Representations

of Childhood in
Art and Literature
Representations
of Childhood in Art
and Literature
Edited by

Kanak Kanti Bera

Anindita Bhaumik
Krishanu Maiti
Representations of Childhood in Art and Literature

Edited by Kanak Kanti Bera, Anindita Bhaumik and Krishanu Maiti

This book first published 2023

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2023 by Kanak Kanti Bera, Anindita Bhaumik,

Krishanu Maiti and contributors

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN (10): 1-5275-9181-6

ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-9181-3
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction .............................................................................................. vii

Childhood—Songs of Innocence and Experience: Art of Polemics
and Polemics of Art
Kanak Kanti Bera and Anindita Bhaumik

Chapter One ................................................................................................ 1

Is there any Space for Children? A Study of Childhood Neglect in Select
Novels of Kazuo Ishiguro
Amit Mondal

Chapter Two ............................................................................................. 10

Looking Back: Representations of Childhood in T.S. Eliot’s Poetry
Mitra Sannigrahi

Chapter Three ........................................................................................... 19

Reflections of Childhood in the Plays of John Osborne
Twishampti De

Chapter Four ............................................................................................. 29

The Mutant Child and the Changeling in Science Fiction
Riccardo Gramantieri

Chapter Five ............................................................................................. 45

The Darker Side of Childhood: An Exploration of Trauma and Crisis
in the Writing of Rabindranath Tagore
Madhurima Neogi

Chapter Six ............................................................................................... 54

Quest for ‘Home’ in Jibansmriti: Literature as the Symbolic Wish-
fulfillment of the Childhood Agonies
Samit Kumar Maiti
vi Table of Contents

Chapter Seven........................................................................................... 66
Coming Out as a Queer Tamil Boy in an Ethnically–Split Postcolonial
Sri Lankan Society: A Study of Shyam Selvadurai’s Funny Boy
Surajit Senapati

Chapter Eight ............................................................................................ 76

“Where there is power, there is resistance”: Adultism, Resistance,
and the Dynamics of Adult-Child Relationship in Anita Desai’s
“Games at Twilight”
Avijit Pramanik

Chapter Nine............................................................................................. 86
Beyond Binaries: A Study of Ruskin Bond’s The Room on the Roof
Soumyadeep Chakraborty

Chapter Ten .............................................................................................. 97

Ninots Indultats: Finding the Child through Intangible Cultural Heritage
Catalina Millán Scheiding

Chapter Eleven ....................................................................................... 119

Windows on the World: The Child’s Gaze framed between the Universal
and the Exotic in World Cinema
Jean-Baptiste de Vaulx

Chapter Twelve ...................................................................................... 134

“The mask is the meaning, insofar as it is absolutely pure…”:
Connections Between Two (1964) and Night Cries (1989)
Susri Bhattacharya

Chapter Thirteen ..................................................................................... 146

Childhood, Cognition and Linguality: Study of Thakurmar Jhuli
as a Tool for Language Acquisition
Kanak Kanti Bera and Anindita Bhaumik
 INTRODUCTION

CHILDHOOD—
SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE:
ART OF POLEMICS AND POLEMICS OF ART

KANAK KANTI BERA

AND ANINDITA BHAUMIK

Childhood: biology vs sociology

Who is a ‘child’? What does ‘childhood’ mean, and what does it consist of?
A search for terminological meanings in the process of morphological
derivation of ‘childhood’ from the root ‘child’ is sure to deprive us of the
rich philosophical connotations associated with them. While the term ‘child’
is often biologically defined, ‘childhood’ is hardly a scientific nomenclature.
Besides science, childhood as a philosophical concept draws heavily upon
both humanities and social sciences. While science tends to define
‘childhood’ with reference to a specific phase in our life cycle, humanities
and social sciences put emphasis on a set of experiences and behaviours to
define it. Of late, as an outcome of this debate or the inter-disciplinary
ramifications, the concepts of children and childhood have lent themselves
to some serious inquiries in the field of academia and the arena of
scholarships.

As hinted above, the whole concept of childhood is an evasively ambiguous

and complex one. In medical terms, childhood is the post-infancy period
that ends with puberty. This concept equates childhood with non-adulthood
in terms of the state and growth of a person. But, rather than a medical or
physiological condition, childhood turns out to be a sociological and
philosophical construct. As soon as the discourse on ‘childhood’ goes
beyond this scientific periphery, it starts losing its concrete definable
character and turns into some intangible entity. But this intangibility is never
a form of refusal to be investigated and explored. Rather, it yields enormous
viii Introduction

opportunities for the thinkers and theorists to redefine and discover

‘childhood’ anew. For example, a number of Western philosophies down
the ages and across the diverse cultures looked upon childhood differently,
thereby pointing out both the paradigmatic and syntagmatic evolution of the
concept.

Various notions and interpretations of the term ‘childhood’can be assumed

as the socio-cultural and philosophical responses to the diverse preoccupations
or needs of the epochs. There are several hypotheses regarding the genesis
and evolution of this concept. In his Centuries of Childhood (1960), the
French historian, Phillipe Ariès argues that the idea of childhood did not
exist before the early modern period. Nicholas Orme, on the other hand,
supposes the Middle Ages in England to introduce the notion of childhood
and children’s culture in his essay “The culture of children in medieval
England” (1995).

If childhood and adulthood are polar opposites, and when the depiction of
childhood in arts and literature has mostly been done by the adults, questions
of biased portraiture, inequalities and injustice to children are quite an
undeniable reality. The story of evolution concerning man’s attitude to
childhood bear enough evidence for this fact. The mediaeval age looked
upon children as mini-adults, and childhood as the early phase of adulthood
(Ariès). In fact, since the 16th century, childhood was considered a primary
phase of human life, a kind of preparation for adulthood, as John Locke
contended. The 17 th century started drawing a demarcation line with respect
to clothes, education, or healthcare. The Victorians could see and realise the
existence of childhood. But the cult of childhood came with a stronger
march of progress, and it is only the modern era that does not only ‘see’ but
also ‘hear’ and recognise childhood and its rights. In this present century,
huge critical attention is paid to childhood by both society and media.

