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Home > Volume 8, 1897 > The Choice of Literature for the Young.

The Choice of Literature for the Young.

by Ronald McNeill.
Volume 8, 1897, pgs. 561-568


The title of this paper suggest a preliminary question, which at the present day divides opinion not a little among those especially interested in the upbringing of children. I mean the question whether the reading of young people should be controlled at all by their elders, or whether they should not rather be encouraged--to quote Mr. Ruskin's analogy--to wander at their own freewill among the bookshelves like a fawn in the woods.

Thirty years ago, I suppose, you could scarcely have found a conscientious parent who would not have strenuously held it a duty to regulate carefully the reading of their children, and more especially of their daughters. Girls were generally forbidden absolutely to open any book that had not previously been read and approved by the parent or some equally discreet authority, and that authority was as a rule by no means a lenient censor. In the domain of fiction, most of the great masterpieces of literature were forbidden fruit. Shakespeare himself was only tolerated after passing through Dr. [Thomas] Bowdler's filter, lest some unmannerly phrase should come between the wind and the simplicity of the young person. I myself know a woman, one of the most intellectual and gifted of women moreover, who was actually prohibited from reading Adam Bede till long after womanhood had been reached, and who in consequence has never, I believe, to this day read that beautiful book. That was the recognised system in the last generation. The reading of novels was as a whole discouraged. It was thought to be at the best a harmless frivolity, a waste of time only justifiable as a relaxation in some odd half-hour of leisure. This was the kind of view even of persons who considered fiction of other kinds, such as the Greek dramatists, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, to be subjects worthy of serious study. By many others, novel-reading was held reprehensible at all times and under all conditions. It is scarcely a matter for surprise that the recoil from such a state of things should have carried many to a position very far in the opposite direction. The opinion is now often expressed, and that too by the most thoughtful and conscientious of parents, many of whom have vivid recollections of the rigour of the ancient regime, that we should exercise no authoritative control over the reading of young people; that what we might think objectionable will in point of fact prove perfectly harmless; that even if we are competent to exercise such a control wisely, the effect of doing so is, on the whole, injurious rather than otherwise to the character of those it is intended to benefit. It may be assumed that even those who profess to hold this view in its most extreme form are unable really to put it consistently into practice. The most precocious of children will in the first instance read only what is given them to read. The story-books that reach them at Christmas or on birthdays, and that form their libraries, are chosen for them by parents, or uncles, or aunts. Whatever, therefore, may be the theory of any of us, it is clear that the necessity of choosing literature for the young exists, and that the only real question for discussion is one of degree. Opinions may differ as to the principles which should guide the choice, as to the method and extent of control that should be exerted at different ages of the child after he has gained some power of choosing for himself, and as to the age at which all idea of control should be abandoned; but there can be no question in practice of dispensing with control altogether.

[Thomas Bowdler published "The Family Shakespeare" in 1807, and a family-friendly version of Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." The term "bowdlerized" refers to his editing of inappropriate content.]

The wise course of action lies, as usual, somewhere between the two opposite extremes. With regard to the old-fashioned doctrine of rigid censorship, it is sufficient to observe that even if we could admit it to be desirable, it is practically impossible to carry it out thoroughly enough under existing conditions. It would be attempting to enforce a blockade without the power of making it effective--a proceeding condemned by common sense quite as much as by international law. To make such an attempt would be exasperating, and at the same time futile. How is it possible when all the great novels of the past can be bought for a few pence at every bookstall; when stories like Tess of the D'urbervilles [Hardy], or Esther Waters [Moore], appear in the pages of weekly illustrated papers; when elaborate analyses of Ibsen's plays, or The Second Mrs. Tanqueray [Pinero], lie on our breakfast-tables in the daily papers; when the pulpit stimulates curiousity and makes itself absurd by denouncing Robert Elsmere [Ward], or eulogising The Sign of the Cross [Barrett]; when everyone you meet is discussing The Yellow Aster [Iota/Caffyn], or Flames [Hichens], or En Route [Huysmans], or The Woman Who Did [Allen]--how is it possible under such conditions to exclude from the attention of intelligent young people the sort of knowledge which it was the object of the last generation, and presumably is still the object of a rigid parental censorship, to exclude? It is reasonable to expect that when every half-penny newspaper reviews half-a-dozen novels per afternoon, your growing up boys or girls should refrain from opening a volume till you have first read it and stamped it with your approval?

