ABSTRACT
EDITH NESBIT’S STORIES OF THE BASTABLES: CONSTRUCTION OF A NEW GENRE
OF LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN
Through the examination of E. Nesbit’s tales of the Bastable children, this
thesis explores the innovative content and literary methods in Nesbit’s texts,
methods resulting in the solidification of Nesbit’s credibility and value as a
woman writer for children as a result of her new avenue of children’s literature.
Nesbit employs a distinctive voice of a child-narrator to accomplish her goals of
breaking free from the constraints that bound female writers in Victorian England
and communicating her mixed social and political stances. She creates a space for
herself in which to vocalize her positions on British imperialism and the role and
value of children and childhood in society. Although Nesbit seemingly conforms
to the restrictive genre of children’s literature as one of the only literary
opportunities for women, in reality she utilizes this apparent submission to grant
herself a voice in a society that silenced and marginalized women. In this way, E.
Nesbit constructs a new way of writing for children that better serves both female
authorship as well as a child-audience.
Corinth Ann Gibbs May 2010
EDITH NESBIT’S STORIES OF THE BASTABLES:
CONSTRUCTION OF A NEW GENRE OF
LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN
by
Corinth Ann Gibbs
A thesis
submitted in partial
fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts in English
in the College of Arts and Humanities
California State University, Fresno
May 2010
APPROVED
For the Department of English:
We, the undersigned, certify that the thesis of the following student meets the required standards of scholarship, format, and style of the university and the student's graduate degree program for the awarding of the master's degree. Corinth Ann Gibbs Thesis Author
Ruth Jenkins (Chair) English
Laurel Hendrix English
Toni Wein English
For the University Graduate Committee:
Dean, Division of Graduate Studies
AUTHORIZATION FOR REPRODUCTION
OF MASTER’S THESIS X I grant permission for the reproduction of this thesis in part or in
its entirety without further authorization from me, on the condition that the person or agency requesting reproduction absorbs the cost and provides proper acknowledgment of authorship.
Permission to reproduce this thesis in part or in its entirety must
be obtained from me. Signature of thesis author:
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It has been a long road to finally completing my MA Thesis and there are
quite a few people I am indebted to. I want to thank all my instructors for the
wonderful experiences I had in the coursework for my master’s degree. Dr. Ruth
Jenkins, Dr. Laurel Hendrix, Dr. Rick Hansen, and Dr. Magda Gilewicz
significantly influenced the ways I read literature, write and revise, and teach. A
huge thank you goes to my thesis readers for the time and effort put into getting
this done!
I’ve been blessed with some really great colleagues and friends who have
also helped this thesis come to be. Andria Osteen-Chinn and Jaclyn Hardy read
my writing and responded as only true friends do....over and over and over again.
Thank you!
My family and friends have stood by me and encouraged me throughout
this long process. I owe my parents, Michael and Barbara Potts, grandparents,
Larry and Marquita Taylor, and sisters Jen and Ally for their love, support, and the
hours of babysitting so that I could read, write, and think! Thank you for always
believing I could do it, even when “one more semester” turned into years. Thank
you for keeping me motivated. Thank you to my extended family, especially Aunt
Kathy for always asking about it and Uncle Larry, for the Uncle Larry
Scholarship. My friends – Sarah, Leslie, Andria – thanks for listening to me
complain and for distracting me when I needed it. Thank you to Gary Brown for
financially supporting my education, as well.
My love and appreciation goes especially to my husband, Kaleb, for his
love, encouragement, and (almost) endless patience, as well as to my daughters
v
Nevaeh and Taylor for being so sweet even when Mommy had to work on her
thesis when they wanted playtime, or lunch. I did it for you. I love you.
To anyone who played a role in my education and completion of this thesis,
thank you.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter Page
1. INTRODUCTION AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT . . . . . 1
Introduction: Nesbit’s Contribution to Children’s Literature . . 1
Situating Children’s Literature . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Victorian Society and British Imperialism . . . . . . . 11
E. Nesbit’s Biographical Information . . . . . . . . . 16
2. VICTORIAN CHILDHOOD AND CHILDREN’S LITERATURE . 30
Children and Childhood in Victorian England . . . . . . 30
Victorian Children’s Literature and Childhood . . . . . . 43
3. NESBIT’S MANIPULATION OF OSWALD BASTABLE AS NARRATOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
4. NESBIT’S INTEGRATION OF BRITISH IMPERIALISM INTO LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN . . . . . . . . . . 79
5. CONCLUSION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
WORKS CITED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT
“A story, even a children’s story, is more than just a story, no matter how
simple it may seem” (Kutzer xiii).
Introduction: Nesbit’s Contribution to Children’s Literature
In The Story of the Treasure Seekers, The Would-Be-Goods, The New
Treasure Seekers, and Oswald Bastable and Others, Edith Nesbit utilizes various
literary methods to comment on the society of the Victorian era, effectively
subverting the social restraints that bound and silenced women. She employs
techniques such as creating an obscure as well as child-narrator, directly
addressing her reader, and providing humor, asides, and references to various
literary works. These methods work to Nesbit’s advantage by enabling her to
branch out from the socially accepted genres and manners of writing that women
were subjected to and confined by. In reflecting on British colonialism, the value
and role of literature in Victorian society, and the role of children and childhood in
her society, Nesbit addresses imperialism, childhood and literary value, all topics
which women in Victorian England were discouraged from addressing or
remarking. “Despite the numerous oppositions . . . in her life and children’s
stories, Nesbit managed to liberate herself and her children’s books from Victorian
constraints” establishing herself as an important contributor to the Golden Age of
children’s literature, despite critical perceptions of her as a conservative imitator
of more prominent Victorian authors (Moss, “E. Nesbit’s Romantic Child” 107).
Nesbit, “having conceived of Oswald Bastable, was able to use him to speak for
2
her,” which allowed her to censure the society that she was a part of, without
being condemned and ostracized (Streatfeild 83). The use of a child voice as
narrator sets Nesbit apart from her Victorian contemporaries due to the originality
of Oswald’s tone, humor, and attempted ambiguity, masking Nesbit’s emerging
ideals. Her utilization of a child’s voice also affirms the role of children in
Victorian society as more than vessels to simply be controlled and filled with
information; instead, she gives them value and purpose, intelligence and
autonomy. Her parody of the literary language and content reveals her bias
towards texts offering entertainment and promoting imagination above training
and regulation. With writing for children being one of the few acceptable genres
for women writers, Nesbit resorted to incorporating her more adult views, about
imperialism for example, into her children’s texts. She used child-play to
represent imperialistic endeavors, allowing her to discuss such controversial,
male-dominated issues. Her inclusion of imperialistic games in the Bastable
children’s activities demonstrated her promotion of colonist expansion. Analyzing
Edith Nesbit’s unique literary techniques and the originality of her writing and
ideals, this thesis seeks to validate her as a prominent predecessor of children’s
literature worthy of in-depth study and illustrate how she creates a new avenue of
children’s literature. By including the social implications surrounding imperialism
and the role and status of children as well as authentic representations of children,
Nesbit uses her unique voice of a child-narrator and the realistic games, thoughts,
and attitudes of children to create original and provocative literature.
Situating Children’s Literature
Although writings for children can be traced back before the time of the
Romantics, the widespread, rapid increase in texts for children became apparent
3
towards the end of the Romantic period (late 1700s, early 1800s) and beginning of
the Victorian period. According to Anita Moss, a prominent Nesbit scholar,
Nesbit began writing The Story of the Treasure Seekers in 1898. It first appeared
serially in the Pall Mall Magazine and the Windsor Magazine. Nesbit wrote about
the adventures of the Bastable children in The Would-Be-Goods (1901) and The
New Treasure Seekers (1904), including some tales about the Bastables in Oswald
Bastable and Others in 1905 (Moss, “Story” 188). When she created the Bastable
children, perceptions of children and their role in society ranged from the ideal
obedient and moral child to the glorification of and nostalgia for childhood
imagination and innocence of the Romantics to the wage-earning, slave-like child
of the Industrial Revolution. These images of children dominated children’s
literature and dictated how texts were written for children. Colin Manlove
explains the shift toward the more imaginative children’s literature to which
Nesbit contributed: “by the 1860s the shifting duality of morality and imagination
was on the whole veering to the latter side. The ideas of the ‘beautiful child,’ and
of childhood itself as a separate state, were beginning to take wider hold” and as
that took place, “imagination, not morality [took] the dominant role” (21). Both in
content and style, Nesbit serves as an originator of these more creative and
different ways to view and treat children, and thus, write for them.
Children’s literature emerged as a distinct literary genre and market
predominantly in the Victorian era, during a time commonly referred to as the
“Golden Age” of children’s literature; this results, in part, in response to these
changing perceptions of children and their place in society. According to Jo-Ann
Wallace, “The ‘golden age’ is typically regarded as beginning in the 1860’s with
the almost simultaneous publication of Kingsley’s The Water-Babies (1863) and
Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), and drawing to a close
4
in the late 1920s with the publication of A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) and
The House at Pooh Corner” (172). She also states that this emergence of
children’s literature is “coincident with the establishment of English Studies and
the rise of nineteenth-century colonial imperialism” (172). As the study of
literature increases, authors find in their texts a means of expressing their stances
on issues that confront them. Colonial imperialism, with its apex during the same
time period, became one of those prevalent issues concerning Victorian writers.
Edith Nesbit’s fiction reflects this combination of English Studies and British
colonialism, but she is unique in a significant respect. She writes not for adults
but for children, linking the emergence of children’s literature and textual analysis.
The significance of this parallel between the development of English Studies and
the rise of colonialism influences the relevance of Nesbit’s texts and also the
importance of studying children’s literature as a whole because it demonstrates
how literature can be an avenue to new understandings and perspectives. Edith
Nesbit epitomizes the fusion of children’s literature with English Studies and
imperialism in that through careful study of her writing, readers gain insight into
imperialism from a perspective that differs from the dominant Victorian outlook.
Edith Nesbit, despite her remarkably progressive texts, has been
marginalized to the point of near-exclusion from literary study due to the fact that
her targeted audience consisted of children. Children’s literature in general has
been devalued to the point of existing along the fringes of critical study, much as
children were marginalized in Victorian times. Neither children nor texts written
for them were held in high esteem, and they have largely remained categorized as
insignificant and lacking in depth and value to society resulting from the continued
marginalization of children and lack of significance prescribed to children. At the
time, efforts were made to “designate children’s literature as pre-literary. It
5
quickly came to be associated with popular culture and uncanonised writing”
(Reynolds 15). Nesbit challenges this limiting perception of texts for children as
she demonstrates that stories for children, while intentionally unpretentious at a
surface level, can be equally radical and innovative in content, form, and structure.
The influence of society and culture on literary texts for children acts as
justification for the study of these works, and the subsequent relevance in studying
Nesbit’s texts specifically; they demonstrate other concerns, attitudes, and issues
we may not otherwise encounter or understand such as the opinions, outlooks,
experiences, and thoughts of children of that era, as well as those of the authors
who wrote for them. The study of this genre, especially when children’s literature
increased in popularity for a wide range of authors, provides readers now with
knowledge of society and humanity over time. It often involves family
relationships giving glimpses into a variety of familial dynamics. As Colin
Manlove, author of From Alice to Harry Potter: Children’s Fantasy in England,
says, children’s texts “often have the amount of depth and literary skill we find in
more evidently sophisticated texts” but are limited only by the condescension
imposed upon them by literary scholars, students, and instructors (7). “The
exclusion of children’s literature from the class of serious literature” when it first
appeared “has of course resulted in its being classified as a branch of popular
literature” resulting in limited study and scholarly credibility (Hughes 550).
However, it is through the examination of this marginalized genre that we are able
to discover themes addressed by the less-noted authors of the nineteenth-century.
More recent examination of these texts demonstrates how authors broke through
the constraints that bound them in order to express their viewpoints, and the
viewpoints of their fellow marginalized groups, allowing for the broadening of
outlooks differing from those of the dominant class. While publishers appreciated
6
the new market of texts for children, it was as a pop culture genre rather than as a
new literary genre intended for study and worthy of merit. Publishers enjoyed the
financial profitability of children’s texts and moralists pushed for obedience and
subservience through conduct books, and although they were widely read,
children’s texts were enjoyed on a merely superficial level, with no consideration
for literary technique, complexity, and magnitude. As Victorian children’s stories
were classified as part of popular culture, they became ignored based on the
supposition that, having been written for children, they were unworthy of any
recognition by those in academia. Children were seen as empty vessels, to be seen
and not heard, lesser citizens. Many adopted the Lockean belief that children were
moldable, like wax, and should be fashioned into an acceptable ornament, while
others aligned themselves with Rousseau in thinking that children were living
beings in need of cultivation.
In either case, both perceptions of children played a role in impacting how
Victorians viewed children and childhood. In discussions on why stories for
children were written, “two contrary impulses have often fairly been said to
dominate in children’s literature, particularly during the nineteenth century – the
wish to instruct, and the wish to amuse” (Manlove 18). Nesbit exists on the
periphery of these dual methods of targeting children through literature, making
her views individual and worthy of study. This collaboration from both sides of
the issue set Nesbit apart from other writers of the Victorian period. Earlier in
children’s literature the writing of texts revolved around the goal of moral
instruction, teaching children how to obey and behave. As the perception of
children changed along with Victorian England, authors began to see writing for
children as a way of entertainment, rather than purely as a means of controlling
and manipulating children into submission to adults. Manlove informs us that
7
although early literature for children threatened imagination by its existence as a
source of moral truth and religious understanding, it has come to be seen primarily
as a form of entertainment (40). This stance becomes problematic when children’s
literature is stripped of its relevance, credibility, and its literary value as we see in
its identification with women’s and popular-literature.
Another way society separated children’s literature from high culture and
more valued literature was by labeling it as women’s literature because, in some
cases, it stemmed from small groups of women exchanging stories with each
other. In addition, a majority of the authors of children’s stories were women.
Because the Victorian society prescribed passivity and a secondary place for
women, texts associated with them also became marginalized and devalued. As
Felicity Hughes states in her text on the theory and practice of children’s literature,
“the achievements of the writers [of children’s texts] . . . has been remarkable and
provided a challenge to the critic” creating a “state of confusion” surrounding
children’s literature which led to the “lack of critical and theoretical support”
(560). Authors for children accomplished feats such as reaching both adolescents
and adults through their writing, addressing taboo issues through subtexts without
fear of marginalization, and breaking free from traditional literary conventions.
These successes created struggles for the literary critic in determining whether or
not texts for children were deserving of examination and in understanding how to
confront and respond to children’s texts, resulting in limited literary scholarship
addressing children’s literature. This process led to Nesbit’s exclusion from
serious academic study, even more so than other female writers due to her goal of
writing for a readership of children. Although other serious women writers were
also marginalized and their writing disguised or dismissed during the Victorian
era, works for children that were written by women had two strikes against them,
8
so to speak. It is quite likely then that Nesbit’s sex and decision to write
children’s texts has contributed to her work being discredited; consequently, her
work remains largely unexamined from a critical and theoretical perspective while
other texts by women of the same time have been given credibility and studied
extensively. Nesbit’s Bastable tales suffered from “the exclusion of children’s
literature from the class of serious literature” which “resulted in its being classed
as a branch of popular literature” as well as consigned to another literary
classification also seen as insignificant – women’s literature – which devalued it
even further (Hughes 550). Even so, the triumphs and exploitations of authors of
literature for children, especially Edith Nesbit, have made it increasingly difficult
for scholars to ignore.
Nesbit challenges the marginalization of children and texts written for
them, especially by women, through her use of a child narrator and through her
inclusion of literary texts for children as catalysts for the Bastable children’s
games and experiences. “Female fictions ask us to learn new ways of reading –
and of teaching” based on the fact that female fiction “considers issues of adult
authority and child empowerment and explored what it’s like for juveniles who
seek both separation and relation,” as Nesbit’s writing does (Myers 134, 136).
Edith Nesbit’s texts “raise cultural, political, and maturational issues from a
woman’s point of view;” they challenge the prevailing adult, male slant on
Victorian society (Myers 136). She further demonstrates her validity as a writer
for children worthy of critical study and analysis because careful consideration of
her texts forces critics to “think about how men and women address similar issues,
why they choose certain literary forms, and how some forms get canonized and
others become marginal” (Myers 136). These benefits to society and literary
arenas such as awareness of gender differences in writing, vocalization of the
9
social views of minority and marginalized groups, and discussion of what is
valued in literary study, were not apparent in the Victorian period, and yet are
important to recognize and understand in order to grasp a bigger picture of the
Victorian era than what is set forth in dominant upper-class white male
perspectives.
Edith Nesbit, and other authors of children’s books, suffered from their
“relegation to the ranks of second-class literary citizenship” by being considered
inconsequential in the literary arena (Foster and Simons 127). Because Nesbit’s
Bastable stories were written between 1899 (The Story of the Treasure Seekers)
and 1904 (short stories for magazines about the Bastables turned into The New
Treasure Seekers), they were perceived to be mediocre and subjected to the
resulting marginalization Victorians prescribed to women and children. That
attitude towards texts written by women and/or for children has dominated the
genre until recently. Critical study of the fantasy, adventure, and bildungsroman
narratives has greatly increased as scholars begin to see relevance and insight into
past societies in children’s stories. The inferior position in which some scholars
place texts for children still limits further investigation into this genre of literature.
Those who prescribe children’s literature a lesser value question its relevance and
the depth and scope of its content, and view its literary technique as juvenile,
immature, and unsophisticated. In his text, Sticks and Stones: The Troublesome
Success of Children’s Literature from Slovenly Peter to Harry Potter, Jack Zipes
comments: “There is still a certain sentiment or ideological attitude that the work
in the field [of children’s literature] is not as demanding and deserving of
recognition as the work in other areas” (73). Despite these somewhat prevailing
beliefs, there are various themes now being explored in these stories such as
gender roles, religious and instructional versus entertainment goals of the authors,
10
and other social issues predominant in the Victorian era. Furthermore, “though
some things could not be said at all or only indirectly [in children’s books], the
lack of fully developed rules and patterns left children’s fiction as one of the freest
and most versatile forms of the nineteenth century” (Briggs 401). As a result,
Nesbit became less inhibited by the conventions of Victorian society, like the
subjugation of women and children, that otherwise would have limited her ability
to comment on the society of her time.
E. Nesbit emerges as a Victorian children’s author worthy of critical study
because she creates new literary techniques and purposes and integrates into her
literature for children a unique mix of liberal and conservative ideals. Humphrey
Carpenter, a leading critic of Nesbit’s fiction, acknowledges a lack of significant
study of the depth and individuality of her viewpoints claiming that “any deep
concern with changing the existing social order is notably lacking from the Nesbit
books” (128). In truth, Nesbit suffers marginalization due to the fact that her
literature resists easy categorization within pre-existing genres which critics
mistake for submissive conformity to Victorian ideals. Despite her strong
convictions, awareness of social wrongs, and literary intelligence, her culture, and
current literary theorists limit her by constantly trying to categorize and thus,
constrain her. Instead of appreciating and commenting on the uniqueness of her
writing techniques and social views on children and imperialism, critics dismiss
her when efforts fail to identify her with a major group. When they are unable to
contain her in one set classification, scholars highlight not the tension that Nesbit’s
work create but the seemingly conformist front Nesbit disguises her commentary
behind. As a result, her work is seen as lacking in any social or political
relevance. It has been said that she “seems to be at least partially responsible for
the extraordinarily narrow social compass of English juvenile fiction for the first
11
half of the twentieth century” (Carpenter 128). In reality her work displays an
abundance of social commentary that she enables herself to express by masking it
with acceptable subject matter and literary conventions.
I would argue that Edith Nesbit is a significant forerunner of authors of
modern texts for children. By close and thorough study of her various standpoints
and her manipulation of children’s literature as a means of voicing those opinions
in a society that subjugated women, I challenge these erroneous and limiting
perceptions of Nesbit. Her ability to voice her opinions through writing despite
being a female writer, new modes of writing and storytelling such as Oswald
Bastable as narrator and realistic portrayal of children and their thoughts and
actions act as evidence of her status and momentous influence on the genre of
children’s literature as a whole. Before considering her life experiences and how
they informed her writing, however, the historical context that influenced her must
be established.
Victorian Society and British Imperialism
Edith Nesbit establishes a nuanced stance on imperialism in her literature
that cannot be reduced to the general binaries of endorsing or rejecting British
expansion. Although Nesbit’s attitude towards imperialism aligns with more
conservative views, as we will see through her Bastable stories, the belief that
some of her more traditional stances make her an apologist for imperialism
remains false. Although some critics contend that “adults who produce children’s
books are . . . conscious of conveying morals and values to their young audience,
and want to ensure that those morals and values are culturally acceptable . . . [and
that] the role of children’s texts, both fictional and non-fictional, is to help
acculturate children into society and to teach them to behave and believe in
12
acceptable ways,” Nesbit disrupts this by not only presenting seemingly
conformist ideals to her child-characters and child-readers but also uses those
conservative leanings to allow for more progressive perceptions to be transferred
to them (Kutzer xv). Nesbit creates her own social and political identity, as her
ideology breaks free from the more limiting party views of the time. Instead,
Nesbit masks herself as both a progressive and a traditionalist, effectively giving
herself more freedom to explore the issues important to her, rather than limiting
herself to the issues and concerns of a specific confined group. She uses her
writing to challenge the social constraints of her time, even if the ideas were not in
direct defiance of her government’s policies. Nesbit also refuses to remain in one
classification by expressing more liberal stances in other aspects of Victorian life,
including types of literature and its role in childhood, the state of childhood and
the significance of children in Victorian society. This mixing of viewpoints from
both conservative and liberal thinking groups further reveals the complexity of
Nesbit’s writing and the need for more critical study of her works.