Two contrasting definitions of childhood became equally popular as they

evolved across different forms of arts. These can be summarised as, ‘faulty
adults’ (to be corrected and disciplined) and ‘icons of innocence’ (which
brings childhood close to divinity). This picture remained unchanged, more
or less, till the early 19th century.

A report from the Children’s Society, published in 2006, shows how

childhood in the true sense of the term is slowly ‘disappearing’, being under
threat from the adult world. An overdose of surveillance and supervision by
that adult world is a huge threat to the essence of childhood — its innocence,
spontaneity, and creativity. Our modern culture, as represented by the parents,
 Representations of Childhood in Art and Literature ix

guardians, governesses or schools, rarely allows children to enjoy any

unsupervised games or sports, or to have any kind of self-designed
recreation. Children, in fact, represent the worst of minorities pathetically
subjugated to multifarious oppression everywhere. At home, they are
rigorously trained to become ideal (and successful) adults in the future. A
number of schools, especially those run with commercial objectives, often
treat them as guinea pigs as a part of their utilitarian experimentation.
Adding to their misery, there is now the marketing industry, which often
falls to exploiting the susceptibilities of children, prioritising business
purposes over children’s welfare. This sector is critically judgmental of the
basic skills these children acquire from their guardians and teachers. Most
of these adult agencies profess to working towards the physical,
psychological, social and moral well-being of the children, but hardly attach
any value to their original thoughts, emotions, creativity, or desires. It would
not be hyperbolic to say that such treatment of childhood is a reflection of
the deep-rooted indifference of a particular section of a society that is self-
indulgent and judgmental. In fact, society as a whole needs to be properly
groomed in the art of treating childhood; and different forms of art can live
up to the task of providing us (individuals, or these social agencies) with
much-needed orientation through proper guidance or admonition. The
paintings of Hermann Gross, a German expressionist painter, have
successfully offered this orientation, primarily by capturing the quintessential
qualities of childhood. His paintings exhibit how art can potentially offer
deeper insights into childhood to all caregivers belonging to this risk-averse
society. Clearly pointing out that childhood is endangered when it is never
encouraged by all these adult agencies, Gross’ art warns us as a society
against the possible loss of this precious childhood.

Childhood: Paradise Lost

For all of us, as individuals, one thing universally common is that we all
passed through childhood. We left it behind (or rather, had to) quite a few
years ago. With all the mature years weighing hard upon our shoulders, we
all dream of time travel, at least once, to that pristine phase of our lives,
even though it was not all a fairytale for every one of us. An unfortunate
few may be haunted by the nightmare of childhood (as happened to
Dickens’ David Copperfield); a lot may have lived a childhood synonymous
with poverty (like Majidi’s Ali). But for the vast majority, childhood is like
a dream, a rare sense of wonder, a time of pure spontaneous imagination,
even amidst poverty, hunger and loss (as it was for Ray’s Apu and Durga).
x Introduction

Irrespective of what exactly the memories of childhood uncover, it is hard

to find an individual who is not keen for time travel to those early days of
life. But let us ask ourselves (and, of course, all our readers) the question:
even if we were blessed with an opportunity for time travel, could we view
childhood now with the same childlike sense of wonder? After being
burdened for so many years with all these sweet and bitter experiences, can
a willing suspension of disbelief be ensured at all? If the reply is ‘No’, and
we cannot help having only a matured critical look into the mysteries of
childhood, then this book can offer exactly what our readers might look for,
i.e.. critical exploration into the different aspects of childhood.

Inquiries into childhood: Philosophy to art

The social or sociological perceptions of childhood, along with various
ideologies associated with them offer a widely varied range of works in
literature, philosophy, psychology and other forms of arts. A plethora of
academic writing on childhood is based upon the works of philosophers,
historians, and theorists, such as John Locke in the 17th century, (concerning
the development and education of children), Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the
18th century (maintaining that children are innately innocent) and Philippe
Ariès, contending a distinctive separation of childhood from adulthood.
This trend of childhood scholarship continued until it gave way to the recent
pluralistic approach, including the deconstructive trends of the 1990s and
2000s.

Since the time of its adoption as one of the subjects of creative inquiry,
childhood has ever retained a huge fascination for the artists, irrespective of
form and genre. In the world of painting, children hardly had any
thoroughfare until the 17th century, other than the figure of Jesus as an
infant, the principal image of childhood in art. As late as the time when the
French impressionists were at the helm, childhood came to hold the centre
stage of art. The avant-garde French painters of the 19th century gave a new
dimension to this new subject matter. The 20th century avant-garde painters
like Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso brought a new freshness to the
representation of childhood. Their immortal creations, like the figures of
Marguerite and Pierre painted by Matisse, and Picasso’s Paulo, came to be
recognised as the first modernistic enterprises that represented childhood in
art. The 1969 Picasso masterpiece, The Painter and the Child finally broke
all the shackles, and firmly established the ‘child’ as a metaphor to stand for
the integrity of the art.
 Representations of Childhood in Art and Literature xi

When it comes to celluloid, childhood has continued to fascinate the minds

of all concerned since the very beginning. The medium reinforces the idea
that childhood is never a biological condition. Rather, as an ambiguous
metaphor, it is now larger than this, then much lesser. The great filmmakers
exploit the awareness that comes with maturity in order to reflect the
‘undoubted otherness of youthful experience’. Those films that ‘approach
childhood with adult acuity’, are held to be the greatest, as Pasquale Iannone
aptly reviewed in the April 2014 issue of Sight and Sound, an international
film magazine.

The greatest problem with childhood is its inevitable confrontation with,

and a constant monitoring or strict surveillance by, the adult world. Not only
is childhood constructed by the adult world, but its whole definition and
existence are also defined by adults. A writer or a painter, himself being an
adult, hardly allows childhood to define and rebuild itself. After childhood
is filtered through the experienced eyes of the artist, it is served to the palate
of adult readers and connoisseurs. In short, childhood in art is reduced to
what the adult world allows it to be. While a writer or a painter serves here
as the individual initiator, in cinema more adults are present (the producer,
the scriptwriter, the director, the actors, and so on), to perform their self-
proclaimed duty to tamper with the picture of childhood.