But even if it were possible, is it certain that it would be desirable? Is the parent always able or willing to keep pace with, and in advance of, the child's reading? There are many parents who are no great readers themselves. There are others who spend their own leisure in reading works on philosophy, or science, or poetry. Is a young girl, say of sixteen, with perhaps a passion for romance, to wait gazing at the binding of some novel that all her friends are discussing, till such a parent finds time or inclination to examine it--and probably be utterly bored by it--and mark it with a chalk-mark of satisfaction like a custom-house official passing a portmanteau? Nor is it by any means certain that if the parent could do this, he or she should be an infallibly good judge of what is best for each of their children to read or leave unread. To begin with, I think there is much truth in the contention that the danger of indiscriminate reading for children is often greatly exaggerated; that what is objectionable makes little or no impression on their minds. But of course this depends very much on the age of the child and its individual temperament. But there is another reason, which I think is sufficient in itself, why we should not stringently regulate the reading of our children. It is because in that case the critical faculty is never called out by exercise at the period when it is most plastic; and consequently when the time comes when the external control must be of necessity be removed, they have never had the training to enable them to discriminate for themselves between good literature and bad, and the result will always be that their judgments will afterwards be formed on wrong principles.

But if these objections may be urged against the old system of regulation, there are weighty objections on the other side against leaving young people too free to choose their own reading. I have said that I think these objections are often exaggerated; but they exist none the less, and should be guarded against. There are books that are absolutely, in their essence, and apart from all considerations of the age and circumstance of the reader, pernicious; and these should be at all hazards kept out of children's way, just as they should also be kept out of our own way if that is possible.

There are others of a different sort which, in the case of readers of sufficient experience and judgment, may be not only harmless but positively good for them to read, but which it may be a great injustice to a child to be allowed to read too soon. But the conventional view of what is undesirable in books for the young person is as often as not entirely misconceived. It is often taken for granted that any story which introduces the subject of sex should be forbidden, at any rate, to girls before they leave the schoolroom. And so long as this is stringently enforced, no more subtle discrimination is as a rule thought necessary by average parents. But this is a double mistake. There are many books in which the incident is concerned with this subject, which are quite harmless and wholly desirable reading for many girls; while, at the same time, some of the most objectionable books are perfectly free from it. Here again much depends on the age of the reader. Thus quite young children will pass over incidents or traits of character, which would arrest their attention and arouse their curiousity a few years later; and they will be content with explanations which a few years later they would reject as insufficient or dishonest.

Of course, at no age should any explanation be given a child which is really dishonest; for if there is one thing that children are entitled to as of right from their parents, it is scrupulous truth. Nor should their quite laudable curiousity be crushed by replies that are no answers--that are mere irrelevant 'puts-off' to enquiry. For example, read to a child of nine or ten some simple version of Lancelot and Guinevere. You are sure to be met with some question as to why it was wrong for the Queen to love the bravest of all the knights. You reply that it was not wrong to love him, but that her sin was that she loved him more than Arthur, although she had solemnly promised always to love her husband best. The answer is a real answer to the question; it is a true answer; and it will be accepted as a sufficient answer.

But at a rather later age--say at about 13 or 14, if not sooner--a fuller knowledge of the facts of life will have been gained (from the parents' own lips if they are wise), and then the same story will be read in Tennyson or Malory, and no questions will be asked or explanations required. The full significance will work its own way to the front of the child's consciousness. And it can hardly be imagined that any thoughtful person believes that the reading of that lovely and pathetic old romance could stain in the slightest degree the purest mind, when all motive of mere unsatisfied curiousity has been thus removed by deliberately imparted knowledge beforehand.

Another reason why the difficulty really does not present itself with the quite young child is that these books conventionally regarded as most objectionable--unless in the case of exceptionally precocious children--would often be found intolerably dull, and would therefore make no impression. Of course, I am not suggesting that such books should be thrown in their way. But it occasionally happens that a child hears a book mentioned, perhaps somewhat mysteriously, by an elder, and immediately becomes anxious to read it. In such a case if you prohibit it, you merely stimulate curiousity (I always think if I were a Catholic, the books I should most ardently long to read would be those on the Index), and when the book is read afterwards--perhaps at an age when it is really much more open to objection--the mind is on the alert to discover the reason for the previous prohibition, with the result that those aspects of the book which would otherwise have been slurred over, unobserved, or taken for granted, are taken out of their proper perspective, and unduly emphasised in the reader's attention.

