Childhood in literature
[9] Pedagogical practices of the time were greatly impacted by his criticism of traditional educational processes that rejected natural predispositions and his support for emotional guidance for children alongside the conventional intellectual tutelage.
They also state that "Childhood means much more than just the space between birth and the attainment of adulthood", and is instead the situation of early formative years, particularly regarding the quality of an adolescent's life, and emphasizes the significance of this period in emotional development and education.
[11] With much cultural variation, childhood is viewed as the period of youth up until around age 16, with the notion of being a child carrying a variety of parliamentary and legal connotations, or is seen as closely related to progression through schooling and the completion of a secondary education.
[12] Constructions of childhood within literature are used to explore the ways in which strange stimuli develop into familiarity throughout adolescence, manipulating that which is considered ordinary, as well as unusual phenomena.
[17] English and creative writing professor Laura Peters posits that, during the Victorian age, cultural systems and social constructions became reorganized to place the notion of family as a "building block" around which society was framed.
[18] As such, a variety of authors were drawn to writing on the topic of orphan-hood, as these parent-less children were on the outside of this newly fundamental social structure, thus constituting the potential for interesting and complex depictions of childhood.
[18] Orphans within literature symbolize, on a whole, detachment from both other people and the most fundamental social unit of a family; they are "the eternal Other" and categorized as outsiders seeking (or avoiding) incorporation into regular society.
[20] Large amounts of academic writing on childhood are based upon the works of philosophers and historians such as John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Philippe Ariès.
Ariès' proposition about the history of childhood has been rejected by some scholars on the basis that the idea was too quickly accepted into academic study without being comprehensively scrutinized and tested, thus becoming "dogma by dint of repetition".
[22] One of the most notable ideas regarding childhood and child development, originally formulated by John Locke in his 1690 work An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, is the notion of tabula rasa, which refers to the mind of a child as a "blank slate", having no preconceived ideologies, thoughts or knowledge at birth; thus, children are free to be molded as a part of their cultural surroundings and are a result of their respective situations and environments throughout development.
[27] Anne of Green Gables, by L. M. Montgomery – A novel about a young orphan who is forced to mature and develop self-agency due to her restrictive environment, with austere Protestant values necessitating an exploration of childhood identity.
[28] Harry Potter series, by J. K. Rowling – Magical fantasy narrative following a boy wizard, deals with orphan-hood, friendship and the development of relationships, child prodigies, and the dichotomies between childhood and adulthood.
