CHILDREN’S IDENTITY IN A. S. BYATT’S
THE CHILDREN’S BOOK
By
Zhu Jingmei
A Thesis
Submitted to the Graduate School and College of English
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for
the Degree of Master of Arts
Under the Supervision of Professor Zhou Min
Shanghai International Studies University
October 2013
Acknowledgements
First of all, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my supervisor,
Professor Zhou Min, who has been providing unfailing guidance in the last two years.
Without her patient instruction, inspiring suggestions and constant encouragement, the
completion of this thesis would have been impossible.
Secondly, I am also grateful to Professor Zhang Helong, Professor Sun Li and
Professor Yin Shulin for their insightful comments on my thesis proposal, which prove to
have saved me from making many detours in writing this paper.
Thirdly, my thanks also go to my friends and classmates at SISU, who has lent
timely and helpful hands whenever I needed.
Last but not least, I owe my special thanks to my husband, my mother-in-law and
my little son, who have been offering constant love and support throughout the whole
process of writing.
摘要
A. S. 拜厄特是英国当代文坛举足轻重的作家，在小说、诗歌、文学批评等领
域多有建树。其 2009 年近作《儿童书》被誉为继《占有》之后最引人瞩目的小说，
获得当年布克奖提名，并获 2010 年詹姆斯·泰特·布莱克奖。小说讲述了维多利
亚末期至一战后几个家庭在社会、历史、文化中的发展变迁，其繁复的历史细节、
纷杂的人物关系、和亦真亦幻的情节，引发了评论界的诸多关注。
儿童是这部小说的核心。作为小说的主要人物和时代关注的对象，《儿童书》
中的儿童在欢愉的表象下，是失败的身份构建及其带来的迷失、痛苦和伤害。本文
试图从“成人—儿童关系”的角度，分析儿童身份的失败构建及其背后成人的影响
和操控。
除了引言和结语，本论文共分三章：第一章“虚幻的身份”，运用拉康镜像理
论等方法，解读因成人沉浸于想象世界，使儿童混淆想象和现实，将其身份建立在
幻想之上，最终无法立足现实而走向毁灭的悲剧。第二章“受控的身份”，运用创
伤理论，分析成人将儿童视为欲望客体、限制其身份构建的过程，指出这一控制给
儿童心理带来的创伤。第三章“解构的身份”，用解构主义视角，指出爱德华时代
赋予儿童的新身份，实际承载了这个时代成人身份的欲求。当以儿童/成人两分法为
基础的二元对立消解时，儿童身份作为成人建构的产物，实际被解构。
结语部分对全文作了总结，并提出以下认识：在儿童备受瞩目的时代，儿童的
身份构建和成长却面临更大困境。成人所关注的，是神秘化、象征化和符号化的儿
童，而非真实、具体的儿童个体。这种关爱的实质，是成人自身欲望的投射，是成
人对现实困境的逃避。《儿童书》是一部儿童的悲剧，更是一部成人及其时代的悲
剧。
关键词： 拜厄特，《儿童书》，儿童身份，成人—儿童关系
i
Abstract
A. S. Byatt is a prominent figure in contemporary British literature, who makes
distinguished achievements in novels, short stories, poetry and literary criticism. Her
recent novel The Children’s Book (2009), regarded as the greatest work since Possession,
is shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize of 2009, and wins the James Tait Black Memorial
Prize of 2010. Tracing the lives of several related families amid social, historical and
cultural changes from the late Victorian period to the First World War, the book draws no
little critical attention with its sumptuous historical details, complicated character
relations and fantastic story lines.
As the main characters of the book and the focus of the times, children are at the
heart of the novel. Beneath the surface joyousness are the children’s failed identity
construction and their loss, grief and trauma. This thesis attempts to analyze, from the
perspective of adult–child relationship, the failed construction of children’s identity
under the influence and manipulation of adults.
The body of this thesis consists of three parts. Chapter I discusses, applying Lacan’s
theory, the “illusory identity”. With the adults immersing themselves in fantasy, the child
is confused between reality and imagination, and is led to construct his identity in the
illusory world, which finally drives him to self-destruction. Chapter II concentrates,
employing the theory of trauma, on the “controlled identity”. It explores how the adults
control their children’s identity and traumatize the children by reducing them to desire
objects and restricting their identity formation. Chapter III focuses on the “deconstructed
identity”. The children’s identity assigned by the times actually carries the adults’
projection of their own identity and is thus a construct of the adults. As the opposing
binaries based on the child/adult dichotomy collapse, the children’s identity is thus
deconstructed.
