The title of this book is grand and lofty, but still easy enough for the average reader to understand the basics of the situation. It promises to offer some literary analysis that illuminates for the non-Victorian reader of stories about little girls falling in Wonderland and discovering secret gardens as well as introducing them to wildly popular stories at the time that are hardly known today like Charles Kingsley’s profoundly xenophobic The Water-Babies.
And, it turns out, there actually is quite a bit inside the volume that is enlightening. The chapter on Kingsley’s forgotten best-seller is almost guaranteed to shine a light on a dark little corner of children’s literature that is both intensely inspiring and utterly dispiriting at the same time, somehow. The very same chapter is also illuminating for the reason why ultimately many readers hoping for a return to their favorite childhood tales are destined for disappointment. The Water-Babies is not morality tale disguised as a modern fable, but it is also at the very same time a deeply allegorical and almost existential riff on Darwinian evolution. The publication of Kingsley’s book actually did a wonderful good for British society: it facilitate the arrival of the long-overdue Chimney Sweepers Regulation Act of 1864 which addressed the issue of often fatally lax child labor laws. It is also immensely anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic, racist, and prejudiced against not just the long-standing enemy of the England—the Irish—but also Americans. By and large, it’s view toward evolution is that perfection has been attained with white protestant British males. That’s the problem with Kingsley’s book.
It in the summarizing and quick analysis of the plot of The Water-Babies that the problem with Evolution and Imagination in Victorian Children’s Literature is raised—and not for the first time: “Kingsley’s fair tale ingeniously fashions a recapitulative education that seamless merges moderns science and a new kind of children’s literature—at least for a while.”
She said what now? Well before one gets to The Water-Babies, Alice down there in Wonderland, that Secret Garden, the little lordly fellow named Fauntleroy or any other “Victorian’s children’s literature” the author introduces the phrase that will become the foundation for her exploration and theorizing: “Ontonegy is a recapitulation of phylogeny.”
You are about to enter into a secret garden yourself and you must not repeat what you are about to read: ninety-nine percent of English Literature majors will have no more of an idea what that statement means that you. And here’s why: both of those terms—ontonegy and phylogeny—are scientific terms. Not social sciences, mind you, but hard science. In fact, one might even go so far as to say hardcore science. Even the common definitions quickly located online do little to clear the fog: phylogeny is “the branch of biology that deals with phylogenesis” while ontonegy is “the branch of biology that deals with ontogenesis.” Did that clear things up for anyone? Well, at least you know that the author is predicating her premise for her entire book on something to do with biology.
Except that the title of the book promises it will be about literature. And, to reiterate: it is about literature. But to fully understand what Straley is saying about Victorian children’s literature one has to be equipped with not just ontogeny and phylogeny, but a very real thing known as “recapitulation theory.” This criticism does not extend to the author’s theories, writing, or grasp of the history of children’s literature, Victorian society or anything else covered in the book. Straley is a top-notch academic writer. Those coming to the book looking for something more “academic” along the lines of Alice in Wonderland and Philosophy are destined for disappointment. The book is of tremendous use for scholars operating at the top line of the education system pursuing interests in kid lit, Victorian culture or even biology. Those wanting a looser and more entertaining “pop culture” approach are forewarned: bring a dictionary because it is going to be need.