In order to understand Edith Nesbit’s texts and the positions she takes in
regard to imperialism, how children were viewed and treated, and the role and
value of literature that she portrays as subtexts in her writing, we must familiarize
ourselves with the social, political, and even religious attitudes prevalent in
Victorian England. British relationships with other nations expanded during the
Victorian era due to territorial acquisition, leisure travel, exploration of new places
and cultures, and religious conversion. However, despite these positive aspects for
England, many people including abolitionists and feminists objected to those
actions. In fact, “by the mid-1700’s, when literature specifically for children
began to appear with regularity, the British West Indies was already being
depicted as an often-questionable asset,” as were other colonies the British
13
pursued (Sands-O’Connor 2). These political activists objected to the overtaking
of other nations, the subjugation of people of other lands, the “stealing” of goods
and labor, the bringing of foreign customs, art, and behaviors back to England, and
the “waste of energy, population, and money” of colonial expansion (Mermin and
Tucker 106). Many British authors responded negatively to British expansion
explaining that the colonies “[were] filled with invisible danger” not necessarily
Britain’s responsibility to overcome (Sands-O’Connor 10). Other authors, such as
Thomas Macaulay, supported the growth and advancement of the British empire
as a means of civilizing the world. However, unlike Macaulay and others like
him, who supported British imperialism out of racism and a sense of superiority,
Nesbit took a more complex and tolerant stance on imperialism. In her Bastable
stories Edith Nesbit endorses imperialism and employs her literature to support
expansion, and enrichment, of the nation, despite it being a more conservative
outlook. Nesbit complicates the issue of British imperialism by challenging the
racism and bigotry of one side and the close-mindedness of the other.
In her Bastable stories, Nesbit confronts British expansion, one of the most
significant and complex social and political questions that dominated the Victorian
period, by meshing the nationalism of some with the desire of others to “live and
let live.” Nesbit’s writing took place in a time marked by change as “Romantic
nationalism gave way to Victorian reformism” but “the prospect of changing
things, be they legislatures, schools, or sewage systems, aroused the concern of an
entire public” and caused turbulence and complications (Mermin and Tucker 3).
The blurring in Nesbit’s texts of progressive and conventional perspectives mirrors
the apprehension that existed over the changing empire as a whole infiltrating all
of society, from military action to literary topics during this transitional period.
Britain’s citizens began to realize the costs of being “fully extended in the last
14
quarter of the century” as “the tally of lives lost and families broken in missionary
or merchant or colonial service kept before everyone’s mind the high cost of
policing foreign frontiers” (Mermin and Tucker 4). Britons became aware of the
costs of their colonial endeavors and not all were eager to accept them, especially
considering the other risks brought about by their militaristic efforts. Not only did
these endeavors risk the lives of soldiers and others in service to the nation, but
also the safety of the entire nation as their forces became spread thin and doubt
emerged as to whether the British military could protect all their original and
newly acquired territory. At the same time Britons were dealing with these
negative consequences, “British power and influence spread outward around the
globe until it could routinely be remarked that ‘the sun never sets on the British
Empire’” (Mermin and Tucker 105). With the aid of “improvements in
steamships, railroads, the telegraph, bookkeeping, and finance – and also guns –
British people and practices and industrial products flowed outward, as raw
materials, profits, and data flowed back” (Mermin and Tucker 105). This debate
about the advantages and disadvantages of imperialization dominated the period.
The objection to colonizing the other lands “reflected a growing apprehension
concerning Britain’s hegemony, and anxiety linked to a radical and moral decline
which made the nation vulnerable to attack by forces whose brutality was merely a
monstrous reworking of Britain’s own imperial practices” (Bar-Yosef 4). The
“prospect of ‘savage’ forces invading and taking over ‘civilized’ world, colonizing
the colonizers, exploiting the exploiters” was the real concern of those who
frowned upon the expansion (Bar-Yosef 4). While anti-imperialistic citizens
“suggest[ed] that the climate of the West Indies [brought] people closer to their
animal nature (in a negative way)” those in support of the expansion of British
influence argued against this saying “only British intervention [could] reverse the
15
degeneration” of other nations” (Sands-O’Connor 14). This is merely one
component of the debate voiced concerning British growth for, with every
negative element presented by those opposed, supporters countered with
compelling advantages resulting from the expansion.
Nesbit incorporates into her Bastable stories benefits such as employment,
charitable organizations, excitement and adventure, and opportunity for
evangelism provided by Britain’s expansion, stressing their importance to the
nation. A variety of these benefits contributed to Nesbit’s pro-imperialistic
attitude, such as the idea of aiding other people, experiencing and learning from
other cultures and religions, and, as conventional as it sounds, a sense of pride in
her country. Nesbit illustrates, through the lens of a child, the benefits to multiple
generations of British citizens. There existed a wide range of benefits to counteract
the objections to imperialism. The colonies provided options for many different
groups of British citizens. Young men of upper class status “found employment
and scope for ambition in military or government service or commercial
enterprises abroad” (Mermin and Tucker 105). Other wealthy families “sent their
black sheep to the colonies and paid them to stay there” (Mermin and Tucker 105).
Criminals and troublesome citizens were sent to penal colonies such as Australia
while charities were established to transport the impoverished to the new lands in
search of opportunity and prosperity. Furthermore, according to Mermin and
Tucker, “restless spirits traveled in search of excitement and adventure;
missionaries sought to spread Christianity and ‘civilization;’ scientists and artists
pursued materials for their work” (105). As colonies developed, “information was
accumulated and organized . . . explorers ‘discovered’ and mapped regions . . .
painstakingly acquired botanical and zoological specimens . . . cultural artifacts,
ancient and modern . . . fashion” (105). Nesbit references these further benefits
16
through the games, activities, conversations, and the imaginations of Oswald
Bastable and his siblings, illustrating her stance on the issue, thereby providing a
glimpse into the perspectives of marginalized voices like hers through the Bastable
tales. As we will see more in the following chapter on imperialism, the Bastable
children incorporate the excitement and adventure of imperialism, evangelism, and
potential for personal and financial success, among other benefits, into the games
and activities that they engage in which emulate the actions and behaviors of
British imperialists. In this way, Nesbit illustrates not only the progression of
child’s play as preparation for adult life, but also her support of the endeavors of
both the Bastable children and the British colonists.
E. Nesbit’s Biographical Information
Edith Nesbit represents the complexities that accompany being female and
an author at the end of the nineteenth-century as she constructs an identity that
neither conforms to the conservative understanding of women nor completely
abandons that idea. As with British imperialism, Nesbit elicits tensions as she is
neither for nor against cultural prescriptions for women, but rather creates a
middle space for herself and her texts. Nesbit’s literary output, although largely
limited to writing for children, gave her an avenue to express in new and creative
ways her new and original opinions on elements of Victorian culture. Her
biographical details, including her childhood, family, personal interests and
involvements influenced and helped shape the direction of her unique branch of
children’s literature that addressed concerns regarding British imperialism and the
role and status of children through her realistic child characters and narrator and
their activities, perspectives, and attitudes. Nesbit’s personal life and activities
demonstrate even further her refusal to align herself with one extreme or another
17
as she situates herself between conservative and radical standpoints with respect to
her marriage, involvement with the Fabian Society, and personal convictions
drawn from her childhood and youth. Julia Briggs explains that “even fifty years
ago, E. Nesbit’s life presented a number of baffling gaps to her biographer: no one
seemed to know much about her childhood or adolescence, and it was particularly
difficult to establish a definite chronology of the events leading up to her marriage
in 1880” yet despite all the unknown, there are specific elements and events that
unmistakably influence Nesbit’s texts such as her siblings and childhood, her
interaction with her husband, Hubert Bland, her involvement in the Fabian
Society, and some of her other political and moral standpoints (xiii). Eleanor
Graham describes Edith Nesbit in the Introduction to The Story of the Treasure
Seekers saying:
She listened, argued, and learned, thrilled to be in at the birth of a
new epoch. She became the modern woman of her time, cut her hair
short, threw away her corsets, revelled in physical fitness, walked a
great deal and leaped over gates when she had a mind to. She wore
Liberty dresses and refused to adopt fashions that were
uncomfortable. She smoked a great deal, carrying about an old
cardboard corset box with a roller, tobacco, and papers so that she
could make her own cigarettes. (2)
Her lifestyle established her disdain for conformity, and her writing style further
emphasized that resistance. Each stage in her life foreshadows some element of
her texts for children, from how she chooses and describes characters to the
decisions to include certain details including references to other literature and the
integration of British values and ideology.
18
Although little is known regarding the specifics of her childhood years, her
writing evidences the pleasures she enjoyed, and the experiences attributed to
growing up in a healthy, encouraging environment. Nesbit’s ability to write for
children stemmed from her memory of what it was like to be a child: “her love of
parties, games, bicycling, boating, bathing and adventures of all kinds” are evident
in the actions of her child characters, her sympathetic adult narrators, and the
extraordinarily accurate voice of Oswald Bastable as a child-narrator (Briggs xvii).
As Julia Briggs explains, “When [Nesbit] first began to fictionalize her childhood
experiences through the adventures of the Bastables, she seems to have portrayed
herself as twins – as the courageous, lovable Alice and her timid, highly-strung
brother Noel” and “her success as a writer for children is closely bound up with
her peculiarly vivid memories of the joys, pains and passions of childhood” (2).
Nesbit incorporates her own familiarity with childhood into her texts through her
child-characters and all their emotions, activities, encounters, and even their
reactions to each other and adult figures. A further testament to her combining of
her childhood and her texts comes with the inclusion of her siblings (Harry,
Alfred, and Mary) as the other Bastable children. The Bastable family consisted
of five children, with Dora as the oldest, followed by Oswald, Dicky, and twins
Alice and Noel. So “as a family, the Bastables strongly suggest the young
Nesbits, with Mary a little old for Dora, Alfred and Harry translated into Oswald
and Dicky, and the Alice/Noel twins standing for Edith herself” as Edith Nesbit
was the youngest child in her family (Briggs 5). Furthermore, chronicled events
from their childhood translate into some of the amusements and mischief of the
Bastable children. Although not much is known about this time in Edith Nesbit’s
life, there are accounts that “she always had happy memories of the Bastable-like
activities of her brother and herself – the shooting of the fox and the search for the
19
source of the stream in The Wouldbegoods were closely based on episodes
involving her brothers Alfred and Harry” (Carpenter 127). Even some of the
poetry Nesbit penned as a young child “sounds remarkably like the work of the
fictional Noel Bastable,” demonstrating how in touch with her upbringing Nesbit
remained throughout her life, to incorporate it into her writing under the guise of
one of her characters (Briggs 29). We must also remember that this is something
she utilizes, also, to incorporate her adult experiences and judgments into the
Bastable stories, again under the guise of a child character. Critics of E. Nesbit
must remember that “while she identified with children, in writing for them, as she
had identified with Oswald, her books only sold because they appealed to adult
buyers” through Oswald Bastable’s narrative voice, humor, reader-addresses and
appeals (Briggs 400). Nesbit accomplishes this, in part, due to her familiarity with
the thoughts, feelings, and activities of children as well as an adult’s insight into
social issues. In addition to the bond she portrays with her childhood family,
Nesbit’s adult relationships also offer context for, and insight into, the children’s
experiences.
Nesbit’s relationship with her husband also impacted her perceptions of
social issues like class and the demonstration of status in society, and she
demonstrates these aspects of their relationship in her texts, specifically how they
mocked and disregarded ostentatious language some Victorians employed to
display intelligence and social standing. His “ability to ‘talk like a book’ when he
wanted to amuse her, in an absurd parody of the pretentious literary language of
the day” is a “trait inherited by Oswald, Albert’s uncle, and many another young
Nesbit hero” which Nesbit uses to comment on the pompous language in literature
of the time (Briggs 42). She mocks this manner of writing through the characters
that utilize or comment on it. She challenges more formalist and instructional
20
methods of writing which encourage limiting views on children’s thinking,
writing, and overall communication. In some instances Oswald begins to narrate
in that affected way, but soon abandons it due to its complexity, difficulty to use
and difficulty to understand, demonstrating Nesbit’s aversion to that pretentious
style of writing. For example, in The Would-Be-Goods, Oswald begins to tell the
story of how they went on adventures to discover the source of the Nile and/or the
North Pole (because some of them wanted to find one location while the rest
wanted to travel to the other) by saying “I am going to try to write in a different
way . . . ‘Ah, me!’ sighed a slender maiden of twelve summers, removing her
elegant hat . . . through her fair tresses, ‘how sad it is – is it not? – to see such
able-bodied youths and young ladies wasting the precious summer hours in
idleness and luxury’” (Nesbit, “The Would-Be-Goods” 355). After a short while
of writing in this affected style Oswald states, “It’s no use. I can’t write like these
books. I wonder how the books’ authors can keep it up. What really happened
was that . . .” and he goes on to use more colloquial and child-appropriate
language to describe their expeditions (Nesbit, “The Would-Be-Goods” 356). His
use and subsequent rejection of the language of that time again demonstrates how
Nesbit inserts herself into her literature to comment on her society. This
effectively demonstrates that “behind the facade of loyal acquiescent supporter or
a charismatic husband was a deeply unconventional woman” who knew how to
disguise and relate her stances without fear of reprimand or rejection from the
conservative British public through her children’s literature (Foster and Simons
129). Further discussion of Oswald’s narrative strategies and unique traits are
explored in a later chapter, but before then we must continue to consider Nesbit’s
associations to understand the arguments her narrator makes between the lines of
the text. In addition to the impact of Hubert Bland’s affected diction on Nesbit’s
21
writing, his political views introduced E. Nesbit to the circle of friends who
greatly influenced her, the Fabian Society.
Edith Nesbit’s political stances extended beyond simply being a member of
the Fabian Society in that her perspectives often meshed both radical and
conservative leanings, just as her children’s literature thrived on tensions between
differing views and facilitated her ability to comment on societal issues without
immediate ostracism. In fact, she was a “founding member of the Fabian Society
(established 1884),” a socialist organization and thus began “introducing socialist
propaganda in her children’s stories” (Knowles and Malmkjaer 204). This radical
group drew Nesbit and her husband, Hubert Bland, into their “circle of lively,
unconventional friends” (Bell 29) and she “remained a committed, if distinctly
eccentric, socialist all her life” (Briggs xii). Despite this involvement, however,
Nesbit did not strictly conform to their values. For instance, she did not actively
seek women’s suffrage, and apparently had little problem with inequality of class
and the disproportionate distribution of money between those classes, even though
“the injustice of the class system as a whole, and the exploitation of servants in
particular, had always posed a problem for serious socialists” (Briggs xix).
Although Nesbit rejected the stereotype common among the Victorians that
women were “angels of the household,” there existed women who were far more
extreme in their rejection of that title than Nesbit, women who participated in the
Women’s Movement and fought for equality. Although well “aware of all the
controversies subsumed under the woman question” Nesbit “refrained from active
participation beyond her membership in the Fabian Society and her limited
association with its Women’s Group” (Rutledge 225). Nesbit opted to accept the
views of her husband, Hubert Bland, that nature established differences between
man and woman, and that “political and economic equality was unnatural and
22
undesirable, and would undermine family life” (Briggs xviii). This decision to
pursue other areas of commentary in her society caused some scholars to comment
negatively on “Nesbit’s ambivalence toward . . . conventional female roles,”
causing some to perceive her as simply conservative in nature and in writing
(Rutledge 223). Also, “the Blands’ socialist principles and sympathy for the
oppressed never prevented them from enjoying a thoroughly bourgeois affluence,
reflected in their increasingly grand houses, growing numbers of servants and their
practice of philanthropy in the best Victorian traditions” (Briggs 77). This rather
conservative way of living, despite their radical involvements, causes numerous
critics and scholars to immediately write her off as all talk and no action in terms
of more liberal politics. This semblance of conformity, however, worked to her
advantage, allowing for widespread acceptance of her stories for children which
contained her voice, her beliefs, and her values. Amelia Rutledge, in her article
“E. Nesbit and the Woman Question” explains that “Nesbit seems to have been
caught in a double bind . . . in evading any real confrontation with New Woman
issues in her fiction, she was unlikely to receive much critical notice, and the
critics’ general tendency to dismiss women’s fiction insured that little notice was
taken of her work” (235). However had she come across as entirely extremist, her
writings would have been rejected by the more traditional Victorians right from
the beginning. British society tolerated very little in terms of divergence from the
values and opinions of the wealthy, upper-class, choosing instead to marginalize
those perspectives. In an effort to avoid ostracism that would have resulted from
blatant opposition, Nesbit chose to disguise her dissension. As a result of this
calculated manipulation of her society, a free-thinking woman was able to give
herself a voice in the Victorian society that otherwise silenced or marginalized
23
texts by women. Nesbit, aware of her risks, created a new means of expressing
her opinions by mixing radical views with conformity.
Edith Nesbit did not wholly conform to either the radical, New Woman
female or to the conservative, silent and submissive model of women. Her social
positions, marriage, and outspoken, free-thinking personality all disrupted the
Victorian woman ideal. She “demonstrated her own essentially willful character
by marrying Hubert Bland despite her mother’s suspicious disapproval” and “she
had already flouted convention, being seven months pregnant when she married”
(Rutledge 226). In addition, she
was alternately amused and intrigued by the new life-styles that she
came across at the Fabian. Some of those who were in revolt against
the dominant capitalist ethos of Victorian England had rejected more
than its economics: the richly cluttered decor of the period, the
mahogany and thick Turkey carpets were being replaced with
distempered walls, scrubbed deal and coconut matting; the stiffly
boned costumes gave place to flowing Liberty gowns and the heavy
meals to “plain living and high thinking.” (Briggs 66)
Her refusal to align herself with either of the extremes illustrates her complexity
and demonstrates the necessity of studying her works. Nesbit demonstrates the
unique character of a woman who highlighted issues most pressing to her and used
conformity in other areas to emphasize her topics of choice without being
classified as overly liberal and progressive. She was an active, independent,
selective woman who had the individuality to choose what interested and appealed
to her from both sides of the social pendulum, and to apply those things to her life
while standing against those she did not endorse. Nesbit represents the
complexities that accompany being female at the end of the nineteenth-century
24
and constructing an identity that neither conforms to the conservative
understanding of women nor abandons that idea.
The complexities of Nesbit’s fiction, which portrays a unique assemblage
of interests and values, were missed because she refused to follow the established,
generic literary patterns, causing some critics to see her position as nothing unique
and therefore not worthy of much attention, let alone in-depth study and
examination of her texts. For example, U.C. Knoepflmacher and other critics
regard her as “hardly different from her Victorian peers” and reputed as more
radical than she actually was (“Of Babylands and Babylons” 302).
Knoepflmacher admits, “E. Nesbit is occasionally regarded as the first woman
writer of children’s books able to free herself from the realistic conventions that
has still bound fantasists like Ewing, Molesworth, and Mulock” due to her
appearance as a
“New Woman,” far removed from her more straight-laced Victorian
sisters: in 1880 she defied conventionality by being seven months
pregnant when she married Hubert Bland, a womanizer who later
regaled her with two children whom she nurtured along with her
own, though they were born to another woman; she helped found the
Fabian Society; she supported other radical causes and esoteric cults.
(“Of Babylands and Babylons” 301)
Knoepflmacher goes on to argue that Nesbit’s stories do not continue that more
liberal inclination. Instead he compares Nesbit’s writing to that of George Eliot’s,
stating that their fiction “neither radically challenges a patriarchal order nor
sharply departs from the more pronounced moralism of earlier nineteenth-century
women writers” (“Of Babylands and Babylons” 302). However by stating this,
Knoepflmacher requires that Nesbit conforms to one of these two modes of
25
subverting the Victorian society rather than allowing her to challenge those criteria
and manipulate her texts in other ways to break free from social constraints. In
terms of the woman question, Amelia Rutledge adds that “Nesbit’s work
resembles what Ann Ardis calls ‘boomerang’ novels, i.e., those that present New
Woman elements but then subvert them by a reversion to the marriage-plot at the
end” (224). I maintain that this is exactly what Nesbit intended to do, and needed
to do, in order to advance those other radical issues her texts addressed – pro-
imperialism, child advocacy, and her opinion on texts of real literary merit. These
limiting views of Edith Nesbit’s writing ignore the barriers she has broken down
through her writing, such as the inclusion of her political standpoints entirely.