In Conclusion, the thesis summarizes the predicaments of constructing children’s
identity in an age that loves children. By pointing out children should be cared as specific
living individuals rather than the imaginary, abstract or mystified symbols, it shows the
ii
nature of such concern as the adults’ projection of their own desires and denial of their
own difficulties. The Children’s Book is a tragedy of children, but it is also a tragedy of
the adults and the whole era.
Key words: A. S. Byatt, The Children’s Book, children’s identity, adult-child relationship
iii
Contents
摘要 ........................................................................................................................................ i
Abstract .................................................................................................................................. ii
Introduction ............................................................................................................................ 1
Chapter I The Illusory Identity ........................................................................................... 6
1.1 Confusion of the Real and Imaginary Identity.......................................................... 6
1.2 The Illusory Identity as an Escape .......................................................................... 12
Chapter II
The Controlled Identity ................................................................................... 18
2.1 The Deprivation of Identity .................................................................................... 18
2.2 The Imposition of Identity ...................................................................................... 21
2.3 The Restriction of Identity Formation .................................................................... 25
Chapter III The Deconstructed Identity ............................................................................ 29
3.1 Children’s Identity as an Adult Construct ............................................................... 29
3.2 The Collapse of the Child/Adult Dichotomy .......................................................... 36
Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 42
Bibliography ........................................................................................................................ 45
Introduction
A. S. Byatt (Antonia Susan Byatt) is regarded as one of the greatest contemporary
writers in Britain1. Being “a multi-faceted, many-voiced writer” (Campbell, 2004: 4),
Byatt demonstrates her extraordinary imagination and intellect in novels, short stories,
poetry and literary criticism, and is appointed CBE2 in 1990 and DBE3 in 1999 for her
distinguished achievements in literature. Her international reputation is primarily built on
her novels, especially her Booker-winning masterpiece Possession: A Romance (1990).
Like Possession, Byatt’s new novel The Children’s Book (2009), equally massive
and magnificent, draws no little critical attention ever since it is published. Shortlisted for
the Man Booker Prize in 2009 and winning the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 2010,
The Children’s Book is considered as a novel with “astonishing power and resonance”
(Shilling, 2009). The Sunday Times claims it “easily the best thing A. S. Byatt has written
since … Possession, … A panoramic cavalcade of a novel [and] a work that superlatively
displays both enormous reach and tremendous grip” (Kemp, 2009). The Washington Post
calls it “a seductive work” which is “bristling with life and invention” (Donohue, 2009).
With over 600 pages and an enormous cast of characters, The Children’s Book is
compared to its popular predecessor not only in its “daring and scope” (Bradbury, 2009),
but also in its depth of ideas.
The novel traces, from the late Victorian age to the end of the First World War, the
fortunes of a skein of families amid the social, historical and cultural changes. The skein,
mainly associated with arts, Fabian socialism and women’s movements, centers basically
on four families: the Kentish Wellwoods, with Olive the fairytale writer and Humphry
the banker, and their seven children; the London Wellwoods, family of Humphry’s
brother; the Fludds, with Benedict the potter and his wife and three children; the Cains,
with Prosper the special keeper of the museum and his son and daughter. In fact, the
1
Her name is put on the list of “the 50 greatest British writers since 1945” by The Times (5 January 2008)
<http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article3127837.ece>.
2
Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire
3
DBE: Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire
1
novel is so full of sumptuous details that it is difficult to locate a center. While the place
is set primarily “in the downs and marches of the Ken countryside and the southeastern
coast at Dungeness, the story also flings characters to London, Paris, Munich, the Italian
Alps and the battlefields of Europe” (Donohue, 2009). Moreover, in “its encyclopedic
form” (Donohue, 2009), the novel seems to encompass everything, from fairytales to
puppet shows, from visual arts to handicrafts, from public movements to historical
events.
