Imagining Better

“I suppose the world of Milly-Molly-Mandy is what we call an ideal one, where grown-ups are never cross or children naughty and quarrelsome. But when things in our own lives are sometimes difficult, reading these stories is like being wrapped up in a warm, reassuring blanket. Something we all need, now and again.”

Shirley Hughes, Foreword to Joyce Lankester Brisley, Milly-Molly-Mandy Stories (2001 edition of 1928 original)

One of the charming original illustrations from Milly-Molly-Mandy Stories, with colours added by some younger version of myself.

Sometimes when I tell people how much I love reading, they seem to end up under the impression that I read important and intelligent books, classics and modern classics of the sort that are compiled into lists of must-reads by pretentious newspaper editors and worm their way onto academic syllabi. This is not so. My taste in reading material has always been rather more … shall we say juvenile than people expect. When I was at primary school, I used to be chastised for reading books that were ‘too easy’ for me. The replacements I was given, however, though I grasped the basic sense of the words on the page easily enough, always rather went over my head in terms of the point of the story and why I was supposed to care about it.¹ Little has changed. You’ll still find me perusing the Young Adult section of the library more often than not.²

Children’s fiction is amazing. And because I read a lot of it, I’ve been able to spot what I think is a very interesting trend in how it’s changed over time.

Quick history lesson: children’s fiction basically emerged in the Victorian era. Childhood as a concept wasn’t really a thing until a couple of centuries before that, and the earliest stuff written for children was highly didactic, so it wasn’t until the mid-1800s that proper fun children’s stories began to emerge. It was in the early-to-mid-twentieth century, however, that I think children’s fiction really hit its stride. A few of my favourites by British authors from this era:

Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling (1902)

The Just William series by Richmal Crompton (from 1922)

Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne (1926)

The Milly-Molly-Mandy series by Joyce Lankester Brisley (from 1928)

The Family from One End Street by Eve Garnett (1937)

The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien (1937)

The Sword in the Stone by T. H. White (1938)

Anything and everything by Enid Blyton (fl. 1940s-50s)

The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis (from 1950)

The Paddington series by Michael Bond (from 1958)

There’s a fair range of subgenres covered by that lot, but certain noteworthy characteristics transcend such differences, popping up again and again within the group. Here are the ones I’ve spotted.

1) A strong emphasis on food.

More specifically, an awareness of what a nice thing it is to have nice food. Winnie-the-Pooh has an obsession with honey, Paddington Bear with marmalade. William Brown has the comparative values of various confectionery items down to an exact science. Enid Blyton’s heroes always seem to be having splendid picnics, although, disappointingly enough, she apparently never wrote the phrase “lashings of ginger beer”.³ And of course, we all know of Bilbo Baggins’ fondness for his well-stocked larder.

There’s a great appreciation in these books both for the fact that the characters need food, and that it’s really nice when they get it. Descriptions of food indulge in excited, almost awed tones. They make you really happy that food is a thing. (As I like to remark, God could have designed us to photosynthesise, but instead he gave us the pleasure – as well as the instructive dependency – of deriving our energy from food. Nice one.)

2) Inclusion of practical explanations and analogies.

These authors are constantly working to make sure that their readers properly understand the world they’re describing. When Wart – that is, a young not-yet-King Arthur – participates in some new squirely activity, like falconry or boar-hunting, the principles of said squirely activity are detailed for the readers’ benefit – non-fictional digressions within the fictional narrative. Milly-Molly-Mandy’s rather less squirely activities are sometimes described so specifically that the reader is enabled to recreate them: a recipe for lid-potatoes, or a diagram of the method for making paper dolls. C. S. Lewis makes frequent apostrophes to his reader in order to explain some aspect of what he’s describing in a heterodiegetic way, relating it to something the reader is more likely to be familiar with him- or herself. On which point…

3) Heterodiegetic narration.

The way these books are written makes it clear that the storytellers are exactly that: tellers of the story, not participants in it. Apostrophes to the reader are one way of doing this: Kipling’s favoured appellative of ‘O Best Beloved’ constitutes an especially famous example. The narrative voice is virtually always third-person and omniscient, or omniscient regarding the world of the story at least: even where it is not, as in Winnie-the-Pooh, for example, the narrator still clearly observes and relates the drama rather than playing any real role in it himself.

4) The imagining of a better world.

