Title Children's literature and capitalism : fictions of social mobility in Britain, 1850-1914 / Christopher Parkes

Published Houndmills, Basingstoke,Hampshire : Palgrave Macmillan, 2012 ©2012

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Description 1 online resource (ix, 215 pages) Series Critical approaches to children's literature Critical approaches to children's literature. Contents Introduction -- Dead Ends and Blind Alleys: Young-Adult Literature and the Nineteenth-Century British Labour Market -- Family Business and Childhood Experience: Charles Dickens's David Copperfield and Great Expectations -- Adventure Fiction and the Youth Problem: Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island and Kidnapped -- Commercialism and Middle-Class Innocence: E. Nesbit's The Story of the Treasure Seekers and The Railway Children -- Educational Tracking and the Feminized Classroom: Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess and The Secret Garden -- The Female Life History and the Labour Market: L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables and Anne's House of Dreams -- Conclusion: Childhood in the Age of Self-Branding Avoiding dead ends and blind alleys: re-imagining youth employment in nineteenth-century Britain -- Family business and childhood experience: David Copperfield and Great Expectations -- Adventure fiction and the youth problem: Treasure Island and Kidnapped -- Commercialism and middle-class innocence: the story of the treasure seeker and The railway children -- Educational tracking and the feminized classroom: a little princess and The secret garden -- The female life history and the labour market: Anne of Green Gables and Anne's house of dreams Summary Children's Literature and Capitalism: Fictions of Social Mobility in Britain, 1850-1914 explores the changing relationship between the child and capitalist society in the works of some of the most important writers of children's and young-adult texts in the Victorian and Edwardian periods. After the first phase of industrialization in Britain, the child emerged as both a victim of and a threat to capitalism. The exploitation of children in the nation's dark, satanic mills revealed the unsentimental nature of the economic marketplace and threatened to render capitalist society as that which can only destroy the innocent child. Examining the works of authors including Charles Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, E. Nesbit, Frances Hodgson Burnett and L.M. Montgomery, Children's Literature and Capitalism explores how a new rhetorical strategy emerged in the nineteenth century which equated the spirit of capitalism with the spirit of childhood. Children were re-configured as subjects defined by their innate ingenuity and invention and, in the process, they were transformed into ideal participants in capitalist society. This is the first study to focus not on what capitalism has done to the child but what the child has done to capitalism Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes Electronic resource, viewed: February 22, 2024 Subject Children's literature, English -- History and criticism Children in literature. Social mobility -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century Capitalism in literature. Children's & teenage literature studies -- English. Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers -- English. Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 -- English. LITERARY CRITICISM -- European -- English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh. Literature. Capitalism in literature Children in literature Children's literature, English Social mobility Children�s & teenage literature studies: general -- 19th century, c 1800 to c 1899. Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers -- 19th century, c 1800 to c 1899. Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 -- 19th century, c 1800 to c 1899. Great Britain Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc. History Form Electronic book ISBN 9781137265098 1137265094

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