The age-old relationship between cinema and childhood started long back,
probably with the 41-second-long movie, Baby’s Breakfast by Louis
Lumière (1895). Lumière’s film provides a strictly adult view of childhood,
as the renowned film-lecturer Pasquale Iannone remarked in his 2014 article
“Age of innocence: childhood on film”. “This early cinematic snapshot of
childhood was made by a filmmaker who was nonetheless rigidly ‘adult’ in
the approach to his material” (Iannone).

Georges Méliès represents a different position with his presentation of the

true senses of innocence, freedom, and the beauty of childhood. While
Baby’s Breakfast shows childhood from the outside, the Georges Méliès
film, A Trip to the Moon (1902) does it from the inside out. On the other
hand, Pete Docter’s Oscar-winning animation film Inside Out (2015) or
Andrew Stanton’s Finding Nemo (2003) can be said to have applied both
these viewpoints. Both films have an almost similar relationship construct,
i.e. a child growing up and maturing in the world of adults who invariably
keep a wistful watch from the sidelines on this gradual evolution and final
amalgamation with the world. In the article “Age of innocence: childhood
on film”, published in 2014 Iannone argued that the best way of exploring
childhood is, of course, to deploy both methodologies simultaneously:
xii Introduction

… the best childhood pictures are those that have found ways to harness
both methods, films that manage to approach childhood with adult acuity
while in some way reflecting its undoubted otherness. The presence of a
child often allows filmmakers to depart from conventional modes of
storytelling, to wriggle free from the strict demands of plot. (Iannone)

In his article, Iannone reviewed childhood as depicted in different films

from both outside and inside, vis-à-vis their experiences of the crudities of
life — sense of loss, rebellion, criminality, alienation, or destitution.
Docter’s film Inside Out is about just that, applying both the inside and
outside views, as Jen Chaney explained in a 2015 article: “In Inside Out,
Pixar gets mature about growing up”. According to Chaney, point of view
is far more important than the plot of the film. The theme of Riley’s
meltdown has almost been subjugated to the way it is presented; to all the
“sophisticated views of the mechanisms behind”. To quote the author,
For the first time, a Pixar film is confronting how much it hurts when a child
realizes her childhood will end — while it’s still ending. It literally gets
inside her head, then bluntly announces that being a kid hurts because it
doesn’t last. That feels refreshingly candid, even for Pixar. (Jen Chaney)

In some way or the other, the ‘adult’ filmmakers seem to be more occupied
with the task of portraying the child attaining psychological maturity in a
hostile world. Much greater focus is put on the interaction between
childhood and the social environment, since, it’s generally believed, a
child’s development is influenced by the social experiences he/she goes
through across different developmental stages, as Erikson contended in
1950 (Svetina 2014). The Harry Hook movie based on Golding’s Lord of
the Flies (1990) is a supreme example showing the different stages of a
child’s psychosocial development, as described by Mariga Marig in the
2019 article, “Childhood psychological development in Lord of the Flies”:
Themes such as self-esteem, gender stereotyping, personality development
and emotional intelligence are comprehensively depicted in the film, which
makes it easier to understand a child’s development. It is notable that
environmental settings, along with social interactions, are imperative in
influencing childhood psychosocial development. For instance, Ralph and
Jack had to form different and opposing camps due to conflict in their social
interactions, particularly without the guidance of adults or parents. (M.
Marig)

Adding to the narrative method employed therein, there are enough

intersections between the introspections both from within and without.
 Representations of Childhood in Art and Literature xiii

These contrasting viewpoints often overlap, complement, and endorse each

other.

The design of the Persian movie Children of Heaven (1997), directed by

Majid Majidi, is mainly based on a child’s point of view, which is also seen
as an ‘innocent’point of view. Mostly, the use of a child’s point of view is
generally accepted, more so when trying to avoid government censorship of
movies. However, the inclusion of a child’s point of view turns out to be
more surprising than it should have been. For example, there seems to be a
fairer representation of the ‘sweet’ life, even in the wake of hardship.

Another paradoxical aspect of childhood is that it is basically a promise

never to be kept to the full. It constitutes a gradual process of baptism into
the adult world. Dickens’ David or Oliver were confronted with the brutality
of the heartless mature world being pitted against them; the socio-political
adversities. In the Indian context, this baptism took place through a less
corrosive, but more productive mechanism. Bibhutibhushan’s Apu, Durga
(in PatherPanchali, made into a film by Satyajit Ray), Gopal and Chotu (in
Sahaj PaatherGappo, 2016, a Bengali film directed by Manas Mukul Pal
on the basis of Bibhutibhushan’s short-story “Talnabami”) are grand
specimens to represent childhood, the beauty, the purity of its innocence.
Here childhood and adolescence are shown as more engrossed in the
environment, with an almost naturalistic agendum. Apu and Durga have
their autumn beauties of kash, jatra in their village, the musicality of the
trains running across the green fields, the blue autumn sky, and the purest
forms of flora and fauna. Gopal and Chotu are perfectly synonymous with
the beauties of rural Bengal, the landscapes, the river flowing, fields
verdant, and the lush greeneries. But everything is not always so bright for
these siblings either. Though not on the Dickensian scale, socio-cultural
adversities threaten to take a toll upon the integrity of their lives too. They
become initiated into a world of disease, death, hunger, malnutrition, the
indifference of the adult world and so on. However, neither of these have
been depicted by Bibhutibhashan the author, or the filmmaker (Ray or Pal)
as forces to chastise childhood. Rather, the primary objective here is
palpably to bring childhood into a natural phase of transition —from
ignorance to knowledge, from innocence to experience — without soiling
the essential integrity of being or disturbing the inner self.

The medium of film and the problem of point of view

As pointed out in the above comparison between A Trip to the Moon and
Baby’s Breakfast in terms of their narrative styles, one of the problematic
xiv Introduction

issues in the representation of childhood in art and literature pertains to the

point of view. More often than not, the pictures of childhood we come across
have been depicted from the adult perspective. The representation itself is
by adults, and for adults, mostly.

