimentalize an arrested childhood. Female authors, on the other hand -- Jean Ingelow, Christina Rossetti, and Juliana Ewing -- tried to wrest fairy tales away from the male authors who had appropriated the genre. These women's tales relate fables of growth that are more grounded in actuality than the men's, and that more often allow their girl characters to mature.
Far from being outdated, these disputes are poignant at a time when our inherited notion of childhood as a precious preserve seems seriously threatened. Ventures into Childland will delight and instruct all readers of children's classics, and will be essential reading for students of Victorian culture and gender studies.
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