Representations of Childhood in American Modernism PDF
Preview Representations of Childhood in American Modernism
Michelle H. Phillips Representations of Childhood in American Modernism Michelle H. Phillips Representations of Childhood in American Modernism Michelle H. Phillips Fairfax, Virginia, USA ISBN 978-1-137-50806-5 ISBN 978-1-137-50807-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-50807-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016942629 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2 016 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub- lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Cover image © Clement Hurd, from T he World is Round by Gertrude Stein Cover design by Oscar Spigolon Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Nature America Inc. The registered company address is: 1 New York Plaza, New York, NY 10004, U.S.A. A CKNOWLEDGMENTS This book began as my doctoral dissertation, and each member of my committee, including Marianne DeKoven, Cheryl A. Wall, Harriet Davidson, and Patricia Crain, has shaped this project in ways both defi nite and indelible. It was my enormous good fortune to have Pat as a mentor throughout this process. She answered questions for me that I did not know to ask and opened doors for me that I never knew were there. One of the luckiest days of my life was when I signed up to take a class with Marianne. She is not only a renowned scholar but also a gifted teacher, an uncommonly devoted advisor, and a trusted friend. I also owe many thanks to Michael McKeon for his meticulous feed- back on earlier drafts of Chap. 4 of the book and for organizing a work- shop where I received crucial encouragement and words of wisdom from Natalie Roxburgh, Sonali Barua, and Shakti Jaising. And I also must thank the Graduate Literatures in English Program at Rutgers University, including Cheryl Robinson, Courtney Borack, John Kucich, Rebecca Walkowitz, and Stacy Klein, for providing consistent and unwavering pro- fessional and fi nancial support and for making Murray Hall one of the best places to learn and work. I published versions of two of the chapters contained herein in T he Henry James Review and in P MLA . I am grateful for the suggestions and revisions made by these journals’ readers and editors, including Susan Griffi n, Eric Wirth, and Nancy Bentley. I have also been fortunate to receive feedback at various conference presentations along the way. I would like to thank Katharine Capshaw for her encouragement in this v vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS context and Marah Gubar for taking the time to retool my brain in regards to nineteenth-century children’s literature. For many of these chapters, it has been my privilege to conduct research at a number of wonderful institutions and libraries. The librarians at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where I studied W.E.B. Du Bois’s papers, went out of their way to provide me with access to materi- als for Chap. 6 . Similarly, I have rarely met more knowledgeable librarians than those at Yale’s Beinecke Library who helped guide my research on Gertrude Stein. Last, but always far from least, none of this would have been possible without the shared sacrifi ces of my family. My mother, Debra, is the most patient and generous person I have ever known and extended me more than my fair share of both during this process. Tesla Miller came to my rescue on more than one occasion. Her humor and her research assistance were equally vital. Vicky and Zdzislaw Pacholec were angels who regularly took over my household so that I could work. More inspiration than I ever needed came from my daughter, Katherine Reese, who helped me, as much as anyone, to understand Gertrude Stein’s children’s fi ction. Most of all, I want to thank my wife, Michelle, who survived with me the loss of our fi rst born and who holds my hand each and every day. C ONTENTS 1 Introduction 1 2 American Modernism, Childhood, and the Inward Turn 13 3 The “Partagé Child” and the Emergence of the Modernist Novel in Henry James’s What Maisie Knew 37 4 An Innocence Worse than Evil in The Turn of the Screw 65 5 Nightwood: A Bedtime Story 91 6 The Children of Double Consciousness: From The Souls of Black Folk to The Brownies’ Book 119 7 Drowning in Childhood: Gertrude Stein’s Late Modernism 163 Works Cited 211 Index 227 vii L F IST OF IGURES Fig. 5.1 Henri Rousseau, The Dream, 1910. Courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY 102 Fig. 6.1 The Crisis Children’s Number 16.6 (October 1918) 282 132 Fig. 6.2 The Crisis Children’s Number 8.6 (October 1914) 273 133 Fig. 6.3 The Crisis Children’s Number 12.6 (October 1916) 275 134 Fig. 6.4 The Crisis Children’s Number 12.6 (October 1916) 287 136 Fig. 6.5 The Brownies’ Book 1.9 (September 1920) 272 149 Fig. 6.6 The Brownies’ Book 1.12 (Dec 1920) 378 151 Fig. 6.7 The Brownies’ Book 1.12 (Dec 1920) 379 152 Fig. 6.8 The Brownies’ Book 1.3 (March 1920) 