This is the big one. These books, be they high fantasy, pastoral, semi-historical, mythical, mystery, or anything in between, are not designed to represent the real world: they deal in romantic alternatives and they know it. They imagine better. Their worlds are safer and more beautiful and more filled with good things; or if they are not, good triumphs over evil to make them so. Their worlds tend to be smaller, also: the action is often confined to one village, one forest, or one boarding school, the harmony of which is never disrupted from without. In this way, the problems that drive the plot are kept small and confined too. Peril from whatever source is not emphasised. In The Family From One End Street, we know that the Ruggles family is very poor, but that poverty never actually threatens their overall wellbeing or security; Enid Blyton’s villains are always easily dealt with by a few meddling kids, and nobody ever gets seriously hurt; the recent film adaptation of Paddington, as thoroughly enjoyable as it is, pitches the threat faced by our ursine hero on a completely different level to the books, where he never really has to deal with anything more serious than an elaborate misunderstanding.⁴ And where the protagonists do face a serious threat of injury or death – Bilbo in Smaug’s lair, the Pevensies facing the White Witch, Wart captured by Madam Mim – we never doubt their ultimate rescue or victory. The peril is never the point; it isn’t the thing that’s valued. It’s peace and plenty and general good times that are valued. The glories of the natural world and the simple pleasures it affords are exulted in. Beautiful places and happy moments are described in detail. These authors in the first part of the last century dreamed of good – sheer, bright, uplifting, heartwarming, sure, safe goodness – and built their stories on that foundation.

 

A cool-looking dragon. Not necessarily Smaug specifically.

These days, on the other hand, children’s fiction looks very different indeed. Better worlds have given way to dystopia. The threats of injury and death that our heroes face have become very real. The triumph of good over evil is often not nearly so clean cut as it used to be. I’m going to mention the film adaptation of Paddington again because it illustrates this point very well indeed, but of course, there’s no need to move outside the medium of the novel to find telling examples. I love Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events, for example, but it builds itself on badness in a way that couldn’t be more contrary to the earlier trend I describe above. Also worth mentioning is real-life fiction of the Jacqueline Wilson type that doesn’t shy away from the grim realities of issues like poverty, bullying, mental health, and family breakdown. And, of course, there are the endless dystopia stories.

Granted, much dystopia fiction styles itself as young-adult rather than children’s, and indeed, the rise of young-adult fiction certainly seems to be one contributing factor behind the shift I’ve described. If children’s fiction hit its golden age in the first half of the last century, young-adult fiction is enjoying its in the first half of this one, and is pulling the whole genre of stories aimed at younger readers along with it. It’s hardly surprising that fiction written for teenagers should deal with darker themes than that written for their younger siblings, and I certainly don’t mean to condemn the shift out of hand, either: it’s actually a really excellent thing that novels for young people are dealing with grim and scary and complex issues.⁵ Engaging with such issues through fiction allows for the building of real understanding and empathy, with the safety net that it’s just a story and you can lift your head from the book and breathe if it all gets a bit much.

But in the midst of all that may be commendable about the consideration of darker themes, we somehow left the will to imagine a better world behind us. And I think there’s more to that than just the rise of the young-adult genre. I think the heart of the issue is that life is so blooming good already for most of us in the modern west that we’re not interested in imagining better any more.

My beloved early-to-mid-twentieth-century authors, and their young readers, were living through the two most destructive periods of warfare the world had ever seen. Their world was too big and too scary. They had family members fighting overseas for the uncertain hope of peace and freedom; danger of death or injury, far from constituting anything exciting, was just a horrible part of everyday life; even small treats and luxuries were in short supply and strictly rationed. So, as they watched the machines of war churn ever destructively onward, no wonder they romanticised the pastoral and the natural world. As they read news about far-off events with terrifyingly major implications for their own lives, no wonder they longed for smaller, safer worlds immune from any outside threat. As they wondered what the outcome of all the blood, toil, tears, and sweat would be,⁶ no wonder they told stories of good triumphing decisively over evil. No wonder they told stories of better worlds, where peril was limited and good things were plentiful. No wonder they imagined better.

We, on the other hand, too many generations removed from the war era to be much shaped by it at all, take safety and plenty for granted. They are boring to us. Small, safe worlds won’t give us our thrills. We prefer the dark and the grim and the edgy, on the grounds that it provides an interesting contrast with our mundane, safe, plentiful, everyday lives. Life is too good already for imagining better to be any fun.

Well, that’s my theory, anyway. And, much as I think there’s room for the dark and the grim and the edgy at least in young-adult fiction, I hope that the will to imagine better when writing stories for young people doesn’t disappear altogether. I’m really very fond of those small, safe worlds of heartwarming goodness.

Footnotes

¹ For example, all I remember about The Railway Children, which I was instructed to read aged seven, was that there was one bit where each child was written a poem about his or her lessons, which I noticed because, you know, it was in poetry.

² If you don’t have a public library card, you’re doing it wrong. Public libraries are the best. Here’s the relevant link for Devon: https://www.devonlibraries.org.uk/web/arena/join-us.

³ As liberally repeated in Comic Strip’s well-known parodical Famous Five story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRQtV6tNOEE.

⁴ Misunderstandings like this one, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2jA265cUY4, which are relegated to very minor plot points in the films.

⁵ For instance, I recently read a story called ‘I Am Thunder’, about a British Muslim girl who nearly ends up getting radicalised, and it was phenomenal. Five stars. I highly recommend: https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/Muhammad-Khan/I-Am-Thunder/21173952.

⁶ And yes, that was how Winston Churchill originally phrased it. Check it out: https://www.thoughtco.com/blood-toil-tears-and-sweat-winston-churchill-1779309.