20th CENTURY CHILDREN’S LITERATURE

  1. Many of the literary texts on our course reading list include representations of the mother.
    In “Introduction: Childhood Innocence and Other Modern Myths,” Henry Jenkins argues
    that,
    The figure of the defenseless child has been consistently mobilized in
    both support of and in opposition to American feminism. Because
    women have carried special responsibilities for bearing and caring for
    children, their attempts to enter political and economic life have often
    been framed in terms of possible impacts on children and the family. (7)
    In your essay discuss the relationship between the representations of motherhood and the
    representations of childhood. Choose (2) TWO primary texts from our course readings
    which were published at least 25 years apart, and discuss if/how the treatment of
    motherhood and of childhood has changed historically in the 20th and/or 21st centuries?
    What do the representations of motherhood and childhood reveal about the author(s)
    assumptions of the child and about the politics of the child/childhood?