Worlding in Victorian Children's Literature: Reading Colours in Selected Texts

Abstract

Abstract

This paper attempts to discuss and analyse colour in Victorian children’s literature, with a specific axis to addressing systems of inequality and subjugation, including wielding a postcolonial lens. I propose to do that by borrowing a concept from the postcolonial theory laid down by Spivak, the theory of  worlding^[1]. It refers to how the colonised space is refashioned and remodelled for the native by the coloniser. Although the native is familiar with their birthplace, the refashioning works through processes such as cartography, travelling, and writing. A similar process happens through pedagogy as well, which continues as an invisible form of colonisation. Children’s narratives have always been a strong weapon for worlding, as I try to illustrate through the paper.

Worlding is an appropriate concept to be applied to the genre of children’s literature, as the space has been designed and historically used for constructing the child’s world. Many critics have already made the observation that children’s literature is similar to colonisation, including Jaqueline Rose^[2] and Perry Nodleman^[3].

Key words: Colour studies, Victorian age, gender, race, imperialism.

^[1] Spivak, Rani of Sirmur.

^[2] Rose, The Case of Peter Pan or The Impossibility of Children’s Fiction, 1993.

^[3] Perry Nodelman, “Decoding the Images : Illustration and Picture Books”, Peter Hunt, ed., Understanding Children’s Literature, cit., pp. 69-80.