Textual Bodies in Young Adult
Literature
By Tanya Kiermaier
An exegesis submitted in conjunction with a creative
component, a young adult novel, Demolition, for fulfilment of
the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in
Communication at the University of Canberra
February 2015
Acknowledgements
The world has changed much since I began this exploration, but what has not changed, and
indeed what has enabled the transformation of ideas, words and sentences into a meaningful
whole, is the steadfast support of my family, friends and colleagues.
My special thanks to Associate Professor Jordan Williams for believing in me and for your
wisdom and advice on so many levels.
Thanks to Distinguished Professor Jen Webb for your many philosophical and intellectual
insights, to Associate Professor Tony Eaton for your guidance and encouragement and to
Emeritus Professor Belle Alderman for your support in starting me on this path.
Thanks to my children, Tim, Sarah and Ben, for rekindling the fire for my reading of
children’s and young adult literature and inspiring me with your sense of fun and the twists
and turns of growing up. To Lynn, your friendship, kindness and support for me and my
family has never wavered and is my source of strength. To my mother Meg, and to all my
many other friends and family, and my book club friends, you have all contributed to this
journey in many ways. Thank you for always being there, for your enthusiasm for my
endeavour, and for keeping my views on life fresh and invigorating. Dad, Max (sr) and Jean,
I wish you could have been here for this.
To Max, you make my life whole, and you made this thesis possible. Thank you for letting
me be myself.
v
Contents
Certificate of Authorship of Thesis ............................................................................. iii
Acknowledgements .................................................................................................... v
Contents ...................................................................................................................... vii
Abstract ........................................................................................................................ xi
Introduction – The Art of growing up ...................................................................... xiii
Research question and aims of research ...................................................... xiv
Significance of study ....................................................................................... xv
Children’s literature and other key concepts .............................................. xvii
The Shape of the dissertation ......................................................................xxv
Exegesis .......................................................................................................xxvi
Novel ............................................................................................................. xxx
Creative practice method ............................................................................. xxx
Textual analysis .........................................................................................xxxiii
Chapter 1 – Texts, writers, readers ............................................................................. 1
Introduction ....................................................................................................... 1
Childhood, innocence and inviolability ............................................................. 2
A Question of space ........................................................................................ 12
Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 25
Chapter 2 - The Body in young adult literature ..................................................... 29
Introduction ..................................................................................................... 29
Sex/uality ......................................................................................................... 30
The Body and gender ...................................................................................... 48
Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 55
Chapter 3 – Finding bodies in the Australian landscape .................................... 59
Introduction ..................................................................................................... 59
Being-in-the-world ........................................................................................ 59
Place and Australian young adult fiction ........................................................ 64
The Body, nature and emotion ....................................................................... 68
vii
The Body, place and power ............................................................................ 70
The Body and the beach ................................................................................. 78
The Beach........................................................................................................ 79
Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 84
Chapter 4 – Embodied connections ...................................................................... 85
Introduction ..................................................................................................... 85
Perception........................................................................................................ 86
Camouflage ...................................................................................................... 94
Conclusion .....................................................................................................104
Conclusion – Textual bodies: the creative practice of writing the adolescent
body ........................................................................................................................... 105
Representing adolescence ............................................................................105
Embodied writing...........................................................................................112
Conclusion .....................................................................................................116
Works cited................................................................................................................ 121
Demolition: a novel .................................................................................................. 129
CHAPTER 1 ................................................................................................................. 135
CHAPTER 2 ................................................................................................................. 141
CHAPTER 3 ................................................................................................................. 149
CHAPTER 4 ................................................................................................................. 157
CHAPTER 5 ................................................................................................................. 161
CHAPTER 6 ................................................................................................................. 179
CHAPTER 7 ................................................................................................................. 193
CHAPTER 8 ................................................................................................................. 197
CHAPTER 9 ................................................................................................................. 205
CHAPTER 10 ............................................................................................................... 209
CHAPTER 11 ............................................................................................................... 225
CHAPTER 12 ............................................................................................................... 233
CHAPTER 13 ............................................................................................................... 241
CHAPTER 14 ............................................................................................................... 253
CHAPTER 15 ............................................................................................................... 257
viii
CHAPTER 16 ............................................................................................................... 265
CHAPTER 17 ............................................................................................................... 279
CHAPTER 18 ............................................................................................................... 289
CHAPTER 19 ............................................................................................................... 297
CHAPTER 20 ............................................................................................................... 323
CHAPTER 21 ............................................................................................................... 333
ix
Abstract
Young adult literature occupies a liminal space – not quite children’s literature, not quite
adult literature. It has been seen as a mid-way point on the way to reading adult literature.
