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Bridging the chasm between muteness and cheek: the street-sweeper of the nineteenth century is granted his say

2004; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 10; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/1361454042000294131

1740-7885

Therie Hendrey-Seabrook,

Abstract Mid-nineteenth-century representations of childhood varied enormously according to the audience—adult or child—at which they were aimed, but one element they all had in common was the problem of creating a voice for the protagonist child that would promote a degree of autonomy, while retaining at the same time the sense of the child as domestic and subject to adult authority. This problem was exacerbated when the child figure in question was also the focus of public discourse. One such figure was the young crossing-sweeper whose occupation of public territory was productive of much adult unease. This paper considers a range of representations of the street-sweeper as expressed through the mute inadequacy of Dickens's Jo in Bleak House, the incisive verbal impudences of Punch's cartoon constructions and the idealised, domesticised voice of Froggy in Froggy's Little Brother, by ‘Brenda’. The paper contends that the tension between the public and the domestic lives of these children was played out through reassessment of the child voice, whereby domesticity promoted muteness as much as it protected childhood, but that survival in the public sphere necessitated the adoption of a voice at the expense of being accepted as a ‘real’ child. Notes Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847) and Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies (1863) are prominent examples of the respective approaches—Jane Eyre being intended for an adult readership, The Water Babies for children. The connection made here between the Street Arab and his knowledge of the Prison Surgeon is indicative of that pervasive assumption of criminality and, as CitationAnna Davin notes, it was felt that ‘any child who picked up a living in the streets risked moral contamination’ (1996, 162). See, for example, Graham Storey's (Citation1987) general discussion of Jo's location in Tom-all-Alone's as embodying disease—specifically small-pox—and suffering. This notion of a stock type also attaches to the generic street Arab. Discussing Thomas Barnardo's fascination with the street Arab, Lindsay Smith notes that Barnardo sets down a list of visual characteristics by which an authentic street Arab may be readily identified (Smith Citation1998, 120). The caption reads: ‘Now, young ‘un! Just give my Wellingtons a good Polish, cos I likes to go to business respectable in the morning!’ The caption reads: ‘Officiousness of a horrid little Crossing-sweeper, soiling the Carpet with his nasty filthy Broom, and completely upsetting the Dignity of the whole thing.’ ‘Brenda’ was the pseudonym of Mrs G. Castle Smith, hereafter referred to in the text as Brenda.