76 153 Fig. 7.1 Facsimile from Gertrude Stein’s manuscript, Geographical History of America 184 ix CHAPTER 1 Introduction By the turn of the twentieth century, childhood was in vogue. The idyllic child at the heart of poetic, Romantic discourse resurfaced in the work of twentieth-century reformers and scientists who dedicated themselves to understanding and bettering the lives of actual children. As Sally Shuttleworth observes, the child-study movement, which thrived in the early years of the twentieth century, had its roots in the core values of post- Romantic discourse (2). In promoting the belief that the entire history of human evolution recapitulates itself in the lifespan of each individual, child-study scientists validated the importance of childhood as the origin of both personal and social progress. 1 By 1930, Herbert Hoover spoke for many reformers when he argued that interventions in the problems of poverty, health, and education for just “one generation” of children would cause those problems and “a thousand other[s]” to “vanish” (qtd. in Smuts 140). Even Freud, whose theories of infantile sexuality seemed to threaten Romantic ideals of childhood innocence, underscored the essen- tialist line on childhood as the epicenter of the self. Childhood played a foundational role in modern visions of individual and human history, but in many of these narratives childhood itself had no history. In the mind, childhood became a permanent fi xture, a place solidifi ed by Freud into what Carolyn Steedman calls the “timeless interi- ority of the unconscious” (93). For Freud and other child-study theorists, the child also served as an accessible agent of man’s otherwise inaccessible, primitive past. And for reformers, childhood was the impressionable point at which and through which future history would be made. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 1 M.H. Phillips, Representations of Childhood in American Modernism, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-50807-2_1 2 M.H. PHILLIPS In her 1900 treatise, T he Century of the Child , feminist and socialist Ellen Key railed against the use of corporal punishment, factory work for both women and children, and the “idiotic” model of public school edu- cation, which, in her view, churned out (like a factory itself) identically- minded, unquestioning, and (above all) obedient children. The book became an international bestseller. Through it, Key sought to make the cultivation of the child along with its mother the centerpiece of social and political reform efforts across Europe and America (330). And, in so many respects, the early years of the twentieth-century were already en route to making Key’s vision of a child-centered society a reality. Anxious par- ents, eager to incorporate the spirit of reform at home, enjoyed a robust body of child-rearing literature, including P arents’ Magazine which made its debut in 1926. The psychological study of children boomed. Alice Boardman Smuts tells us that in 1918 there were only fi ve psychologists and psychiatrists who studied childhood full time, but by 1930 there were more than 600 (1–2). 1912 saw the creation of “The Children’s Bureau,” which devoted its fi rst years almost entirely to the problem of childhood mortality. In the 1890s children accounted for 40 % of all deaths; by the 1920s that number had fallen dramatically to 21.7 % (Zelizer 29). To help move children out of danger zones, such as the streets and the facto- ries, public spaces were created for the child’s cultivation and protection. Kindergartens grew alongside a more progressive educational model that emphasized children as active rather than passive learners. Playgrounds were beginning to become regular features of urban centers like Chicago, which built its fi rst in 1893 (Kinchin and O’Connor 43). In the key area of child labor, however, Hugh Cunningham observes that progress in the United States was slow. Nearly all countries had passed laws regulat- ing child labor by the end of the nineteenth century, except for the U.S. (180–181). Nonetheless, the number of child laborers in America was on the decline, from nearly 2 million in 1910 to around 667,000 in 1938 (the year the fi rst federal regulations fi nally took effect) (Zelizer 65; 56). The turn of the twentieth century was also the time of the so-called golden age of children’s literature in which such classics as J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan (1902), L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables (1908), Frances Hodgson Burnett’s T he Secret Garden (1911), Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows (1908), Margery Williams’s T he Velveteen Rabbit (1922), and A.A. Milne’s W innie the Pooh (1926) appeared to work along- side Anglo-American progressives to sentimentalize childhood as a beloved space set apart from the disenchanted adult world of labor, materialism,
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