Adolescence can be seen as a liminal space itself, neither child nor adult, inhabiting a
borderland that adults don’t really understand. The evolution of young adult literature has
seen it develop into a literature that has less in common with children’s literature than with
adult literature. I argue that it is a separate, unique form which is innovative, varied and able
to give voice and vision to an unlimited range of subjects and defined by the space between
writer and reader. This is a shared space, where the author takes the reader into their
confidence seeking access to the truth and possibilities of adolescent experience. I suggest
that this is a liberating experience for author and reader, whose relationship produces a space
where young adults increasingly exercise their own moral and ethical judgements.
I propose that writer, text and reader connect in the shared space of young adult literature
through a bodily process characterised by immersion into and emergence from the text. This
interaction of writer, text and reader sees the writer, and then the reader in their turn, submit
to the text and lose the self temporarily. They become one with the other, assimilating to the
imaginary space of the narrative. In this space they make a bodily connection through
emotions, feeling and senses. They emerge from the narrative, reaffirming the self and bring
their responses back to the real world. This establishes potential for change in the reader
through the shared power relationship unique to young adult literature.
This research comprises an exegesis and the creative component of a young adult novel,
Demolition. In the novel I write the adolescent body into being through the use of a
phenomenological approach, focussing on the inextricable intertwining of place and body as
a ‘being-in-the-world’.
xi
Introduction – The Art of growing up
Perhaps I never grew up.
Perhaps, while my outside skin is wrinkling, dimpling, and threatening me with its lumps and
sagginess, and my bones move more slowly and achingly with every step of winter, inwardly
I am smooth-skinned, lithe and young. Perhaps this is why I am drawn to writing and reading
children’s literature.
I have a copy of Heidi by Johanna Spyri, inscribed with love by my grandmother for my
ninth birthday in 1969. While clearly this is more than a book in its significance as an object
to me, it is one of the stories of my childhood that left a lasting impression and influenced the
course of at least some of my life. In my own experience, I believe fiction—especially
children’s literature—can be a powerful and influential force.
As a child, I lived next to a main road with the ceaseless noise of traffic and dire warnings of
doom should I try to wander off. Across the road, a second-hand car yard filled our view.
Beyond the car yard, lay an unseen presence, constant as a beating heart; the coastline with its
sandy beaches, ragged cliffs and moody waters. This was suburban Sydney in the 1960s. So
between the covers of Heidi was a world I had never encountered, a world of whispering
pines, white-capped mountains glowing in sunsets, the oddity of snow, and a carefree outdoor
life that I envied. Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series immersed me in the English countryside
countryside and its opportunities for innocent adventure; with its steam trains, picnics with
cake and ginger pop, camping on the moors, copses and dells, and cycling along country
xiii
lanes. I joined Blyton’s character George in her outrage at being treated condescendingly for
being a girl, and understood why her cousin Anne was always scared of adventure. Lilith
Norman, the author of Climb a Lonely Hill, introduced me to my own country, a vast, dry,
ruthless place of wild beauty that caught my soul; feelings reinforced by other outstanding
Australian authors including Ivan Southall, Eleanor Spence, Mavis Thorpe Clarke, Hesba
Brinsmead, Patricia Wrightson and Colin Thiele.
Despite my best efforts, I eventually grew up. I became one of those grown ups who so
frustrate Julian, Dick, George, Anne, and Timmy the Dog in the Famous Five books. But
these stories, these places, still excite me in both nostalgic and bodily ways. My connection
with the stories of my childhood is the foundation of my interest in reading and writing for
young people. This leads me to think about its characteristics. What is children’s literature?
What makes it different to adult literature or literature in general? How might authors write
this connection between the reader and place?
Research question and aims of research
In this dissertation, I am searching for the embodied adolescent as portrayed in the landscape
of Australian young adult fiction, and considering how this representation is written into
being. The research question has three interconnected aims:
1. To creatively investigate, through practice-led research, how the embodied adolescent
subject is written into being by giving the adolescent a body;
2. To explore representations of the embodied adolescent subject in the landscape of
fiction for young people;
3. To consider the bodily connections which link writer, text and reader.
xiv
Significance of study
The significance of this study lies in its focus on the body in children’s and young adult
literature. To do this, I use the phenomenological lens of Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty to
capture insights into writing for young adults in a way which unites the author, text and
reader through the body. My quest is to give the adolescent a body because while the body is
always assumed in children’s literature, the focus is more often on the mind. Representations
then perpetuate the idea of mind as separate to the body, perpetuating Descartes’ argument,
referred to as Cartesian dualism, that “the mind or soul of man is entirely different from the
body”.1
Phenomenologists such as Merleau-Ponty bring the body to the centre of philosophical debate
challenging this Cartesian dualism. Merleau-Ponty argues that the body is our unmediated
access to the world,2 rather than a tool of the mind, while Heidegger believes that a mind, and
thoughts and feelings, can only exist for an entity who is actively engaged with the world.3
So when I suggest that I have never really grown up, if I feel young on the inside but appear
old on the outside, I am still me. I am in my body, or rather, as Merleau-Ponty says, “I am
it”4. I cannot separate my mind from my body because “[b]odily experience forces us to
acknowledge an imposition of meaning which is not the work of a universal constituting
1
Descartes (1901) para 19.