Edith Nesbit’s literary avenues, while limited, presented her with the
opportunity to present in her unique and different way the original opinions on
elements of her culture. She enjoyed many privileges women of Victorian
England were denied by using her Bastable stories as a means of making her views
known, her political associations in particular. “E. Nesbit’s political opinions
permeate[d] her work, sometimes surfacing as bubbles of high-minded propaganda
– on the horrors of industrial disease, the cruelty of poverty and slums and
(without any sense of inconsistence) the blight of urban development” but at the
same time, other attitudes toward British nationalism and imperialism, the status
of children in British society, and even the role of literature did not measure up to
the standards of the Fabian Society (Briggs xix). Still, she participated in many
social activities women were denied, such as engaging in friendship and
conversation with men she found interesting and educated. In addition, the
women she befriended from the Fabian Society represented an “‘advanced’
woman who wrote up her opinions in magazines, or spoke about them in public,
and who expected others to find her views worth hearing” (Briggs 68). So,
26
although her views may not be aligned with women who supported the Women’s
Movement and other radical (for the time) agendas, she still broke free from
traditional Victorianism by giving herself a voice and utilizing that voice to
comment on issues that she found particularly noteworthy. She represents an
alternative type of Victorian woman, unconfined by those who attempt to classify
women as either the submissive angel in the house or the rebellious, eccentric New
Woman. Nesbit’s literary outlet, largely limited to writing for children, gave her
an avenue to express in new and creative ways her new and original opinions on
elements of Victorian culture.
Despite Nesbit’s hesitancy to be fixed as a children’s writer alone, it was
her children’s stories that contributed to her financial success and enabled her to
write subversively. Nesbit herself wrote to her literary agent, JB Pinker, stating, “I
wish you could get me an order for a serial for grown-ups – something like the
Red House. I don’t think it is good for my style to write nothing but children’s
books” because she sought to incorporate more extremist ideals, and her own
stances in general (Foster and Simons 127). She felt constrained by the genre into
which she was placed; she became “wary of being permanently classified as a
literary lightweight” due to her marginalization resulting from the stigma
prescribed to writers of children’s stories (Foster and Simons 127). At the same
time, her consignment to children’s literature “paradoxically facilitated her release
from imposed traditions of canonical writing and allowed her to situate herself in
radical relation to establishment practice” in that she was able to mask “potentially
radical undercurrents by its reassuringly conventional framework” as we will see
through Oswald Bastable’s narratives, effectively involving those who classified
her as moderate and unprogressive (Foster and Simons 127, 129). Nesbit’s ability
to utilize the genre into which she was cast to voice her arguments demonstrates
27
her worthiness to be studied. And although she felt consigned to the genre, “and
knew the limited value placed on children’s books, it was nevertheless as a
children’s writer that she recognized her own achievement” (Briggs 401). Not
only did she speak out in a society that silenced women, but she also presented her
stances on topics of great relevance and debate at the time, issues such as British
imperialism, the role of children, and roles and purposes of literature. As Julia
Briggs explains, “while the marginality of children’s books kept them in low
esteem,” that dismissal also operated as a “source of strength,” especially for E.
Nesbit (401). She goes on to explain that “some things could not be said at all or
only indirectly, the lack of fully developed rules and patterns left children’s fiction
as one of the freest and most versatile forms of the nineteenth century” (401).
While other female authors for children may have taken offense to the category of
literature they were confined to, for Nesbit
it paradoxically facilitated her release from imposed traditions of
canonical writing and allowed her to situate herself in radical
relation to establishment practice [because] Nesbit’s texts are not
merely pieces of childish entertainment nor unthinking inventive
fantasies but highly sophisticated productions which continue to
enact the tensions shared by a number of nineteenth-century texts by
women writers . . . with particular reference to children’s literature.
(Foster and Simons 128-29)
Nesbit’s manipulation of the genre sets her apart from other female authors in that,
while they shared some similar concerns, unlike the others Nesbit broke free from
Victorian constraints and found liberation rather than confinement through her
children’s stories. This unique perspective on writing for children solidifies the
importance of in-depth study and analysis of her works.
28
Nesbit’s children’s stories result from her relegation to the genre of
children’s fiction and ironically that lower status ends up empowering her,
allowing her to address both child and adult, male and female, with her stances on
topics such as the aforementioned status and role of children and childhood and
significance of British imperialism. As a result, Edith Nesbit is found among
other brilliant writers for children who used marginal literary forms to explore
adult and child themes: “in folk tales, ghost stories or in children’s books [such as]
Lewis Carroll’s Alice, Thackeray’s The Rose and the Ring, Kingsley’s The Water-
Babies and much of George MacDonald’s fiction” the authors write “in daring and
experimental ways that point forward to more modernist freedoms” (Briggs 401).
By being classified into a genre that called for adult involvement in the selection
and reading of the texts, Nesbit engaged a wider audience than if she had written
solely for adults. Furthermore, disguising her writing as unassuming children’s
literature enabled her to confront more issues and articulate her opinions.
Evidence in support of this empowerment through a seemingly powerless genre
comes in the realization that “during her life-time the Bastable adventures always
sold significantly better than her fantasies” and her publisher “offered her better
royalties on them accordingly,” demonstrating the value actually given to her
children’s stories (Briggs 215). Nesbit’s personal attitude, involvements,
experiences and opinions appear more predominantly in her texts once we are
aware of her background and how it influenced her writing. As we have
discussed, Nesbit’s unique narrative voice in the Bastable texts acts as one mode
of writing that is influenced by her background, and that sets her apart from her
Victorian contemporaries and allows for her subversion of the restrictive society.
Equally important is the position of children and how they were viewed in
29
Victorian England, especially as it factors into Edith Nesbit’s most popular
writings, the stories of the Bastable children.
Chapter 2
VICTORIAN CHILDHOOD AND CHILDREN’S LITERATURE
Children and Childhood in Victorian England
The Victorian period was a transitional one, a time when childhood as we
recognize it first emerged and authors began to write literature that responded to
that new perception of children. Early on, children were seen as second-class
citizens, unworthy of much attention, and meant to be seen and not heard. As the
period progressed, children began to be addressed in ways more beneficial to the
purposes of the nation, manipulated to be always obedient, submissive, and
supportive of the predominant societal views. Edith Nesbit uses the tales of the
Bastables to combat the limiting aspects of both the traditional and emerging
views of children and the experiences of childhood. Some critics claim that Nesbit
“constructs childhood as a period of helplessness, ignorance, and incompetence”
(Gubar 417). I contend that, in actuality, Nesbit uses the child-like innocence,
imagination, and intuition to argue for children’s significance in their society. She
constructs them as worthy of consideration as her texts present “a group of spirited
and imaginative children engaged in adventures apart from adult,” rather than
disregarding them as uneducated, inept beings (Moss, “Story” 189). Edith Nesbit,
through the inclusion of other literary works and commentary on those texts in her
own writing, addresses children and the experiences of childhood positively,
viewing childhood as a valuable time of growth and exploration and children as
beings in need of respect, attention, freedom, and entertainment. In this way, what
may appear as inconsistent or contradictory in her fiction is really evidence of her
rich, complex construction of childhood in her era. She compounds the tensions in
31
her narrative, refusing to fit in and align herself with either the traditional or new
Victorian way of classifying and defining children and their experiences, for
instance, with the inclusion of the moral lessons the Bastables deliver that lack the
condescension and forcefulness of the conduct-type books of the time. Similarly,
her adult characters in the Bastable tales reveal and emphasize the potential and
relevance of children rather than minimizing the significance, an aspect of her
fiction that will be developed later in the chapter.
E. Nesbit finds in literature for children a means of amusement, and
challenges the prevailing belief of the Victorians that writing for children should
be limited to strict moral and instructional texts. Furthermore, while
“acknowledging the extent to which adults and their texts shape and influence
children, she nevertheless insists that such power does not preclude the possibility
that children can borrow, transform, and renew the scripts they are given,”
undermining the society that suppressed them and giving children credit for their
ability to think and make meaning for themselves (Gubar 426). This does not
simply apply to their involvement with literature, but also to their ability to
maneuver and negotiate other aspects of Victorian society. All of Nesbit’s texts
“explore the anarchic potential of childhood and in their identification with a
juvenile perspective gain a license to satirize adult mores and expose the disabling
effects of a patriarchal” and repressive society (Foster and Simons 129). By
presenting children in this manner, Nesbit gives them value and credit beyond
what they had traditionally been granted, presenting them as intelligent, creative,
and able to critique the world around them through the texts they are exposed to.
In contrast to the majority of the texts written for children during her era,
Nesbit creates narratives from the perspective of the child-character. The child-
characters engage in realistic rather than idealistic behavior. She even constructs
32
the narrative with the voice of Oswald Bastable, giving her texts an even more
authentic awareness and understanding of children and their experiences. Nesbit’s
texts challenge certain literature for children such as Victorian conduct books and
religious texts while endorsing other methods of writing for a child-audience, like
adventure and travel tales, based upon her sense of children and their interests,
values, and needs. Together, these elements of Edith Nesbit’s literature for
children demonstrate her uniqueness as an author, worthiness of study, and
significance to the genre of children’s literature as a whole.
Nesbit’s narratives present an alternative to moralist tales by creating
stories where the children are significant and important, and thrive upon action,
adventure and play. With the adventures the children engage in throughout her
books, Nesbit provides counter texts, “stressing the need for children to play
creatively and to develop their own individuality without the constrictions of adult
control” (Wall 154). As Nesbit states through Oswald Bastable in Oswald
Bastable and Others, “Adventures are the real business of life. The rest is only
inbetweenness” (35). Nesbit voices her belief that children need exploration and
excitement rather than structured teaching and observation. Nesbit’s Bastable
stories stand “squarely between Victorian and modern children’s literature and
[have] been acclaimed by critics as ushering in the ‘Nesbit Tradition’ in twentieth-
century children’s literature, a vision that owes much to the Romantic conceptions
of childhood and imagination” because she saw children as intelligent and
creative, not simply empty vessels to be filled with adult-accepted virtues,
experiences, and thoughts (Moss, “E. Nesbit’s Romantic Child” 107). Instead,
Nesbit’s child-characters, the Bastables, invent their own games and stories, use
imagination to enhance their experiences, and are able to think about and analyze
33
texts and the adult issues they encounter. As Anita Moss describes this shift in
childhood perception,
Nesbit’s child characters liberate themselves from the static myths of
childhood by seizing control of their own stories to become makers
and creators. Unlike Wordsworth’s child characters, Nesbit’s are
highly literate. Although they retain intuitive ways of knowing, the
activities of reading, thinking, fabricating, and even artful lying help
them to evade sentimentality, constraints, and aggressions of adults.
While Wordsworth and MacDonald celebrate the simplicity and
innocence of children, Lewis, Carroll and Nesbit rejoice in their
complexity, intelligence and experience. Nesbit encourages her
child characters and her readers to transcend literary and social
convention, to speak in radically new voices, and to create new
idioms and myths of childhood, just as Nesbit herself broke free of
some rather stifling Victorian children’s literature. (“E. Nesbit’s
Romantic Child” 107)
Nesbit’s realistic portrayal of children and their thoughts and actions and her first-
person child narration illuminate the differences in the outlook on children and the
role of childhood in Victorian between E. Nesbit and more traditionalist views.
Nesbit’s originality is also shown through her incorporation of works of literature
by other authors, some that she endorsed and others that she felt missed the true
interests and value of childhood, such as Kipling, Dickens, Dumas, and specific
texts like Ministering Children and What Katy Did into her works, as will be
discussed subsequently.
Nesbit provides her opinion on Victorian writing for children through her
own texts, and the serialization of the Bastable stories allowed her to communicate
34
to both adults and children. She “presents her critique of life in terms of a critique
of reading habits and the peculiar dangers and deceptions that reading can offer,”
especially texts meant to guide and form children, rather than allowing them
autonomy, entertainment, and imagination (Briggs 402). Throughout their
discussion of books and literary figures, it becomes apparent that “the Bastables
know and distrust moral stories,” as Nesbit also found them a limiting and flawed
way of writing to children (Bell 41). While society predominantly encouraged
educational and religious texts, Nesbit preferred giving children adventurous,
entertaining texts as shown through the Bastable texts. Not all critics have
recognized Nesbit’s critique of the predominantly moral tales offered to children.
Humphrey Carpenter, for instance, suggests that “the fact that Oswald is telling the
story, funny as it may be, disguises the true nature of The Treasure Seekers, which
is as condescending towards children as are any of the Beautiful Child books of
the Molesworth era” (132). He continues, “In fact, The Treasure Seekers is a
strikingly old-fashioned book. Underneath the comedy, the Bastables are steadily
being schooled in the accepted adult virtues. Not only do the adults patronise
them; they never hesitate to deliver more lectures” (134). Carpenter concludes
that “Oswald, H.O. Noel et al. are a far cry from the sharply observant, shrewd,
adult-criticizing children of The Golden Age and Dream Days” (133). He misses,
however, the nuances of her fiction such as where the children break free from
simply demonstrating obedience or where adults interact more with the children
than just to direct or correct. Although Doris Langley Moore, in her Nesbit
biography, agrees with Carpenter to some extent, she notes that Nesbit’s children
do differ from more conservative expressions of children:
The Bastables are perhaps nicer than most real children are – purer,
more honest, less greedy; ruinously destructive, terrifyingly
35
adventurous though they are, they yet provide for the child-reader a
“good example,” for they despise all forms of meanness and are
never consciously cruel. Yet the moral is implied, not preached.
(149)
What Carpenter misses is that although Nesbit’s child-characters do exhibit a
sense of right and wrong, they do not force it upon the reader, as conduct books of
the time articulated and advanced their purpose. Again, this subtlety reveals the
inherent tension created in the Bastable stories by E. Nesbit’s refusal to conform to
or be classified by any existing avenue of children’s literature. The Bastables
learn moral lessons on their own during their adventures and exploration rather
than solely through the instruction of strict, supervising adults. In addition, those
lessons on morality are secondary to the entertainment that the excursions provide.
Finally, while some of the concepts of right and wrong are in alignment with
Victorian standards, some, such as their high regard for the smuggler in The New
Treasure Seekers, complicate a simple enactment of those standards with the
observations of the children. Oswald concedes that “[they] saw that smuggling
must be wrong;” however, he continues, “but we have never been able to feel
really sorry” (Nesbit, New Treasure Seekers 213). The Bastables respond
similarly in their opinions of pirates saying, “For though of course it is very wrong
to be a pirate, it is very interesting too” (Nesbit, New Treasure Seekers 213).
These conflicting, paradoxical responses to people mainstream Victorians
immediately discounted as immoral demonstrate the freedom granted to the
children. It was that liberty which enabled them to draw such conclusions. So,
while the Bastable children address morality, it is on their own terms, not limited
to judgment based on acceptable Victorian conduct. It illustrates a morality
learned through experience, not rule books.
36
Edith Nesbit shows, through adult characters included in the Bastable tales
and the unspoken reality that adults are readers of children’s books, that adults
miss underlying messages about children and society when they minimize the
potential and significance of texts written for children. What Humphrey Carpenter
also fails to take into consideration in his condescending perceptions of Nesbit’s
works are the underlying subtexts of imperialism, the role and status of childhood,
and how literature for children should be written that she sends through these
seemingly conformist thoughts and actions. He does not account for the liberties
she takes, as a woman, in writing about certain issues, or the freedom she grants to
another marginalized group – the children. Despite their somewhat conservative
morals and behavioral limitations, these children remain vocal about their
opinions, and that is an attribute not often granted children at that time. Rather
than presenting her texts from an authoritarian adult perspective, Nesbit remains
completely dedicated to the child narrator and his opinion and perspectives. In
terms of Nesbit’s subversion of the genre, Margaret Meek writes, “During the
early part of childhood when children are discovering what books are and what
reading can be like, they are the implied audience. But the books themselves are
produced, sold, bought, read, and judged by adults” which is exactly what Nesbit
aimed at in writing stories for children, but with underlying adult assertions about
the role and status of children, literature, and imperialism (91). For example, as
Anita Moss puts it in “The Story of the Treasure Seekers: The Idiom of
Childhood”,
Nesbit’s subversively anarchic spirit and her deep suspicion of social
institutions are expressed in the Bastables’ rebellion against adult
institutions. The most sympathetic adults in the Bastable stories are
writers. The least sympathetic adults are associated with
37
bureaucracy: the clergyman and Lord Trottenham, M.P., in The
Story of the Treasure Seekers, and the rude policeman and sour
missionary in The Wouldbegoods. Association with bureaucracy,
Nesbit implies, may cause adults to forget what it is to think, feel,
and imagine as children and hence, to lose a vital part of themselves.
(196)
By presenting texts with a child narrator that is seemingly for children with adult-
themed undertones, Nesbit dismantles the Victorian standard of literature for
children by first presenting progressive, affirmative visions of Victorian children.
Unlike the more traditional stance of the time that children should be seen and not
heard, Nesbit gives her child characters center stage in her texts, imparts upon
them a voice of their own to tell their stories, and incorporates adult figures into
her writings who also view children with an outlook similar to Nesbit’s own.
E. Nesbit creates adult characters in her texts to demonstrate the way she
believes adults should treat children, lovingly and as intelligent, innovative
creatures. Albert-next-door’s uncle is the first adult shown in the Bastable stories
to treat children as equal human beings, thereby illustrating Nesbit’s regard for
children. In The Story of the Treasure Seekers Albert’s uncle, as he is titled by the
narrator, encourages the children in their imaginative and adventurous endeavors
by participating in these along with them. For instance, when the Bastables
attempt to restore the fortunes of their family by playing as bandits and kidnapping
Albert-next-door for ransom, Albert’s uncle plays along, exclaiming, “Alas, alas,
my nephew! Do I find you the prisoner of a desperate band of brigands? . . .
Where’s the dungeon?” (90-91). He even goes so far as to say, “Albert really is
not worth three thousand pounds” but instead offers to pay them some loose
change from his pockets for his release (91). In this way he rewards them for their
38
creativity and play. This attitude differs from the more conservative Victorians
who emphasized work, moral teaching and guidance, and obedience. Oswald also
relates to his audience that “it was Albert’s uncle who thought of our trying a
newspaper . . . he thought we should not find the bandit business a paying
industry, as a permanency, and that journalism might be” (94). The Bastables took
that into consideration and decided to try it, and “when it was done Albert-next-
door’s uncle had it copied for [them] in typewriting” (96). This involvement
portrays Nesbit’s belief that children need to be encouraged in their games and
ideas. Nesbit subtly promotes this though her writing by giving the Bastable
children success in their activities: they earn money from Albert’s uncle for
releasing him from captivity and eventually earn money by selling Noel’s poem,
The Wreck of the Malabar, which they first included in their newspaper. Yet even
with Albert’s uncle’s advocacy of the children and their activities, Oswald still
relates, “We don’t mind Albert’s uncle chipping in sometimes when the things
going on, but we are glad he never asked us to promise to consult him about
anything” (159). By making this statement through Oswald, Nesbit maintains that
while there exists a positive way to appreciate and encourage children (as we will
see more in adults other than Albert’s uncle as well) it remains necessary to give
them freedom and opportunity to exercise their thoughts and ideas.
Another example of Nesbit’s ideal adult interaction with the Bastable
children is found with Mrs. Leslie, an author whom the Bastable children meet on
their trip to sell Noel’s poem, The Wreck of the Malabar to an editor in a further
attempt to restore their fallen fortunes. H.O. Bastable accompanies them to the
train station and “called out ‘Good Hunting!’ as the train started” which Mrs.
Leslie recognized as coming from Kipling’s The Jungle Book (Nesbit, Story of the
Treasure Seekers 54). She remarks, “That’s very pleasant to hear . . . I am very
39
pleased to meet people who know their Jungle Book. And where are you off to –
the Zoological Gardens to look for Baghera?” (54). They were “pleased . . . to
meet someone who knew the Jungle Book” and so started up a conversation with
her and she ended up being a famous poet who helped them succeed in selling
Noel’s poetry (54). The attraction the Bastables feel for Mrs. Leslie, and their
subsequent success in attaining wealth through their association with her,
demonstrates Nesbit’s endorsement of those who read and write texts that she
values and who treat children as she feels they should be treated, as ingenious
readers and learners. Mrs. Leslie demonstrates this as she engages the children in
conversation around the text and encourages their pretending with reference to
another character from the book and a way they could potentially personalize the
tale.
Nesbit incorporates other adults throughout the other Bastable tales who
also enact Nesbit’s attitude towards children and their childhood experiences. In
The New Treasure Seekers the Bastable children go to stay at the Red House, and
so they give their guardians there the names Mr. and Mrs. Red House. Oswald
describes them saying, “As far as a married lady can possibly be a regular brick,
Mrs. Red House is one. And Mr. Red House is not half bad, and knows how to
talk about interesting things like sieges, and cricket, and foreign postage stamps”
(105). Nesbit, through Oswald, describes them as such because of the way they
interact with the children, playing and conversing with them as equals, not simply
as beings to be tolerated and controlled. Later in the text the children go to stay
with another woman whose cousin, Mrs. Bax, comes to stay with them. Their
father writes to them stating that “she is going to Lymchurch to rest” and he wants
them all to “be very quiet” and not “bother her to tell [them] stories” despite that
she “has traveled a great deal” (235). Oswald explains that “if he had not been
40
told how quiet she wanted to be he would have thought she looked rather jolly.
