That's what a liberal arts education will do to you...
I think college warped my brain forever.
I find that I am unable to read books to my daughters without completely over-thinking them. Thus, while my voice is chanting: “The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play. So I sat there with Sally, all that cold, cold wet day...” for the thousandth time, my brain is thinking: Gee, there are really some Freudian implications in this story. The Id and the superego are blatant enough: cat and fish. Who/what functions as the ego? The boy? And why does the boy have no name? What about the absent mother? Where is she, why has she left her two children home alone all day, and what does this lack of mothering represent? And what about the absent father, for crying out loud?
So I present to you here a proposed series of critical essays on children's literature.
1.Freudian representations in The Cat in the Hat (see above)
2.Man, imperialism, and nature. Source material: Curious George and The Three Little Pigs. Questions: what does the Wolf represent and why must he be defeated (or colonized, or tamed) by building strong brick dwellings? Why is removing a monkey from his native jungle and bringing him to a zoo in a city, where he is completely unable to navigate the industrial infrastructure, presented as an acceptable outcome?
3.A feminist look at Snow White: Why is cooking and cleaning all she ever does, both at the castle and at the dwarfs' cottage? Why is a sexual advance by a strange man celebrated as the happy ending that breaks the magic spell?
4.The Runaway Bunny: A portrait of a parent's constant love and abiding care, or of a twisted mother who refuses to let her little boy leave home and find his own way in the world?
5.Where have all the daddies gone? Absent fathers in children's literature: see The Cat in the Hat, The Runaway Bunny, Peter Rabbit, The Poky Little Puppy, and Madeline (he sends her presents in the hospital but does not come visit her after emergency surgery and leaves her to be raised by nuns in an orphanage or boarding school or whatever it is)?
Feel free to submit any other suggestions for a Kid's Lit Crit course to me here.
P.S. Despite the hyper-critical notions my mind creates, fueled by an over-priced education and the monotony of reading books dozens and dozens of times, I truly love children's literature, including all the books mentioned above. The Runaway Bunny is a particular favorite, despite what some people think about it.
P.S.S. I actually wrote an essay on one of these topics once.
I find that I am unable to read books to my daughters without completely over-thinking them. Thus, while my voice is chanting: “The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play. So I sat there with Sally, all that cold, cold wet day...” for the thousandth time, my brain is thinking: Gee, there are really some Freudian implications in this story. The Id and the superego are blatant enough: cat and fish. Who/what functions as the ego? The boy? And why does the boy have no name? What about the absent mother? Where is she, why has she left her two children home alone all day, and what does this lack of mothering represent? And what about the absent father, for crying out loud?
So I present to you here a proposed series of critical essays on children's literature.
1.Freudian representations in The Cat in the Hat (see above)
2.Man, imperialism, and nature. Source material: Curious George and The Three Little Pigs. Questions: what does the Wolf represent and why must he be defeated (or colonized, or tamed) by building strong brick dwellings? Why is removing a monkey from his native jungle and bringing him to a zoo in a city, where he is completely unable to navigate the industrial infrastructure, presented as an acceptable outcome?
3.A feminist look at Snow White: Why is cooking and cleaning all she ever does, both at the castle and at the dwarfs' cottage? Why is a sexual advance by a strange man celebrated as the happy ending that breaks the magic spell?
4.The Runaway Bunny: A portrait of a parent's constant love and abiding care, or of a twisted mother who refuses to let her little boy leave home and find his own way in the world?
5.Where have all the daddies gone? Absent fathers in children's literature: see The Cat in the Hat, The Runaway Bunny, Peter Rabbit, The Poky Little Puppy, and Madeline (he sends her presents in the hospital but does not come visit her after emergency surgery and leaves her to be raised by nuns in an orphanage or boarding school or whatever it is)?
Feel free to submit any other suggestions for a Kid's Lit Crit course to me here.
P.S. Despite the hyper-critical notions my mind creates, fueled by an over-priced education and the monotony of reading books dozens and dozens of times, I truly love children's literature, including all the books mentioned above. The Runaway Bunny is a particular favorite, despite what some people think about it.
P.S.S. I actually wrote an essay on one of these topics once.
7 comments:
I see some of the stuff kids are fed nowadays, like Disney Channel and real brainless movies. Even Sesame Street has taken a real dive.
That mixed with sugar/high fructose corn syrup/ all things artificial diets is dooming today's generation. I grew up in the 80s and 90s and it's interesting to see how alot of us have been warped. Then again, look to the past at how warped everyone else was.
Good post.
Harold and the Purple Crayon always prompts some existential wrangling: does Harold's world exist at all? When he wakes up the next morning, is he really home, or just in a netherworld of his own creation?
I didn't mean to make it look like Suzanne was posting all kinds of nasty comments that I had to delete. It's just that apparently Blogger did something weird (not surprising) and posted her same comment five times in a row, so I thought I'd get rid of the extras.
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