2
Merleau-Ponty (2002).
3
Heidegger (2008).
4
Merleau-Ponty (2002). p.173.
xv
consciousness”.5 In my body, I “learn to know that union of essence and existence”6 because
my body is “in the world as the heart is in the organism”.7
Even though the body is central to ideas of children and adolescence, little attention has been
paid to it in critical studies of children’s and young adult literature. Beth Younger8 considers
female body image in Learning Curves. Roberta Seelinger Trites9 considers sexuality and its
relationship to power in her text Disturbing the Universe. Kathryn James10 also looks at
sexuality in combination with death and gender in Death, Gender and Sexuality in
Contemporary Adolescent Literature. Heather Scutter11 considers the child’s body in her
book Displaced Fictions. Trites also considers Heidegger’s ideas of being-towards-death and
the authentic being as a marker of young adulthood. There is a gap in analyses from the
perspective of the body and its interactions with the world. As Trites explains, the nature of
young adult literature is often described as ‘coming of age’ novels, reflecting the adolescent
experience as a journey on the road to the destination of adulthood. Experience is then seen
as transitional, moving from child to adult through the aberration of adolescence. It promotes
an apparent desire by young adult literature to help adolescents find their ‘true’ self using a
template of self-discovery such as the Entwicklungsroman, which are those novels where an
adolescent character experiences personal growth, and the Bildungsroman or ‘coming-of-age’
novel where the character matures into adulthood.12 This has two implications for me. Firstly,
it represents adolescence as a series of experiences that happen because of youth, which
5
Merleau-Ponty (2002) p.170.
6
Ibid p.170
7
Ibid p.235.
8
Younger (2009).
9
Trites (2000).
10
James (2010).
11
Scutter (1999).
12
Trites (2000).
xvi
requires adults to use the novel to teach a life lesson. Secondly, it assumes that adulthood is
the desirable end to the torment of adolescence (even though there are many depictions of
dysfunctional adults within young adult novels). In both of these cases, even though it is the
body which gives rise to adolescence in the first place, the focus of many novels seems to be
that the mind must grow in order to control the body.
This is not to say that I view young adult novels as didactic, repressive or less worthy than
other literature. On the contrary, I believe that young adult novels provide some of the best
literature in terms of writing, characters, and innovative and entertaining storylines, often
questioning fundamental philosophies and pressing global issues. However, I believe that
young adult literature suffers at times under the weight of assumptions about children and
childhood, adolescents and adolescence. This can be seen in the binary oppositions that often
drive critical debate such as the child vs the book, entertainment vs education, simple vs
complex, morals vs moral decay, innocence vs experience, as Katharine Jones13 has
discussed. By focusing on the body, experience is about presence rather than focusing on a
journey, and what I see as a validation of adolescent experience first and foremost as an
embodied person in a certain time and place.
Children’s literature and other key concepts
What is children’s literature? At face value, it seems obvious that we are talking about
literature written for children. But compared to other categories of literature such as Victorian
literature, this category is ‘unusual’ in Nodelman’s view, because it is “not so much about the
text itself as about its intended audience”.14 Reynolds agrees that the term “has a largely
13
Jones (2006).
14
Nodelman (2008) p.3.
xvii
unproblematic, everyday meaning” outside academia but suggests that it is “fraught with
complications” for those within the field of children’s literature.15 Generally, she says the
term is used to refer to texts
…written to be read by children and young people, published by children’s
publishers, and stocked and shelved in the children’s and/or young adult (YA)
sections of libraries and bookshops.16
This is a good definition for those interested in reading children’s literature because it tells
you how and where to find it, but of course it gives no clue as to the aesthetics of children’s
literature, or in other words, what the characteristics of children’s literature might be.
Nikolajeva discusses the characteristics of the children’s literature genre and points out that
some view children’s literature as a homogeneous genre which is “simple, action oriented,
optimistic, repetitive and didactic”, but follows on to identify examples which contradict
these terms.17 Reynolds argues that children’s literature has always “been implicated in
social, intellectual and artistic change”,18 and that the field is “simultaneously highly
regulated and overlooked, orthodox and radical, didactic and subversive”.19
Peter Hunt suggests a definition of children’s literature (which he acknowledges as not being
particularly practical) as being for “members of the group currently defined as children”20 in
recognition of the shifting meaning of the child and childhood through time and across
cultures. This idea of the ‘shifting meaning’ of the child and childhood is reflective of these
15
Reynolds (2011) p.1.