It is therefore natural to see that critical reviews on this novel come with varying
focuses. Some are on arts and crafts, like Margaret D. Stetz’s “Enrobed and Encased:
Dying for Art in A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book”, and Morna O'Neill’s “‘The
Craftsman's Dream’: Objects and Display in The Children's Book”. Some view it from
the perspective of history, as in Katharina Uhsadel’s “The Continuity of Victorian
Traces”. Others place the novel in the political light, like “The Newer New Life: A.S.
Byatt, E. Nesbit and Socialist Subculture” by Diana Maltz. In China, there are several
introductory articles about the book, including Wei Lan’s “Byatt: From Ficticism
Possession to The Children’s Book”, though few critical essays are available.
However, among all the current criticisms, insufficient attention is given to people,
especially children, except a few book reviews. In the essay “Artists as Parents in A. S.
Byatt's The Children's Book and Iris Murdoch's The Good Apprentice”, June Sturrock
analyzes how the position of the parent as artist influences the parent – child relationship,
but the emphasis is still on the adults rather than the children. Despite its multiple topics
and storylines, the title of the novel seems to indicate that there is a unifying theme. For
one thing, “The children’s book” may refer to the book Olive Wellwood writes for each
of her children; for another, it may well refer to the whole novel that is devoted to
“children” in the literal sense. It resembles a children’s story with its magical places,
fairytale-like characters and fantastic plots. It writes about children, traces their
development and explores their relationship with adults. Moreover, it presents a picture
of the lives of close to 20 children, and “we remember who they all are … we care what
happens to them and are often moved by the twists and turns of their lives” (Bradbury,
2009). Some reviewers even point out that “the main thrust of the novel is to track the
2
various children from what Byatt names the ‘Golden age’ of their growing up during the
fin de siècle through to the ‘Iron Age’ of weapons and slaughter” (Norris, 2009: 51).
Furthermore, the age in which this novel is set also has intimate affinity with
“children”. Different from the Victorian period when Byatt’s novels usually set, The
Children’s Book places the story in the late Victorian and Edwardian time which attaches
more importance to children than any of its preceding ages. The concern of and the
obsession with children witnesses the elevation of children’s status. Children are starting
to be treated as adults, recognized as independent beings, and regarded as having their
own separate needs. At the same time, the adults are beginning to uphold the concept of
childhood, talking and writing about children, thus promoting the prosperity of children’s
literature. Many of this era’s children’s books become children’s classics, like Alice in the
Wonderland, Puck of Pook’s Hill, The Railway Children, The Golden Age, Peter Pan and
The Secret Garden, making an essential part of children’s life at that time.
Being the focus of concern and love, the children characters of the novel should
have enjoyed a happier childhood. However, just like the Edwardian time is “never a
golden age … [but] could easily be mistaken for one” (Gavin and Humphries, 2009: 3),
the usual image of Edwardian children playing freely in the garden of golden summer
afternoon can easily be reversed in the novel. They are confronting no fewer
predicaments than the children living in other ages: complicated family relationship,
patriarchal oppressiveness, parental neglect and deception. Why are children lost and
harmed in an age when they are claimed to be loved and cherished by the adults? This is
the question that the thesis makes attempts to answer.
One of the prominent issues that highlight the confusion and damage to children is
their identity. The question of “who I am”, or “what I should become” troubles the
children characters in the novel. Rooting in the Latin word identitas, the word “identity”
“represents the idea of ‘sameness’ (from idem), parallel with the ideas of “likeness”
(similitas) and of unity (unitas)” (Poole, 2010: 12-13). In other words, identity means
“the sameness of a person or thing at all times or in all circumstances; the condition or
fact that a person or thing is itself and not something else” (13). But in the modern and
postmodern context, the term is becoming more complex and has undergone constant
3
changes from the centered self of a unified individual to the decentered self of a
fragmented subject. However, despite its divergent explanation from different aspects, all
the various approaches to the interpretation of identity are largely based on adults, who
have already formed a relatively stable identity. Children’s identities, on the contrary, do
not resemble that of the adults’, which can “break up the psyche into its opposing
‘forces’”. Rather, they “have the opposite task of fusing, or at least bring together, the
conflicting features of individual personality”. In other words, they attempt to “build the
Ego, and make it the indisputable centre of its own structure” (Moretti, 2000: 10-11).