The cinematic expression gives a new dimension to the presentation of

childhood. Both Bibhutibhusan in his novel Pather Panchali (Song of the
Road) and Satyajit Ray in his film adaptation presented Apu and Durga’s
love for nature, their extraordinary sense of wonder at every natural
phenomenon. It has been aptly pointed out by Sudipta Datta in her article
“Looking Back at PatherPanchali”, published in The Hindu (November 2
2019):
The idea of distance, in general, enchanted him (Apu). . . .The high blue
arch of the skies above, the disappearing speck of a flyaway kite, the misty
indigo field he had seen as a child . . . all of it made him think of the nebulous
adventures that were happening at that very moment, in land that lay just
beyond an average human’s reach. (Sudipta Datta)

In addition to this, the medium of film and its cinematic expressions helped
Ray look deeper into the child psyche. While the novel presented the
children’s impressionistic view of the world, Ray’s film version with all its
visual and musical effects could make this sense of wonder more appealing
and the pathos more appalling. Ray made the least use of words and
conversation, but much of silence and non-verbal sounds. These sounds and
nuanced visuals not only resulted in some profound poetry of the natural
world, and a greater poignancy of effects, but helped Ray perform the
miracle of capturing the experiences of the protagonist caught between his
romantic imagination, and the ways of the world; between the beauties of
nature and its devastations, between his sense of wonder and the reality of
death. The cinematic charisma of Ray is at its best when the parent’s heart-
rending lamentation over their daughter’s death trails into strong and
tortured musical screeches, and it communicates everything to Apu in an
instant. More strongly than ever, the child figure of Apu, his sense of beauty
and wonder, became challenged, and forced him to wake up to the real
world, as one who has just grown up.

Childhood and Literature

Childhood, being an age-old object of interest globally, is nothing new as a
stock theme in literature. As a critical concept, it has gathered momentum
only in recent times, with significant contributions to childhood scholarship
 Representations of Childhood in Art and Literature xv

made by thinkers and philosophers, such as Philippe Ariès, Stephen Wilson,

Michelle H. Martin, Kate Capshaw, Anna Mae Duane, Jacqueline Rose,
Marah Gubar and Robin Bernstein, and many others. The whole corpus
produced by them simply leads us to the point that we need to understand
the philosophical idea(s) of childhood, as they have evolved gradually since
the time of ancient fables transmitted orally, from nursery rhymes to the age
of the e-book.

Literature reflects both the paradigmatic and syntagmatic shifts, both the
evolution and variances in the representation or perceptions of childhood in
its own way. Constructions of childhood in literary works explore the ways
in which strangeness turns into familiarity in the process of growing up. It
also serves the author to relocate the ‘lost self’ by stressing the distance
between childhood in the past and the reality of adulthood, as Susan Engel
suggests in “Looking Backward: Representation of Childhood in Literary
Work” (1999).

Childhood has been represented in English literature with all its multifarious
dimensions. The literary potential of childhood is evident in its inherent
dualism, in the range of its association with the contrastive binaries — from
innocence, purity and vulnerability to the negative, even the dystopian sense
of ‘evil’. This innocence is begotten out of the child’s ignorance, but once
it is gone, with the gain of knowledge, it paves the way to evil, eventually
to ‘adulthood’:
Their childhood is based around their innocence, whether that is defined as
sexual, emotional or physical. Once their innocence has gone, so has their
childhood, and once that has disappeared they are subject to the same
pressures and difficulties as adults, whatever their age and whatever their
understanding. They are entitled to no protection, no sympathy and no
special pleading. They are no longer children. (Mary Jane Kehily 2010)

In consonance with this argument, the orphan narratives (that became very
popular in the late 18th century) showed children and childhood as
vulnerable victims of the system, which easily wins our sympathy. In
contrast, books with strong moral instructions depict children with errors as
bad role models. Fables and allegories dedicated to the cause of moral
welfare (for example, the Buddhist Jataka Tales for the kids and children)
took a middle flight. They frequently hint at the elements of evil in adult
society which children can hardly escape, but also preach morality as a tool
for these children to fight against evil and vanquish it.
xvi Introduction

Coming to English literature, we may trace the portrayal of children in a

number of Elizabethan lyrics. In the neo-classical era, though it finds room
in the works of John Dryden or Alexander Pope, a more serious
preoccupation with the theme of childhood became almost a vogue in the
18th century with the rise of the English novel. Its prolific ramification
followed. William Blake and Charles Lamb glorified children as meek,
mild, innocent, beautiful creatures. Wordsworth showed the child as a
symbol of natural piety and wisdom, and often went on to mystify it; Samuel
Taylor Coleridge heaped his praises upon the same qualities, often breaking
the boundaries between adulthood and childhood (Christabel being an
embodiment of this ‘adult’ childhood). These Romantics, in fact, initiated
the ‘cult of childhood’ in the 19th century. As Margarita Georgieva observed
in Childhood in English Literature (2010), critical inquiry into childhood
became essential, for the sake of a fresh critical perception and re-evaluation
of the Romantic or Victorian literary production. Eventually, the 19th and
20th centuries witnessed the growth of different bodies of literature, both
entertaining and didactic:
The 19th and 20th centuries saw the steady emergence of a real literature for
children, either for their instruction or entertainment. Thus, the child
became either the central subject and/or object of a plethora of writing since
the 18th century. These reflected the dichotomy of childhood which was seen
as a symbol of growth and development on the one hand and as a symbol of
regression and ignorance of the world on the other. (Georgieva 2010)

The body of literature written primarily with a didactic intention consists of

fantasy, fairytales, nonsense verse and prose, limericks and science fiction.
Despite the guise of childlike fantasy, Lewis Carroll’s Alice (Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland) conveys a serious message. The girl has been
used by the author as an instrument to challenge social conventions, and to
raise questions about the behaviour and attitudes of grown-up people. This
kind of admixture of fantasy form and didactic intention is highly
enlightening, as well as entertaining, even for the young readers. Thus,
besides the entertainment provided to children by modern writers of fantasy
like J.K. Rowling or Roald Dahl, there are allegories, fables and nonsense
texts with some serious propositions. The dichotomy of progression and
regression that Georgieva talked about has been epitomised beautifully
through the characters of Ralph and Jack in Golding’s Lord of the Flies,
where the presentation of childhood is explicitly drenched with a serious
didactic message for the adults.