16
Ibid p.1.
17
Nikolajeva (2005) p.50.
18
Reynolds (2007) p.1.
19
Ibid p.3.
20
Hunt (1991) p.61.
xviii
concepts as cultural constructions, which would make it difficult to ascribe enduring
characteristics to children’s literature. For some scholars, the whole concept of children’s
literature is untenable because children are very different from each other .Children’s
literature stands accused by psychoanalytic scholars such as Rose, Lesnik-Oberstein and
Zornado, of inventing the concept of one, homogenised, knowable child. As Rose says,
“[t]here is no child behind the category ‘children’s fiction’, other than the one which the
category itself sets in place, the one which it needs to believe is there for its own purposes”.21
The assumption of the child reader as knowable can be located in reader response theory as
outlined by Wolfgang Iser.22 This posits that all texts have an implied reader, and because we
cannot know what anyone might extrapolate from a text, authors make assumptions about
their characteristics. One of these assumptions relates to the state of innocence of the child, a
concept I will discuss later in this dissertation with regard to Rose’s argument. Another
assumed characteristic is that the child is generally considered incapable of making complex
meanings based on their reading. This belief can colour interpretations and perspectives of
children’s literature, which is often regarded as sub-literary.23
There is a range of other implied readers who initially take precedence over the child reader:
the adults involved in publishing and making books accessible to children. These include the
publisher who is interested in content for saleability according to certain criteria such as word
length, narrative style and format. Publishers may demand changes to the storyline to suit
their audience. Then there are the gatekeepers —librarians, parents, teachers, booksellers,
critics and reviewers. As Page points out, any adults involved in this process are motivated
21
Rose (1984) p.10.
22
Iser (1978).
23
Jones (2006).
xix
not only by commercial reasons, but also by what they believe is best for the imagined child
readers.24
Much literary criticism is based on this notion of what is best for the real child, with a general
quest to find “a good book for the child, through knowing both the child and the book”.25
According to Lesnik-Oberstein, following Rose, it is impossible to achieve such a goal
because there is not “one child”.26 She suggests that new approaches are needed for writing
and thinking about children’s literature without relying on the real child. Aidan Chambers
offers an opportunity of writing about child response to literature while still focusing on the
text by using terms such as the implied author and implied reader.27 But this adds no further
insight nor assistance into defining children’s literature.
Children’s literature criticism has generally fallen either into a child-centred approach or a
book-centred approach. The child-centred approach focuses on the child reader and the nature
of their experience. In this approach, children’s literature should be judged by child standards
not adult standards. In the book-centred approach, children’s books should be judged by adult
standards, as part of literature in general.28 There is another approach as suggested by Val
Van Putten29 of the Children’s Book Council of Australia, which argues that literary
criticism, in the footsteps of Leavis, has had a negative effect on children’s literature because
of its position against canonisation. This is in direct conflict with the idea of conferring
awards for a ‘good’ book and the subsequent creation of a literary canon. Van Putten believes
24
Page (2005).
25
Lesnik-Oberstein (2004).
26
Ibid p.19.
27
Chambers (1985).
28
Jones (2006).
29
Van Putten (2007).
xx
that the legacy of Leavis is that literary criticism makes it impossible to answer the question
of what is a ‘good’ book, and that instead, the only question is about power. This perspective
highlights tensions within the field about the academic study of children’s literature, given
the fundamental value of literacy within our society and the drive for children to read, versus
the focus of literary analysis which may have completely different aims.
Content can play a role in delineating the boundaries between types of literature. For
example, editor Jennifer Dougherty finds young adult literature has something more
invigorating and stimulating than ‘adult’ literature which she claims
…is heaped with serious, densely over-written novels about middle-class marriages
that aren't quite the fairy tales they seem on the surface…Grownups are baffled by the
fact that their lives aren't an endless parade of beauty, sex, luxury and success, and
can't stop writing novels about how their boobs are sagging and their kids are
ungrateful and their husbands are mooning over twenty-three-year-old waitresses. It's
hopelessly broken, they say, there's no point believing your life will be any better.