Therefore, identity construction is of utmost importance to the growth of children. If a
child’s identity is fused or integrated, “particularly in adolescence”, the sense of
self-sameness is formed and the basic personality is “largely fixed and stable”, so that the
child can experience the self as a unitary and autonomous human being. Otherwise, if the
identity is “inconsistent or fragmented or not integrated”, the child’s personality is
regarded as disordered or disturbed, which may harm the child psychologically or
mentally (Besley, 2006: 30). Nevertheless, it is neither the intention nor within the
capability of this thesis to discuss children’s identity from every aspect like self identity,
gender identity or class identity. Instead, it aims to explore, in the context of adult–child
relationship, how the construction of children’s identity fails under the influence or
manipulation of the adults. Therefore, the major theories and methods will include,
though not limited to, psychoanalysis, deconstructionism, the theory of identity, and the
theory of trauma.
Besides introduction and conclusion, the main body of this paper is composed of
three chapters. Chapter I deals with the “illusory identity”. Living in a fantasy world
created by his mother, Tom builds his identity upon an ideal self or a mirrored self.
Compounded by his mother’s confusion of real and imaginary Tom, he has to cling to his
illusory identity, which finally brings destruction to him. Tom’s tragedy shows how
children’s identity is influenced by the adults’ indulgence in imagination.
Chapter II elaborates on the “controlled identity”. In order to pursue child-like
unrestrained freedom in art, the father of Imogen and Pomona deprives their own
independent identities, imposes the identity of desired objects on them and restricts their
4
identity formation. The children are greatly traumatized by the adult’s control and
exploitation of their identity.
Chapter III concentrates on the “deconstructed identity”. The children’s identity
assigned by the age actually carries the adults’ projection of their own identity and is thus
the adults’ construct. As the opposing binaries based on adult/child dichotomy collapse,
the boundaries between children’s and adults’ identity are blurred. Thus the children’s
identity is deconstructed.
In Conclusion, the thesis summarizes the predicaments of constructing children’s
identity in an age that loves children. By pointing out children should be cared as specific
living individuals rather than the imaginary or abstract or mystified symbols, it shows the
nature of such concern as the adults’ projection of their own desires and denial of their
own difficulties.
5
Chapter I
The Illusory Identity
For children, imagination is an essential element in their life. However, it will also
do harm if they immerse themselves in it and lose connection with reality, especially
under the influence of the adults. In The Children’s Book, Tom is probably the most
fortunate child in the novel: living in a fantastic environment, reading all kinds of
children’s literature, and having his own special story written by his mother. Nevertheless,
it is the same imaginary life created by adults that drives Tom to his final suicide. What
makes Tom’s very “self” unable to exist when he appears to have such a perfect life? The
process of how Tom’s identity is constructed on illusion and how he is lost in reality is
what the first chapter intend to explore.
1.1 Confusion of the Real and Imaginary Identity
Among all the things that make up Tom’s ideal life, it is, first of all, the
imagination-prone social mood that sweeps every character, adult or child, into a
fantastic world. In an interview with Byatt, Sam Leith points out, “The Children’s Book is
on one level a work of careful social and psychological realism […]. On another level, it
is stuffed with the motifs of fairy stories” (Leith, 2009). Indeed, in The Children’s Book,
the real and the imaginary weave so tightly together that the places and activities in the
novel are all tinged with the fantastic element. Todefright, the house where Olive
Wellwood’s family live, reminds people of the comfortable and idyllic home in the fairy
tale of “The Wind in the Willows”. The house where the theater director Augustus
Steyning lives is called “Nutcracker Cottage”. The Purchase House, which holds the
Fludd family, originally means a meeting place of little pucks. Here is the real world with
“socialists, anarchists, Quakers, Fabians, artists, editors, freethinkers and writers” (Byatt,
2010: 29), and there is another world with “half beast, people and creatures who could
change their skins and sizes, sometimes by choice and sometimes by accident” (80).
Besides, children’s stories are loved, talked about and voluminously written. The birth of
6
many children’s classics and the craze for children’s stories marks the whole Edwardian
era “a golden age of children’s literature” (Alfer and Campos, 2010: 118). Other things
that people seem to revolve around are invariably related to fantasy: acting in the festive
dramas, giving puppet shows, making art crafts and attending art exposition that displays
things created out of people’s imagination.
