Literary Parenthooh

Literary Parenthooh

Parenthood has been defined as a process of rearing children. According to contemporary standards, “parenthood” involves a number of daily responsibilities and financial and affective obligations such as the education and instruction of one’s children. The notion of “parenthood” also presupposes an active concern for a child’s welfare and physical and intellectual development. Initially, parenthood was concerned with teaching the taboo—what is forbidden—and with inculcating basic rules and restrictions to the young. Later on, parenthood began to be seen as a longer process of nurturing that was increasingly centered on the concept of caring. Such was the case with certain utopian societies founded on the American continent (for example, the Owenite societies of the 19th century), which developed some of the first kindergartens. Children were raised and educated together, and society itself was engaged in a collective effort of parenting. The same concept was developed in Europe at almost the same time. In fact, defining parenthood is a recent preoccupation, but the concerns and worries of parenthood are as old as the world. As early as ca. 440 b.c., the Greek tragedian Sophocles produced a series of plays—Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone. Without mentioning “parenthood” explicitly, the trilogy’s plots develop a familial tragedy, based on a hereditary curse, and discuss the problems of knowledge, ignorance, destiny, and personal choice as related to the denial/rejection of parenthood and abandonment. Oedipus is a victim, an abandoned child, threatened with death by his father, while Antigone is the daughter of the incestuous relationship between Oedipus and his mother, Jocasta. Epitomizing the major family taboos, the figure of Oedipus is extensively referred to in child psychology since the Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud explored the myth in the light of a father and mother’s unconscious feelings regarding the early stages of parenthood. Antigone, on the other hand, is in total opposition to the will of the king. She acts against the orders of the “parent” of the nation, obeying her instinct of filial duty. It has also been suggested that her name means “opposed to motherhood.” Her behavior engenders destruction, while the outcome of the tragedy implies that there are different levels of parental allegiance. In the same fashion, English literature of the 16th and 17th centuries was concerned with the structure of the world as God’s supreme creation and introduced a complex, layered structure of parentchild relationships. The political and religious climate favoured biblical examples of parenthood; the attempted sacrifice of Isaac by his father Abraham is a case in point. It demonstrated that God was the father of humanity and that humanity was to obey. Humanity’s allegiance to God was likened to a child’s obedience to its parents. This reasoning was a part of what is known as “the great chain of being,” a conception of the world as a strictly hierarchical system composed of intricate links and interactions. It was frequently alluded to in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, and it was also much utilized by William Shakespeare in his tragedies, including Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet. Both plays introduce us to strict, forbidding parents whose word is law. Every opposition to their wishes on the domestic or public level has diverse implications on the scale of the great chain of being. Hamlet’s revolt brings political change, while Romeo and Juliet’s deaths launch a reconciliation of the feuding families. The authority of parenthood in both plays is the highest authority conceivable. In Macbeth, on the other hand, the fear of disobedience to the king is essentially a fear of causing imbalance on a natural and divine level. The fragile balance of power is disturbed by the murder of the kingdom’s wise and just parent, and even the supernatural demonstrate their fury at the deed. The 18th century was the century of reason, and concepts of parenthood were significantly modified. The anxiety and fear of confrontation were transposed from the level of the state to that of the family cell, and the notion of exercising effective parental control on the child’s development gradually emerged. Conduct and advice books, written for both parents and children, were very common throughout the 18th century and well into the 19th. The correct methods for educating one’s children and the basics of good behavior in society were the main concerns of such works. Concurrently, a strong tradition of educational theory was founded with the publication of John Locke’s Thoughts Concerning Education (1692), and it spread to the writings of Daniel Defoe (e.g., The Family Instructor, 1715), Anna Laetitia Barbauld (Early Lessons, 1781), Maria Edgeworth (Parent’s Assistant, 1796, and Practical Education, 1798), and many minor authors of the late 1780s and the 1790s. An interesting but also extreme example is the moralizing of the notorious Thomas Day (Sandford and Merton, 1783–89) who adopted two sisters with the hope of raising one or the other as his wife. His purpose was to instill in their minds all the characteristics that made the perfect woman as he saw her. Rumors of mistreatment and even torture were circulated, and he abandoned the experiment. In 1719, Daniel Defoe published Robinson Crusoe and suggested that a child’s flight from paternal authority and protection is not a solution. His economic man established a new paternalistic state, and the father-son relationship between Crusoe and Friday have been interpreted as economic, political, and social ideals, though they can actually be seen as a simulation of perfect, natural parenthood. Crusoe enlightens Friday on moral and religious matters, while Friday demonstrates submission to his spiritual parent. Twenty years later, Samuel Richardson’s Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded presented a very interesting form of passive