On the other hand, she claims young adult novels
…break open their characters at a time when they're truly vulnerable, when they need
to learn to act according to their own lights, usually by making terrible mistakes. They
are sometimes excruciatingly painful to read, but they're uplifting as well. These
characters are forced to look at themselves and their choices, and work through the
grief, guilt and anger they feel to piece themselves back together stronger and more
xxi
humble than before. There's a kernel of hope in these books, and a sense of purpose
and potential. It might be broken, they say, but we can make it better.30
Children’s and young adult literature are key terms in my thesis and as I have demonstrated,
these terms have been debated widely. Any attempt to come up with a stable set of
characteristics is bound to end in failure, first of all because of the incredibly wide range of
content and texts which defy categorisation, and secondly, because if the term ‘children’s
literature’ includes young adults, the age range covered makes it impossible other than the
very broad brush of ‘writing for people aged under 18’. When Kimberley Reynolds says that
there is no single, identifiable body of work that makes up children’s literature31 she is
reflecting upon the complexity of the field of children’s literature which is made so by its
history and its future; its multiple audiences; the assumptions of adults around their expertise
over all things related to children; and the ever-slippery notions of children, childhood and
adolescence and the associated power relationships.
In a general sense, I refer to children’s literature as literature (focusing on fiction) published
for those aged 18 and under. I must acknowledge that this is a definition of convenience, and
is not a definitive boundary. As part of my investigations in Chapter 1, I will seek to clarify
the meaning of this term and juxtapose it with the term young adult literature, which I argue
is a body of literature which should be considered separately to children’s literature.
Martin Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty are two phenomenologists whose ideas I use as a
framework for discussion throughout my thesis.
30
Dougherty (2014).
31
Reynolds (2011).
xxii
Heidegger’s Being and Time32 is an attempt to understand the meaning of what it is ‘to be’.
Heidegger believes that human existence is grounded in our always already finding ourselves
in a world. A ‘mind’ can only exist—can only be possible—for an entity who is actively
engaged in the world, not just mentally through our mind, but by our body existing in a
particular place and time with certain established ways of doing things. To distinguish us
from all other entities, Heidegger refers to humans as Dasein, a combination of German
words which have not been translated because there is no adequate direct translation. As
Dasein we are unique because we understand our existence and the possibilities the world
presents to us and the fact that we are mortal. And as Dasein, we bring meaning to every
other entity.
Heidegger sees the human as a ‘being-in-the-world’, and by that term, he means that the body
is not just the physical body, but the body as it relates to the world. We are constantly
interacting with the world in everything we do and we act with intentionality. Merleau-Ponty
takes this idea further, saying that it is through our body that we perceive and understand the
world, with the body and mind being one embodied consciousness.33 The concept of beingin-the-world is important in considering the relation between bodies and place and how they
are represented in young adult literature.
Throughout my thesis, the themes of liminality, boundaries and thresholds recur across many
levels. The concept of liminality was central to anthropologist Victor Turner’s study of
behavioural ritualisations which he took from earlier work by Arnold van Gennep in 1909.34
Van Gennep had shown that rites of passage comprise three phases: separation, limen (a
32
Heidegger (2008).
33
Merleau-Ponty (2002).
34
Turner (1969).
xxiii
Latin word meaning boundary or threshold) and aggregation. The first phase sees symbolic
behaviour signifying the separation or detachment of the subject (subject as individual
passenger of the transition) or group, from either a fixed point in the social structure or from a
set of cultural conditions or perhaps both. In the liminal phase, the characteristics of the
subject are ambiguous as they pass through a realm which has none of the attributes of the
previous or future state. In the third phase, the individual becomes relatively stable again with
rights and obligations, norms and ethical standards that are part of the new social position
conferred as having consummated the passage.
Those in the liminal state – the threshold people – are in an ambiguous, indeterminate state,
neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the positions assigned and
arrayed by law, custom, convention and ceremonial…liminality is frequently likened
to death, to being in the womb, to invisibility, to darkness, to bisexuality, to the
wilderness, and to an eclipse of the sun or moon…Liminal entities such as neophytes
in initiation of puberty rites, may be represented as possessing nothing. They may be
disguised as monsters, wear only a strip of clothing, or even go naked, to demonstrate
that as liminal beings they have no status, property, insignia…in short, nothing that
may distinguish them from their fellow neophytes or initiands…as though they are
being reduced or ground down to a uniform condition to be fashioned anew and
endowed with additional powers to enable them to cope with their new station in
life.35
35
Turner (1969) p.95.
xxiv
Aspects of this liminal state have a strong connection with the psychosocial nature of
adolescence, that in-between state where the ‘threshold people’ have left the fixed position of
childhood (security of dependence, innocence, powerlessness, responsibility-free) but have
not gained the status of adult and the rights and responsibilities that brings. Applying this
concept in considerations of young adult literature has considerable relevance then as
characters in young adult novels are often operating in this space, and indeed young adult
literature as a genre may also be seen to operate in this space. Author Anthony Eaton points
out that “this particular ‘field’ of literature exists both because of and despite its position as
the midpoint on the continuum between ‘children’s’ and ‘adult’ literature”36 He suggests that
young adult literature is a liminal product because of its ability to expose and break down
oppositional polarities37, as in liminal space, boundaries are blurred, binary opposites undo
themselves, and meaning becomes fluid and dynamic.38 I continue Eaton’s discussion of the
boundaries and thresholds that arise in young adult fiction as a feature of the genre, with
some consideration as to the limitations.