Moreover, the home where Tom is brought up is also such a perfect place as if it
were out of an imaginary world. The house Todefright, both in the eyes of Olive herself
and others, is a typical “Garden of England” at that time. Not only is the house nicely
decorated and comfortably built, the surroundings also add to the pastoral atmosphere
with orchards, gardens, and weald. More importantly, this “Garden”, like the original and
magical Garden of Eden, seems to be totally free from the anxieties and sorrows of the
outside world. As Olive herself observes,
She had constructed her own good picture of the Todefright family,
which was innocent and comfortable. There were sons and daughters and
babies in various stages of creeping, crawling and tottering, there were
children having real and imaginary adventures in the woods and on the
Downs, there were informal gatherings round the fire in winter, or the lawn
in summer, where old and young mingled and discussed things with laughter
and serious common sense. […] she thought of her garden as the fairytale
palace the prince, or princess, must not leave on pain of bleak disaster. (Byatt,
2010: 301)
The inhabitants of this house – the Wellwoods – are also an open and pleasant
Fabian family, who like to give all kinds of “frivolous, lantern-lit, silk and velvet
fancy-dress parties” (29). Children, including Tom, not only have sumptuous meals,
extravagant performances and masque dancing, but also enjoy the freedom and adventure
in the gardens and woods. It is a family that is always running, hugging and laughing.
Living in such a house as a “fairytale palace” and with such a joyful family, all Tom has
to do is to live comfortably in it, play freely in the garden, read children’s stories, and
attend various luxurious parties. Thus it is easy for Tom to identify himself as an
innocent little prince in the fairytale who does not have to worry about any of the earthly
matters.
This identification is further reinforced by his mother Olive, whose fairy stories
7
obscure the line between reality and fantasy in Tom’s life. As a writer of children’s
stories, Olive not only writes tales as a profession, but also creates stories for her own
children. Each child has his or her very own story, which is continually added to with the
growth of the child. However unlike traditional fairy stories which set the story in an
evidently fictive way, Olive’s special stories for Tom mix the real and the imagined so
that the real Tom is further identified with the imaginary character. Tom’s story, Tom
Underground, follows a little prince “Tom” on his journey in the underground to retrieve
his shadow, which is stolen by rats when he is in cradle. Instead of setting the story in
“once upon a time” or “a remote country”, Tom’s story is added with the growth of him
and is set in a real place of the house. The imaginary door leading into the underground
world is a small trap-door in a Todefright cellar. The combination of imaginary and real
things changes the children’s living place into a magical world, therefore when children,
especially Tom, walk in Todefright, they would develop the awareness that “things had
invisible as well as visible forms …The seen and the unseen world were interlocked and
superimposed. You could trip out of one and into the other at any moment” (81-82). For
Tom, such blending is more obvious, for the protagonist in Olive’s story is generally
modeled on him. The hero of Tom Underground not only shares Tom’s name, but also
resembles Tom in nearly every respect. Tom is a sweet and bright boy, and the fictional
Tom is also described to be “flawlessly beautiful and wonderfully clever” (143). While
the real Tom is the beloved son of his mother and would bent into Olive’s embrace like a
little kid, the fictional Tom in the story is “much longed for and much loved” and almost
spoiled by his royal parents (143). Moreover, similar to the real Tom, who is kept in an
ideal home and out of any dark side of reality, the fictional Tom, after losing his shadow,
remains sunny and smiling as he always is, and turns into “an image of shadowless
singularity” (145).
All of the above – the fantasy-prone social mood, the palace-like home and mother’s
fairy story – is like a mirror, in which a perfect image of Tom is reflected: an innocent
and bright boy who has all the freedom and joy of the world and is loved by all other
people. This process of identification bears much resemblance to Jaque Lacan’s mirror
stage. Such a stage is a term introduced by Lacan to describe a period when a baby starts
8
to recognize his image in the mirror. Although the baby is “physically uncoordinated”, it
takes its “gratifying unified image” as itself, thus such a stage begins “the process of
constructing a centre of self” (Eagleton, 2004: 143). However, Lacan also points out,
such a process is a misrecognized one, since the “pleasing unity” (143) of the image is
only something reflected by some object in the world but not something actually
experience in the baby’s own body. Therefore, the constructed self or “I” is an Ideal-I, a
narcissistic I, or an alienated I. In Tom’s case, Tom is the baby standing before the mirror,
while his identity as an innocent little prince is his mirror image, and the identification is
too a narcissistic process whereby Tom “bolster[s] up a fictive sense of unitary selfhood
by finding something in the world with which [… he] can identify” (143).
