Perhaps in no other activity does society express its fundamental values more distinctly than in the socialization of children. While historians of childhood search the past for clues to link the growth of the individual to the movements of society, most overlook children's literature. . Yet children's literature is specifically designed to (or does by indirection) communicate the basic elements of culture to the rising generation. In children's stories we find the artifacts of the process of socializing children in the past. This study examines the stories written for children in late eighteenth century England. At one level these stories reflect the attitudes to children and child-rearing that evolved in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; at another, they record the response to the social situation of a small group of educated reformers. The authors consciously promote a particular system of values, but not one specifically intended to prepare youth for industrial society. Rather, they present values that serve to protect their ideal of a reformed but traditional social order. The transitional state of eighteenth century society caused many to fear for its stability. Older problems of vice, crime, and poverty became more visible as the society became more urban and industrial. At the same time, a new class, unencumbered by the traditional social responsibilities embodied in landed property, was rising in wealth and power. Reformers sought to preserve the peace and order of society by attempting to improve the manners and morals of the lower orders and by systematically reinforcing the obligations of rich to poor. In the service of these goals, authors of children's stories directed their attention to youth, particularly middle class youth, for it was crucial to gain the allegiance of this group to the values that upheld the social order. In their stories they constructed realistic social situations in which to demonstrate the efficacy of these values and beliefs. They erected a model of harmonious society that accorded with a rational universe wherein diligence, frugality, honesty and benevolence inevitably led to security and happiness. They drew the boundaries within which the fulfilling life may be won, justifying the existing order by providing a reward for every virtuous child. The rock upon which their model of harmonious society rested was the family. Within the stable domestic family resides all virtue and happiness; it is the arena for all aspects of human life; its values maintain the stability of society. The primary function of the story-book family is to transmit these values to the young, to instill in the individual child those qualities that will prepare him for life in a peaceful orderly society. The image of the world and society that emerges from the children's stories of the late eighteenth century is not a direct reflection of actual conditions any more than the heroes and heroines of the stories represent the real behavior and experience of eighteenth century children. Nevertheless, we do see how at least part of society perceived its times, and, more important, the values thought necessary to sustain their way of life. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

The writer's purpose in this study has been to make a thorough investigation of the Newbery Medal books to determine if they represent the best literature suitable for children's reading that has been published since 1922, and to investigate carefully the group as a whole to see if the books possess those rare qualities and characteristics which, deservedly, would set them apart from the ordinary type of books usually designated as suitable for children's reading.

Drawing upon historical studies of the family and feminist studies of discourse and culture, this dissertation explores representations of the family in Charles Dickens's Bleak House, Elizabeth Gaskell's Wives and Daughters, and George Eliot's Daniel Deronda. It situates each novel's representation of the family within a central ideological undertaking in Victorian culture—the attempt to confirm individual autonomy without sacrificing collective responsibility. It claims that a new family paradigm, the affective family ideal, gains cultural currency because it appears to reconcile these competing values by, on the one hand, giving a new primacy to individual feeling and choice and, on the other hand, insisting that individual choice be contained by familial bonds. This dissertation thus delineates the network of associations—among them individuality and collectivity, natural law and social progress—that composes the affective family ideal and explores its implications. It suggests that normative conceptions of gender and selfhood mandated by this ideal actually obstructed individual choice even as its new articulation of class difference undermined collective well-being. Fundamentally, it claims that the affective family ideal, despite its construction as individualism's antidote, rationalized practices central to the ideology of individualism and promoted middle class hegemony. The first chapter summarizes historical developments that produced the affective family ideal and explores the ways in which gender, class, and subjectivity were shaped within the context of that ideal's construction. Each succeeding chapter analyzes the discursive construction of the family in one Victorian novel. In each novel, three entities structure the family narrative: the aristocratic patrilineal family, individualism, and the affective family. Besides tracing these recurrent figures, this dissertation demonstrates the complex nature of nineteenth century domestic ideology by identifying points of consensus and dissent among these representations of the family. It claims that, despite notable differences, both Bleak House and Wives and Daughters identify the affective family ideal as a distinctively moral alternative to the traditional patrilineal family and individualism. It argues that Daniel Deronda, despite its similar critique of both patrilineal family and individualism, rejects the family ideal that the earlier two novels posit as the key to individual and collective progress.

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