The Shape of the dissertation
My investigation takes the form of two separate but interconnected components. One is this
exegesis, which focuses on the relationships between author and reader through
representations of the adolescent body. The second component is a young adult fiction novel
exploring, complementing and extending the concepts raised in this exegesis. Together, they
form a unified whole, canvassing the relationships between writer, reader and text and the
nature of young adult fiction.
36
Eaton (2010).
37
Eaton (2012) p.13.
38
Brooks (1998) p.91.
xxv
Exegesis
In Chapter 1, I consider the space between author and reader and how it might be seen to
define categories of literature. The spaces of literature can be separate, where the author
exercises all power, or shared, where the author is creating an egalitarian space in which
power is shared by author and reader. In children’s literature, the space between the author
and the reader is, according to Rose, inviolable.39 She argues that this space must remain
separate to satisfy the adult’s need to believe in the innocence of children, and thus protect
them.40 This space clearly separates the reader from the author, and the reader has no power
or potential to seek the truth of experience. They are dependent on the author to provide the
content and prescribe how they may interact.
In contrast, I argue that other literature, including young adult literature, is a shared space,
with young adult literature constituting a separate, unique form which is innovative, varied
and able to give voice and vision to an unlimited range of subjects. Thus, in terms of literary
space, I suggest that young adult literature is a shared space, where the author takes the reader
into their confidence, jointly seeking access to the truth of experience. This is a liberating
experience for author and reader and the relationship produces a space where young adults
increasingly exercise their own moral and ethical judgements and take risks.
In Chapter 2, I continue interrogating the relationship between author and reader by analysing
representations of the body in young adult literature. I am seeking to give the adolescent a
body in my creative piece, and sexuality, sex and gender are central to this endeavour, as well
39
Rose (1984).
Note: Rose’s 1984 study is one of the most significant theoretical contributions to the field of children’s
literature. While I do not specifically engage with the body of critical writings on Rose’s work in this thesis, one of
the major works I refer to is that of Perry Nodelman, whose book The Hidden Adult is a critical response to
Rose’s arguments.
40
xxvi
as to understanding the characteristics of this space between author and reader. Puberty and
adolescence are intrinsically tied up with notions of sexuality and gender. This is the time
where the body is allowed to be recognised at societal level as a sexual entity to a certain
extent, but there are many concerns about how to best control adolescent behaviour for their
own physical and mental protection in the full knowledge that adolescence means a loss of
adult control. In young adult literature, sex and sexuality have made an increasingly overt
appearance over the years. Under analysis, such representations suggest that there have been
changes to the way society thinks about or is prepared to acknowledge adolescent sexuality,
but that it is difficult to break away from stereotypical representations. For example, the idea
that females who are sexually promiscuous are deviant is a consistent representation. Authors
who are trying to depict adolescent sexuality and gender may have their own issues in
understanding these concepts, with the result that they are unable to recognise that their own
culturally constructed ideas are being played out by their characters, thus further clouding the
very issues they are trying to enunciate.
So if, in this shared space of literature, sexuality, sex and gender are central concepts in
understanding this space, and I am seeking to give the adolescent a body in representations,
then it is essential to establish what an embodied adolescent is. Critical to this is an
understanding of the relationship between body and place. In Chapter 3, I explore the way
place, represented through setting, and the body are inextricably linked, how place and body
together are productive in playing out power relations and can be both enabling and
oppressive. I consider how the embodied adolescent interacts with place to manifest
behaviour, power and sexuality.
xxvii
The final aspect of my thesis is then to consider how this shared power relationship might
operate. There have been many theories on the interaction between the reader and the text
such as reader response theories, which commonly focus on the mental processing of the text
by the reader to gain meaning. The author has been left out of these transactional theories,
further crystallised in Roland Barthes’ essay, The Death of the Author, where the text is
proclaimed to stand on its own.41 Similarly, work in the area of cognitive psychology and
fiction primarily considers the relationship between the text and the reader, albeit there is
more of a bodily process considered.
These debates have emerged from within the literary theorists’ domain. As a creative
practitioner, I suggest that separating the author from the text and reader is to overlook the
relationship between writer, reader and text. In these approaches, the text appears to separate
author and reader. However, I see the text as the connecting factor between author and reader.
