<p>The child as a prominent figure in English literature reached its richest stage of development in the nineteenth century, particularly in the fantasy fiction of such writers as Lewis Carroll and George MacDonald. Until this time, the child was generally perceived as an essentially innocent and passive figure requiring little analysis of character or symbolic meaning. However, in the nineteenth century, a growing awareness of the child as a figure of isolation and sadness prompted many writers to embrace him as the representative individual struggling to survive in a hostile world. Such a concept proved very effe9tive in the Victorian era in particular, in which one finds a tremendous intellectual and moral confusion. Accordingly, the thesis deals with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass, and The Princess and the Goblin in terms of the child as surrogate wanderer in search of his proper place within the rapidly spinning world of which he is an integral part. In so doing, the paper discusses such aspects as Carroll's use of the journey through a world of inversions as the quest for self-identity, and MacDonald's concern with the passage of the human soul to complete union with God, keeping in mind that the child himself is the key to all that man will become.</p> / Master of Arts (MA)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/9636 |
| Date | 09 1900 |
| Creators | Tuck-Henry, Leslie |
| Contributors | Lee, Alvin A., English |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis |
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