Those are the closing words of Peter Pan. It's interesting that 'heartless' is the very last word, as that's the word that has been unspoken throughout the book and is uncomfortably central to it. Children will have dangerous adventures. Children will grow up and leave. They must. Peter Pan is a freak, and real children aren't like that. They are, instead, like Wendy and John and Michael. They will torture their parents by going off and doing stupid things with no thought for their parents' suffering, putting themselves in danger and just thinking it's jolly good fun. And - worst for parents - that's how it should be. Because children are 'gay and innocent and heartless.' And it's both delightful and unbearable.
I read a very interesting blog post by Clementine Beauvais last week which was really about open-access academic articles, but it described an article she had written some time ago (not much time ago, as she's very young for someone so accomplished!) The article discusses the power children have or don't have in literature, and how children have a particular type of power because they have more potential than adults: they have more life ahead of them, can do more stuff than we will be able to, and will be around after we are dead (in the usual run of things). She is clearly right - this is an extremely important part of the power dynamic between adults and children. I'm not sure it's one that finds much expression in children's books, though - but perhaps Clem can point me in the right direction. It's rather undermined in the dead-kids genre currently in vogue.
Another important source of the child's power is that they can destroy the adult's life at a stroke, just by choking on a peanut, falling under a bus, getting diphtheria or walking through a wardrobe into a non-existent land. Adults are scared of their children because the children hold ALL the important power. And children are at least subliminally aware of it. Children's literature plays with that dynamic to a greater or lesser degree depending on the perspicacity and courage of the writer.
In the nineteenth century, children's books (and children in adult books) generally end up being absorbed into 'normal' (thank you, Clementine) adult society - what we could call an aetonormative resolution if we wanted to be jargonish about it (thank you, Maria Nikolajeva for that word). But today we tend to write books that leave the future more open for children, perhaps because the real future looks so uncertain (although futures have always been uncertain). Or perhaps because we don't like to endorse a 'normal'.
When we, as writers, exclude parents from the picture - sending them to work, killing them off, making them neglectful, leaving them asleep in the cave, or whatever - we give the stage to the child characters. I think most of us do it, if we think about it, to free the child to act. In Arthur Ransom's day, it was fine to give your kids some sandwiches and stick them in a leaky boat, not expecting to see them for a few days. Now it's not. To do so (in a book) would be to make an issue of irresponsible parenting. So we need another way to give children the freedom to have adventures. But why ever we might think we do it, one of the undeniable results is that the parents, once out of sight, are out of mind. And not just the reader's mind. I'm writing something set in the late 19th century at the moment. The hero is an orphan, with an abusive guardian. No one cares what he does. But, perhaps more importantly for me as writer, whatever he does can't harm anyone who loves him. I can have him chased by a murderous villain, threatened with drowning, cut to ribbons by a slasher robot, and not have to worry about a grieving or angst-ridden parent behind the scenes.
I'm struggling to think of a children's book in which loving parents are present and respond realistically to the dangerous exploits of their children. Children don't want to see that, of course - it's either not interesting to them, or would detract from the joy of the story, depending on the child. But neither do we want to write it. We don't want to think about it. There's a terrible tension at the centre of exciting children's books, as in real-life parenting, between wanting the child to have exciting adventures and not wanting them to die. Every parent draws their own line of acceptable/unacceptable risk. Every story-teller pushes the risk and harm as far as they can/want and usually stops just short of death (if we exclude Edward Gorey from the mix). And they are freest to remain gay and innocent and heartless if we don't have to think too much about their parents as we write.
Anne Rooney
Stroppy Author
Latest book - Evolution, Octopus, September 2014
12 comments:
And what with the mobile phone, we have to find more and more ways of getting children away from their parents in stories - nowadays, Julian and Susan would just have sent a text when they got into trouble... though I suppose many of their adventures would have been in places where there wasn't a signal...
That's so interesting. What a great post!
Great post, thank you.
Fascinating post. That heartless thing is so true, and yet so rarely portrayed. So many protagonists are fully empathic or otherwise nice. It's a useful insight, thanks.
The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf by Nick Bryan has a fairly realistic parent in it but, since the protagonist is 17, the parent's power to be aware of the risk beforehand or to prevent its reoccurrence is limited. It would be far harder to manage it successfully with a younger child.
Great pots Anne.
When parents are around in scary situations often you have a role reversal and have the child behaving as the adult. I did this with my Oliver Strange books. The father, a herpetologist, is the one who is often in trouble. At one time when he is about to rub his eye after touching the most poisonous poison dart frog in the world, it's his son who shouts out to warn him.
I think you can get away with role reversal in younger chn's novels. I solve the mobile problem by cheating and putting them in the heart of the Okavango Swamps... or the forests of Colombia. Sorry no signal!
Lovely post. You've picked up on just what I think makes Barrie's book so radical and challenging in its representation of children - a challenge that few of his successors have successfully met.
Towards the end of my new book Project Firebird, one of the heroes discusses whether or not to let their parents know where they are. He decides, 'No. They'd only worry.' Another replies, 'Parents do that.' In context, of course, it's all rather an understatement.
So true about kids holding all the power. I remember contemplating the question: to have kids, or not? At the time we were childless, and reasonably happy. But we knew that to have a child, and then be childless again, would be to face utter destruction. How is it that we can wilfully hold such a gun to our own heads? Yet we do.
I agree entirely, Nick - it is such a strange thing that we do. My daughter had a baby last year and I realised all over again how it really is stepping up to the edge of the abyss, where you didn't need to go, and then living your life on that edge ever afterwards.
really interesting post, Anne. That question that gets asked so often of children's writers: 'have you got children?' is usually taken to imply 'because if you haven't, how can you write for children?', but I often think it is more about questioning the horror of losing 'heartless children' to their dangerous adventures - even within the pages of a book someone has written.
One of the things that instantly struck me about the power relation between children and parents - the aetonormativity argument Clementine makes - is that it's completely different from, say, gender power not just because children will live longer but because they will themselves become adults - there's a kind of exchange at the heart of this relationship - we have the power now but look after you, you will have it later (and hopefully look after us). So childhood is a kind of stage rather than category - and children's books do celebrate the special power of that stage; the vividness of everything, the freedom to care mostly about yourself (I suppose that's the heartless bit!) So I can't see the aetonormativity as oppressive argument at all.
But I guess I should probably read Maria Nikolajeva before I put my oar in on that one!
Oh, yes, kids have all the power, as much as we might like to think that we have it. Great post, Anne, and very interesting. My current WIP has a couple of 'heartless' teens, and it's interesting that actually few have been portrayed in fiction. Lots of food for thought.
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