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Papers by Maeve Pearson
This article surveys the tensions in James's representation of childhood, from his novels of... more This article surveys the tensions in James's representation of childhood, from his novels of the 1880s to his later autobiographical works, between his belief in the necessity of privacy to enable the child to secure and develop a sense of individual personhood and the potential risk of privation incurred by the complete dissociation of childhood from the broader arena of human life. Central to this account is his delineation of the challenge provoked by the emergence of a modern, publicized, yet nevertheless "obscure" child figure and the process of demonization she seems to incur for thwarting a more treasured ideal of the transparently innocent child.
This article surveys the tensions in James's representation of childhood, from his novels of... more This article surveys the tensions in James's representation of childhood, from his novels of the 1880s to his later autobiographical works, between his belief in the necessity of privacy to enable the child to secure and develop a sense of individual personhood and the potential risk of privation incurred by the complete dissociation of childhood from the broader arena of human life. Central to this account is his delineation of the challenge provoked by the emergence of a modern, publicized, yet nevertheless "obscure" child figure and the process of demonization she seems to incur for thwarting a more treasured ideal of the transparently innocent child.
HENRY JAMES …, Jan 1, 2007
This article surveys the tensions in James's representation of childhood, from his novels of the ... more This article surveys the tensions in James's representation of childhood, from his novels of the 1880s to his later autobiographical works, between his belief in the necessity of privacy to enable the child to secure and develop a sense of individual personhood and the potential risk of privation incurred by the complete dissociation of childhood from the broader arena of human life. Central to this account is his delineation of the challenge provoked by the emergence of a modern, publicized, yet nevertheless "obscure" child figure and the process of demonization she seems to incur for thwarting a more treasured ideal of the transparently innocent child.
Radical Philosophy, Jan 1, 2002
New Formations, Jan 1, 2004
Talks by Maeve Pearson
In her American best-selling novel of 1854, Maria Cummin’s introduced her working-class child her... more In her American best-selling novel of 1854, Maria Cummin’s introduced her working-class child heroine “Gertie” with the preamble: “One may wonder why she did not work.” As the nineteenth-century progressed, this kind of preamble had become redundant. In literature at least – although by no means in reality - children simply did not work. Zelizer has argued that this represented a social shift from valuing children for their “usefulness” to valuing them for the “sentiment” they provoked. (1994) Walter Benjamin had pre-empted this debate in 1914, when he proposed that ideology charged children with a “different order” of productivity from that of men (labour) and women (sexual reproduction): namely, the task of “creative renewal.” Subsequent scholars have analysed this shift as an ideological strategy whereby notions of “sentiment” figured around an idealised child are drawn upon to reinforce conservative social values (Levander 2007; Edelman 2005). One consequence of this process is that the literary child also begins to represent “a dream of complete idleness.” (Nikolajeva 2002). Focusing on writing by Henry James, who has been credited with Freud for “inventing” the modern child (Piffer 2000), this paper argues that the figure of the “idle” child emerged concurrently with anxieties about the social value of artistic labour. I propose that tropes associated with Aestheticism’s resistance to “mere work,” most famously that of the flâneur, were modelled on the principle of “genius as childhood regained” (Baudeliare 1863). But that, as the century progressed, the collapse of Aestheticism under the weight of commercialism and professionalism increasingly burdened childhood with sustaining this dream of a fulfilling, creative life liberated from the oppressive world of “work.”
This article surveys the tensions in James's representation of childhood, from his novels of... more This article surveys the tensions in James's representation of childhood, from his novels of the 1880s to his later autobiographical works, between his belief in the necessity of privacy to enable the child to secure and develop a sense of individual personhood and the potential risk of privation incurred by the complete dissociation of childhood from the broader arena of human life. Central to this account is his delineation of the challenge provoked by the emergence of a modern, publicized, yet nevertheless "obscure" child figure and the process of demonization she seems to incur for thwarting a more treasured ideal of the transparently innocent child.
This article surveys the tensions in James's representation of childhood, from his novels of... more This article surveys the tensions in James's representation of childhood, from his novels of the 1880s to his later autobiographical works, between his belief in the necessity of privacy to enable the child to secure and develop a sense of individual personhood and the potential risk of privation incurred by the complete dissociation of childhood from the broader arena of human life. Central to this account is his delineation of the challenge provoked by the emergence of a modern, publicized, yet nevertheless "obscure" child figure and the process of demonization she seems to incur for thwarting a more treasured ideal of the transparently innocent child.
HENRY JAMES …, Jan 1, 2007
This article surveys the tensions in James's representation of childhood, from his novels of the ... more This article surveys the tensions in James's representation of childhood, from his novels of the 1880s to his later autobiographical works, between his belief in the necessity of privacy to enable the child to secure and develop a sense of individual personhood and the potential risk of privation incurred by the complete dissociation of childhood from the broader arena of human life. Central to this account is his delineation of the challenge provoked by the emergence of a modern, publicized, yet nevertheless "obscure" child figure and the process of demonization she seems to incur for thwarting a more treasured ideal of the transparently innocent child.
Radical Philosophy, Jan 1, 2002
New Formations, Jan 1, 2004
In her American best-selling novel of 1854, Maria Cummin’s introduced her working-class child her... more In her American best-selling novel of 1854, Maria Cummin’s introduced her working-class child heroine “Gertie” with the preamble: “One may wonder why she did not work.” As the nineteenth-century progressed, this kind of preamble had become redundant. In literature at least – although by no means in reality - children simply did not work. Zelizer has argued that this represented a social shift from valuing children for their “usefulness” to valuing them for the “sentiment” they provoked. (1994) Walter Benjamin had pre-empted this debate in 1914, when he proposed that ideology charged children with a “different order” of productivity from that of men (labour) and women (sexual reproduction): namely, the task of “creative renewal.” Subsequent scholars have analysed this shift as an ideological strategy whereby notions of “sentiment” figured around an idealised child are drawn upon to reinforce conservative social values (Levander 2007; Edelman 2005). One consequence of this process is that the literary child also begins to represent “a dream of complete idleness.” (Nikolajeva 2002). Focusing on writing by Henry James, who has been credited with Freud for “inventing” the modern child (Piffer 2000), this paper argues that the figure of the “idle” child emerged concurrently with anxieties about the social value of artistic labour. I propose that tropes associated with Aestheticism’s resistance to “mere work,” most famously that of the flâneur, were modelled on the principle of “genius as childhood regained” (Baudeliare 1863). But that, as the century progressed, the collapse of Aestheticism under the weight of commercialism and professionalism increasingly burdened childhood with sustaining this dream of a fulfilling, creative life liberated from the oppressive world of “work.”