She has short hair and gold spectacles. Her skirts were short, and she carried a
parrot-cage in her hand” (238). Not only does this appearance fit Nesbit’s
description, but as we will find out, she too fits the profile of positive adult
company for children. Although she looked like an adult they would have fun
with, they remembered their father’s request:
Mrs Bax seemed very noble. She kept trying to talk to us about
Pincher, and trains and Australia, but we were determined she
should be quiet, as she wished it so much, and we restrained our
brimming curiosity about oppossums up gum-trees, and about emus
and kangaroos and wattles, and only said “Yes” or “No,” or, more
often, nothing at all. (Nesbit, New Treasure Seekers 240-41)
While this shows their obedience to Father, it also demonstrates the restraint that
being quiet, submissive children has on their learning and activities. It is not
nearly as entertaining, educational, or interesting when they follow the “seen-and-
not-heard” model. Later, when the children get into an altercation with the police
for playing at being peddlers without a license, Mrs. Red House comes to their
rescue along with her friend, Mrs. Bax. The children were shocked to see them
together because Mrs. Red House exemplified one type of adult and Mrs. Bax
represented the less-appealing adult to the adventurous, questioning Bastables.
When Mrs. Bax sees how they respond to Mrs. Red House she exclaims, “Chloe,
you seem to be a witch. How have you galvanized my six rag dolls into life like
this?” because with her they had been quiet and reserved (256). To answer Mrs.
Red House’s inquiries regarding their behavior towards Mrs. Bax “[they] told how
Father had begged [them] to be quiet, and how [they] had earnestly tried to” (257).
Once the truth emerges, Mrs. Bax exclaims,
41
Oh, my dears! You don’t know how glad I am that you’re really
alive! I began to think – oh – I don’t know what I thought! And
you’re not rag dolls. You’re heroes and heroines, every man jack of
you. And I do thank you. But I never wanted to be quiet like that. I
just didn’t want to be bothered with London and tiresome grown-up
people. (257)
Through Mrs. Bax, Edith Nesbit presents the dichotomy of adult perspectives
towards children at that time. Originally she stood for the more rigid, suppressive
adults, but, as Oswald put it, “Mrs. Bax, now that her true nature was revealed,
proved to be A1. The author does not ask for a jollier person to be in the house
with. We had rare larks the whole time she stayed with us” (257). Nesbit utilizes
the character of Mrs. Bax to demonstrate Nesbit’s belief in the beneficial ways for
adults to interact with children. Oswald tells the reader,
We had discovered her true nature but three days ago, and already
she had taken us out in a sailing-boat and in a motor car, had given
us sweets every day, and taught us eleven new games that we had
not known before; and only four of the new games were rotters.
How seldom can as much be said for the games of a grown-up,
however gifted! (258)
He reveals their positive estimation of her, as well as her obvious affirmation and
enjoyment of the children. Mrs. Bax is an exemplary model of the adult
perceptions of and responses to children and childhood that Nesbit desires to draw
attention to and support. The similarities between Mrs. Bax and Edith Nesbit are
evident given Anita Moss’s description of Nesbit in her article, “The Story of the
Treasure Seekers: The Idiom of Childhood” that says, “An unconventional
Bohemian who refused to wear corsets, E. Nesbit went about in flowing, aesthetic
42
gowns with bracelets to her elbows, wore knickers, rode the bicycle, jumped
fences, smoked in public, adopted two of her husband’s illegitimate children as her
own, and tolerated a highly unconventional household” (188). Nesbit makes her
views on children and their experiences known through the Bastable children’s
opinions on the adults in their lives. Those characters such as Mrs. Leslie, Mrs.
Red House, and Mrs. Bax demonstrate how, according to Nesbit, adults should
give children freedom while also encouraging them to use their imaginations, play
games, and voice their thoughts and feelings on different subjects.
In addition to writing with the goal of changing how children and childhood
were viewed by her society, Nesbit wrote to effect change in how people wrote for
children. She models this in her own texts by presenting the Bastable children as
unique, independent, and intelligent beings deserving of books that entertain and
allow them to develop their imaginations and make their own meaning of what
they read and experience. In the Bastable stories, Nesbit showed herself clearly
aware of the reader at the receiving end of her tale-telling and she wrote to benefit
them. Instead of simply aiming to guide and instruct, she sought to entertain,
educate, and relate childhood experiences, a strategy that will be developed in the
next section of this chapter. Throughout the Bastable stories, Nesbit uses her
unique literary techniques to endorse imaginative and entertaining texts, while
parodying the more rigid religious and instructional writings, revealing the
restrictive and stifling effects of those texts. Nesbit used the literary avenue as her
means of participating in the conversation surrounding the role of children and
significance of childhood in Victorian England. In order to give herself a voice in
the discussion Nesbit disguises her commentary as children’s literature, while it
seemed
43
to belong in tone with the adult stories of the time rather than the
work specially written for children. Indeed, the Bastable stories
made their appearance in magazines where they would be read by
adults before being passed on to the children. There was a spirit of
jovial comedy in many adult stories of the time . . . and E. Nesbit
took it over into children’s books when she invented the Bastables
getting involved in their well-meant mistakes. (Bell 36-37)
This act of presenting children’s stories to adults not only served her purpose of
commenting on her society to an audience who would otherwise ignore or dismiss
her, but it also allowed her to present her views on the quality of certain writing
and ways of composing texts for children, and through them reiterating the
significance she granted children and their childhood experiences. As we will see,
within her own texts Nesbit refers to other literary works in an effort to comment
on those that influence children positively and those that limit their potential.
Victorian Children’s Literature and Childhood
Through her stories Nesbit creates a new genre within the scope of
children’s literature, one that encourages and facilitates literary analysis by
children. Nesbit made literature and its relationship to childhood a predominant
theme as the children analyze, mirror, and even challenge and criticize various
literary works throughout the Bastable texts. Julia Briggs informs us that “The
Treasure Seekers is above all a book about books, for the children’s literary
expectations govern many, perhaps most of their adventures, which are themselves
conveyed in parodies of contemporary literary cliches” (187). The children base
their excursions on elements of various texts they have read, and even their “many
efforts to garner funds derive from ideas they have taken from various texts”
44
(Gubar 411). Nesbit incorporated a number of important texts into her writing to
show its significance to children such as, but not limited to
La Motte Fouqué’s Sintram (1814), Dumas’s The Count of Monte
Cristo (1845), Captain Maryat’s The Children of the New Forest
(1847), Charlotte M. Yonge’s The Daisy Chain (1865), Dickens,
and, more recently, Kipling’s Jungle Books and Stalky, Kenneth
Grahame’s The Golden Age and Sherlock Holmes, as well as books
written in the mid-century evangelical tradition, such as Ministering
Children (1854), and What Katy Did (1872). (Briggs 402)
Through allusion to these texts, “Nesbit . . . explores the place of writing,
publication, and reading in the child’s imaginative life, and suggests ways that
children use reading and writing to make sense of their experience and to survive
both pain and benumbing boredom” (Moss, “Story” 189). The Bastable children
use the texts they encounter to create entertainment and make sense of the world
around them.
Nesbit uses other literature as examples throughout her Bastable stories to
demonstrate her support of, and the value of an emphasis on imagination and
adventure in texts for children. She presents her position on important texts for
children as the Bastables tend to have success in their endeavors that mirror the
more entertaining and less instructive texts. These interesting and stimulating
texts are those the children find most appealing. The most common references
come from Rudyard Kipling’s texts of adventure and exploration. For instance,
the Bastable children mimic The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling when they
pretend to be Mowgli and the animals, and their efforts are successful in that they
are sent to the country where they have more freedom and inspiration to exert their
imaginations and explore around them. This benefit to the children resulting from
45
their Jungle Book antics illuminates Nesbit’s endorsement of Kipling’s writings.
Nesbit’s esteem for Kipling’s texts, as evidenced by the Bastables’ imitation of his
works as well as their repeated praise of his tales, developed for the following
reasons:
Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Books (1895) tell of the Indian boy
Mowgli who [is] brought up in the jungle by beasts . . . In his Indian
jungle, Kipling created one of the first secondary worlds with its
own laws in children’s fantasy; and he also married the pastoral
impulse of The Water Babies, the Alice books . . . to the savage facts
of wild animal life. The books were instantly popular, for they
united fantasy with the adventure story of faraway lands; though
secretly they were also an allegory of the way Europeans should try
to relate to the culture and variety of the Indian peoples. (Manlove
37)
Edith Nesbit appreciated Kipling’s work and showed her support for his writings
through the Bastable children’s appreciation for the Mowgli stories, and the
victories they reap from imitating those texts. In The Would-Be-Goods the
Bastables “play Jungle Book” and “the lawn under the cedar was transformed into
a dream of beauty, what with the stuffed creatures and the paper-tailed things and
the waterfall” (325, 326). She reveals the benefits he bestows on children through
his literary works: new places, experiences, creatures, and excitement. Nesbit did
not limit her commentary on literature for children entirely to allusions to Kipling,
however. The Bastable children consistently refer to imaginative games about
pirates, smugglers, Indians, and savages inspired by their other readings. Oswald
and his siblings play at savages when they incorporate Rudyard Kipling’s texts
and others, such as The Last of the Mohicans that referenced Indians and natives
46
of the British colonies, into their make-believe. “H.O. painted his legs and his
hands with Condy’s fluid – to make him brown” and then during the game Oswald
“sprang forward with the native bow and arrows out of uncle’s study” to protect a
“gentle Indian maid” (326). The children enjoy the excitement and independence
of the Indian people they have read about. Nesbit’s purpose behind such
references is clear: “Savages have a kind of freedom that most children long for,
but rarely achieve” and as is evidenced in her texts, Nesbit felt children were
entitled to that sense of independence (Kutzer 8). M. Daphne Kutzer continues by
saying, “Pirates are also common characters in children’s fiction, and are
appealing for many of the same reasons natives are: they live by their own rules,
are seemingly free of authority, and have many more adventures than children
restricted to nursery, garden, and school can have” (8). This adequately explains
why Edith Nesbit incorporated those types of characters to prompt the children’s
play. Their entertainment, enthusiasm, and learning in games taken from stories
about those types of people expresses Nesbit’s beliefs concerning positive texts for
children.
Nesbit illustrates her support of realistic writing for children through
instances when the children imitate authentically written texts. For instance, when
the children go for a boat ride and witness a snake slithering through the water,
Oswald describes it saying, “it swam with four inches of itself – the head reared up
out of the water, exactly like Kaa in the Jungle Book – so we know Kipling is a
true author and no rotter” (Nesbit, Would-Be-Goods 344). The Bastables trust his
writing as genuine and attentive to the child-reader. Oswald goes on to repeatedly
uphold Kipling’s value by referring to him as “that great and good writer” (Nesbit,
New Treasure Seekers 48). Edith Nesbit reveals her partiality for Kipling in that
she refers to him and his texts more than any other author throughout the Bastable
47
stories and the Bastable children hold him and his texts in high regard, beginning
in The Story of the Treasure Seekers and continuing throughout the Bastable
series. However, she does integrate other authors who write realistically into her
texts to further support that method of writing for children. Nesbit and other
authors she references write faithful representations of children, their thoughts,
and their experiences rather than idealizing or dismissing them. Nesbit validates
this manner of writing through her texts, instead of those less accurate or true-to-
life. In The Would-Be-Goods, Oswald becomes so overwhelmed by their activities
and the results of those endeavors that “he sat down suddenly, just like Betsy
Trotwood did in David Copperfield, which just shows what a true author Dickens
is” (363). Nesbit’s approval of different authors and their writings hinges on the
children’s ability to authentically relate to the texts when they read them. Nesbit
illustrates her support of some texts by drawing similarities or parallels between
literary works and the Bastable adventures. She expresses the children’s interest
in and amusement from stories by authors such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle by the
fact that Oswald exclaims, “Good old Sherlock Holmes!” when their adventures
resemble those of the famous literary figure, again due to the realistic nature of the
writing and how it comes to life in their own experiences (New Treasure Seekers
134).
Through references to the narrative techniques of other literary works of the
time Nesbit reveals her approval and disapproval of different ways of telling a
story. Not only does Nesbit divulge her regard for Kipling’s texts due to their
adventurous elements such as exotic settings, characters, and plotlines, but she
highly values his methods for writing for children as well. When Oswald has a
difficult time thinking of a way to best end his story he uses a technique of
Kipling’s and credits him saying, “I think that is such a useful way to know when
48
you can’t think how to end up a chapter. I learnt it from another writer named
Kipling. I’ve mentioned him before, I believe, but he deserves it!” (Nesbit, Story
212-13). This reference to Kipling and blatant admiration on Oswald’s part
illustrates Nesbit’s own endorsement of him and his techniques for writing for
children. Nesbit incorporates this type of endorsement for Kipling throughout the
Bastables stories when Oswald reflects on Kipling and what he has learned from
his texts. For instance, in The New Treasure Seekers Oswald starts to tell the story
but then regresses explaining that “the next Christmas saw us the affluent nephews
and nieces of an Indian uncle – but that is quite another story, as good old Kipling
says” (22). Oswald utilizes the same methods of storytelling as Kipling, further
revealing Nesbit’s appreciation for Kipling and his techniques.
She further emphasizes her position that literature for children should
address the real interests and concerns of children by referencing conduct books of
the era and associating them with failures of the Bastables because of the focus on
adult affairs and anxieties rather than those of the children. She incorporates other
readings when they intend to save a gentleman from deadly peril in The Story of
the Treasure Seekers and in The Would-Be-Goods when they try (unsuccessfully)
to live up to the children of the conduct books. Their “efforts to emulate the
virtuous child heroes of texts like Ministering Children prove equally disastrous . .
. in stories like ‘The Benevolent Bar’ and ‘The Conscience-Pudding’” (Gubar
419). In both tales the Bastable children attempt to provide food or drink to those
less fortunate and instead, end up offending those they were trying to serve. They
fail to achieve the goal of being good little British children. The Would-Be-Goods
revolves around the children’s idea to “propose to get up a society . . . and keep a
journal-book saying what [they’ve] done . . . The aim of the society is nobleness
and goodness, and great and unselfish deeds. We wish not to be such a nuisance
49
to grown-up people and to perform prodigies of real goodness” (328-29). They
wanted to “rise above the kind of interesting things that you ought not to do, but to
do kindness to all” (329). When all of their well-intentioned efforts at acceptable,
gentlemanly and gentlewomanly behavior fail, the audience realizes how futile,
limiting, and dull those traits, and the books that endorse them, are. Oswald
informs the reader that the actions they engaged in as a result of their British sense
of duty were not done to please themselves, but because it was their responsibility
but, “that made no difference to [their] punishment” and illustrates the negativity
of the British obligation to be good (332-33).
Nesbit reveals her repugnance for conduct books and religious literature
through the negative results the Bastables experience in impersonating children of
those texts. They not only do not accomplish their goals, but often their attempts
lead to catastrophe and punishment. She even portrays the religious and
instructional books negatively through Oswald’s explanation that “the backs of
them were beautiful – leather and gold – but inside they were like whited
sepulchres, full of poetry and improving reading” (Nesbit, New Treasure Seekers
216). In The Would-Be-Goods Oswald again states his revulsion at the thought of
reading and imitating the contents of conduct books when he says, “I’m not going
to smooth the pillows of the sick, or read to the aged poor, or any rot out of
Ministering Children” (329). The children thwart the deceptive appearance of
merit of the conduct books by first failing at anything they do that conforms to the
acceptable British standards, and then, through description, presenting the content
as worthless, boring and archaic. On the other hand, when the Bastables replicate
tales from Kipling’s The Jungle Book the results, while initially appear negative in
that “[their] extended reenactment of Mowgi’s experiences in the jungle leads
them to be beaten and banished to the country at the beginning of The
50
Wouldbegoods,” the actual outcome is positive because the children are able to
enjoy more freedom and other experiences (Gubar 419). Marah Gubar elaborates
on the practice of imitating occurrences in other literature:
A number of critics have noted the extraordinary extent to which
Nesbit’s child characters are saturated in and fascinated by all kinds
of literature. In book after book, Nesbit portrays young people as
irrepressible mimics who shape their games, ideals, behavior, and
even speech around texts created by adults. In The Story of the
Treasure Seekers, for example, the Bastable children swipe
scenarios for their activities from Kipling, Conan Doyle, Marryat
Edgeworth, de la Motte Fouque, Pope, and the Arabian Nights, as
well as assorted picture books, newspaper stories, and
advertisements. (411)
As a result of the incorporation of other texts into her own literature, Nesbit
reinforces the significance of written works for children, demonstrating their
influence on the attitudes and behaviors of children. She also addresses the
consequences of what can be gained or lost by association with different types of
texts in that the imaginative texts provide experience and reference for the children
while conduct books are uninspiring and off-putting. Nesbit, in her Bastable
stories as well as her other texts, “takes for granted that children, whether
characters or readers, are intelligent, independent beings, capable of following
suggestions and acting on their own initiative” and she uses the inclusion of other
works to demonstrate their abilities (Wall 154).
In addition to using conduct books, Nesbit incorporates other types of
writing for children that fails to engage, enlighten, educate and entertain children
as a means of presenting her views that literature for children should not be merely
51
superfluous and instructional. She endorses some authors and texts over others
through how her child-characters and unique child-narrator refer to and use the
writings they encounter. When the selling of Noel’s poetry earns more than
Oswald expected in their efforts at reestablishing the Bastable fortunes, he
explains by saying, “I believe nobody really likes poetry, and yet everyone
pretends they do, either so as not to hurt Noel’s feelings, or because they think
well-brought-up people ought to like poetry, even Noel’s. Of course, Macaulay
and Kipling are different. I don’t mind them so much myself” (Nesbit, Oswald
Bastable 24). Through this assertion Oswald reveals his own, as well as Nesbit’s,
repugnance for more austere and formal texts. He refers to poetry as a genre that,
rather than being engaging and entertaining, attracts an audience only because it is
associated with the Victorian aristocracy, education, and acceptability. The poets
whose work Oswald and Nesbit approve of are those with a goal more to amuse
than to lecture, instruct, morally advise, or fit into the realm of the upper classes.
Dull, pompous, or strictly religious writings do not appeal to the Bastables or to
Nesbit as is evident when Oswald tells of a book Uncle sent to them. He describes
it saying, “It was The Golden Age and is A1 except where it gets mixed up with
grown-up nonsense” (Nesbit, Would-Be-Goods 344). Their preference for
adventure, exploration, discovery and entertainment mirrors those elements of
literature that Nesbit herself values and deemed appropriate and important for
children. Oswald and his siblings come across as well-read and knowledgeable,
but resist teaching lessons to the reader, especially at moments during the stories
where Oswald reveals some of their learning and natural intelligence. One such
instance was when Oswald announces that “the girls picked a lot of flowers. I
know the names of some of them” (Nesbit, Would-Be-Goods 359). But then tells
the reader, “I will not tell you them because this is not meant to be instructing”
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(Nesbit, Would-Be-Goods 359). He does not want his stories to resemble those
purely instructive and informative writings he loathes. Oswald’s aim remains to
entertain and engage his readers, not to teach lessons or morality, or to simply
appeal intelligent and of a high social status. Nesbit allows Oswald’s opinion and
use of and relationship to specific literary texts and styles to speak on her behalf,
upholding those values she endorses and degrading and dismissing those she finds
offensive, dangerous, or simply boring to children.
Nesbit also uses her allusions to this range of written works to portray other
unique and positive qualities of the Bastable children such as their charming,
enterprising, and creative characteristics versus the plain, uninspiring traits of
characters more in line with children of religious and instructional texts. Nesbit
associates the Bastables with active imaginations and abundant creativity and
juxtaposes them with other child-characters in the texts who are lacking in
inventiveness. The Bastables, who have more appreciation for the adventurous,
imaginative texts, are juxtaposed against Albert-next-door in The Story of the
Treasure Seekers and Daisy and Denny, children of a business partner of the
Bastable’s father in The Would-Be-Goods, who are prone to reading and behaving
like the children of religious conduct books. As a result, Albert-next-door and
Daisy and Denny are seen as meek and dull while the Bastables thrive through
entertainment, learning, imagination, and creativity. For example, when Albert-
next-door does not understand their games adapted from literature they have read,
Oswald makes excuses for him stating, “You see, Albert-next-door doesn’t care
for reading, and he has not read nearly so many books as we have, so he is very
foolish and ignorant, but it cannot be helped, and you just have to put up with it
when you want him to do anything” (Nesbit, Story 23). Similarly, in describing
Daisy and Denny, it is much the same: “The newcomers (Daisy and Denny) would
53
never have done for knight-errants, or to carry the Cardinal’s sealed message . . .
they would never have thought of anything to say to throw the enemy off the scent
when they got into a tight place” because according to Oswald they did not have
the imagination the Bastables had, resulting from their lack of familiarity with the
imaginative, entertaining texts Nesbit herself endorsed (Nesbit, Would-Be-Goods
324). This lack of originality on the part of the Bastable children’s playmates
stems from their lack of familiarity with the kind of works Nesbit endorses.
Nesbit highlights the benefits of abundant reading of texts that inspire and elicit
original thoughts, games, and perspectives.