I argue that for both author and reader, this is a bodily connection, established from the
writing and the reading of the text through a process characterised by immersion into and
emergence from the text. This process operates in a similar way to Leach’s aesthetic theory
which he refers to as camouflage.42 Unlike the more common usage of camouflage as
blending with the surroundings, Leach sees camouflage as a productive process of relating of
the self to the world through the medium of representation, or forming a connection and
engaging with the world through creative processes and products. The writer, and then the
reader in their turn, submit to the text and temporarily lose the self. They become one with
the other, assimilating into the imaginary space of the narrative. In this space they make a
bodily connection through emotions, feeling and senses. They emerge from the narrative,
reaffirming the self and bringing their responses back to the real world. In young adult
41
Barthes (1977).
42
Leach (2006).
xxviii
literature, this process creates the potential for change for the reader. This potential for
change can be understood in terms of Heidegger’s concept of ‘authentic being’, where one
accepts one’s mortality43 —something suggested by Trites44 as being a primary function of
young adult literature. In many ways, the very nature of the relationship between adult and
child and the fact that the majority of children’s literature is written by adults for a young
audience ultimately reinscribes the power relationship. For as Nikolajeva points out, there is
nowhere that power structures are more obvious than in the relationship between adults and
children, as everything created for children is "deliberately created by those in power for the
powerless".45 However, I suggest that the author of young adult literature is responsible for
creating potential for change through the establishment of a space enabling a shared power
relationship with the reader, which does not exist in the inviolable space between author and
reader in children’s literature. This arises from the acknowledgement by the author of the
capability of the reader in presenting situations where they are better able to exercise their
own judgement.
My young adult novel is a product of my research into the space between author and reader
and at the same time is research into how to write the embodied adolescent. I seek to write a
novel that gives adolescents a body, and through that body, gives them agency. In writing the
embodied adolescent into being, I focus on the intertwining of place and body as a being-inthe-world, and acknowledgment of sexuality and sex as part of that embodied consciousness.
Through the bodily process of camouflage, with the immersion into and emergence from the
text, I establish a shared power space to engage the reader whose own bodily response,
through the process of camouflage, gives rise to the potential for change. This process of
43
Heidegger (2008).
44
Trites (2000).
45
Nikolajeva (2010) p.8.
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camouflage is a way of understanding how writers and readers can connect in this shared
space.
Novel
My fiction novel for young adults simultaneously researches and represents these ideas, with
creative choices being influenced by understandings of writing the embodied adolescent,
which in turn inform the exegesis.The novel’s setting in an Australian coastal town, is central
to the characters’ actions, motivations and behaviours as they interact with (and because of)
their environment. I was also conscious of establishing a relationship with readers which
gives the potential for them to exercise their own ethical and moral judgements, while at the
same time producing an entertaining story. The novel itself is research into writing the
adolescent body, as well as enquiring into the meaning of writing for young people, and
exploring the boundaries and thresholds operating in the liminal space of adolescence.
Creative practice method
Smith and Dean46 identify the creation of a work of art as a form of research, generating
research insights to be documented, theorised and transferred to other contexts. They
articulate a model which highlights that ‘practice-led research’ and ‘research-led practice’ are
complementary terms, and that these activities are interconnected in an iterative cyclic web,
alternating between practice and research, with sub-cycles within each activity and
“numerous points of entry, exit, cross-referencing and cross-transit”.47
46
Smith & Dean (2010).
47
Ibid p.8.
xxx
For this thesis, the creative practice of writing the novel, combined with the exegesis,
interrogates both the concept of young adult literature as a cultural and social entity, and its
representations of young adults. These notions are interwoven: the novel is an artistic
contribution to the field, yet within the context of this thesis is in some respects a creative
experiment, testing and exploring the understandings of writer, reader and text. For example,
what is the difference between an author and an author of young adult literature? And how
are young adults represented within the literature which seeks to engage them? More
specifically, how is the young adult body represented and how might these representations
help us understand the young adult in society and culture? These questions are not answered
by the creative work alone, but they are answered by the thesis as a whole.
Drawing the links between research and practice into some form of sensibility is necessarily
for me a closed and personal process, emphasising that an understanding of the self in the
research process is crucial to practice-led research, as Griffiths acknowledges.48 She suggests
the self is best understood as being embodied and embedded in a particular time and place.
More than seeing the production of research output only in terms of new knowledge or
understanding, she sees practice-led research as upholding “the personal, the creative, the
imaginative and the passionate, the human”.49
Haseman and Mafe suggest it is the combination of emergence and complexity which
characterises practice-led research, where the artist immerses in their practice to do, emerging
to make the connections between their research and work.50 This idea of immersion and
48
Griffiths (2011).
49
Ibid p.185.