But if it be true that books which introduce incidents connected with the question of sex are often perfectly harmless, it is equally true that numerous books which, as a rule, pass without question through the conventional censorship of the parent, are not at all harmless. I mean books which, without containing any single incident that you could pick out as objectionable in itself, are written altogether from an undesirable point of view--the point of view which is apt to narrow instead of expanding the sympathies, or to make children self-conscious or priggish, or opinionated; which make love-making and marriage-at-any-price the single aim of a girl's endeavours; or which emphasise the distinction between mistress and servant, and represent accidents of social difference as if they were as eternal and vital as the moral law. To this list I would add that class of goody-goody story, composed of religion and water--happily very uncommon now--in which naughty children fall into the river because they go larking on Sunday, and drummer-boys are saved from bullets by a Bible in their breast-pocket. Such stuff as this only leads children, when they get a little knowledge and sense, to look back with scorn instead of reverence to the religious ideas instilled in childhood. Then again, there are books which, to be harmless, require to be read by a person of sufficient experience of life to gauge the value of the picture of life presented to the reader; to distinguish accidents from types, satire from narrative, caricature from portraiture; books which cynically represent all life as frivolous, all society as selfish and flippant, all men as sordid, all women as intriguers--which, like Vivien, would leave

These are bad for the young, not because there is fear of their soiling the mind in the ordinary sense of the word, but because they may warp the judgment, destroy that balance of mind in weighing social life and institutions which is the spring of all that is valuable in opinion, and sow the seed of an unjust and untrue pessimism, cynicism, and scorn of men and things. A child naturally has not learnt that exaggeration is a legitimate device of rhetoric for enforcing a single aspect of life. We ourselves can read Dodo [series by Benson] and Dolly Dialogues [Russell] and the rest, and enjoy their wit and point without harm, because we know them to be caricatures of exceptional sports of Nature; and we have no inclination to accept a picture of a heartless, selfish, empty-headed, petted woman as a model for imitation, or as a true portrait of what is successful, happy, and lovable in life. But the child that has no experience of the bigness of life may not be able to discount these things at their true value, or perceive the true perspective; and for them, such books are certainly not to be desired during the most formative years of the character. And if there be any truth in the belief now held by a good many, as to the powerful influence of mere unconscious mental suggestion, not only on the character but even on the physical health, of course it is still more important to guard the young against the entrance into their minds- even into that region of the mind which is not supplying conscious thoughts--of whatever is not lovely and of good report.

It must not be forgotten, that what is harmless at one age may be harmful at another. It can only be left to the judgment of the parent to decide when the change occurs. This is the more difficult because in addition to the question of age (and largely affecting it) is the question of individual temperament, which must be closely studied and intimately known by any parent who undertakes to choose literature for the young. It does not follow because a certain book has been quite wisely recommended to her own children by some friend in whose judgment you have confidence, that therefore it is desirable reading for your boys and girls. It does not even follow that what is suitable for some or one of your own children is suitable for the others, any more than it follows that a tonic prescribed for one is required by the rest of the family. This is what makes it so impossible to generalise on this subject. It may very well be the case that those who maintain that no control or choice whatever is desirable, have found such a system--so far as it is possible to give effect to it--satisfactory in their own experience as parents: it by no means follows that it would be satisfactory in the experience of anyone else. This matter of individual temperament is indeed all important. One of our children, for example--more especially perhaps one of our boys--may urgently require to have the emotion of sympathy aroused, the sense of pathos stimulated, or the imagination excited. For such a one, the tales of adventure where perhaps deeds of oppression or cruelty or bloodshed, even if not held up for admiration, are passed over as matters of course, might be more infinitely more harmful than the outspokenness of the most outspoken New Woman; while, on the other hand, such stirring yarns might be most wholesome food for children of a different disposition. There is no more exquisite child's book than Mrs. Ewing's Story of a Short Life, but I should imagine there are many little girls quivering with sensibility and too keenly responsive to all sadness and pathos, to whom it ought to be a closed book.

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