Nesbit opens specific conduct texts up to criticism when she situates the
less appealing child-characters in relation to those texts, and associates the more
charming Bastables with the adventure and amusing texts. Not only does this
establish the importance of literature as entertainment for the children, rather than
educational instruction or moral guidance, but “The Treasure Seekers keeps the
relationship between life and books under continual scrutiny, and this is made
possible by the use of children’s play and games as central themes” (Briggs 188).
By creating children who are interested in literature, Nesbit creates a context that
allows for Oswald to voice his (and Nesbit’s) appreciation for and integration of
some written works such as texts by Kipling and Dickens. At the same time,
Oswald (and Nesbit) is able to disparage other writing as dull, pompous, and
written with outdated perspectives of children in mind. An illustration of this
comes from Oswald’s complaint concerning Daisy’s lack of imagination and
adventurous play. Oswald explains that Albert’s uncle “said it came from reading
the wrong sorts of books partly-she has read Ministering Children, and Anna Ross,
or The Orphan of Waterloo, and Ready Work for Willing Hands, and Elsie, or
Like a Little Candle, and even a horrid little blue book about like something or
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other of Little Sins” (Nesbit, Would-Be-Goods 338). Once he hears this dreadful
news “Oswald took care she had plenty of the right sorts of books to read, and he
was surprised and pleased when she got up early one morning to finish Monte
Cristo. Oswald felt that he was really being useful to a suffering fellow-creature
when he gave Daisy books that were not at all about being good” (Nesbit, Would-
Be-Goods 338). Through this interaction Nesbit presents her standard for good
children’s stories, while also identifying those that do not interest or benefit
children. She establishes her stance on quality literature for children which
challenged the dominant views of traditional Victorian opinion on literary value.
Through the Bastable children Nesbit gives herself a forum for commenting
on not only the types of writing for children that she considered beneficial, but
also on the importance of reading and analyzing various texts. While critics like
Carpenter minimize Nesbit’s abilities, it remains true that “like a number of major
nineteenth-century writers – among them Jane Austen and Flaubert – E. Nesbit
presents her critique of life in terms of a critique of reading habits and the peculiar
dangers and deceptions that reading can offer” (Briggs 402). As Oswald states in
regards to the turnaround of their fortunes at the end of The Story of the Treasure
Seekers, “I can’t help it if it is like Dickens, because it happens this way. Real life
is often something like books” (Nesbit 238). The Bastables analyze and interpret
much of what they think about and experience in terms of the literature they are
familiar with. When the Bastables read and attempt to imitate the religious and
instructional texts, it dampens their fun-filled experiences, damaging their
freedom, creativity, and good intentions. Conversely, when they engage in active,
imaginative play they find that life is often exciting and stimulating, just like the
entertaining books Nesbit endorses for and through them.
55
Through Nesbit’s distinct intertwining of the Bastable children’s childhood
and the literature they read she challenges the belief that all adult influence stifles
and controls children. She disrupts “the colonization paradigm that has proven so
popular and influential with theorists of childhood and children’s literature
[which] assumes that all acts of influence are oppressive, one-way transactions in
which adults exploit and manipulate the child” (Gubar 426). Instead, Nesbit
allows her child-characters’ liberation through the texts she find acceptable. They
only endure constraints and captivity through the works Nesbit resists and combats
in her Bastables’ tales, such as conduct books, religious writings, and texts with
superfluous language to demonstrate social status, refinement, and culture. It is
these works which jeopardize the childhood Nesbit asserts that children require.
However, by praising some styles of literature and allowing the children success
and diversion through some texts, Nesbit’s Bastable children illustrate that
children can usurp power and authority through texts rather than meekly
submitting to adult assumptions and rule.
Edith Nesbit’s child-characters are well-read and demonstrate the ability to
actively engage in other writings by comparing, imitating, and creating meaning
and relevance through them, which expresses further the significance of the
intersection between literature and childhood. In her texts, Nesbit conceptualizes
the Bastable children as “active receivers of texts, capable of improvising on – not
just slavishly adhering to – other people’s stories” (Gubar 413). She presents this
as the children copy activities from texts while altering them to suit their situation.
For example, when Oswald “[feels] quite certain that the books were right, and
that the best way to restore fallen fortunes was to rescue an old gentleman from
distress” the children decide to embark on that adventure (Nesbit, Story 127).
However, when there “are no highwayman on Blackheath” to rescue the
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gentleman (Lord Trottenham) from, the Bastables take it upon themselves to
create their own dangerous situation from which to rescue him (129). The
Bastable children demonstrate the ability to improve on their readings by creating
for themselves activities derived from texts they encounter, but not simply
extracted from the texts. When the Bastables read The Daisy Chain, they discuss
how the children “dug in a Roman encampment and the children went first and put
some pottery there they’d made themselves” as a possible endeavor for them to
embark on when the Maidstone Society of Antiquities and Field Club come to
their residence (Nesbit, Would-Be-Goods 374). However, Oswald is clear and
firm in stating that they “weren’t going to do EXACTLY like those Daisy Chain
kids,” his tone implying that he saw his siblings and himself as capable of even
better ideas (374). Accordingly, they select parts of the texts that suit their
purpose and improve on the ideas to better achieve their goals. In this way Nesbit
discloses “her belief that literary exploitation goes both ways,” that children “use
texts penned by adults to entertain themselves, while adults use children as
material for their literary efforts” (Gubar 416).
By drawing this parallel she places children and adults on the same level,
refusing to accept that children were inferior beings. Rather, the Bastables
demonstrate their ability to imagine and execute plans to achieve their goals.
Nesbit further presents glimpses of their intellect in their dealings with the “robber
and burglar” in The Story of the Treasure Seekers. Oswald and his siblings muster
up the courage to confront the robber and “their refusal to fall victim to the plot of
a scheming adult – the burglar – parallels their ability to resist the limiting and/or
condescending picture of themselves presented to them by texts” (Gubar 415).
Oswald further expresses Nesbit’s view of children as active readers of texts when
he refers to himself in third-person narration saying, “But he (Oswald) sat up in
57
bed and read The Last of the Mohicans, and then he began to think” (Nesbit,
“Would-Be-Goods” 396). Nesbit implies that by reading, Oswald and children in
general are encouraged to think for themselves. The text that inspires Oswald’s
thoughts, being one of British colonial expansion, adventure, and journeying,
epitomizes the types of books that provoke meaningful perception and
examination. Edith Nesbit associates an actively analytical and engaged mind
with texts that evoke excitement, intrigue, and discovery. She found in children’s
literature a means of communicating her views of children and their intellect to a
society that found them void of useful and clever thought. As Marcus Crouch
explains in Treasure Seekers and Borrowers: Children’s Books in Britain 1900-
1960, “Unlike most fictional families, the Bastables were readers, and critics of
what they read. Oswald was outspoken about his contempt for some
contemporary writers” as well as assertive about those he respected and admired
(19). Nesbit subverted the genre of children’s literature in a way that allowed for
her to voice her belief that children were active readers and engagers of texts and
deserving of works that evoked and facilitated critical thought, imagination, and
entertainment.
Nesbit wrote with the goal of not only changing how children and
childhood experiences were viewed by society, but to effect change in how people
wrote for children based on her assertion of their significance to society. Instead
of simply aiming to guide and instruct, she sought to entertain, educate, and relate
childhood experiences. Aside from Lewis Carroll whose Alice, in the beginning
of Alice in Wonderland, doubtfully ponders the usefulness and appeal of a book
without pictures or conversation, “no other author has been able to lay down so
clearly what in their opinion a children’s book should be, as E. Nesbit” (Streatfeild
83). Unlike the conduct books of the time, Nesbit emphasized the importance of
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children’s being able to think for themselves for, “even as she encourages children
to take pleasure from reading and make use of texts” as she does when the
children imitate the texts they enjoy, Nesbit also “coaxes them to become more
critical readers” (Gubar 411). Oswald Bastable and his siblings become analytical
with the texts they encounter. For example, in describing his experiences with
authors of texts for children Oswald states,
I have often thought that is the people who write books for children
knew a little more it would be better. I shall not tell you anything
about us except what I should like to know if I was reading the story
and you were writing it. Albert’s uncle says I ought to just put this
in the preface, but I never read prefaces, and it is not much good
writing things just for people to skip. I wonder other authors have
never thought of this. (Nesbit, Story of Treasure Seekers 21-22)
Nesbit “pays her young readers a great compliment, assuming they are able to
understand linguistic challenges like irony and parody. They are able to share in
the joke” (Wall 154). She counters the dominant perception of the time that
children are simple readers, and engages them in more complicated elements of
literature. “Nesbit found in diction a convenient vehicle for articulating dissent
opinions in an acceptably packaged form” and expressed it through the language
of Oswald Bastable as he narrates the adventures of himself and his siblings
(Foster and Simons 129). Nesbit’s satire comes through as Oswald addresses the
conduct book types of literature and demonstrates a trait contributing to Nesbit’s
designation as a forerunner of modern children’s literature. Edith Nesbit made
conscious decisions to control the effects of her texts and the messages she sent
through those texts on different levels. This leads us into another use of literature
for children that Nesbit addresses within her Bastable tales.
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As a result of the changing views of children in Victorian England from
silent outcasts to future citizens of the nation, children were bombarded with
literature meant to shape them into model citizens, as we have seen through the
instructional and moral stories. As evidenced in her texts, Nesbit writes against
didacticism and authorial intrusion and for a more realistic portrayal of the voice
of children, their childhood experiences and their interests and values. In this she
is certainly writing against the didacticism of the nineteenth-century evangelical
writing and for a children’s literature more concerned with the delight and
enjoyment of children rather than the objectives of the adults that create the
literary works.
Chapter 3
NESBIT’S MANIPULATION OF OSWALD BASTABLE AS NARRATOR
E. Nesbit’s creation of an authentic child-narrator through which to tell her
stories and ultimately remark on social issues of her day sets her apart from her
Victorian contemporaries and other children’s authors, establishing Nesbit as a
writer worthy of critical attention. The Story of the Treasure Seekers, The Would-
Be-Goods, The New Treasure Seekers, and Oswald Bastable and Others are all
texts revolving around the Bastable children: Dora, Oswald, Dicky, Alice, and
Noel. The stories are narrated by Oswald, although he initially attempts to
disguise his identity as he tells of their adventures restoring their fallen fortunes
(when their father fails in his business ventures and they are left in a lower
financial class than previously accustomed to), attempting to “be good” and follow
the rules, and in their general activities as young children in Victorian England.
Nesbit’s Bastable texts “[capture] a genuine sense of the child’s ‘voice’ for the
first time in children’s fiction” (Moss, “Story” 188). In fact, numerous scholars
agree that “Nesbit is very nearly the first to tell her stories in the voice of a child,
not an adult” (Kutzer 63). She is deserving of the credit “for addressing her child
audience in its own colloquial idiom” while attracting adults through the humor
and suspense she creates, thereby gaining readership consisting of both grown-ups
and children alike (Moss, “Story” 189). The voice of Oswald Bastable as narrator
“becomes an important aesthetic feature of the three volumes [and collection of
short stories in Oswald Bastable and Others] devoted to the adventures of the
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Bastables, since it is the element which unifies the episodic stories” (Moss,
“Story” 190). Barbara Wall also points out the novelty of Nesbit’s child-narrator:
Traditionally, defining books as children’s literature has focused on
subject matter and readability: that is, on questions of simplicity,
both of style – of vocabulary, syntax, sentence length – and of
content, with concentration of action and brevity. The development
in the last decade of the theory of narratology has provided a new set
of terms for the criticism of fiction and has made possible the precise
and methodical examination of an aspect of fiction until recently
almost totally ignored – the relationship between narrator and
narratee, a relationship which is of fundamental importance in
identifying fiction for children and distinguishing it from fiction for
adults. (3)
As, at times, the tales of the Bastable children are related in a disjointed fashion,
Oswald’s unique tone, personality, and attitude become the seam throughout each
circumstance of each text, serving to maintain readership and support through
literary devices simultaneous to his narration. Nesbit’s use of tools relating to
narration such as the vague narrator, asides, reader-addresses, self-disclosure and
blunt honesty create an affinity on the part of the audience for the Bastable
children, and especially Oswald, which allows Nesbit to manipulate the genre and
provide her own unique and subversive commentary.
Edith Nesbit semi-disguises the identity of her narrator, Oswald, in order to
disguise her own voice, gender, and the social commentary she makes through the
Bastable children and their experiences. The texts are “realistic and entertaining
family chronicles narrated by Oswald Bastable” that present Nesbit as an
innovative and creative author (Lockhead 59). Nesbit “makes use of a complex
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narrative technique by which Oswald relates much of the story in the third person,
and often in a self-congratulatory and ‘literary’ style, every now and then slipping
back into the first person” (Briggs 186). In Oswald Bastable and Others, for
instance, Oswald addresses the reader with, “Perhaps you will think I do not say
enough about Oswald’s quickness of sight, so I had better tell you that is only
because Oswald is . . . very modest” (Nesbit 38). Oswald also hints at his identity
through references to himself such as in The Story of the Treasure Seekers when
he writes, “Oswald always tries to make up quarrels” (Nesbit 115).
She maintains that the identity will remain unknown, even as she artfully
reveals the speaker shortly thereafter through not-so-discreet mix-ups in narration
point-of-view, references to himself, and even praises of Oswald’s character and
behaviors. From early on in The Story of the Treasure Seekers, Oswald makes
comments like “H.O. is eight years old, but he cannot tell the clock yet. Oswald
could tell the clock when he was six” (Nesbit 16). Another incidence of this self-
exaltation comes when he explains, “Oswald is a very modest boy, I believe, but
even he would not deny that he has an active brain. The author has heard both his
father and Albert’s uncle say so” (Nesbit, New Treasure Seekers 65). Oswald
takes the opportunity to commend himself, through which Nesbit ingeniously
reveals her narrator’s identity. Oswald goes on to explain that “the words
‘tenacious of purpose’ mean sticking to things, and these words always make me
think of the character of the young hero of these pages . . . I suppose his brothers
Dicky and Noel and H.O. are heroes too, in a way, but somehow the author of
these lines knows more about Oswald’s inside realness than he does about the
others. But I am getting too deep for words” (Nesbit, New Treasure Seekers 65).
This self-praise, while revealing the character behind the disguised narration, also
serves a deeper purpose. By hiding and then subtly revealing Oswald’s identity
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“unintentionally,” Nesbit masks even further her voice behind the writing. This
emphasizes the reader’s tendency to follow along with Oswald, granting him
liberties in what he says and does that would not have been granted to the female
author hidden behind him. “Complimenting Nesbit on her seamless channeling of
a child’s voice” Marah Gubar cites W.W. Robson who claims that “in the Bastable
books there seems to be no storyteller behind Oswald” which allows for the subtle
inclusion of Nesbit’s ideals, and solidifies Nesbit’s credibility as a unique literary
figure worthy of examination and esteem (421). Nesbit takes further advantage of
Oswald as the narrator of the texts by commenting on various elements of
childhood through his voice. As Anita Moss states, “As Nesbit’s own rhetorical
device, Oswald-as-narrator molds the child reader’s beliefs by endorsing the
childhood values of honesty, courage, and imagination, and reprehending
excessive piety, sneakiness, lying and lack of imagination” (“Story” 193). Also,
by targeting the child-audience, Nesbit takes into account that she will gain adult
readers as well, resulting in the expression of these values to her peers. Despite
using an ambiguous narrator, Nesbit takes authority over the writing by making
clear criticism of the treatment of children as sub-citizens, the instructional and
condescending literature for children, and the anti-imperialistic sentiment of some
of her contemporaries, as we discussed in more depth in the previous chapter.
Nesbit constructs, though her use of Oswald as narrator, his voice and the
persona it expresses, a narration that draws readers into the text and into alignment
and agreement with Oswald’s (and through him, Nesbit’s) perspective. Nesbit
enables herself to both criticize and commend the adult audiences that she
previously captivated by using Oswald Bastable’s characterization as her
mouthpiece. Oswald’s initially ambiguous and complicated narration serves to
captivate the audience, challenging them to discover his identity. When we first
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encounter Oswald in The Story of the Treasure Seekers, he introduces himself and
his brothers and sisters claiming simply, “It is one of us that tells this story – but I
shall not tell you which; only at the very end perhaps I will. While the story is
going on you may be trying to guess, only I bet you don’t” (11). Right from the
beginning this vague identity creates a sense of longing in the reader to discover
the narrator’s identity, because it is unknown and because he sets it up as a test to
see who can distinguish who recounts the events of the children. In addition, the
blunt honestly and candid relaying of information inevitably creates a sense of
familiarity and camaraderie between storyteller and reader. In “The Story of the
Treasure Seekers: The Idiom of Childhood,” Anita Moss explains that “while
Oswald pretends to hide his identity, he soon gives the secret away through his
glorification of ‘the noble Oswald’ or by lapsing into first person narration when
recounting Oswald’s adventures. The author freely admits that he knows more
about Oswald’s thoughts and experiences than he knows about the other Bastable
children” (190). This insight into his person further engages the reader in the
Bastable texts as the bond between the narrator and audience solidifies. Oswald,
as a narrator, “has many virtues. He is direct and efficient . . . ready to take his
reader into his confidence” as “he frequently addresses a narratee” (Wall 152).
Furthermore, “he is his own man and speaks – politely, it is true – to everyone
alike” which increases his likeability and acceptance (Wall 152). By creating and
establishing this close connection between the two, Nesbit sets up the reader to
support Oswald and his siblings in their endeavors to “restore the fallen fortunes
of . . . the ancient House of Bastable” (Nesbit, Story 11). His narrative voice
taunts the readers with, “I think when you have read it you will see that we were
not lazy about looking” which encourages the reader to continue the text in order
to discover the means of treasure-hunting, and how the children showed diligence
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and hard-work in their efforts to re-attain financial stability (Nesbit, Story 10). We
increasingly find ourselves not only wanting to continue the story but also hoping
that the Bastable children have success in discovering treasure that will indeed
restore them to their former status in society. As Julia Briggs has commented,
“Nesbit’s ‘creative use of child’s play as a potentially critical imitation of the adult
world’ set[s] the reader up for how the child games will symbolically represent
some aspect of the real, and adult like in the Victorian period” (Foster and Simon
129). This allows Nesbit to ridicule and condemn the rules and values of
Victorian England that she opposed, as well as to praise and endorse those she
aligned herself with, through her stories for children.
Nesbit further experiments with narrative techniques for the purpose of
appealing to the audience and then making her claims, criticisms, and praises.
Nesbit directly addresses the reader at first, but then also comments to the reader
through asides, and honest and humorous self-disclosure. “Oswald continues to
display his awareness of making rhetorical choices and of experimenting with
narrative technique, a device which seems to reveal Nesbit’s own awareness that
she is also making choices as she experiments” by using a child-narrator in order
to express individual ideals to a society not open to heeding the words of a woman
(Moss, “Story” 191). For instance, when the children are playing, Oswald not
only directly refers to the reader through a reader-address but also includes the
reader in their games and discussions through an aside. When Dora asserts that
they are not playing Babel, and need to stop talking all at once, Oswald brings the
reader in by saying, “It is a very good game. Did you ever play it?” urging the
reader to participate in the dialogue and activities, as they continue on in their
games directly following (Nesbit, Story 16). He further engages the reader when
he defines a word for his audience and explains, “I tell you this because it is so
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sickening to have words you don’t know in a story, and to be told to look it up in
the dicker” (Nesbit, Would-Be-Goods 323). This honesty and concern for the
reader creates an affinity for Oswald that allows for his later actions that may
challenge conservative values. It also challenges the limited regard traditional
Victorians held for children as the reader through insight into the mind of a child.
Later, when the children get into trouble Oswald relates, “Gentle reader, I will not
conceal from you what Oswald did” and goes on to admit fault and explain his
actions (Nesbit, Story 175). This endearing address coaxes the audience to support
Oswald despite his occasional shortcomings. Furthermore, this direct and honest
approach serves to win over the audience and gain acceptance for Oswald’s (and
Nesbit’s) simultaneous rejection of traditional Victorian values.
Nesbit writes Oswald in such an honest way that he is the first to disclose
important information and admit error or wrongdoing, effectively engaging the
reader and establishing a unique tie that forces the audience to accept what
transpired without negative judgment or rejection of his actions. Oswald directly
addresses the reader with such openness and a straightforward tone when he says,
“Now what I am going to tell you is a very strange and wonderful thing, and I
hope you will be able to believe it. I should not, if a boy told me, unless I knew
him to be a man of honour, and perhaps not then unless he gave his sacred word”
(Nesbit, Story 181). He then proceeds with the story as though his reader trusts
what he says completely. In this way Nesbit reveals her assumption that through
her likable narrator she makes way for her commentary to be accepted and
endorsed, all because Oswald is honorable, trustworthy, and attempts to obey
Victorian standards of conduct. In one instance of admitting imperfection, the
Bastable children are debating who it was who made the suggestion of playing as
detectives and Oswald narrates, “I wish to be quite fair, but I cannot remember
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exactly who said it. Oswald thinks he said it, and Dora says it was Dicky, but
Oswald is too much of a man to quarrel about a little thing like that” (Nesbit, Story
34). Through this honest admission that Oswald, himself, might be incorrect
Nesbit draws the reader into support of and trust in Oswald and the ideals he
presents. He does this again when he and his siblings suspect they are at fault for
setting a fire but do not come forward to admit guilt. “We had not done this, and
the reason, the author is ashamed to say, was . . . very selfish” he explains (Nesbit,
Oswald Bastable 73).
