Political Anxiety in Golden Age Children's Classics and Their Contemporary Adaptations

302 Pages·2021·1.585 MB·English

by  Jasmin Sültemeyer

Jasmin Sültemeyer
Political Anxiety in Golden Age Children’s Classics and Their
Contemporary Adaptations
Buchreihe der ANGLIA/
ANGLIA Book Series
Edited by
Lucia Kornexl, Ursula Lenker, Martin Middeke,
Gabriele Rippl, Daniel Stein
Advisory Board
Laurel Brinton, Philip Durkin, Olga Fischer, Susan Irvine,
Andrew James Johnston, Christopher A. Jones, Terttu Nevalainen,
Derek Attridge, Elisabeth Bronfen, Ursula K. Heise, Verena Lobsien,
Laura Marcus, J. Hillis Miller, Martin Puchner
Volume 74
Jasmin Sültemeyer
Political Anxiety in Golden Age
Children’s Classics and Their
Contemporary Adaptations
ISBN 978-3-11-074265-7
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-074276-3
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-074283-1
ISSN 0340-5435
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021935735
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.
© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck
www.degruyter.com
Acknowledgements
What once seemed further away than“[s]econd to the right and straight on till
morning” (Peter Pan: 28), and at least as unreachable as the Neverland, is
now a published book. Such a journey would not have been possible without
this world’s equivalent to fairy dust: my teachers,colleagues and friends.
I am immensely grateful to my supervisor, Rainer Emig, whose steadfast
trust in my project and longstanding support with applications and reports al-
lowed me to shape a vague idea into a dissertation. The same holds true for
myexaminers,MarionGymnichandStephanLeopold,whoseexpertiseandval-
uable feedback enriched every stage of my writing process and turned my de-
fence into a pleasant experience. At the Department of English and Linguistics
in Mainz I was lucky enough to work with wonderful colleagues. My profound
thanks are due to Sandra Dinter for her contagious enthusiasm, to Wolfgang
Funk for his unshakable faith in my academic abilities, to Monika Class for
hercommitmenttowardstheendofmyprojectandtoSarahWegenerforherme-
ticulous proof-reading, as well as her friendship. I also owe a great deal to my
colleaguesfromtheDepartmentofRomanceStudies,JuliaBrühne,TimoKehren,
Karin Peters, Bastian Piejko and Lisa Zeller, who adopted me into their post-
graduate forum and thereby enabled me to participate in many fruitful discus-
sions.Myresearchandtravelswouldnothavebeenpossiblewithoutthegener-
ousfinancialsupport I receivedfromtheStudienstiftungdes deutschenVolkes.
Among all the opportunities I got between 2010 and 2020, the most rewarding
was being part of the Chancengleichheit team. It was a pleasure to meet such
hard-working and caring people.
Beyond the world of academia, I wish to thank Hannah and Marius Hach,
Clara Noffke, Aline Pfeifer and Annika Stendebach for our countless coffee-
break-and-dinner-table-talks,aswellasJakobSchmidforhisincrediblepatience
and his relentless insistence on Sunday rests. To my three favourite teachers,
Lisa, Bettina and Dieter Sültemeyer, I owe adventures that would leave Never-
landersgreenwithenvy.Mymotherendowedmewithherloveofbooksandal-
waysencouragedmyaffinitytolanguages.BecauseofherIbecameareader.My
fatherpassedontomehisinsatiablecuriosityandneverceasedtosupportmein
my attempts to feed it. Because of him I became a researcher. In gratitude for
everybedtimestorytheyreadtomeandallthequestionstheyanswered,Idedi-
cate this book to them.