In this literary journey undertaken by the ‘child’ down these periods,

childhood in English literature was sometimes viewed in contrasting lights,
 Representations of Childhood in Art and Literature xvii

with the child as either as a subject or an object. Kimberley Reynolds in his

Perception of Childhood (2014) points out that childhood was considered a
‘perilous period’ before the mid-18th century, because of the Puritan belief
that humans are born with an inheritance of Primary Sin. Since the mid-18th
century, this religious perception of childhood was gradually replaced by a
positive idea, associated with innocence, freedom, creativity, and spontaneity.
The influence of Rousseau (Emile 1762) is discernible here. The works of
Blake and Wordsworth have idealised the whole conception of childhood.
A tendency toward such idealization remained prevalent in the 19th and the
early 20th centuries as well. The novels of Charles Dickens, for instance,
show an image of childhood against the backdrop of squalor and decadence
of industrial London. The ‘Golden Age’ of children’s literature, which
features British and American texts produced during the mid-19th and early
20th centuries represents images of childhood firmly established in the
contemporary cultural imagination. Figures of Alice in her Wonderland,
Peter Pan, Mowgli, and Tom Sawyer, became popular motifs of childhood,
embodying the adult who longs to be a child once more. Childhood
continues to be a favourite theme in a bourgeoning number of genres. For
instance, we may mention the depiction of children at times of war, looking
at poems, diaries, and other writings by children, and exploring children’s
written experiences of their own childhood. While childhood was viewed as
a preparatory period for adulthood in the earlier literary works, the new age
puts emphasis on retaining childhood in one’s later life, with all the elements
of wonder, magic and volatility associated with it.

At present, a shift is discernible in the fields of children’s literature and

childhood studies toward questions of ethics regarding children, and the
effects of categories of age. Such an approach foregrounds the scholarly
works concerning matters of actual children, instead of an exclusive focus
on the cultural concept of the child.

Children as authors and readers

As soon as the question of authorship comes into consideration, it is the
adults who enjoy supreme monopoly, leaving no room for the children,
irrespective of the form of art. Hundreds of women have authored feminist
texts or talked about female issues. Authors like Forster and Orwell as
colonial masters, or the likes of Achebe or Raja Rao have talked about the
colonial experience. The queer writers or the black writers wrote themselves
for their respective clans. But stories for children or about childhood are
seldom written by themselves. On one hand, this mirrors the social need for
xviii Introduction

children to be guided and monitored by adults. On the other, this lack of

children’s authorship, or adult monopoly, in this sphere leads to some
inevitable consequences — defilement of the picture of childhood through
the adult lens, and marginalisation of the children, even as the readers.
Children, while playing the roles of readers too, can hardly enjoy any liberty
to make choices of text or even their meaning.

When the reader-response theory confirms the significant role the readers
play in the construction (even reconstruction or deconstruction) of a text,
the treatise on childhood as reflected in the world of art can never be
complete without looking at children as the audience. In consonance with
the arguments put forward in From Work to Text by Roland Barthes, a
‘work’ is ‘closed’ but ‘text’ open, and “the work is held in the hand, the text
is held in language”; our present enterprise has harped quite well upon the
linguistic aspect of the ‘works’ with some focus on childhood. Childhood
can pervade both the premises — the ‘work’ space as well as the ‘textual’
one. Childhood is to constitute the content mandatorily. Though it happens
to be there outside the work occasionally, it is found very much inside the
text. Here, one of the articles by Bera & Bhaumik, dealing with the role of
fairy tales in language learning and cognition in the early formative days of
childhood, shows how the ‘text’ or the whole of the discourse can serve as
a tool for language acquisition by children.

The collection and the objective

Concentrating on the theme of childhood as explored in the different art
forms, this collection of critical essays supposedly takes this increasingly
problematic and debatable topic a step forward. It addresses some of these
critical issues discussed above relating to childhood inside the text and
outside. Different critical perspectives have been adopted by our contributors
in their analysis of salient issues relating to childhood. The articles touch
upon almost all the major concerns relating to childhood, both the positives
and the negatives, as mirrored in art forms such as literature, painting and
films.

Whether a virtue or otherwise, this collection could not help putting major
emphasis on literature. Articles on dramatic, poetic, or narrative representations
of childhood have outnumbered heavily other entries focusing on film,
artistic figurines, gaming, or language learning. The critical entries
analysing literary texts include plays, poetry, novels and short stories.
 Representations of Childhood in Art and Literature xix

Amit Mondal’s article explores the extent to which Ishiguro’s adult

characters are aware of, and fulfil their duties towards, children. Delving
into this issue through readings of Ishuguro’s novels A Pale View of Hills
(1982), The Remains of the Day (1989), When We Were Orphans (2000)
and Never Let Me Go (2005), the article shows how these novels focus on
the lives of certain figures who were denied their childhoods, with
childhood becoming a tool guarded by adults.

Mitra Sannigrahi’s article examines how T.S. Eliot’s poetry sometimes

reflectively reminisces childhood as the happier part of a person’s life - a
part that differs from adulthood even as the two merge. Evidently, as it is
claimed, Eliot’s poetry suggests that childhood experiences stick with
people as they transition through their lives.

Against the backdrop of John Osborne’s formative years, and the

relationships he forged in the course of them, Twishampati De’s article
demonstrates how Osborne transposed his childhood experiences onto his
plays to make them credible. It is, asserts De, in this transposition that the
greatness of Osborne as a writer resides. Through a glance at Frank
Cvitanovich’s 1950s biopic of Osborne, A Better Class of Person, De
suggests that Osborne’s love for his father, and his disgust with his mother
as a child, produced him as an unpleasant rebel.

In his article, Riccardo Gramantieri demonstrates how science fiction, as a

futuristic version of supernatural fiction, adapts the pre-scientific myth of
the changeling to modern scientific and socio-historical situations. Fleshing
out the myth, Gramantieri explicates the historical beginnings of the figure
of the changeling, and shows that science fiction’s appropriation of this
figure, though less delved into, needs to be taken into account.

Madhurima Neogi’s article, concentrating on Rabindranath Tagore’s poems

and short stories, argues that Tagore’s work often focuses on the darker side
of childhood. To flesh out her point, Neogi examines some of the child
characters in Rabindranath’s texts — characters whose emotions the adult
world often refuses to grasp.