50
Haseman and Mafe (2009).
xxxi
emergence, which I see as bodily performance, is a recurring theme in my research findings,
both as a practising author and taking readers into account, as this thesis will make clear.
Webb acknowledges that “there is still a lack of precision about the methodology, design and
methods”51 of practice-led research. She suggests that
…artist-academics apply a reflexive dimension to their creative and practical
knowledge, in order to contribute knowledge that is recognised as such within the art
disciplines: refining the methodology, design and methods found in the research
literature so that they are better suited to creative thinking and seeing; reminding the
academy more broadly about the extent to which imagination, chance and tacit
knowledges actually drive research practice; being explicit about the difference
between professional, aesthetic and research practice.52
But this task, this thesis, is not a matter of writing a novel, reflecting on process and
critiquing that process. McNamara outlines six rules for practice-led research, the first of
which is to eliminate or limit “the use of the first person pronoun, ‘I’, as a centrepiece of
research formulation”.53 This is difficult to avoid, as McNamara points out, given that it is the
writer’s creative practice that is the subject of the exegesis and where the research is
occurring. However, it makes some sense because the PhD must be more than a “quasiconfessional mode of the artist’s statement”54 reflecting on the artwork’s process and intent.
The research topic, he warns, should not become the researcher. Similarly, making sense of
one’s own experience is not the aim of a PhD. On the other hand, the creative work cannot be
51
Webb (2012) p.3.
52
Ibid p.14.
53
McNamara (2012) p.5.
54
Ibid p.5.
xxxii
completely divorced from the research inquiry. While both components of this thesis stand
alone in their own right, the whole product works together both experimentally in terms of
writing, and as research.
The overall goal of this research is to produce the aesthetic of the body through writing an
embodied young adult novel. The novel flows out of a textual analysis of representations of
the body in Australian young adult literature in the exegesis seeking to find the embodied
adolescent subject within that landscape. Exegesis and novel work together to show that
embodiment is about a body at a time and in a place in the sense of being-in-the-world that
Heidegger sees as the essential quality of what it means to be human. Who we are is about
where we are at a particular time. Our interactions with place create meaning.
Textual analysis
Karen Coates believes that adolescent fiction “suffers from a bit of an identity crisis itself”
because one of the key features is its currency, “its absolute synchronicity with the concerns
of the audience to whom it is marketed”. Thus she believes there is no consistent canon, and
that young adult literature has a relatively short shelf life.55
While this may be true, especially in novels that aim to reflect contemporary cultural
practices including speech, dress and music, it is neither fair nor productive to dismiss the
body of literature for young people which has developed over the years. Many titles are
enduring, and if not necessarily popular, offer readers interesting and entertaining
experiences across time. It is interesting to note that the Australian novel which has been in
constant publication for over 100 years, outlasting any other book, is a work of children’s
55
Coates (2004) p.138.
xxxiii
literature—Seven Little Australians (SLA) by Ethel Turner.56 It captures childhood and
adolescence at a time when Australia itself was an adolescent, emerging from the puberty of
nationalism in the 1890s to take on more responsibility for its own decisions.
SLA is a text I return to as a benchmark in terms of writing for young people, and I use it to
compare issues such as sexuality and place. In general, though, I use Australian texts
published from 2000 onwards to extend an earlier thesis done by Heuschele57 who analyses
Australian texts over a 20 year period from 1980 to 2000. The texts I chose are by wellknown, award-winning children’s novelists or texts which have been recognised by the
Children’s Book Council of Australia for their literary contribution to children’s and young
adult literature, generally in the category of Older Readers. Some novels I have selected
because of their relevance to my topic, and all are realist texts rather than fantasy or science
fiction, because my creative work is in the same vein.
The primary books I have selected to focus on are as follows:
Alex as Well, Alyssa Brugman 2013
Friday Brown, Vikkie Wakefield, 2012
Losing It, Julia Lawrinson, 2012
The Dead I Know, Scot Gardner, 2011
Jasper Jones, Craig Silvey, 2010
Pink, Lily Wilkinson, 2009.
F2M, Hazel Edwards and Ryan Kennedy, 2010.
A Small Free Kiss in the Dark, Glenda Millard, 2009
Town, James Roy, 2007
The Lace Maker’s Daughter, Gary Crew, 2005
The Simple Gift, Steven Herrick, 2000
56
Turner (2005).
57
Heuschele (2007).
xxxiv
Deadly, Unna?, Phillip Gwynne, 1998
Seven Little Australians, Ethel Turner, 1894
These books are but a small sample of Australian young adult fiction and I must acknowledge
the many quality novels not included here. These authors represent a good cross-section of
well known Australian writers in the field of young adult fiction. This provides a broad
framework for my research and analysis, as well as a context in which to place my own
young adult novel.
xxxv