Not only does Oswald engage readers in the texts through his integrity, but
he also encourages child and adult acceptance of Nesbit’s texts through moments
like these that reflect conservative British morals. Nesbit further exemplifies the
moral standard of Victorian England through Oswald’s narration of a time when
he did wrong and did not admit to it. He implores the reader to understand by
exhorting, “I hope you will try to not think foul scorn of Oswald because of this
story. Perhaps you have done things nearly as bad yourself sometimes. If you
have, you will know how ‘owning up’ soothes the savage beast and alleviates the
gnawings of remorse. If you have never done naughty acts I expect it is only
because you never had the sense to think of anything” (Nesbit, Would-Be-Goods
349). Nesbit purposely aligns Oswald’s sense of right and wrong with the moral
compass of her day. It allows her more freedom where she disrupts British values:
when she, as a female writer, touches on social issues in her texts. This self-
disclosure further exemplifies the reader’s close ties to Oswald and his tale,
especially when he admits to their wrong actions. He admits to their fault in trying
to rescue a gentleman from deadly peril (danger that they inflicted upon him) and
preaches to his audience with, “Always remember never to do a dishonorable
thing, for money or for anything else in the world,” the same lesson the Bastable
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children were just taught, creating solidarity between each other (Nesbit, Story
137). The combination of honesty, self-disclosure, humor, and a petition to the
reader to respond with understanding and empathy demonstrates the ingenuity of
E. Nesbit’s narrative choice. Furthermore, Oswald “is his own man and speaks . .
. to everyone alike,” avoiding distancing any readers for any reason (Wall 152).
He speaks to child and adult audiences alike, further endearing him to the reader,
as well as demonstrating Nesbit’s versatility in her writing style of meshing
attention to purpose and audience. Through these techniques, Nesbit (through
Oswald) engages the reader and sets him/her up to accept what the children do,
even their behaviors that challenge the status quo of Victorian society. As the
reader becomes invested in the well-being and success of the Bastables, Nesbit
succeeds in her goal of eliciting hope in the audience that the Bastables thrive in
their endeavors.
Edith Nesbit empowered herself to endorse societal appreciation of and
respect for children and childhood adventures, and she furthers that endorsement
through the child-narration of Oswald Bastable. E. Nesbit portrays Oswald who,
while being instructed in conforming to acceptable Victorian standards, reveals
some of the contradictions and duplicitous nature of those upstanding British
citizens, thereby giving himself (and all children, through his example) the
intelligence to critique and respond to the society around him. Some examples of
this emerge in The Story of the Treasure Seekers when the children attempt to
secure a business partnership with the Generous Benefactor and later, when they
attempt to sell Castilian Amoroso, a wine. First, the advertisement for the
partnership reads that there are no fees involved, but then the GB tells them,
“When you can, you shall pay me back the pound (they borrow) and sixty per cent
interest” (Nesbit 123). Through this interaction Nesbit reveals the lack of integrity
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and honesty in the loan businesses of the time. The children were deceived by the
false advertisement, and they represent others who were manipulated by the vague
or misleading notice. Another demonstration of this immorality of Victorian
adults takes place when the children attempt to sell wine to a clergyman. Mr.
Mallow asks them, “Have you never been taught that it is the drinking of wine and
spirits – yes, and BEER, which makes half the homes in England full of wretched
little children, and degraded, MISERABLE parents” (Nesbit 153). While his
words denounce the selling and consumption of alcohol, he simultaneously
portrayed “conflicting emotions” and when they got up to leave with the drink told
them, “‘No; you can leave that’” subtly revealing his interest in the wine (Nesbit
155). In these instances, Nesbit makes the reader aware of the contradictory
words and actions of British adults who interacted with the Bastable family,
demonstrating the innocence of the children and iniquity of the more strict and
demeaning British adults who express condescension towards children.
Through Oswald’s unique narrator-narratee relationship, Nesbit provides
herself with the opportunity to comment on the role of children and childhood in
Victorian England and to create a new sense of children and establish children as
autonomous, creative, and intelligent, and to argue for the importance of a
nurturing, encouraging childhood that promotes critical thinking, inventiveness
and individuality. Due to the still lingering doubt as to the status of children in
Victorian society, “few writers had experimented extensively with the use of first
person child narrator in realistic fiction for young readers” except for E. Nesbit
(Otten and Schmidt 188). Victorian society was still situating children, either as
needing of pastimes and entertainment, or moral direction and guidance as we
discussed in the previous chapter. As
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Oswald’s narrative shifts ingenuously between first and third person
narration . . . [it] sets him in an ironic perspective and also solves
one of the most fundamental problems of children’s books – the
question of ‘Who is speaking, and to whom?’ Oswald’s transparent
device means that Edith is not obliged to decide whether she
approaches her reader as a child or an adult – she can do both.
(Briggs 186)
This creates an ambiguity in the narration and intended audience. Establishing the
vague narration, and thus vague readership, Nesbit grants herself the liberty to
challenge restrictive views of children and their role in Victorian society. Nesbit,
unlike the society around her, not only saw children and their thoughts and
experiences as valid and worthy of critical attention, but also viewed a child’s
voice as a means of providing subversive discourse without it being detected, as
well as to engage and captivate the reader so as to, later, take liberty with the
textual content. Nesbit’s “very act of delegating the power of narration to a child
surrogate reveals Nesbit’s interest in dissolving any strict division between author
and audience” or adult and child, effectively eliminating the Victorian perceptions
of the superiority of the adult and inferiority of the child (Gubar 412).
Nesbit uses Oswald’s child-narration to discuss further the accepted literary
works of the era subtly commenting that literary works for children should target
their real interests when it comes to language, topic, and overall purpose. This
assertion made through her children’s literature successfully challenged Victorian
literary traditions and created Nesbit’s own. As Julia Briggs explains, “Edith was
always much amused by literary clichés, and Oswald’s childish desire to sound
‘grown-up’ gave her ample scope to parody some of these” methods of writing
(186). Nesbit integrated this into The Would-Be-Goods when Oswald explains,
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“Let me to my narrating. I hope you will like it. I am going to try to write it a
different way, like the books they give you for a prize at a girls’ school” (355). He
goes on to write in an affected way, followed by an explanation of what actually
took place in his own, more colloquial, conversational language and tone. He
repeats this again in The Would-Be-Goods when he recounts:
In a very short space of time we should be wending our way back to
Blackheath, and all the variegated delightfulness of the country
would soon by only preserved in memory’s faded flowers. (I don’t
care for that way of writing very much. It would be awful swat to
keep it up-looking out the words and all that). (395)
Then to clarify for his readers, Oswald narrates that “to speak in the language of
everyday, our holiday was jolly nearly up. We had had a ripping time, but it was
all but over” (395).
Nesbit demonstrates Oswald’s awkwardness with more formal, abstract
writing styles and thus, her own aversion to such literature. She also evidences her
ability to manipulate writing conventions to suit her purposes. She mocks more
formalist writing by making it sound absurd in Oswald’s voice, and accentuates
the simplicity and honesty of Oswald’s writing. Oswald attempts to sound grown
up and literary when he describes their experience one night during a storm. He
says:
And through the night, and the wind, and the rain, our dreadful
destiny drew nearer and nearer. I wish this to sound as if something
was going to happen, and I hope it does. I hope the reader’s heart is
now standing still with apprehensionness on our account, but I do
not want it to stop altogether, so I will tell you that we were not all
going to be murdered in our beds, or pass peacefully away in our
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sleeps with angel-like smiles on our young and beautiful faces. Not
at all. What really happened was this . . . and he finished with the
real events of the evening. (Nesbit, Oswald Bastable 47)
As he tries to sound sophisticated, writing with affected diction and form, Oswald
misuses words and phrases, making the text sound ridiculous. In relating to his
audience their discoveries during one of their outings, Oswald writes, “I have not
yet told you about the finest find of all the fine finds we found (that looks very
odd, and I am not sure it is it allity-what’s-its-name, or only carelessness. I
wonder whether other authors are ever a prey to these devastating doubts)”
(Nesbit, Oswald Bastable 102-03). In this way, “through her stories, E. Nesbit
mocks literary traditions and works that she disliked such as the ‘Ministering
Children’ genre, popular around the mid-century” (Briggs 189). Furthermore,
Oswald’s unique switching between “a chatty, informal tone and one of deliberate
‘literariness’” demonstrates the different methods of writing for children, one
Nesbit endorses and one she sees as pretentious (Briggs 186). It is from very early
on in the Bastable stories that the reader understands that Oswald’s writing
subjects and techniques are shaped, predominantly, by the texts that he has come
into contact with. Oswald clearly writes in response to what attracts and distances
himself from different literary works. The manner in which he relates the Bastable
tales shows careful consideration of his audience. In one instance he writes, “I
will not tell you about the picnic on the river because the happiest times form but
dull reading when they are written down” (Nesbit, Would-Be-Goods 344). Oswald
remains diligent in his attempts to be engaging and interesting, as are the texts
which he esteems. Similarly, he explains, “I have not numerated Noel’s birthday
presents because I wish to leave something to the imagination of my young
readers. (The best authors always do this)” (Nesbit, Would-Be-Goods 344).
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Oswald never fails to integrate his literary preferences into his storytelling.
In doing so he also reveals Nesbit’s opinions on elements of great texts: creative,
thought provoking, captivating. In another instance he references his readings
saying, “I hope you do not think that the words I use are getting too long. I know
they are the right words. And Albert’s uncle says your style is always altered by
what you read. And I have been reading the Vicomte de Bragelonne. Nearly all
my new words come out of those” (Nesbit, Would-Be-Goods 351). Oswald
repeatedly and consistently associates what he relays to the reader in terms of the
texts he has read. His opinion on quality works of literature emerges through the
comments he makes regarding those writings, and the elements he imitates in his
own narratives. Nesbit allows Oswald great freedom to comment on the types of
books he prefers – “And there were lots of books – not just the sawdusty, dry kind
. . . but jolly good books, the kind you can’t put down till you’ve finished” he
explains (Nesbit, Oswald Bastable 67). He goes on to voice their disappointment
in the literary choices at their nurse’s house saying, “There were no books except
sermons and the Wesleyan Magazine” (Nesbit, Oswald Bastable 89). They go on
to use the books to steady an uneven table they needed for their games, revealing
their disregard for that type of writing.
Nesbit’s lack of interest in and respect for the more instructional and
religious books comes out as the children respond to those simple, monotonous
works. The styles Nesbit supports are those that appeal to the reader, and draw
readers into Oswald’s confidence, whereas the modes she opposes are those that
frustrate Oswald, create confusion and distance the reader. Despite Humphrey
Carpenter’s adamant stance that “the sustained humour of The Treasure Seekers
may be original; the device of child narrator is not,” we find Nesbit worthy of
credit for manipulating the child narrator in a manner conducive to the expression
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of her social critiques (132). While the use of a child narrator extends beyond
Nesbit’s work alone, never before had a humorous, authentic, and analytical child
narration like Oswald Bastable been created. This originality establishes Nesbit as
a forerunner in modern children’s literature as more and more attention and
experimentation with child narration exists in response to her conception of
Oswald.
Overall, E. Nesbit’s use of Oswald as her narrator enables her to confront
Victorian adults while also disguising the commentary as mere children’s
literature to avoid even further marginalization. Nesbit’s narration, although
written from a child’s voice, must not be discounted for its seemingly submissive
and conservative tone. She had to keep in mind that it is “adults who choose
which books are to be published for children, adults who review, [criticize], and
buy those books. Adults, then, as well as children, are readers of children’s
books” and she needed to remember that in order to get her texts published and
distributed (Wall 18). She also took that into account when she decided what
issues in Victorian society to address and challenge in her texts. While some may
discredit Nesbit as a copy-cat children’s author, we need to remind ourselves that
“[Rudyard] Kipling and [Kenneth] Grahame, even in their children’s stories, wrote
as much for adults as they did for children,” and, in her own way, so did Edith
Nesbit (Wall 118). In her case, however, her commentary to adults had to be more
disguised in order to be acceptable to Victorian readership as a result of the gender
biases of the era. Nesbit’s contributed to “the evolution of freer narrator-narratee
relationships” in children’s literature through her use of Oswald Bastable and his
seemingly conformist yet subversive narration (Wall 118).
Nesbit simultaneously conforms to and subverts elements of Victorian
society to avoid being classified as an inconsequential female author. She follows
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convention by writing children’s literature, one of the only genres of literature
open to women of the Victorian era. Her lack of blatant social commentary or
liberal ideals further positions her to be socially acceptable, earning approval from
the more traditional, conservative Victorian masses. Simultaneously, Nesbit
manipulates and subverts her apparently conformist texts by incorporating
subtexts of dissent and presenting her own female opinions and perspectives
through the writings. In doing so Nesbit undermines the Victorian practice of
silencing and marginalizing women, especially women authors. This nuanced
stance created tensions surrounding her works as critics limit and minimize her
ingenuity in an effort to contain her in one defined, pre-existent group. Rather
than facing the challenge of creating a new classification of children’s literature
for someone so unique and original in her positions, critics look only to the surface
level writing of Nesbit’s work and subsequently align her with merely
conventional writings for children.
Despite Nesbit’s obvious use of her children’s text to promote children and
their experiences as such to her traditionalist society, some of Nesbit’s critics
disagree that she makes any new claims concerning children. For example,
although she presents children as readers and interpreters of texts, imaginative and
playful beings, Humphrey Carpenter states that
Nesbit’s Bastables are fools from the beginning, albeit holy fools,
foolish through extreme innocence. Their understanding of the
world around them is simply naive, and the comedy derives from the
collision between their idealism and the naivety with which they try
to carry out their ideals. (133)
Unlike Carpenter, however, Lloyd Alexander thanks Nesbit for “her voice. That
is, her tone, her personality” and he goes on to state that “E. Nesbit has a
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freshness, tartness, without gushing or talking down. Today’s writers owe her a
debt. We are modern thanks largely to her. As much as anyone, perhaps more,
she helped us find our twentieth century voices” (Wall 148). He credits Nesbit for
her distinguished contribution to children’s literature through Oswald Bastable’s
narration, rather than seeing it as a limitation. Barbara Wall goes on to explain
that,
although superficially her narrative manner seems light-hearted and
playful, her address to her narratee casual and familiar, in reality she
treated child readers with a new seriousness, for she placed them
first, and in doing so gave the act of communicating with children,
or writing to them, a new significance. (148)
Carpenter fails to take her new attitude and means of speaking to children into
consideration when he dismisses Nesbit’s creativity and ingenuity. Instead of
realizing Nesbit’s more realistic and accurate portrayal of children and childhood,
as well as her attitude of affirmation and admiration toward children as readers,
writers, thinkers while disguising her more radical standpoints, Carpenter degrades
Nesbit’s texts by arguing that Nesbit’s portrayal of Oswald and his siblings hardly
differs from the Victorian concepts of children as oblivious of and unable to
contribute in a meaningful way to the world around them. As a result he limits
Nesbit by classifying her as “a late Victorian writer, who accepted the attitude,
prevalent in the 1870s and 1880s, that children are delightfully naive” (135). This
perspective, and others like it, fail to take into account that Nesbit undermines
society and disrupts prevalent views of children despite her, at times, conforming
ideals. As we have seen, Nesbit uses Oswald Bastable and her texts as wholes to
disrupt the values and principles of Victorian England by disguising her
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commentary behind seemingly conformist characters and plot, enabling her to
voice those otherwise controversial ideals.
Edith Nesbit’s use of the child-narrator in the Bastable stories allows for
her to comment on issues prevalent in her society-issues, such as British
imperialism and the importance of children and the experiences of childhood,
which she aims to confront and debate, voicing her views through the avenue of
literature available to her. Oswald’s narration “permits Nesbit not only to create a
more convincing rendering of childhood experience” drawing readers into the
texts, “but also to discover her own voice as a children’s author” and express her
voice to the suppressive Victorian audience (Moss, “Story” 191). Nesbit uses her
dual-authorship to attract, win over, and influence her audience as well as give
herself a voice in a time when women were silenced. However, that alone is not
what sets her apart and makes her credible. Instead, it is in conjunction with the
fact that “many of the twentieth century’s finest children’s authors . . . continued
to appeal to a dual authorship” in their own texts, carrying forth the trend that
Edith Nesbit set (Knoepflmacher, Ventures into Childland xiii). Exploring her use
of the Bastable texts reveals Nesbit’s promotion of the significance of children and
their childhood experiences and the role of literature in a child’s life.
Also applicable to recognizing Nesbit’s contributions to children’s
literature is to see how her creation of an amiable and magnetic narrator like
Oswald Bastable enabled her to break down conversational barriers that prevented
women from publicly participating in the most significant issues of the day,
including one of the most pressing concerns of the nation, British imperialism.
For instance, as we noted earlier in Nesbit’s references to Rudyard Kipling and his
works in her Bastable stories, she writes “for Kipling” (Kutzer 64). By addressing
him and his literature in this manner “Nesbit is also espousing the values of
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imperialism” and creating works that incorporate those ideals (Kutzer 64). For
example, texts for children were set “against a background of territorial expansion
. . . the propagandists of imperialism turned their attention to elementary
education. Their aim was to give the nation’s children a sense of patriotic mission
. . . which would enable them to sustain Britain’s position in the world” (Horn 40).
Nesbit responds to this emergence of politics in children’s stories by endorsing
colonialism, but also remaining true to the belief that children should be
entertained, use their imaginations, and have fun being active, thinking for
themselves, and enjoy works of literature. So, not only does she reference Kipling
to show support for imperialism, but she identifies works for children that merge
the political and the entertaining, creating a new genre of children’s literature into
which she writes the tales of the Bastable children.
Chapter 4
NESBIT’S INTEGRATION OF BRITISH IMPERIALISM INTO LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN
Nesbit’s imperialistic attitudes and behaviors in her children’s fiction
demonstrate her unique avenue of children’s literature and intentions for the
Bastable tales. The inclusion of the dynamics of imperialism facilitates the
revelation of Nesbit’s contributions to and improvement of literature for children
such as her combination of conservative and radical ideals, new literary techniques
and purposes of stories for children, and her new concept of portraying children
and their activities authentically and as worthy of critical evaluation and
recognition. Because “the rise of imperialism is roughly contemporaneous with
the golden age of children’s literature (approximately 1860-1930), and the two
grew up together” it remains a topic of great importance and significance in
reading Nesbit’s stories for children critically (Kutzer 10). Attention to how she
addresses imperialism and why explains and demonstrates her contributions to
children’s literature as a whole.
Nesbit incorporates the world of British imperialism into her texts for
children by aligning herself with the pro-imperialism views; this can be seen
through the Bastables’ child-play, as she simultaneously disguises her commentary
as simple stories meant to entertain children, allowing Nesbit to situate herself
between conservative and radical groups. By both appearing to conform to the
social prescriptions for women writers and also to challenge them through
alternative subtexts in her writing, Nesbit creates a new avenue for female writers
and a new facet of children’s literature, validating herself as an ingenious author
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worthy of critical attention and study. In the tales of the Bastables, E. Nesbit
utilizes the Bastable children’s inappropriate behavior during their play to
symbolize the actions of imperialists who were detested and opposed by critics
who disagreed with British expansion. However, ultimately Nesbit portrays these
child-games and the imperialistic acts they represent humorously and as well-
intentioned and successful in defense of British imperialism. The games she
includes consists of “going off to soldier, or to administer to colonial subjects, or
to explore and appropriate new lands” all of which “struck children as being
delightful prospects, promising action, power over others, and status as
discoverers of a new world, all things guaranteed to appeal to children” (Kutzer
65). Not only do these pastimes reiterate what we have learned concerning
Nesbit’s affinity for children and texts that promote their imaginations and
amusement, but they demonstrate alignment with British imperialism by the
Bastable children.
Nesbit engages the reader to the point where allowances are made for the
children’s, at times, immoral and even criminal pursuits, thus justifying the
corresponding actions of British colonialists through her use of a seemingly
ambiguous narrator and narrative devices we have previously discussed such as
reader-addresses, asides, humor, and self-disclosure. However, despite this
assertion of a female perspective, Nesbit avoids ostracism by writing under the
guise of children’s stories, effectively turning her literature into a form of social
commentary as well as a new facet of literature by women for children. By the
conclusion of the Bastable stories, Nesbit makes her defense of colonial expansion
known through references to the Indian uncle and other aspects indicative of the
colonies, revealing how the reader’s acceptance of the child-play mirrors the
necessary acceptance of those aspects of imperialism previously criticized and
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condemned. By sympathizing with the plight of the Bastable children, the reader
simultaneously sympathizes with the acts of the British in their development of the
nations through other colonies.