parenthood. This epistolary novel insists on the fact that even though outside the sphere of parental protection, the virtuous offspring should follow her parents’ moral principles in her quest for happiness. In a series of letters, Pamela complains of the treatment she receives, only to be rewarded by matrimonial happiness and parenthood herself. The later 18th and earlier 19th centuries saw the rise of new fears and quite a few revivals of the incest taboo, a widespread gothic theme. The gothic novel of the second half of the 18th century was very much concerned with parenthood; with issues of succession and usurpation of birthright; and with heritage and extended, increasingly complex family ties. It depicted the dissolution of the nuclear family and the psychological instability generated by guilty or adoptive parents. As a natural fin de siècle continuation of this literary current, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) is about the monster made by man, reflecting Shelley’s own childbirth and parenting fears. It also introduces a new literary theme that would be explored throughout the 19th and 20th centuries: The creator is also a parent to be held responsible for his creation. The period also saw some pre-Freudian, post-gothic musings by Edgar Allan Poe. In his “Ligeia” (1838), Poe reflects on the obsessive behavior of a father figure, linking eroticism and parenthood into a narrative of morbid incest. The 18th and 19th centuries were concerned with establishing models for the roles of parents of both sexes, consigning the women to the domestic sphere and the men to the public sphere. Such ideas of parenthood were driven by family narratives, autobiographies, and instruction booklets but also by many novels. The mothers would provide care to the younger children and girls, while fathers were considered responsible for the education of elder children—boys in particular. Parenthood became at once a duty and an obligation. Some of the paintings and drawings of J. E. Millais depict the ideal family and present the image of successful parenthood (e.g., The Young Mother, 1857; The Crawley Family, 1860; The
Ruling Passion, 1885). Much in the same fashion, the beginning of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women announces the typical family structure with Beth’s famous “We’ve got Father and Mother, and each other.” Alcott’s book is said to represent the female revolt against 19th-century assumptions that a “female genius” cannot be a parent, but it also explores the cult of femininity, of childbearing and parenting—roles to be contested by some feminists but advocated by others. In this respect, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter displays a challenging plot based on an innovative theme. Beyond the most obvious problem of original sin lies a discussion of the hardships of single parenthood. It also develops the stereotype of the “Madonna with Child,” raising parenthood to a higher level. In The House of the Seven Gables, Hawthorne goes back to the theme of the heritage parents leave to their children, much in line with Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764). However, Hawthorne is more concerned with hereditary transmission of sin than with the practical problems of parenthood. Thomas Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886) also goes back to an old theme, that of the abandoned child. Instead of focusing on the child itself, Hardy depicts the life of the parent, haunted by guilt and the painful souvenir of past parenthood.In an attempt to expiate the sin of abandonment, the main character becomes mayor. The impulse to compensate for his wrongdoing makes him the parent of an entire town. Here we notice a change in perspectives: While the sentimental and gothic novel would focus on the life, adventures, and growing up of the abandoned child, later 19th-century authors chose a perspective that permitted them to explore the psychology of the abandoning parent. Another late 19th-century author who is frequently associated with the intricacies of the parental psyche is Henry James. His The Turn of the Screw is a story told by a governess, concerning dead parents, neglected children, an absent uncle, and disturbed guardians. The psychological frustration accumulates and causes the death of a child, a death that can be taken literally or as a metaphor of the premature death of childhood and innocence. The 20th century saw a number of literary developments and experiments. On the one hand, William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World propose dystopian visions of parenthood. In the first novel, parental control is totally absent from an aggressive, deathly world. The second presents twisted political machinery, as a result of which children send their parents to their deaths. The third speculates about the implications of planned parenthood if carried too far. On the other hand, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) focuses on birth as a metaphor of writing and artistic creation. Atwood likens the conception of a story to the conception of a child, and the writing process to a painful delivery. As we have seen, the image of the parent in literature is far from immutable. The relationships and conflicts between parents and children have become recurrent themes in world literature. Some of them are not developed explicitly or intentionally, but they are present nevertheless, and through them we can try and imagine what parenthood was like throughout past centuries. Through diverse forms of literature, society gradually came to conceptualize parenthood, often without making direct reference to the word itself. However, the ramifications of the theme are numerous and provide a rich background for innovative academic research. See also Hemingway, Ernest: Farewell to Arms, A; Irving, John: World According to Garp, The: Kureishi, Hanif: Buddhist of Suburbia, The; Morrison, Toni: Song of Solomon; Sula; Potok, Chaim: Chosen, The; Silko, Leslie Marmon: American Pastoral; Turgenev, Ivan: Fathers and Sons.