The fictive nature of Tom’s self image becomes more evident as reality invades and
secrets drift to the surface, and Tom’s fairytale-like life and his identity turn out to be
built on mere illusion. At first, it is his family that raises Tom’s thinking of the identity
issue. When Aunt Violet tells the story of cuckoo bird which borrows nest and lets other
bird raise its children, indicating that many people are not really their parents’ children,
Tom asks the other kids “If you found out your parents weren’t your parents, would you
be a different person?”, but he dismisses such misgivings at the thought that “we are a
happy family” (Byatt, 2010: 94). When the family secret – either Olive or Humphry is
not their real parent – is finally laid bare to the children as they eavesdrop their parents’
quarrel, Tom starts to feel the real shock of reality. If his parent is not real, all the other
things connected are unreal as well:
Tom did not think clearly. He felt his world was threatened, and his
world was Todefright, woven through and through with the light from the
woods and lawns, summer and winter, golden and frosty, and also woven
through and through with the web of his mother’s stories, stories whose
enamelled colours and inky shadows, hidden doors and flying beasts made
the real Todefright seem briefly like a whited, plaster-cast sort of a place, a
model of a home merely, which propped up the constant shape-shifting of the
otherworld, whose entrance was underground. He didn’t – he couldn’t – even
begin to imagine Olive not his mother, and it did not occur to him to try […].
What he feared was that everything might turn out to be cardboard and
plaster of Paris, though he feared this in the depth of his gut and behind his
eyes. He could not have put it into words. (149-150)
9
The revelation of family secret makes Tom perceive, for the first time, the illusory
quality of his original identity, or his mirror image. Since his parent might be unreal, the
palace-like Todefright may turn out to be a castle in the air, so is Tom’s original
self-perception as an innocent, happy child. From the definite “I” to the uncertain “I”,
Tom begins to have a vague sense of the distance between his real self and illusory self.
Yet being unable to express the fear and anxiety caused by such awareness, Tom has to
repress such feelings.
Unfortunately, before Tom is able to pin down his real self, the stark social reality
further widens the gap to its mirrored self. After the sitting of examination, the
fourteen-year-old Tom is sent to the boarding school Marlowe, where the course of his
life is totally changed. Different from the comfortable home, Marlowe is described to be
hideous, “built in gray stone slabs, imposing and imprisoning, with all sorts of
anachronistic turrets and portcullis gates” (195). Despite Julian’s serious warning of the
possible bullying, beautiful and innocent Tom still cannot escape being the prey of the
head archet Hunter. His life at Marlow is nothing but horror. Not only is he physically
hurt, but he is also mocked, humiliated, menaced, and even sexually assaulted.
Tom, as a new bug, had no private place. Not even the jakes […]. Not in
the dorm […]. He was, of course, being touched, by Hunter, who had his
own gang of bloods, […] who played a kind of game of forfeits with the
newbutts, which consisted of tearing off their garments, one by one, as they
tested them on arcane school lore. […] what must you do when we beat you?
Say thank you, because it’s good for you, or we’ll beat you a lot more. His
underpants were taken before his socks and shoes, and they all handled him,
one after another. The whole code of such places insists that it is foul and
dishonourable to tell anyone of such happenings. Tom didn’t. (196)
Tom does not tell anyone, including his parents. Instead, he turns to his mother’
story. In the story Olive sends to school from time to time, the fictional Tom begins to go
to the dark underground world looking for his shadow. Like the hero in his story, Tom
finds himself in a similarly painful situation. When the fictional Tom “made his way
inwards and downwards”, and “concealed himself in a crevice, fearing their [unknown
animals’] alien dark faces and spiked, filthy fingernails” (197), Tom finds himself nearer
and nearer to the darkest parts of school life, and has to hide himself in a cramped corner
10