In his essay, Samit Kumar Maiti argues that Rabindranath Tagore’s

Jibansmriti (1912), (the English version called My Reminiscences),
becomes an impressionistic portrait of the development of Tagore as both a
creative writer and a man. Maiti examines how the inner world of the
imagination that Tagore delved into as a child, protected him from the
agonies he faced during his early years. Eventually, Maiti’s article explores
xx Introduction

whether the political discordance against which Tagore calls for an

egalitarian harmony, stems from a lack defining his childhood.

Surajit Senapati’s article questions Sri Lankan society’s founding of

Sinhalese racial and ethnic purity on heteronormativity, and its concomitant
outlawing of homosexuality. Senapati examines this setting through a
reading of Shyam Selvadurai’s 1994 novel Funny Boy, and interrogates how
a democratic society could, paradoxically, enforce homophobia as its
deciding parameter.

Avijit Pramanik claims in his article that most children’s literature is written
by figures observing and commenting upon their childhoods. As a result,
critical interventions in the field of children’s literature often hinge on the
relationship between adults and children. In this setting, Pramanik examines
Desai’s short story, “Games at Twilight” in which, claims Pramanik, adult
and child alike possess dynamics of power which are, however, generally
enjoyed only by one of the two parties. From this point of view, “Games at
Twilight” questions the controlling behaviour of adults toward children, and
gestures toward the strategies by which children resist that control.

Soumyadeep Chakraborty’s article suggests that a subversive streak runs

through children’s literature — a streak that questions the political and
cultural codes founded on binaries. Needless to say, adults wield the sceptre
of power within these binaries. Reading Ruskin Bond’s 1956 novel The
Room on the Roof as a piece of children’s literature, Chakraborty questions
such binaries through the novel’s portrayal of the boy-protagonist’s psycho-
social journey and development.

Discussing the ninots indultats — an artistic figurine in the festival of Fallas

in Valencia, Spain — Catalina Millán-Scheiding shows how this figurine
depicts children as links between the past and modernity. Arguing that the
ninots indultats has made for the increase of Valencian and fallero
community self-representation, Millán-Scheiding demonstrates how the
recent inclusion of the ninots in the UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage
is representative of an increase in the portrayal of children in aural and
visual events. Such performative inclusions, Millán-Scheiding’s article
claims, have helped show how contemporary spaces shared between adults
and children forge communal identity and selfhood.

Focusing on two Iranian films — Abbas Kiarostami’s film, Where is the

Friend’s Home (1987) and Jafar Panahi’s The White Balloon (1995) —
Jean-Baptiste de Vaulx shows how they use their child characters, who are
 Representations of Childhood in Art and Literature xxi

multiple Othered, to construct a new cinematic aesthetic. This aesthetic

strikes a balance between the exotic and the universal to reach out to
cosmopolitan international audiences. However, looking at the films
through paradigmatic child protagonists, such aesthetics are not without
their shortcomings, as de Vaulx painstakingly demonstrates, by drawing
connections with the international reaction to Satyajit Ray’s Pather
Panchali (1955).

Susri Bhattacharya’s article examines matters of failed assimilations and

consequent alienation among the child protagonists of two short films —
Satyajit Ray’s Bangla Two (1964) and Tracey Moffatt’s Night Cries: A
Rural Tragedy (1989). Both films show how the effects of colonialism are
connected with matters of self-estrangement among children across
cultures.

In their article, Bera & Bhaumik have examined how the collection of
Bengali fairytales, Thakurmar Jhuli, compiled and edited by Dakshinaranjan
Mitra Majumdar, contributes to the process of language acquisition by the
young Bengali children during their formative years. A discussion on the
select fairytales in both the original Bengali, and in English translation,
makes a comparative study to show how they help children improve their
linguistic and communication skills to differing extents in processes of
language learning.

Applying both the extensive and intensive analytical tools and critical
approaches, the articles included in this volume present a diversified
representation (rather a serious exploration) of childhood and its
complexities. These critical essays will surely be helpful to make our
readers re-visit, imagine and understand childhood anew. Touching upon a
number of social-cultural, psychological, philosophical or even linguistic
issues relating to childhood, the volume aims at offering a wholesome
critical assessment of as many important aspects of childhood as possible,
when it constitutes the centre of critical attention of the artists. In this
present volume, the articles have addressed, analysed, and offered insights
into, a number of relevant issues relating to childhood, discussed above.
Vehemently rejecting the idea of childhood as an unambiguous monolith,
as a psycho-medical or biological concept, this collection is expected to
appeal especially to those minds that are interested in childhood scholarship,
and are looking for some newer avenues to re-direct their critical interests.
xxii Introduction

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 CHAPTER ONE

IS THERE ANY SPACE FOR CHILDREN?

A STUDY OF CHILDHOOD NEGLECT IN SELECT
NOVELS OF KAZUO ISHIGURO

AMIT MONDAL

Biography: Amit Mondal is a PhD scholar at the Department of English &

Culture Studies of The University of Burdwan. He has published articles on
various emerging issues related to English and Indian literature in national
and international journals. He was awarded Junior Research Fellowship by
UGC in 2017. He qualified West Bengal State Eligibility Test in 2017
conducted by WBCSC.

Abstract: Kazuo Ishiguro is a contemporary British writer born in Japan.

He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2017 for his remarkable work. In
his novels he has portrayed an emotional world, and looked into the human
relationship from a different perspective, about the practice of the same
ideology among different individuals, and their shared connectedness with
the world. Characters in Ishiguro’s novels are connected to each other on
the basis of their duties and responsibilities, irrespective of age and
profession. In the domain of life, childhood plays a major role in interpreting
the duties and responsibilities of the adults to their own children, and shows
how adults disturb children’s mental states with prescribed rules in the hope
of fulfilling their own unfulfilled desires and expectations. I find that there
are certain complexities in the representation of childhood in Ishiguro’s
novels, A Pale View of Hills, The Remains of the Day, When We Were
Orphans and Never Let Me Go. His novels talk about children who are not
allowed to enjoy childhood. The identity of children is politically
determined by the so-called ‘guardians’ in the act of compromise. Here,
childhood itself is less a phase of human life, more an act of compromise.
Childhood is not something that a child is supposed to ‘get’, rather,
childhood is something that becomes useful for guardians. Children do not
2 Chapter One

have choices about their own lives. They are used just like machines by the
adults whom they work for.