Edith Nesbit further reveals her stance as she allows the children to
experiment with more traditional British endeavors in addition to the activities that
mimicked the British imperialists in their play. In these instances, however, the
children experience failure, disappointment, and reprimand, drastically departing
from the success, delight, and diversion they enjoy in participating in the
imperialistic activities. The children demonstrate the British beliefs that “they
represent a superior power, ideologically as well as materially, and their actions
are driven on by a sense of mission which embraces, legitimises and uplifts their
private ambitions” (Cain and Hopkins 43). While they are compelled to make
attempts at these occupations at home rather than abroad, they do not get the
desired results. Throughout The Story of the Treasure Seekers there exists an
assumption “that treasure, for Britain, is to be found not at home, but in the
colonies, and that removing treasure from the colonies and bringing it home to
England is both good and natural,” validating the efforts of British colonists
(Kutzer 68-69). They gain wealth and sport by mimicking British travelers and
adventurers. The children further demonstrate the increasing attention to
colonialism in the sequel to their adventures, The Would-Be-Goods, for “when
[they] are not playing at soldiers and empire, they are playing at being explorers”
(Kutzer 74). The children have decreased interest in role-playing at common
British professions resulting from the lack of success they achieve when they do
engage in those trades. This reference to, and subsequent acceptance of
colonialism, and rejection of occupations “at home” in Britain, illustrates Nesbit’s
personal agenda and overall subversion of the purpose of children’s literature,
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expanding it to include her goals of creating a new way of writing for children and
new avenues of writing by women, affirming her state as one of the foremost
contributors to the Golden Age of children’s literature as well as one of the most
innovative in that her children model through their child-play adult professions,
values, and consequences.
The nation’s acquisition of colonies and the emergence of texts for children
take place, predominantly, during the same time frame in British history. While
some wrote to inform, direct, and manipulate children regarding imperialism and
others wrote to entertain, Nesbit, in her unique mindset, wrote to accomplish a
variety of these goals in ways that, rather than trivialize and marginalize the child-
readership, encouraged and empowered them. As Karen Sands-O’Connor states in
her article Soon Come Home to This Island: West Indians in British Children’s
Literature, “the fact that children’s literature developed as a market at about the
time of imperial expansion and its sustained development is no accident of fate”
(2). Although Nesbit challenges the predominant Victorian view of children and
childhood, the fact remains that society saw them as empty vessels to be filled
with specific, approved knowledge, attitudes, and assumptions. This purpose
explains why “children were being sold a very specific idea of the West Indies that
would shape future British colonial ventures” (Sands-O’Connor 2). In order to
reinforce the status quo, children’s texts that commented on imperialism contained
moral lessons intended for the British child reader. As a result, “empire,
colonization, and white superiority [were] directly linked to the early development
of children’s literature” because it was through that means that the adult views on
imperialism were passed down to the future generations (Sands-O’Connor 10).
Because texts intended for child-readers “increasingly presented fantastic
versions of the [colonies]” the works “reinforced stereotypical images of [the
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colonial natives] and strengthened the cultural myth of British supremacy” that
society wanted projected onto the future generations of Englishmen (Sands-
O’Connor 42). At the same time, other authors “prepared their readers for the
potential dangers, and perhaps the impossibility, of controlling the British Empire”
if they continued to add more colonies to their nation (Sands-O’Connor 21).
These contrasting viewpoints establish one element of the significance of
children’s literature, explaining the purpose behind the writing of some texts for
children. Nesbit responded by addressing the issue through the lens of a child’s
point of view, challenging to some extent both binaries of the imperialism
question. The Bastables neither struggle to remain in control when they mimic
colonization nor submit to all stereotypical judgments of colonial natives. In this
way Nesbit reveals her goal of entertaining and educating without instructing and
stifling the children. Through her child-characters Nesbit situates herself between
conservative and revolutionary ideals allowing for her acceptance by groups like
the Fabian Society and the more traditional Victorian readership even as she
addresses the controversial issue of British expansion and empire.
Nesbit references imperialism to demonstrate the value she placed on
adventure, entertainment, and exploration for children. She engages the Bastable
children in a variety of games and make-believe, some demonstrating British
undertakings at home while others illustrated endeavors abroad in British colonies
and she aligns their more successful, innovative, and entertaining schemes with
colonialism in order to subtly support those activities over more traditional British
occupations. The Bastable children first play at restoring their fortunes, which
have been reduced due to the failed business ventures of their father. The first
solution they come up with involves traveling to a foreign land to discover buried
or long-lost treasure, illustrating the desire and intentions of those colonists who
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sought similar wealth in places such as India, Japan, and China. As Oswald
explains to his siblings, “I’ll tell you what, we must go and seek for treasure: it is
always what you do to restore the fallen fortunes of your House” (Nesbit, Story
11). This solution to their lack of monetary support also reflects the solution of
British citizens for restoring and enriching their nation. This play of digging for
treasure in a far-off place aligns the actions of the Bastables with those of British
colonists. Oswald related Dora’s plan saying, “Let’s dig for treasure . . . just plain
digging” and so they “dug and dug and dug, it was jolly hard work!” (Nesbit,
Story 19, 23). The children soon tire of doing the work themselves and ask
Albert-next-door to assist them, ignoring the fact that he protests: “I shan’t – I
don’t like digging – and I’m just going in to my tea” (24). They soon “enslave”
him and Oswald states, “But Albert wouldn’t [help]. So we had to make him,
because it was only fair” (25). Symbolically, this represents the European
explorers who colonized foreign lands, enslaved the natives, and forced them into
work, usually to benefit themselves financially. In matters of defining
imperialism, “one power has the will, and, if it is to succeed, the capacity to shape
the affairs of another by imposing upon it,” and that is precisely what the Bastable
children do to Albert-next-door (Cain and Hopkins 43). As we do not condemn
the children for their exploitation of Albert, we cannot criticize British colonists
for their similar actions. Furthermore, Albert-next-door literally is “next door,” as
in he is British through and through. He does not delight in the same acts as the
more progressive Bastable children; instead, he represents those who oppose what
Nesbit is advancing through the symbolic actions of the children. This explains
their lack of interest in him, except as a victim when one is needed. The Bastable
children engage in imaginative, adventurous games and play due to the
incorporation of imperialistic elements into their daily activities resulting in the
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achievement of Nesbit’s goal of writing entertainingly for children and
authentically about them.
Nesbit uses Albert-next-door to further illustrate the benefits of
colonization while disguising her supportive commentary on imperialism as
simple childhood mischief in order to avoid ostracism by those with opposing
standpoints, breaking free from the restrictions imposed on women writers in
Victorian England and thus creating a new component to children’s literature.
Alice’s statement regarding Albert-next-door, “Of course . . . he was buried after
all. Why shouldn’t we let him have the odd somethings, and we’ll have fourpence
each” shows how not only the British (Bastables), but also those being
imperialized (Albert-next-door in this instance) benefited from the acquisition of
new territories (Nesbit, Story 30). By giving some of the “earnings” to Albert-
next-door, the Bastable children demonstrate the advantages the colonies
experienced through British imperialism, as well as the “enlarged moral purpose in
the late-Victorian decades” of the British Empire (Eldridge 187). The emphasis
on “the idea of ‘character’ and the notion of ‘duty’” spread to include benevolence
to the colonies as the duty of Britain came to include “defending kith and kin and
protecting, education and converting the half-savage and half-child” (Eldridge 180
and 186). “In the late-Victorian period the sense of mission was strong” and so
many people “endorse[d] the moral view of empire that Britain had an obligation
to bring the benefits of civilisation to the backward parts of the world” through
imperialization (Eldridge 183). Nesbit asserts the benefits of imperialism through
the Bastables’ interaction with the neighbor, an affirmation she would not have
been able to make in any other circumstances. “Although many authors of the
time seemed uneasy about Britain’s colonizing efforts,” Nesbit’s literature
“emphasizes Britain’s ownership of and responsibility to its islands across the
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seas” (Sands-O’Connor 20). While some “early British children’s literature about
the West Indies depicted a definite unease about the colonizing imperative,” and
focused on placing all effort on maintaining control of the land already belonging
to the English, some (like Nesbit) found aiding other nations a duty (Sands-
O’Connor 19). Those authors who involved themselves and their writing in the
abolitionist movement had much in common with authors who promoted
imperialism: “most were women, often daughters of dissenting ministers or
politicians; most had an interest in education and were motivated by a desire to
further the cause of women through a promotion of charitable causes” (Sands-
O’Connor 26). What this signifies is Nesbit’s multifaceted views on the nation,
imperialism, and even the rights of women, a cause she is sometimes criticized for
responding to passively. Through the use of her texts for children as a means of
entering these conversations, Nesbit firmly establishes herself as not only both
progressive and conservative, but also one-of-a-kind in how she goes about
addressing those issues. Once again, she breaks free of boundaries that would
limit her to certain groups and takes the liberty in her writing to voice exactly
where she situates herself.
The presence of the theme of British expansion in Nesbit’s writing exists to
demonstrate the importance and value of travel literature and adventure stories for
children that were written as a result of British endeavors overseas. Due to British
imperialism, much travel literature and corresponding adventure stories were
being written, familiarizing the masses with knowledge of other land, cultures, and
information about the world in which they existed while also providing
entertainment to younger audiences; Noel Bastable’s suggestion to use his poetry
as a means of reviving their fortune further represents these benefits of British
involvement in other lands and subsequently, Nesbit’s own stance on the
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advantages of colonial expansion. The advantages of British imperialism are
revealed, here, through a more artistic means. Noel’s poetry, primarily The Wreck
of the Malabar revolves around a “full-rigged schooner” and idealizes those who
ventured across the seas in ships to influence people of other nations. When the
children venture into the city to try to sell Noel’s poetry and make money to
restore their fortunes, they wish each other “Good hunting,” a quote from Rudyard
Kipling’s The Jungle Book, one of the famous pieces of exotic-setting literature of
the time (Nesbit, Story 54). As a result of this well-wishing, the children capture
the attention of Miss Leslie, a famous writer of the time, whose reference brings
them into two shillings. This attainment of money for Oswald and his siblings
through benefits reaped from their “colonial” endeavor, or travel literature, further
demonstrates the benefits of British travel. Not only did they bring back wealth
from conquered colonies, foreign mines, and the reproduction of exotic trinkets
and decorations, but they increased the wealth of the nation by advancing their
own arts, further developing the literary arena. Through this exchange Nesbit
furthers her endorsement of Kipling’s literature, as we discussed earlier, when
Oswald remarks, “Good old Kipling! We owe him those two shillings, as well as
the Jungle books” (Nesbit, Story 58). She attributes the children’s earnings to
their imitation of his stories, as well as crediting him with entertaining texts that
they are also thankful for. “Adventure stories set in exotic locations, especially for
boys, were immensely popular, as were the innumerable books of travel that
appeared throughout the century” bringing even more wealth to the nations
(Mermin and Tucker 106). Noel’s poem about a boat that enabled British travel is
the work sold to restore their fortunes, mirroring the British tales sold, especially
those of Rudyard Kipling who totally immersed himself in his travel and foreign
cultures, illustrating the benefits of colonialism. Here Nesbit validates Kipling
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who was ostracized for his complete adoption of foreign living, choosing to reside
in India rather than his native land, while yet again illustrating the prosperous
results of colonialism and its resulting efforts. The Bastable children also
entertained themselves with imitations of pirates, and “indeed, pirates and pirate
stories appeared with great regularity in fiction for boys” (Sands-O’Connor 82).
Nesbit demonstrates, through her new, created space in children’s literature that
allowed for her commentary hidden behind the voice of a child-narrator, the
positive effects of stories for children that highlighted travel and adventure. She
presents different ways of writing for children that elicit positive and beneficial
characteristics in children such as critical thinking, duty and honor, and bravery
while also projecting children as worthy of such attention and concern.
Nesbit incorporates enslavement into a child-game to represent British
actions towards natives of other colonies in an effort to counteract the protests
made by abolitionists who condemned slavery and the slave trade as cruel and
abusive, showing instead how a sense of British honor and duty in terms of
imperialism instilled in children results in benefits to both Britain and the peoples
of the developing nations. H.O. Bastable’s idea for restoring their finances was to
become bandits, and they “were to lurk in ambush . . . and waylay an unwary
traveler . . . call upon him to surrender his arms, and then bring him home and put
him in the deepest dungeon blow the castle moat . . . load him with chains and
send to his friends for ransom” (Nesbit, Story 83). This parallel forces the reader
to sympathize with the Bastable children, and while one may doubt the morality of
their actions, one still desires success and wealth for them. In their bandit game,
Albert-next-door again becomes the target and “resistance was useless” and he
“saw that from the first” just as Nesbit sees opposition to British imperialism as
obsolete (Nesbit, Story 85). A note is sent to his uncle and mother asking for a
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ransom in exchange for his life and freedom saying, “Albert Morrison is held a
prisoner by Bandits. On payment of three thousand pounds he will be restored to
his sorrowing relatives, and all will be forgotten and forgiven” (90). Again their
actions comment on those of British citizens who trapped natives after the
conquest of their nation, and promised them freedom and other positive influences
in exchange for their land, riches, women, and labor. Albert embodies those
entrapped people, and yet Oswald claims that “nobody could have had a nicer
prison that he had” (87). Even his uncle asserts that Albert’s conditions were
“very pretty and complete,” nothing worth complaining about, and that he had
never had that same treatment (91). Albert-next-door was given treats like dried
fruit, apricot jam, and bread; he was bedded on relatively clean straw, in the
nursery. While some may have condemned the actions on grounds of cruelty and
inhumane conditions, Nesbit points out through the children’s treatment of Albert,
that that was not always the case. Through this illustration, she counteracts the
complaints of her society that colonization is brutal and inappropriate by
suggesting that there are manners with which to go about expanding territories
without crossing the boundaries into callous mistreatment. She urges the changing
of their minds through the close narrator’s honest assertions, and the evidence of
decent treatment and positive outcomes on behalf of those mirroring British
imperialists and Albert-next-door who symbolized the people of colonial
conquests. Nesbit’s use of the Bastables here achieves the goal of commenting on
the societal issues of her time while avoiding rejection from society by masking
her viewpoints. At the same time she reveals her contrasting conservative and
subversive ideals by both undermining the restrictions while superficially aligning
herself and her Bastable works with those Victorian restraints.
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By inserting elements of other cultures into the successful endeavors of the
Bastable children, Nesbit reveals her regard for the traditions of other societies and
how they provided advantages to Britain while also benefiting from British
imperialism. In doing so, Nesbit once again utilizes her new genre of children’s
literature to demonstrate her unique assemblage of social values and political
stances, break free from Victorian constraints on women writers, and pose
children and their activities and texts as meaningful and intentional. The child-
play of the Bastables once again leads them into money when they mimic the
rituals of foreign nations to discover their fortune, once again asserting the
benefits of British exploration and control of other people and places and masking
Nesbit’s subversion of the genre of literature to which she was relegated and
confined. Alice’s contribution to the children’s efforts at financial success was
through a divining rod, a ritual with allusions to cultures valuing magic and myth.
Oswald makes a request to the “fair priestess” saying “we do greatly desire to find
gold beneath our land, therefore we pray thee practise with the divining rod, and
tell us where we can find it” (Nesbit, Story 203). Alice then chants a hymn,
“Ashen rod cold/That ere I hold/Teach me where to find the gold,” and walks
around, being led by a rod to a place in the floorboards where they discover a half-
sovereign (205). She is dressed in priestess garb, and her speech is of another
culture. Nesbit incorporates this into the Bastable adventures to illustrate that
“imperialism impacted Britain not only economically, but also culturally” (Kutzer
68). The divining rod is obviously not an original British ceremony, a Christian
doctrine would condemn such actions; it is instead a component of British folk
history in England due to contact with other cultures and societies. Instead, Nesbit
validates the rituals and spiritual beliefs of foreign nations. They are, as the
Bastable children portray, of value and deserving of respect, but also only made
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familiar and/or attained through colonization. “As these brief examples indicate,
much of what the children find intriguing lies not within the borders of England,
but overseas in Britain’s imperial possessions,” showing that Nesbit considered
those territories worthy of requisition, exploration, and value (Kutzer 65).
She refutes the assumption by British colonists and their supporters that
other nations needed to be overtaken and their unique customs and characteristics
squelched. Rather, she uses the child-games of the Bastables to illustrate a
combination that endorses British expansion as well as preservation of and respect
for other societies while solidifying Nesbit’s distinctive social and political
position. The children play as though they are gypsies with an outcome that
exemplifies this belief. Alice pretends to tell fortunes, saying, “‘You will travel in
distant lands . . . you will marry a beautiful lady – a very fine woman, it says in the
book, but I think beautiful lady sounds nicer, don’t you?’” (Nesbit, New Treasure
Seekers 229). Their deviation from British normalcy resulted in “two quid and
something to talk about” (234). Through the Bastable children Nesbit
demonstrates the value and success to be found in non-traditional, and even
unacceptable forms of play, while reiterating the importance of children making
their own meaning through texts they engage in. They gain financially, socially,
and enjoy entertainment simultaneously through their alignment with traits of
foreign lands. What is exotic to them is more interesting and has more benefits to
the Bastable siblings than the everyday British ventures. Nesbit does not neglect
presenting conventional British enterprises, however. Conversely, she presents
them as sources of trouble and failure for the children, effectively demonstrating
the pro-imperialism stance through her child-characters.
Although the Bastable children engage in symbolically “colonialist” games,
some of their ideas are predominantly associated with British who remain at home,
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and those are the schemes that fail miserably, illustrating, through the realistic
activities of the Bastable children and Nesbit’s new place in children’s literature,
her alignment with the imperialistic endeavors over the traditional British
occupations in England. However, by including these British livelihoods and
involvements, Nesbit successfully disguises the Bastables as proper English
children who simply make childish, immaterial and easily overlooked errors in
judgment because of their age. In this way Nesbit appeals to both the established
and changing perceptions of children, childhood, and the British empire, all
through a marginalized, discredited and neglected genre of literature. Nesbit
presents conventional British enterprises at home as sources of trouble and failure
for the children, effectively demonstrating the pro-imperialism stance through her
child-characters. They intend to be bandits, take out loans, and sell alcohol, all of
which conclude with negative consequences. The children set their dog after Lord
Trottenham in order to then rescue him and “he would say, ‘How can I reward
you, my noble young preservers?’” (Nesbit, Story 130). But he discovers their
plan and exclaims, “You set your dog on me, and you tried to make me believe
you were saving me from it. And you would have taken my half-sovereign. Such
conduct is – No – you shall tell me what it is, sir, and speak the truth” to which
Oswald acknowledges that they were in the wrong (135). Representative of the
“deceit and trickery” that prevailed in English businesses and on the streets, Nesbit
makes her sentiments known – that although there are occupations available in the
nation before or without imperialism, many are dishonest and shameful (136).
The children later decide to engage in something less morally
reprehensible, borrowing from a Generous Benefactor, but they come to realize
that that British means of acquiring money was also undesirable and unethical.
They travel into town in search of the Generous Benefactor whose advertisement
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reads “Advances cash from L20 to L10,000 on ladies’ or gentlemen’s not of hand
alone, without security. No fees. No inquiries. Absolute privacy guaranteed” and
yet, when they find him and ask for money, he brings up the topic of paying
interest on the loan (Nesbit, Story 114). This undermines the “no fees” statement
on the advertisement. As a result, the reader sees that he really is not generous,
but only out to make money off of unsuspecting, desperate individuals. This is the
model of a British occupation, which Nesbit portrays in a much more negative
light than those imperialistic positions the Bastables (and through them, Nesbit
herself) highly praise such as the soldier, sailor, etc. The children fail to get their
loan and so their plan to rebuild their financial status is foiled. Once again, their
actions aligning to strictly British behaviors are ineffectual and reflect negatively
on traditional “acceptable” British employment and career options.
Similarly, when the Bastables decide to save up money and then purchase a
sample to sell as a means of making money, the children’s plan backfires and
reveals the flawed characteristics of common British enterprises yet again.
Oswald and his siblings save up their money and Oswald informs the reader, “So
we decided to dally no longer with being journalists and bandits and things like
them, but to send for sample and instructions how to earn two pounds a week each
in our spare time” (Nesbit, Story 139). Unfortunately for them, this plan also
represented British endeavors, failures from the start. They did not know what
they were involving themselves in, nor were they prepared to sell wine.
Furthermore, once their plan was made known to their father, he simply tells them
that “the wine trade is overcrowded” and to avoid it (Nesbit, Story 158). This
illuminates the problematic state in England during that time: the lack of work and
the dishonest paths people did take to secure money. Unlike their actions
mirroring those of colonists, these more “British” avenues consistently failed to
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secure them funds to restore their fallen fortunes. Instead they end up scolded,
disheartened, and with less money than they had when they went into the plan.
Nesbit’s intentionality with the activities of the Bastables allows her the forum to
situate herself between political extremes while also asserting the value of children
and their experiences, as it is through youthful games and behaviors that these
lessons emerge.