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110742763-001

Contents
Introduction 1
 Discord at Home 22
. Uncanny Homes 26
.. The Pleasure of Anthropomorphism 29
.. The Ambivalence of Magic 33
.. The Power of Thoughts 36
.. The Mystery of Humanity 40
.. The Thrill of Ontological Uncertainty 46
. Traumatic Childhoods 50
.. Father would have laughed 51
.. I don’t want to be a good man 56
.. I long for the day that I can come back for you 60
.. You’re mine. Mine to me 65
.. He considered all men his enemies 68
. The Phobia and the Middle-Class Family 73
.. Standing Up Against the Queen of Hearts 74
.. Defeating the Wicked Witches 80
.. Slaughtering the Pirates 88
.. Outsmarting the Tiger 96
.. Dealing with Newcomers 101
 Troublesome Otherness 107
. Of Cannibals and Totalitarian Leaders 112
.. Lawless Wonderland 115
.. The Uncivilized Land of Oz 119
.. An Asylum for Traitors 123
.. Native Troublemakers 128
.. Predators and Prey 135
. The West in Front of the Mirror 140
.. Dangerous Desires 142
.. Perilous Mediocrity 147
.. Contagious Violence 152
.. Painful Authority 156
.. Shameful Politics 162
VIII Contents
. Identification and the Transatlantic Self 167
.. Transatlantic Memories 169
.. Reconceiving Global Responsibility 174
.. Protecting the Mother(land) 179
.. From Colonial Hierarchy to Multicultural Glory 183
.. A Special Relationship 187
 Guilty Pleasures 193
. Re-Animating the Pleasure Principle 198
.. Insatiable Curiosity 201
.. Luxurious Pastimes 206
.. Passionate Immersion 208
.. Timeless Enchantment? 212
.. Elastic Reality 216
. The Abyss of (Children’s) Entertainment 218
.. Repetition and Its Discontents 220
.. The Pains of Disenchantment 224
.. Imperious Media 228
.. The Maddening Effects of Fiction 234
.. Civilization and Its Discontents 237
. Figurative Re-Enactment and the Recuperation of (Creative)
Autonomy 241
.. Moving Alice 244
.. Selling Oz 248
.. Interpellating Children 253
.. Mastering Fear 257
.. Rewriting the Past 265
Conclusion 269
Works Cited 277
Index 290
Introduction
At the beginningof J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan (1911) PetertellsWendy that he lives
“[s]econdtotherightandthenstraightontillmorning”(PeterPan:28).Shortly
afterwards,heinviteshertoparticipateintheseductivemagicofflyingandlures
hertohishome,theNeverland.TotheEdwardiangirlandherbrothers,thecol-
ourful island is awfully fascinating. At times, however,the place seems to have
profound difficultiestoprovide the pleasuresPeterpromised.The more Wendy,
JohnandMichaelindulgeinfunnyroleplays,excitingexpeditionsandthrilling
adventures,themoreNeverland’sdailyrealityistarnishedbycomplicatedlove-
hate relationships, bloody wars and the children’s growing sense of helpless-
ness.AlicefromLewisCarroll’sAlice’sAdventuresinWonderland(1865),Dorothy
from L.F. Baum’s The Wizard of Oz (1900), Mowgli from Rudyard Kipling’s The
Jungle Book (1894) and Tarzan from Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan of the Apes
(1912)fightcomparablebattles,bothagainstothersandagainstthemselves.Con-
trarytothecommonassumptionthatchildren’sentertainmentischeerfulbyna-
ture,the flagships of the Golden Age¹ are shot through with anxiety.
Victorian and Edwardian readers received Golden Age fiction with enthusi-
asm (Wullschläger 2001: 134; Gubar 2009: 200).² Adults read texts written for
children. Girls enjoyed stories designed for boys. Plays and novels travelled
back and forth between the UK and the US (Lundin 1994: 41; Rowbotham
1998: 7; Beckett 1999: xii; Gubar 2009: x; Reynolds 2011: 4, 17; Gubar 2016:
403).Consideringthestories’investmentinphysicaldangersandpsychological
conflicts,thispopularityisnotself-evident.Norisitobviouswhytheircinematic
adaptationscontinuetodelightagediverseaudiencestoday.Fromatwenty-first
century perspective, the combination of children’s entertainment and anxiety
 OriginallythetitleofKennethGrahame’scollectionofchildhoodmemories(1895),theterm
‘GoldenAge’wascoinedinHumphreyCarpenter’slandmarkstudySecretGardens.AStudyof
theGoldenAgeofChildren’sLiterature,whereitdesignatesthetimebetweenthecreativeperiods
ofLewisCarrollandA.A.Milne(Carpenter1984:ixf.).JerryGriswold(2014:xviii)usesittorefer
totheperiodbetweentheAmericanCivilWarandWorldWarI.Inbothdefinitions,thedecades
ofconcernareroughlycongruentwiththeVictorianEra.