Keywords: choice, guardians, morality, negligence, projection.

“The child is father of the man”. William Wordsworth’s expression about

human life is well suggested in his poem “My Heart Leaps Up” in which he
explains that we should remain childish through our entire lives, to retain
positivity of mind. Childhood is the best part of human life because it holds
a mirror to experiencing innocence and purity. It teaches man the lesson of
being original to his own self. The best thing to discuss about childhood is
its connection to the adult world. When childhood is exposed to the adult
world it creates memories and nostalgia. While celebrating and glorifying
childhood, Wordsworth has rightly suggested that in every ‘man’ there
should exist a child, because adults always learn from the experiences of
childhood. In the global context, this representation of childhood takes
many turns in the fields of criticism, especially in contemporary literature.
Kazuo Ishiguro’s novels are fertile with the idea of childhood which
explores the selfish nature of the adult world. It tells the story of older people
who are not satisfied with the life they live. They think that the only way of
serving their own purpose is to play on the lives of children. Children are
abandoned in a world of darkness, devoid of hope and fulfilment. Ishiguro’s
fiction is exposed to the politics of the adults about the idea of childhood.
Childhood is not considered as the nostalgic phase of adulthood anymore,
rather it anticipates bad experiences in adulthood. Boys and girls grow up
under the guidance of adults who shape young minds in such a way that they
continue to live the lives allowed by their guardians. Turning into
adulthood, those boys and girls do not have good memories to be nostalgic
for. There remains no choice for them. It is the anger and frustration they
nurture in their minds to shower upon forthcoming generations. This
relationship between childhood and adulthood becomes very complicated.
Childhood cannot be understood without understanding the politics of
adulthood. In this juncture of life, living within childhood is risky as well as
dangerous for a child. It raises the issue of ethics and morality so far as the
question of freedoms of childhood is concerned. It questions the love and
care of adults towards their children. The protagonists of Ishiguro’s novels,
namely Kathy, Tommy, Ruth, Stevens, and Banks, are not happy with their
lives. They are scared of their past and uncertain of the future.

Ishiguro’s first novel, A Pale View of Hills explores the history of a Japanese
family. In this novel, the schildhood of two daughters of the family, Keiko
and Niki, play a very crucial role in showing a mother’s attempt to consider
 Is there any Space for Children? 3

her daughters as a mirror, to create her own identity, as well as exploring

the imagination of a mother who creates a projection of bad memories
associated with the childhoods of her daughters. The novel tells the story of
Etsuko, a middle-aged Japanese woman living in England with her second
husband and her daughter Niki. Etsuko’s sad memories take the readers to
her past in Japan, where she had a daughter named Keiko by her first
husband. In her Japanese life, she had a friendly relationship with her
neighbour, Sachiko, and her daughter, Mariko. Etsuko had a friendly
relationship with the little Mariko, for whom she had some motherly
affections. This motherly feeling of Etsuko points towards the fact that
before becoming a mother, she projects the image of her unborn daughter
into Mariko. This later leads Etsuko into becoming careless of her own
daughter.

Mariko’s life is merely a reflection of Keiko’s life. Mariko’s childhood is

marked by negligence and abandonment. As a little girl she is not taken
enough care of by Sachiko. There are many instances in the novel which
show this negligence. There is a scene in the novel in which Sachiko drowns
Mariko’s cats before they move to England. This act shows the intention of
a mother to murder her own daughter. Sachiko seems to be less careful to
treat Mariko as her daughter. Rather, Mariko is reared just like those “dirty
little” creatures by Sachiko. Brian Shaffer has rightly pointed out that
Sachiko’s act of drowning Mariko’s cats is “a figurative murder of her
daughter” (qtd. in Beedham). Mariko’s suicide later in the story explores a
threat of the adult world to childhood in Japan. It is the psychological
pressure on a little girl that leads to her committing suicide. This
psychological pressure is created by Sachiko’s negligence and abandonment.
This story is repeated in the family of Etsuko because she knows that bad
things would surely happen to her own daughter, Keiko. Keiko seems to
appear as a rebirth of Mariko. It is forecasted that Keiko will bring fear and
grief into Etsuko’s life. To Etsuko, Japan is always a land of nightmares,
and the Japanese are the dreamers of bad dreams. With fear and grief, they
leave Japan for England. Keiko’s childhood does not offer Etsuko a
motherly space, rather it provides a constant threat to her. Because of this
threatening intervention, she becomes negligent of her own little girl,
because she knows the future of Keiko’s childhood. It is the negligence of
a mother that disturbs a child’s psychology and thus spoils her entire
childhood. Being members of the adult world, Etsuko and Sachiko represent
a society which is devoid of love and care for children, especially in the
context of Japan.
4 Chapter One

It is noteworthy to mention that the impact of atomic war is ever-present in

Japanese life, as we see in the characterisation of Sachiko and Etsuko. The
terrible influence of war sets the background of the novel. It also plays a
major role in sudden changes in Japanese life, in comparison to the rest of
the world. The horrible experiences of atomic devastation do not even spare
these two mothers, Sachiko and Etsuko. They are damaged, both
psychologically and socially. This distorted life victimises the younger
generation, and thus spoils their childhood. The bombing in Hiroshima and
Nagasaki is not only responsible for spoiling Japanese children, it also
creates a psychological alienation between a mother and daughter which is
metaphorically associated with Etsuko’s growing tomatoes. The planting of
the tomatoes points towards the fact that as a mother, Etsuko must have
possessed the sense of love, compassion, kindness and care which creates
an emotional bond between mother and child. However, the reality shows
Etsuko’s failure to show her motherly love towards Keiko which is explored
with Etsuko’s negligence of the tomatoes. If we try to understand Etsuko’s
psychological state, we find that she was conscious of Keiko’s associations
with the life and death of Mariko, whom she projected as her own child. The
tomato plant is the symbolic representation of Keiko’s childhood —
neglected and projected. For Shaffer, Etsuko’s negligence of the tomatoes
is an indication of her treatment of Keiko; so Etsuko is “figuratively
speaking, the murderer of Keiko” (qtd. in Beedham). This negligence is also
notable in the scene in which, before leaving for England, Etsuko promises
Keiko that they will come back to Japan if life does not go well there. Etsuko
feels guilty that she did not keep the promise. Keiko is emotionally cheated,
and it is the broken promise that creates an alienation between the two. To
Etsuko, Keiko has always remained the projection of her own guilty
feelings. This alienation offers a space for her childhood which is merely a
total projection of fear, guilt, and negligence on the part of adults in the
Japanese context. This makes the lives of Mariko and Keiko so insecure that
they cannot cope with real situations. They fail even to compromise with
real life challenges. Due to the lack of this ability, Keiko commits suicide.

