A Somber Pedagogy—A History of the Child Death Bed Scene in Early American Children's Religious Literature, 1674–1840 (original) (raw)

A SOMBER PEDAGOGY-A HISTORY OF THE CHILD DE ATH BED SCENE IN E ARLY AMERICAN CHILDREN'S RELIGIOUS LITER ATURE , 1674 -1840 ursory review of popular culture of the nineteenth-century United States reveals the presence of what is, to contemporary eyes, a macabre and curious literary convention. To historians familiar with childhood or nineteenth-century studies, the trope of child death, so ubiquitous in nineteenth-century literature, is as puzzling as it is familiar. The subject of child death was pervasive as evidenced by the fact that two of the most famous fictional characters of the era are pious but doomed children, Harriet Beecher Stowe's' Little Evangeline St. Clare and Charles Dickens' Little Nell. What social, demographic or religious developments led to the sensationalist portrayal of child death particular to this era? The pervasiveness of the phenomenon demands a critical treatment, and scholars have begun the process of examining the subject from multiple perspectives. 1 This essay contributes to these analyses by examining the theological precedents for the literary genre of sentimental literature that had as its subject the dying child.