 Thisstudysubsumesbotherasundertheterm‘VictorianEra’.Atthis,‘Victorian’isnotsup-
posedtorefertothehistoricalperiodofQueenVictoria’sreign(1837–1901),buttothecultural
communitythatcameintoexistenceduringthesecondhalfofthenineteenthcenturyandthat
arguablypersistedthroughtheyearsfollowingherdeath.Bypointingoutthecontinuitiesbe-
tweentheendofthenineteenthcenturyandthebeginningofthetwentieth,theensuinganaly-
sessubscribetotheoverarchingstrategyofanthologieslikeLateVictorianintoModern.Twenty-
FirstCenturyApproachestoLiterature(Marcusetal.2016).
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110742763-002
2 Introduction
seems striking,counter-intuitive, maybe even distasteful.Whydid Victorian au-
thors choose to expose their child protagonists to traumatic events? And why
have their works become so enormously popular nonetheless? This book
drawsonFreudianandLacanianpsychoanalysistoshedmorelightonthepsy-
chologicalandpoliticalsubstratumoffivewell-knownVictoriantextsandtheir
contemporaryadaptations.Indoingso,itshiftsthefocusofpsychoanalyticalen-
quiry from authors’ alleged pathologies and readers’ potential responses to a
text-basedideologycriticism.ThepioneerofthisinterpretativepracticeisFredric
Jameson,whoseanalysescombinetheFreudiantenetthatdreamsarewishfulfil-
ments with political readingsin a Marxist tradition.Jameson encourages critics
toapproachtextsassymbolicactsandtoreconstructthe‘politicalunconscious’
evenofseeminglyapoliticaltexts(Jameson2002:iv,51,53,56).Inordertopave
the way for such an approach, this introduction outlines four conventional as-
sumptionsandsubjectsthemtocriticalinterrogation:(1)thatcinematicadapta-
tionsarepoorimitationsoftheirliterarysourcetexts;(2)thatchildren’sliterature
is trivial and apolitical; (3) that psychoanalysis can only describe individual
pathologies and (4) thatanxiety is one of these private,non-political disorders.
Inafinalstep,thisintroductionoutlineswhyitmakessensetoanalysethechos-
en texts from both a transhistorical and a transnational perspective.
From Golden Age Classics to Twenty-First Century Films:
the Art of Adaptation
“AlicefortheiPad”(2010)isamobileapp,createdbyChrisStevensforthedigit-
al book publisher Atomic Antelope. It comes across as an interactive pop-up
book, featuring coloured and three-dimensional versions of John Tenniel’s ori-
ginal Alice illustrations. As the user twists and turns the iPad, objects begin to
move. Jars, bottles, mushrooms, rose petals and comfits tumble from the top
to the bottom, or from the bottom to the top. Even the Queen’s crown can be
broughttofall.Atthepushofabutton,Alicestartstogrowortoshrink,theHat-
ter shakes with laughter and the Cheshire Cat appears out of nowhere.The re-
spectiveYoutubecommercialisextremelyfastpaced.Accompaniedbythepom-
poussoundofAntonínDvořák’s“CarnivalOverture”(1891),anon-specifieduser
quicklyswipesfromoneillustrationtothenext,wherebythechronologicalorder
ofthenovel’sepisodesissignificantlyaltered.Duetothestaggeringspeedofthe
movements, spectators can hardly read any of Carroll’s lines. (“Alice for the
iPad”). Apparently,the app’s implied users are less interested in the story than
in interactivity and special effects.They might even be illiterate. Hence, “Alice
fortheiPad”subscribestoalongtraditionofmarketingchildren’sentertainment