Beatings and idolization: Portrayals of childhood in literature

About 250 years ago, the pioneering thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) reinvented childhood. The Swiss-French philosopher and author published a work in 1762 that caused a big stir at the time and continues to influence thinking to this day. In it, Rousseau cast an entirely new perspective on the early stages of a person's life—a perspective that was foreign to 18th century principles. In "Emile, or On Education"—half fiction, half non-fiction—the author described the life of a boy who grows up in a rural setting, unencumbered by societal constraints. He is able to develop freely and learns through play, without any form of control or punishment.

The image that Rousseau painted stood in sharp contrast to the traditional views on children and education of that time. A glance into the more distant past tells us that for a long time, the concept of childhood simply didn't exist. In the Middle Ages and into the Early Modern Age, children were simply regarded as small adults and had to work hard from a young age.

With the rise of Enlightenment, this picture gradually changed. The proponents of Enlightenment no longer saw children as small adults, but they did view them as unreasonable individuals who had to be brought to their senses through a strict upbringing—which included beatings if necessary.

Little geniuses

Rousseau saw this differently. He was the first to view childhood as a distinct life phase worthy of protection, so that children could express themselves and develop in a positive manner. His ideas went on to influence the thinking of countless educators and pedagogues. And moreover, they also inspired many writers.

"After Rousseau, a whole raft of literature emerged during the late 18th and the 19th centuries in which childhood and questions around parenting and pedagogy were explored," says Davide Giuriato, whose research centers on the subject of how childhood is represented in literature.

Well before modern scholarship discovered childhood as a topic at the end of the 19th century, literature became a kind of leading medium, where questions relating to childhood were posed and widely differing ideas and concepts were developed and reflected upon.

For Giuriato, examining and analyzing this literary wealth of ideas is a fascinating task. "Childhood is a vast mirror," he says. "When we talk about childhood, we're simultaneously talking about us as a society—you could say that the child is a vehicle for social and cultural self-reflection."

What skills do we need to lead a good and successful life? What values are important to us? How should we structure education? And how should we raise our children? In view of the currently ubiquitous and controversial discussions around early years education and school reforms, it's fair to say that these are questions which still occupy society today. Since the late 18th century, these issues have also been reflected across literature in ever-changing forms.

Writers of the 18th and 19th century Romantic movement, including Novalis and E.T.A. Hoffmann, were particularly receptive to Rousseau's ideas. They idolized the child. For them, children were little geniuses and the embodiment of playful creativity. This also meant the writers saw them as a kind of role model for their own authorial creativity.

The Romanticists adopted Rousseau's view that an authoritarian upbringing stands in the way of this natural creative ability and blocks it. It wasn't the children who should regard the adults as role models but the other way around. This thinking led to a veritable childhood cult in 19th century literature.

It also inspired alternative educational projects such as the progressive education movement, which arose from the romantic concept of the self-directed child. Today's forest schools and experiential education also have their roots there. "If you look at literary history, you can see that many writers sympathized with the ideas behind progressive education," says Giuriato.

This becomes particularly apparent in some of the well-known early 20th century coming-of-age novels, such as Hermann Hesse's "Beneath the Wheel" and Robert Musil's "Confusions of Young Törless." Both novels depicted the high schools of the time as authoritarian, sinister and soul-destroying disciplinary institutions, criticizing them sharply.

From the end of the 18th century onwards, numerous autobiographical texts also focused on the topic of childhood and were published alongside coming-of-age novels such as Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship by Goethe or Anton Reiser by Karl Philipp Moritz. Both these works tell the story of the main protagonist's experiences growing up, following them on their complex journey into a more or less happy adulthood.

Karl Philipp Moritz wasn't just a fiction writer, he also studied the psychology of childhood. More specifically, he carried out empirical psychology, as he called it, and published a magazine on the subject. The Magazin für Erfahrungsseelenkunde (magazine for empirical psychology) could be considered Germany's first periodical on psychology—published at a time when psychology as a subject didn't even exist yet.

Moritz collected and documented life stories for the magazine, including many stories of children. "Empirical psychology took a near-scientific interest in the developmental phase of childhood," says Giuriato. "It was based on the idea that difficulties in adult life—psychological problems, criminality, violence—had their source in childhood."

This view was entirely new at the time. Roughly 100 years later, the academic fields of psychology and psychoanalysis which emerged around 1900 picked up on this notion, explored it further and placed it on a modern scientific foundation.

Childhood and cultural criticism

Trials and tribulations, problems with the parents and at school—not many of the childhoods that have been narrated in literature over the past 200 years are happy ones. Tragedy and misfortune simply provide better literary material, it seems. "The representation of childhood in literature is often linked to a decidedly critical view of society and the opinion that modern life is lacking in some way," says Giuriato.

Even in the writing of the romanticists, who celebrated childhood, a happy upbringing is rarely found. Conversely, childhood is seen as holding the promise of happiness—more specifically, children are seen as offering a way back to a supposedly happy natural state.

Very little remains of this promise in the novels and stories written in the 20th century. "The common idea of childhood as a period deserving of protection and shelter is increasingly eroded," says Giuriato. "What comes to dominate instead is the exploration of damaged or even destroyed childhoods."

This becomes particularly evident after the experiences of the Second World War. Fatelessness by the Hungarian writer and Nobel Prize laureate in literature Imre Kertesz is one such example. Kertesz describes deportation and camp life in the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Buchenwald from the perspective of a 15-year-old boy.

According to Giuriato, the novel established a narrative pattern that went on to be adopted by many authors in the 1980s and 1990s. Much of contemporary literature, such as the novel GRM. "Brainfuck" by German-Swiss author Sibylle Berg for instance, also represents childhood as shaped by violence and sexuality. "A story of an idyllic and happy childhood would probably appear rather anachronistic today," says Davide Giuriato.

Subversive logic

The genre most likely to offer tales of childhood idyll is probably children's literature—Astrid Lindgren's stories of Pippi Longstocking being a classic example. "In the adventures of the eponymous hero, childhood with its subversive inherent logic is celebrated in a grandiose manner, and there are certainly also moments of great joy," says Giuriato. But even Astrid Lindgren's writing isn't entirely without a certain melancholy, exemplified by the fact that Pippi is continuously threatened with being put in a children's home.

And then there's the famous episode with the Krumelur pills. The fantastical magic pills are supposed to prevent Pippi and her two friends Annika and Tommy from growing up. "It's not just the nasty adults and their terrible institutions that threaten childhood, it's also the course of time," says Giuriato. Sooner or later, we cease to be a child. That's when we start dreaming of childhood and writing about it.

Provided by University of Zurich