Reading for Profit <i>and</i> Pleasure: <i>Little Women</i> and <i>The Story of a Bad Boy</i>
1994; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 18; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/uni.0.0179
ISSN1080-6563
Autores Tópico(s)Media, Gender, and Advertising
ResumoFiction written in the United States specifically for children changed fundamentally in 1868 and 1869 with the publication of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, part 1, and Thomas Bailey Aldrich's The Story of a Bad Boy. In these two novels, we see the development of a new narrative strategy that mirrors a new awareness or understanding of children's experience and a trust in the child reader's abilities to interpret and judge. Alcott's Little Women and Aldrich's The Story of a Bad Boy were written in opposition to the didacticism of contemporary children's literature. In both novels, we see a greater degree of realism in the characters. The children behave in childlike (and frequently childish) ways. Unlike most of the children in the juvenile fiction of the decade, the characters in these novels are not examples of ideal or wrong behavior. Moreover, the characters are not overshadowed by adults who constantly guide them into proper behavior. Most significantly, the authors of these novels consistently attempt to prevent an adult judgment of the childlike behavior by shifting the narrative point of view from omniscient adult narrators to the children's consciousness.
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