Niki, the youngest daughter of Etsuko, creates a new space for Etsuko who
wants to renew her life, so she can forget about the past and welcome a new
life offered by England. Niki is a compromise between Etsuko’s past and
present. She is mixed-blood, of a Japanese wife and an English husband.
The significance of the character of Niki lies in the fact that she creates a
new identity of her mother. She is the external projection of Etsuko’s
internal feelings. This becomes realistic with the dat of Keiko’s funeral,
when Niki absents herself. It is not only about Niki’s rational self, which
prevents her from joining the funeral, but also about the guilty feeling of a
 Is there any Space for Children? 5

mother about the bringing up of a child. The space Niki is supposed to enjoy
in her childhood is also neglected by Etsuko, because she has never treated
Niki like a baby, rather Niki has always been a means for reconstructing her
identity and forgetting past memories. Niki is the projection of her rational
self, which accepts the new world and denies the horrors of past.

Childhood is not given a solid identity in Ishiguro’s novel; what is important

is the attitude of the adults on which the identities of children depends.
Mariko, Keiko or Niki, all of these little girls are merely neglected children.
They are treated more as imaginary children, less as human babies. In such
lives they are not given space or choices of their own. Their existence is
denied by society. They only exist when it is a case of satisfying adult
society and forgetting the past.

Ishiguro’s next novel, The Remains of the Day deals with memory,
nostalgia, and disappointment in portrayal of childhood. This is a story of
an English butler, Stevens, who has dedicated his entire life to the service
of Lord Darlington, and is now is in the service of his new employer, Mr
Farraday. Stevens makes a journey to meet Miss Kenton, the former
housekeeper at Darlington Hall, with whom he spent lots of time. On his
journey, he recollects memories of his past life at Darlington. Ishiguro has
not given detailed descriptions about the Stevens’ childhood, but readers are
given the space to think of of it, and to reconstruct the character of Stevens
through his memories. Childhood plays a prominent role in this novel in
exploring the hidden reality in the relationship between children and older
people. It is the past life of Stevens that reminds him of the days when his
fate was predetermined; to be a butler like his father, a job of dignity and
prestige in England. After dedicating his entire life to his job, he realises
that he has not achieved any dignity or the honour that he once expected to
earn, but intead, he has been used only for social benefit. In Stevens’s
realisation, it is nothing but an act of continued service over the years. As
his father was a butler, he is also supposed to be a butler. Stevens’ journey
has some psychological aspects too; it can be seen as a journey from
ignorance of social dignity to the light of knowledge. Stevens’ realisation
finds its source in his childhood, when he was not given any opportunity to
find his own way. The orders and rules of his father affected his child
psychology, so he could think only of his future as determined for him by
his father. This looks like a dignified mission, continuing a job to which his
father has dedicated his own life. Keeping this thought in mind, his father
does not even know how he has spoiled his son’s childhood. Stevens’ father
is not the only guardian who influences his life; the entire society takes part
in it. The narration itself does not explore detail about Stevens’s childhood
6 Chapter One

memories. It hints at the fact that he wasted his childhood days; he was not
given any choice on his own terms. His childhood was used to construct his
psychology according to the demands of society. It is the bad memories of
Stevens’ past lead him to think of his life as having been in vain. Memories
are so prominent in the novel that they are turned into a character. Stevens’
constant servitude and determination take his childhood away from him. It
can be argued that has has never had a childhood. He is left with the
remaining days of his life. If he wants to recreate his childhood, he will have
to use his imagination to help him reconstruct it.

When We Were Orphans turns to loss, memory, and the search for identity.
This novel deals with the journey of a detective, named Christopher Banks,
to find out about his parents and solve the mysteries of his past.

Banks spent his childhood days in the Shanghai International Settlement in

China during the early decade of the 20th century. The story goes down
memory lane to let readers know about the sudden disappearance of Banks’
parents when he was a child. After this shocking incident, he was sent to his
aunt in England. His parents’ sudden disappearance creates a kind of
alienation, and turns him into an orphan. He feels a sense of loss and guilt
which haunts him for ever, leading him to want to solve the mysteries of his
personal life. ‘We’ in the title suggests that Banks is not the only orphan,
and there is another character named Sarah, who was also orphaned at the
age of ten. This alienation probably impels Banks to become a detective so
that he can solve his personal problems. Ishiguro uses a unique narrative
style to tell the story, in which readers see how Banks spent his childhood
days and how he becomes a successful detective. Ishiguro has not gone into
detail in the portrayal of Banks’ childhood days, but the narrative tells us
that his father eloped to Hong Kong with his new girlfriend, and a few days
later, his mother was captured and turned into a concubine by a warlord
named Wang Ku. This has been an unresolved mystery to Banks, who
questions why his parents abandoned him, and thus spoiled his childhood.
As a child, Banks deserved to enjoy a happy and normal life, but it is the
acts of hiding truths and abandonment that make him feel guilty. He does
not know the reasons behind what happened. This explores the reality that
children have little importance in the society of adults, because they separate
themselves from their children for their own causes. The Lacanian
interpretation of ‘real stage’ has close associations with Banks’ parents’
sudden disappearance from his life. As representatives of adulthood, Banks’
parents deny the mundane existence of their son, because, in their view, the
identity of Banks as a child is not a ‘real’ one. Banks’ childhood is
considered as a projection of his parents’ imagination. It is an undeniable