The Rhetoric of Character in Children's Literature MariaN ikolajeva The Scarecrow Press, Inc. Lanham, Maryland, and Oxford In memoriam Astrid Lindgren SCARECROW PRESS, INC. Published in the United States of America by Scarecrow Press, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.scarecrowpress.com PO Box317 Oxford OX2 9RU, UK Copyright© 2002 by Maria Nikolajeva First paperback edition 2003 All rights reserved. No part of this publication 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 publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available The hardback edition of this book was catalogued by the Library of Congress as follows: Nikolajeva, Maria, 1952- The rhetoric of character in children's literature/ Maria Nikolajeva. p. em. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. 1. Children's literature-History and criticism. 2. Characters and characteristics in literature. I. Title. PN1009.5.C43 N55 2002 809'.927-dc21 2002019952 0-8108-4886-4 (pbk: alk. paper) Q'e:J ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Manufactured in the United States of America. Contents Acknowledgments v Introduction: Why a Theory of Character? vii Part I. Ontology and Typology of Character Chapter 1 Approaches to Literary Characters 3 Chapter 2 From Hero to Character 26 Chapter 3 In Search of the Protagonist 49 Chapter 4 Collective Character 67 Chapter 5 From Collective Character to lntersubjectivity 88 Chapter 6 Secondary Characters and Character Constellations 110 Chapter 7 Complexity and Development 128 Part II. Epistemology of Character 153 Chapter 8 Character and Plot 159 Chapter 9 Authorial Discourse: Description and Narration 182 Chapter 10 Authorial Discourse: Actions and Events 198 Chapter 11 Figural Discourse: Speech Acts 223 iii iv ,____. Contents Chapter 12 Figural Discourse: Internal Representation 241 Chapter 13 Implicit Characterization 268 Conclusion: Returning to the Text 282 Bibliography 285 Name Index 306 Title Index 309 Character Index 315 Subject Index 323 About the Author 332 Acknowledgments This book is the first result of a large-scale research project on "Children's Literature and Narrative Theory" financed by Stockholm University. Dur­ ing my three-year research grant, I was able to devote my whole attention to the theory of characters, which is almost an unheard of luxury for a scholar in the humanities. I feel privileged by having been given this oppor­ tunity and would like to extend my thanks to the Department of Compar­ ative Literature at Stockholm University for supporting this project, espe­ cially given the fact that the alternative proposal was August Strindberg. The idea for the specific examination of literary characters in children's literature was prompted by the members of the research project "Children's Literature: Pure and Applied" at Abo Akademi University, Finland. While the initial inspiration came mainly from Mia Osterlund and Kaisu Rattya, during the later stages of my work, Maria Lassen-Seger's investigation of transgressional characters provided many valuable thoughts. The book was researched and written during my two years as a visiting pro­ fessor at San Diego State University (SDSU) in California. I would like to extend my thanks to Alida Allison for initiating this enterprise; to Carey Wall, the chair of the Department of English and Comparative Literature at SDSU, for providing this opportunity; and to all colleagues at SDSU for the stimulat­ ing intellectual climate. Nobody is forgotten, but I must emphasize weekly lunchtime conversations with Mary Galbraith as an indispensable part of my scholarly process, as well as Carole Scott's ever-inspiring skepticism. Roberta Seelinger Trites has been especially important during this time, with her unfailing confidence and support. Apart from this personal inspi­ ration, I received many helpful comments on my research during the semi­ nar she invited me to give at Illinois State University. v vi Acknowledgments ,____. I received several opportunities to present parts of my research at the University ofTurku and the Abo Akademi University, Finland; the Danish Center for Children's Literature, Denmark; and the conference on Modern Critical Approaches to Children's Literature at Middle Tennessee State University, Murfeesboro. I am indebted to Judith Plotz for soliciting an essay on work in children's fiction (appearing in The Lion & the Unicorn), which has become incorpo­ rated into chapter 10. Great thanks to Lydia Williams, who managed elegantly to change hats from being a demanding and helpful colleague to shaping my text into proper English idiom. Finally, thanks to my husband Staffan Skott, who once again showed patience and understanding during my long and boring explications on intersubjectivity and psychonarration. INTRODUCTION Why a Theory of Character? I wrote this book in response to recurrent experiences as a university teacher of children's literature. Before I became aware of the problem, I, like so many of my colleagues, favored examination topics such as "Discuss char­ acterization in . . . ." What we got back were dull, descriptive essays, even though we naturally wanted something other than a rendering of what char­ acters do in the story or even an evaluation of the ideas they represent. However, the fault was ours: we failed to offer our students adequate tools for analyzing the artistic means used for characterization. The issue of characters seems to be so self-evident that few studies of children's literature have paid any attention to it. We may find some basic concepts in textbooks, and we often see children's book reviews men­ tioning something to the effect that "characterization is strong and vivid." However, there is no clear understanding of what exactly "characteriza­ tion" includes. Scholars do not agree about the nature and function of characters in literature for children, nor has theoretical research been done on characterization in children's fiction. Little established termi­ nology exists for discussing characters and characterization. No theoreti­ cal work compares characters in general fiction and characters in fiction for children. Among the many questions that teachers put to schoolchildren when dis­ cussing literary texts, I find two particularly illuminating: "Who is the main character of the story?" and "Who do you like best in the story?" (Less sophis­ ticated versions include "Who would you like to be friends with?"; more sophisticated: "With whom do you identify?") When teachers ask such ques­ tions, they obviously assume them to be simple and self-evident, but on closer consideration they would probably have problems, as do my students-many vii viii Introduction ,____. of them future teachers-determining the main character in Little Women or The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Moreover, the assumption that as read­ ers we necessarily must identify with some character in the story we are read­ ing has been seriously questioned by contemporary literary theory. Children's writers have successfully subverted identification by creating a variety of repulsive, unpleasant characters with whom no normal human being would want to identify. The problem of subjectivity in literature, which has recently become a key issue in general criticism, has so far not reached the attention of children's literature scholars, with few exceptions (e.g., McCallum 1999). These are just two very elementary examples of the complexity of this seem­ ingly simple matter. Unfortunately, there is no option, as there has been in some other areas of children's literature research, to borrow concepts and analytical tools from general criticism. The theory of character is only marginally more developed in general literary studies. Searching the subject "character and characteristics in literature" in the Library of Congress on-line catalog, I found 427 items, 95 percent of which fall roughly under one of three cate­ gories: ( 1) "who is who in literature," including who is who in Shakespeare, Dickens, Jane Austen, and so on; (2) writers' manuals ("how to create a plausible character"); and (3) critical studies of particular writers or works. In the third category, the majority of studies focus on the question of what or who the characters are or, at best, what they represent, rather than on how they are constructed and revealed for the reader. In children's literature research, Gillian Avery's (1965, 1975) studies of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century heroes and heroines in children's fiction are a very good example. Many titles are misleading in this respect. For instance, Life Made Real: Characterization in the Novel since Proust and Joyce by Thomas F. Petruso (1991), a brilliant study of what characters are, hardly addresses any theo­ retical aspects of characterization. Mary Doyle Springer's (1978) promising title A Rhetoric of Literary Character has the subtitle Some Women of Henry ]ames, which corresponds better to the contents of the study. The titles of some studies of children's fiction are equally deceptive; for instance Ray­ mond Jones's (1997) Characters in Children's Literature is an annotated index, while Margery Hourihan's (1997) Deconstructing the Hero is a mar­ velous feminist study of ideology in traditional children's literature. Paradoxically, the most rewarding theoretical discussions on character are to be found in general studies of narrative, not specifically focused on character. These range from the standard Aspects of the Novel by E. M. Forster (1927 ) to one of the most recent contributions to the field, the sec- Introduction .--._. ix ond edition of Narratology by Mieke Bal (1997). However, far from all the­ oretical works on narrative pay attention to character. Such a milestone in contemporary theory of the novel as Wayne C. Booth's (1 961) The Rhetoric of Fiction does not discuss character or characterization at all. In The Nature of Narrative, Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg (1966), striving to go beyond the examination of the novel and to build bridges between ancient or medieval and postmodern literature in terms of narrative structure, have provided valuable insights into characterization. In fact, most of this illu­ minating study is about character, even the chapters devoted to plot, point of view, and meaning. Scholes and Kellogg maintain that "characters are the primary vehicles for revealing meaning in narrative" (104 ). Yet, while some valuable observations are made in the chapter on character in narra­ tive (160-206), they have long been surpassed by more recent studies, espe­ cially in the area of depicting the characters' inner life. Also the chapter on point of view feels outdated, given the expanding nature of narrative stud­ ies in the last quarter of the twentieth century. The ever-increasing number of writer's manuals on character do not, of course, represent any scholarly rigor; however, given the general lack of sources, they should not be neglected (see Card 1988; Cowden 2000; Edel­ stein 1999; Hood 1998; Kress 1998; Lauther 1998; Swain 1990). Although, for obvious reasons, not based on any theoretical ground, they do suggest the vast scope of artistic devices available for writers in creating characters. These include descriptions, dialogue, background, psychologically plausible personality traits, professions and hobbies, relationships, involving charac­ ters in a plot, using setting for characterization, and so on. The dilemma for a children's literature scholar is that it is almost impos­ sible to extrapolate the results of general narratological studies to children's fiction. One very good example is that many genres discussed in studies of narrative are not relevant for children's fiction, such as the courtesy novel, fabliaux (Martin 1986, 31), sacred myth, epic, legend, allegory, confession, or satire (Scholes and Kellogg 1966, 3 ). With very few exceptions, such as Roald Dahl, children's literature does not employ the grotesque. According to conventional genre definitions, all children's literature can be labeled as bildungsroman. The nature of children's literature presupposes a different set of rules both for the authors' creation of characters and for the readers' understanding of them. A number of studies, often of surveys, discuss concrete types or charac­ ters in children's or young adult fiction: the portrayal of Afro-Americans (MacCann 1998), homosexual characters (Cuseo 1992; Day 2000), immi­ grants (McCoy 2000), people with disabilities (Robinson 1992), and so on.