Theories

There are many theories that can be discussed when analyzing children literature in the 19th century. I feel that these five are the most prominent and most useful in approaching and understanding children literature. The first is that every main character has mostly good attributes with one major character flaw in order to teach children what they must do in order to fix the flaw and realize there are consequences for these flaws. According to Children's Literature for a New Nation, "each tale centered on a child in need of some moral correction: the correction of this...constituted the whole plot." A second theory I have formulated is that all children's stories are family oriented because the authors want to seem relaatable to the readers and stress the importance of a family unit. According to MacLeod, "physical migration separated families and splintered communities, the fiction urged children to stay close to home." The idea of moving away from your comfort zone was completely unheard of, and families were encouraged to stick together, as shown in books like Rip Van Winkle and Little Women. A third theory is children's writing is not generally written by children because adults didn't trust that children had substantial opinions or thoughts, rather they were sponges to draw in knowledge. As Sanchez claims, "there are no archives of children's writing, and most documents penned by children are scattered, often unmarked..." Society does not see children as capable of producing feelings or ideas and most often adults are telling children what they think they should know rather than what the children themselves think. Which brings me to my fourth theory: children literature is dominated by what adults deem important, not what the children are actually interested in, which can tarnish a child's innate creativity, curiousity, and imagination. in Dependent States it is written that "adult goals and expectations discerned something of value ...this practice in writing and making order." Children are almost brainwashed to act and communicate like little versions of their parents, with their parents giving no room for indepentdent growth. It is important for children to think about what they find interesting, without their parents just simply feeding them information. And my final theory in studying children's literature in the 19th century is that all stories are written in order to explain and justify a moral lesson in order to teach kids to be good Americans and upstanding citizens because they wanted the future of their country to be "American" not "British" or any other ethnicity. MacLeod references that "foreign books...are not to be perscribed" in order to teach American morals and American ideals. It's strange that, in this new democratic government, literature was still being dictated and children were not allowed to choose for themselves what books they ought to read.