Nesbit uniquely ties all of her critiques of her society into the characters
and adventures of the Bastables, including their interactions with adults during
their day-to-day experiences. Adults in Nesbit’s Bastable stories demonstrate the
value and worth of children and childhood by how they respond to the children
and then, in turn, how the children interact with and relate to them. Rather than
being amused by their fellow children like Albert-next-door, the Bastables find
other adults interesting who are traveled and familiar with British colonies and
oftentimes, in addition to this attention to imperialism they possess other attributes
Nesbit supports such as being well-read and encouraging to children’s imagination
and play. For example, the Bastables are more attracted to Albert-next-door’s
uncle “who has been to sea, but now he writes books” (Nesbit, Story 27). He is
traveled and intelligent, while his nephew is portrayed as wimpy, sniveling, and
boring as a result of his lack of travel and absence of the desire to experience those
exotic locations. Albert-next-door’s uncle is a favorite of Oswald’s because, as he
explains, “He always talks like a book, and yet you can always understand what he
means. I think he is more like us, inside of his mind, than most grown-up people
are. He can pretend beautifully” (209). Oswald goes on to explain that “it was
Albert’s uncle who first taught us how to make people talk like books when you’re
playing things, and he made us learn to tell a story straight from the beginning, not
starting in the middle like most people do” (210). Albert’s uncle possesses many
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characteristics the children admire and seek to emulate such as his interest in and
travel to other territories, knowledge and experience of other cultures, attention to
children and their need for amusement through activity and literature. His worldly
knowledge enables him to engage in the imperialistic games along with the
children, as he does when they are playing at the divining rod. Albert’s uncle
gives himself the title of “the great high priest” and he offers to “bite into [the
half-sovereign] to see if it is good” (210). He finds that it is real and remarks, “‘I
congratulate you . . . you are indeed among those favoured by the Immortals”
demonstrating his ability to participate in the imaginative games of the children
(210-11). Albert-next-door’s uncle epitomizes the traits that Nesbit, herself,
possesses and strongly advocates for through her literature. While Albert-next-
door’s uncle demonstrates a variety of Nesbit’s assertions made throughout her
Bastable stories especially in relation to the impact if children and childhood and
Nesbit’s new avenue of children’s literature that stresses authenticity,
entertainment, and the merit of texts for children, the Indian uncle’s portrayal
focuses on the impact of the British imperialism and through that Nesbit’s unique
conservative-radical stances and her agenda to “imperialize” children’s literature
and change it to better suit and serve women writers as well as the child-audience.
Through the Indian uncle, Nesbit ties all her previous assertions about the
benefits of imperialistic travel together as all his wealth and possessions were
attained through imperial acts and worldly travels and it is he and his vast wealth
that saves the children from destitution and restores their fortune. Nesbit makes
her assertions about the similarities between the Bastables’ games and
imperialization obvious as the purpose of their games, restoring the Bastable
fortunes, is finally achieved through association with an imperialistic and
adventurous individual. “Although Britain’s empire extended to the Caribbean, to
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South America, and to Southeast Asia, it was primarily India and Africa that
captured the imaginations of writers for both children and adults,” explaining
Nesbit’s incorporating of an Indian uncle and through him, the influence of India’s
unique culture (Kutzer 1). Utilizing the uncle, Nesbit reinforces the benefits of
imperialism and stresses British dependence upon colonization. “India and other
imperial holdings being wealth to the Bastables as they did for Britain as a whole,”
and Nesbit shows this through the games the Bastables play, culminating in their
relationship to their “Indian Uncle” as we will see in their first meeting with him
and throughout the Bastable tales (Kutzer 68). It is through the Indian Uncle that
they achieve access to the adventures related in The Would-Be-Goods, The New
Treasure Seekers, and Oswald Bastable and Others. When the uncle first agrees
to come their father tells them to avoid being detected because their “dear
Mother’s Indian Uncle is coming to dinner” and they must not be making noise
overhead (Nesbit, Story 211). Automatically the reader detects the importance of
this man, When the children hear the term “Indian” they think of Native
Americans, so when they see their uncle, they are shocked to describe him as “just
like a kind of brown, big Englishman” who they assume to be poor (215). As a
result of the children’s blunt honesty and friendliness, the uncle comes back to
dine with them alone when they invite him. At this point Oswald discloses his
identity when he answers the uncle’s question about his identity with, “‘Oswald
Bastable’” he says, “and I do hope you people who are reading this story have not
guessed before that I was Oswald all the time” much as Nesbit begins to disclose
the agenda behind her writing (220).
As we discover our narrator, we also learn the author’s intention to
emphasize the salvation found only through the Indian uncle. From little money,
bland foods, worn clothing, and the loss of their pretty possessions, Uncle brings
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toys for all the kids and model engines for Dick and me, and a lot of
books, and Japanese china tea-sets for the girls, red and white and
gold – there were sweets by the pound and by the box – and long
yards of soft silk from India, to make frocks for the girls – and a real
Indian sword for Oswald and a book of Japanese pictures for Noel,
and some ivory chess men for Dicky: the castles of the chessmen are
elephant-and-castles . . . big cases of preserved fruits and things . . .
there were carved fans and silver bangles and strings of amber
beads, and necklaces of uncut gems – turquoises and garnets, the
Uncle said they were – and shawls and scarves of silk, and cabinets
of brown and gold, and ivory boxes and silvery trays, and brass
things. (Nesbit, Story 232)
From this increase of wealth and goods brought from the uncle, the children as
well as the reader are made privy to the information that colonization is vital to the
well-being of England. Without it they would lack not only all these material
goods but also the cultural and artistic benefits it brought to the nation. “The lists
of presents the Indian Uncle gives to the children suggests that India is both a
source of British wealth and a shaper of British culture” and signifies the benefit
of other imperial conquests, as well (Kutzer 68). As the Uncle demonstrates,
“many of the travelers returned, often with money acquired abroad – sometimes
large fortunes, more often government or military pensions or the modest fruits of
labor and trade – as well as new and less insular ideas” (Mermin and Tucker 105).
The Indian Uncle, representative of British colonists, and the child-play illustrative
of colonial expansion and actions combine to form the evidence for Nesbit’s
justification of, and support of, British colonialism. Mavis Reimer, “observing the
colonist nature of the games the children play with their newfound relative,”
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suggests that Nesbit ignores the exploitative nature of imperialists (Gubar 423).
However, as we have seen through her utilization of other games and activities the
children partake in, Nesbit instead focuses on the bettering of other nations
through their contact and relationship with Britain. “Just as Nesbit insists on
blurring the line between adult and child, writer and reader, she also appears to
downplay the division between colonizer and colonized, by setting up a finale [to
The Story of the Treasure Seekers] that depends on and celebrates the idea of
perfect reciprocity,” so instead of ignoring one element critics emphasize, Nesbit
in her unique and specific way, presents and argues her case differently (Gubar
423). Her subversion of the narrator’s voice and the purpose of children’s
literature is made blatantly obvious as these final assertions are made involving the
Uncle without much effort at disguising her perspective. Because she engages the
reader throughout the text utilizing Oswald Bastable’s voice, convincing them to
support the Bastable children, she can depart from that vague narration and more
obviously present her stance on imperialism now that she is sure of her reader’s
attention and approval.
Nesbit consistently references through her authentic child-narrator, child-
characters and their experiences, imperialistic components as a means of
commenting on Britain expansion as a whole. Contrary critics believe that “little
has been said . . . about [Nesbit’s] radical view of the imperial crisis,” believing
that rather than endorsing Britain’s expansion, Nesbit presents the endeavors of
imperialists as mere child games (Bar-Yosef 5). Instead of viewing the Bastable
stories as a means of “[charging] young Britons with the energy to go out into the
world and explore, conquer and rule” they see them as “[rejoicing] in exposing the
state’s political and social crises, celebrating the withdrawal into the domestic, the
homely, the familiar” (Bar-Yosef 5). In actuality Edith Nesbit repeatedly
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comments on the importance of travel, exploration, conquering, and controlling
other territories through the games and perspectives of the Bastable children. In
Nesbit’s works, “sometimes militaristic overtones were added to the general
patriotic mixture” (Horn 49). In The Would-Be-Goods the children went to
welcome soldiers as they arrived, with Oswald saying, “We all drew up in a
line . . . and saluted as they went by” shouting “Three cheers for the Queen and the
British Army!” (Nesbit 333). They waved the flag and cheered and the next day
“got up as much like soldiers as we could,” demonstrating their admiration for and
imitation of those who aid in British expansion (333). Oswald stresses his
appreciation of them and their duties by saying, “I should like to be a soldier. It is
better than going to the best schools” (333). Through assertions such as this
Nesbit endorses the political climate of the Victorian period that depended upon
soldiers and explorers to claim and maintain territories around the world. They
take joy out of presenting the soldiers with gifts, conversing with them, and
examining their guns. Oswald “looked with envy on those who would soon be
allowed-being grown up, and no nonsense about your education-to go and fight for
their Queen and country” demonstrating his alliance with British imperialists
(334). By linking the Bastable children with the British soldiers and their colonial
acts, Nesbit reveals her own support of their goals.
While Nesbit comments on the reverence the children have for the military,
she also incorporates the other stances she has taken in her works such as the
importance of childhood, the value of children, and the role of children in
Victorian Britain’s society. During a military assault that was staged for their
benefit, the Bastable siblings unwittingly played into it, fighting off the enemy
with Oswald declaring that “it felt fine, marching at the head of a regiment” and
“lead[ing] the foe astray at great peril (Nesbit, Would-Be-Goods 393, 394). He
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remarks that “it is a terrible thing to a loyal and patriotic youth to see an enemy
cleaning a pot in an English field, with English sand, and looking as much at home
as if he was in his foreign [home]” (390). The feeling that evoked in such a loyal
patriot caused Oswald’s determination to “teach them England’s might and
supremeness” (393). Edith Nesbit’s texts mirror “the elementary school
curriculum [that] was adjusted to emphasize the desired message and a range of
youth organizations [that were] promoted which inculcated a love of country and
of Empire, and a willingness to sacrifice self for the common good” (Horn 52).
Yet, while Nesbit accomplishes some of the same goals as the school texts,
she does so in a manner that targets children’s interests and experiences above a
simple obedience to adults and loyalty to one’s country. Her manner of addressing
children regarding Britain and their status as citizens further epitomizes the
uniqueness of her perceptions of children and how to write for them. It is for the
contribution of these influences and changes on children’s literature that Nesbit
remains deserving of critical study and merit. Oswald goes so far as to exclaim,
“Oswald only hopes that if he falls on the wild battlefield, which is his highest
ambition, that somebody will be as sorry about him as he was about Bill,” their
neighbor who was presumed killed in battle (Nesbit, Would-Be-Goods 337).
Oswald demonstrates here, the love and dedication to the British Empire that was
instilled in children once they began to be seen as the future of the nation. They
further express that reverence when they encounter deserters who are punished for
their abandonment and Noel writes a poem about the experience: “Poor soldiers,
learn a lesson from to-day/It is very wrong to runaway/It is better to stay/And
serve your King and Country—hurray!” (Nesbit, Oswald Bastable 45). As Nesbit
uses her literature to endorse British imperialism, so the Bastables establish
support for the expansion of their country through Noel’s writing. They
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characterize extreme loyalty and respect for and admiration of their country and its
military operations especially through their adventurous natures and spirits of
exploration and patriotism.
The Bastable children reveal pride in their nation as well as a thirst for
adventure and exploration, themes E. Nesbit finds appropriate and advantageous in
children which allows for her to establish common ground and avoid isolating and
distancing those with alternative perspectives on British imperialism. Oswald
Bastable emphatically reveals his quest for an expedition when they travel past the
Naval College where “Naval Collegians have to learn about ropes and spars” and
he states that “Oswald would willingly give a year of his young life to have [a]
ship for his very own” (Nesbit, New Treasure Seekers 68). Nesbit supports travel,
adventure, and imperialism through her references to military positions that
involve sea travel and exploration. Oswald “think[s] coastguards are A1. They
are just the same as sailors, having been so in their youth, and you can get at them
to talk to, which is not the case with sailors who are at sea (or even in harbours) on
ships” (Nesbit, New Treasure Seekers 192). He admires their dedication and
service to the country, but also their familiarity with the sea and the journeying it
entails. Other times, the Bastable children’s games consist of making “two
expeditions to discover the source of the Nile (or the North Pole)” because they
could not agree on just one destination, and other explorations of various streams,
woods, and neighboring lands (Nesbit, Would-Be-Goods 335). Their many
adventures and discoveries reflect the value and significance Nesbit assigns to
such imaginative, physical, and exploratory games. She finds them important to
the development of children as well as giving her an outlet for her particular
viewpoints on British society.
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While some of Nesbit’s more radical associations can suggest anti-
government stances, Nesbit breaks free from being labeled as one extreme or the
other by situating herself rather conservatively on some issues such as The
Woman Question. Furthermore, despite their defiance of the government,
“Bernard Shaw . . . declared in 1900 that a Fabian must necessarily be an
imperialist” and Nesbit not only leaned that way politically, but she acted it out
through the subject matter and manner of writing (Bar-Yosef 13). Her texts
“testify to [her] self-conscious sense of herself as an author who plunders or
colonizes the realm of childhood, as well as the work of other authors of children’s
literature” (Gubar 410). She acts out her endorsement of imperialism by
effectively “imperializing” the only avenue available to her as a female writer of
children’s books. She situates herself to appeal to both the conventional attitudes
and progressive outlooks of Victorian England; she maintains acceptance by the
Fabian Society while also producing texts not immediately shunned by the austere
Victorians. She does this all within the confines of stories for children, resulting
in the communication of Nesbit’s regard for and attention to the roles and
experiences of children. This combination of ideals further establishes Nesbit as
worthy of critical study and analysis in order to better understand an alternative
perspective that did not fit into the confines of support or opposition to British
imperialism.
Chapter 5
CONCLUSION
Nesbit’s children’s stories assert her perceptions of narration, colonialism,
and the value of children and childhood in a society that marginalized and
suppressed women. While she appears to conform to the restraints of Victorian
society by participating in the marginalized genre of children’s literature, she
subverts that prescribed role by incorporating her own unique social and political
standpoints into the Bastable stories. These tales themselves also serve to express
Nesbit’s non-traditional and innovative ways of regarding children and thus,
writing for them. She effectively turns child’s play into commentary, undermining
the dominant purposes of children’s literature at the time, emphasizing
entertainment, adventure and a realistic portrayal of children and their experiences
over moralistic and instructional lessons. By maintaining acceptability by social
conservatives and those more progressive through her disguised stances, Nesbit
constructs a new fact of children’s literature that also allowed her to communicate
her unique social and political stances. By carefully studying her literary texts for
children, we are able to counter the criticisms leveled at Nesbit’s texts and,
ultimately, give her the credit she deserves for usurping a voice and avenue for her
commentary. This “uneasy tension between radicalism and conformism that is
latent in Nesbit’s earlier work” illustrates and emphasizes her relevance to literary
study today and how she has forever altered the genre of children’s literature
(Foster and Simons 135). Nesbit’s unique narrative techniques set her apart, and
enabled her to break free from the marginalization of Victorian society. She
“created a narrative personality for her narrator unlike any which had come before,
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and allowed that narrator to communicate freely with a narratee” and “made the
child’s interests rather than the adult’s the real concern in her stories” through “the
strong emphasis she placed on the partnership of narrator and narratee” (Wall 148,
149). Although “this emphasis [on child interests over adult interests] has
unfortunately lessened the value of her work for many adult readers and critics,” in
reality, Nesbit’s attention to and realistic representations of children and
childhood, as well as her ability to use those avenues to voice adult opinions and
social commentary, validates Edith Nesbit as a forerunner of children’s literature,
and one of the most influential writers for children (Wall 149).
Although Nesbit’s association with, and even alignment with, some of the
more conservative notions of Victorian society facilitated her ability to be widely
accepted and avoidance of marginalization due to extremism, some critics argue
that she merely submits to the cultural demands. While some claim that Nesbit
“gradually acquiesced in the contemporary assessment of the genre . . . and, like a
number of other women writers for children, became complicit in the process of
her own self-devaluation, accepting without question the cultural premise that held
that popularity and ‘art,’ children and literary quality, were mutually
incompatible” we understand, through careful study of the Bastable stories, that
she challenges these assumptions in a variety of ways (Foster and Simons 128).
Nesbit uniquely disguised her assertions in order to have an outlet for her silenced
voice refusing to accept, as so many other female authors did, her marginalization
and classification as a second-class writer. Instead she validates through her
subversion of children’s literature, her status as a forerunner of modern literature
for children. At the same time, Nesbit links children’s literature to the value and
literary esteem given to adult works through her range of literary techniques and
sub-text of social commentary. She utilized the tension between different groups
105
to her advantage, allowing for her to subvert her restrictive Victorian society and
change the course of children’s literature. Another critic of Nesbit, U.C.
Knoepflmacher says, “Nesbit’s fiction for children, therefore, much like Eliot’s
fiction for adults, neither radically challenges the patriarchal order nor sharply
departs from the more pronounced moralism of earlier nineteenth-century women
writers,” overlooking that Nesbit does in fact subvert the male-dominance by
giving herself the power to speak through the only means allowed her, her
literature (“Of Babylands and Babylons” 302). Furthermore, she does deviate
from the entertaining and didactic/conduct-book texts while appearing to align
herself with those in order for her writing to be accepted and even embraced. Her
“use of the genre is non-conventional,” proving her progressive nature, and
establishing her place among the leaders of the Golden Age of children’s literature
(Knowles and Malmkjaer 202-03).
Edith Nesbit also suffers from the lack of serious and sustained critical
attention given her texts, as much of her work is immediately discounted as
imitative, conformist, and lacking in any significant impact on the genre of
children’s fiction despite the fact that her authentic child-narrator, Oswald, who
relates true-to-life experiences of children combined with Nesbit’s social
commentary regarding literature for children and imperialism refutes and
discredits these stances. Critics “[object] strenuously to the inclusion of Nesbit in
the canon of great writers for children” by labeling even her best work as simply
borrowed from other writers, inserting minimal originality into her texts (Wall
136). I maintain that, “what this reading fails to recognize is that Nesbit’s extreme
allusiveness itself constitutes an innovative technique, one that her child characters
practice constantly and to great effect” much as Nesbit has a great effect on
children’s literature (Gubar 421). She “was the first professional writer of fiction
106
for children who did not feel the need to justify her writing for children, in her
own eyes and in the eyes of other adults, by insisting on the intellectual and moral
differences between herself and her [child] readers” (Wall 149). Instead, she used
her child narrator to speak directly to children regarding topics of childhood
interest, writing authentically and in a manner illustrative of genuine regard and
attention to children.
Nesbit’s distinct voice of a child-narrator, accurate portrayal of children and
childhood experiences, and subtext of social commentary deserve the critical
attention previously denied to texts by and for women and children. Despite “the
renewed critical attention being paid to the novel in England from the 1880’s
onward, with the concomitant attempts to develop a theory of fiction,” the
demands called for “the reclamation of the genre for intellectuals, a category
which inevitably excluded women and children” (Foster and Simons 127-28).
And yet, even though literary theorists “are notably uninterested in children’s
literature,” Nesbit’s Bastable stories have begun to attract attention due to Nesbit’s
ability to create a child narrator and use him to undermine Victorian restraints in a
variety of ways as he allows her to address a variety of issues: imperialism,
childhood and the role/significance of children, and types of literature to value and
how they penetrate real life (Knoepflmacher, “Balancing of Child and Adult”
529). Nesbit has “had a decisive influence upon much modern writing for
children, arguably stronger than that of any other single writer: adventure stories
of the ‘famous five’ type, stories of magical happenings and visits to the past
largely owe their existence to the models she established” (Briggs 402). M.
Daphne Kutzer quotes Suzanne Rahm when she states that, “‘E. Nesbit, if anyone,
could be called the children’s writer’s children’s writer of our century’” because
“her works influenced C.S. Lewis, Arthur Ransome, Noel Streatfeild, and other
107
twentieth-century writers for children” (Kutzer 63). Also, her “refusal to idealize
either the child’s actual – as opposed to imaginative – power, or the nature of the
world that children inhabit” makes up another of her major contributions to the
genre of literature for children (Briggs 190). Nesbit remains a forerunner in
writing authentically for and about children and their experiences, refusing to
emphasize either goodness or wickedness in the process. Her usage of a child
narrator, especially a vague, first-person child narrator who is honest, engaging
and endearing and forces readers to invest in the Bastable children’s activities and
experiences, also demonstrates her contribution to literature, as she provided other
means of storytelling used in current popular texts for children.
As Barbara Wall states, “Nesbit really pioneered modern writing for
children. Her acceptance of children as fit companions enabled her to bridge what
she herself called the ‘great gulf’ between adult and child in a new way, a way that
gave children as readers a new important status” as well as children as speakers,
thinkers, and analyzers through the portrayals of the Bastable children (157). To
conclude my support of Edith Nesbit’s texts as worthy of more critical attention
and regard I cite M. Daphne Kutzer when she says, “Children’s books – children
themselves – are often discounted as not being serious, as undeserving of close
critical attention. Children’s literature is often marginalized in academe, and older
children’s literature suffers” (140). While she goes on to state that older children’s
literature suffers more than contemporary children’s literature, I contend that
modern texts for children suffer just as much due to the lack of a fully developed
critical and analytical history of the genre. We can only hope to understand
current writings for children once we have understood the themes, tensions and
motivations for children’s literature of the past.
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Corinth Ann Gibbs
03/08/2010