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In the last couple nights, I have dreamed of being invaded by clowns, that ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
telophase was dying, that I had absent-mindedly showed up for physical therapy naked, and that I was falling down a cliff (at great length, because I kept grabbing tree roots that would sloooowly snap, sending me plummeting until I grabbed the next tree root) and it was all my fault for taking a short cut.
I think I am anxious about some upcoming submissions.
The last dream reminds me of the lifechanging accidents suffered by kids in What Katy Did, Emily of New Moon, one of the Malory Towers books where a girl is warned not to go swimming and she does and the current bangs her against the rocks, and some Isabelle Hoffman book where a girl climbs a cliff and falls into the ocean, and a dog that's a drunk and lonely old man's sole companion swims out to save her and apparently drowns, leaving her to suffer agonies of guilt until it reappears the next day. After they end up paralyzed or noticed by creepy old men or the dog drowns or whatever, they always get lectured on how it was all their fault. Insult to injury!
What strikes me about many of these books is that in many cases, the activity is not obviously dangerous or has never been dangerous before-- going swinging in What Katy Did; swimming in the school pool in the Malory Towers book-- but has become dangerous because of some factor which the adult knows about-- a staple holding the swing to the roof broke; currents are dangerous in this time of year-- but does not tell the girl about, because children shouldn't need to know why, but ought to blindly obey anything an adult tells them for any reason. Then when they go swinging or swimming and end up severely injured, they are lectured on obedience.
I note a couple things about these stories:
1. These are almost all books written before 1960. Cautionary tales for children and teenagers certainly do exist after that time, but generally in those, adults do tell the kids why they shouldn't do things, but the kids go ahead and do them anyway. These more modern books tend to involve particular social issues, like drunk driving, joining gangs, doing drugs, and so forth, rather than random and unique accidents.
I am guessing that there was a major change in ideas about parenting and adult-child relationships during the sixties, in which people realized that perhaps blind obedience was not that great, and that it's OK for children to ask why, and OK for adults to tell them.
2. There is a related idea which I have come across much more occasionally, but which annoyed me recently in the Noel Streatfeild novels The Growing Summer and The Circus is Coming. In both of these, children who have led a sheltered life are suddenly thrown into a society in which children are expected to be far more independent. In both books, the children are mocked and criticized by adults for not knowing how to do things which no one ever taught them, but when they ask adults to teach them, the adults mock and criticize them for that and tell them they are supposed to figure things out on their own without asking for help. When they figure it out wrong, they're mocked and critized; when they get it right, the adults are nice.
I find that attitude really despicable, and am glad that it seems to have died out to the extent that no one writes books any more where it's presented as normal and good.
But between attitudes 1 and 2, it seems like the idea is that it's bad for adults to explain anything to children, but children are supposed to both obey adults to the letter, and also, being seen but not heard, carefully watch what others are doing and learn to imitate it without ever actually being taught. I am clearly the model of a modern person, because that seems like a dynamic perfectly designed to foster mindless conformity and child abuse.
3. These pre-1960s stories only seems to happen to girls. Can anyone think of a similar story involving a boy? I find it significant that the girls are often punished for doing physical, unfeminine activities like swinging high and climbing cliffs, and that their punishment is the loss of their physical abilities. There's a great statement of ideas about what girls should and should not do, and what happens to them if they disobey.
telophase was dying, that I had absent-mindedly showed up for physical therapy naked, and that I was falling down a cliff (at great length, because I kept grabbing tree roots that would sloooowly snap, sending me plummeting until I grabbed the next tree root) and it was all my fault for taking a short cut. I think I am anxious about some upcoming submissions.
The last dream reminds me of the lifechanging accidents suffered by kids in What Katy Did, Emily of New Moon, one of the Malory Towers books where a girl is warned not to go swimming and she does and the current bangs her against the rocks, and some Isabelle Hoffman book where a girl climbs a cliff and falls into the ocean, and a dog that's a drunk and lonely old man's sole companion swims out to save her and apparently drowns, leaving her to suffer agonies of guilt until it reappears the next day. After they end up paralyzed or noticed by creepy old men or the dog drowns or whatever, they always get lectured on how it was all their fault. Insult to injury!
What strikes me about many of these books is that in many cases, the activity is not obviously dangerous or has never been dangerous before-- going swinging in What Katy Did; swimming in the school pool in the Malory Towers book-- but has become dangerous because of some factor which the adult knows about-- a staple holding the swing to the roof broke; currents are dangerous in this time of year-- but does not tell the girl about, because children shouldn't need to know why, but ought to blindly obey anything an adult tells them for any reason. Then when they go swinging or swimming and end up severely injured, they are lectured on obedience.
I note a couple things about these stories:
1. These are almost all books written before 1960. Cautionary tales for children and teenagers certainly do exist after that time, but generally in those, adults do tell the kids why they shouldn't do things, but the kids go ahead and do them anyway. These more modern books tend to involve particular social issues, like drunk driving, joining gangs, doing drugs, and so forth, rather than random and unique accidents.
I am guessing that there was a major change in ideas about parenting and adult-child relationships during the sixties, in which people realized that perhaps blind obedience was not that great, and that it's OK for children to ask why, and OK for adults to tell them.
2. There is a related idea which I have come across much more occasionally, but which annoyed me recently in the Noel Streatfeild novels The Growing Summer and The Circus is Coming. In both of these, children who have led a sheltered life are suddenly thrown into a society in which children are expected to be far more independent. In both books, the children are mocked and criticized by adults for not knowing how to do things which no one ever taught them, but when they ask adults to teach them, the adults mock and criticize them for that and tell them they are supposed to figure things out on their own without asking for help. When they figure it out wrong, they're mocked and critized; when they get it right, the adults are nice.
I find that attitude really despicable, and am glad that it seems to have died out to the extent that no one writes books any more where it's presented as normal and good.
But between attitudes 1 and 2, it seems like the idea is that it's bad for adults to explain anything to children, but children are supposed to both obey adults to the letter, and also, being seen but not heard, carefully watch what others are doing and learn to imitate it without ever actually being taught. I am clearly the model of a modern person, because that seems like a dynamic perfectly designed to foster mindless conformity and child abuse.
3. These pre-1960s stories only seems to happen to girls. Can anyone think of a similar story involving a boy? I find it significant that the girls are often punished for doing physical, unfeminine activities like swinging high and climbing cliffs, and that their punishment is the loss of their physical abilities. There's a great statement of ideas about what girls should and should not do, and what happens to them if they disobey.