Description
Book SynopsisThe figure of the wartime child in the mid-twentieth century unsettles and disturbs. This book employs a range of material â biographical, literary and historical â to chart some of the surprising and unanticipated crossovers between womenâs writing and early psychoanalysis in the years of the Second World War and the decades before and after. This volume includes examples of childrenâs adventure fiction, as well as works written for adult audiences and important and previously unrecognized similarities are noted.
The war was a disruptive influence in the lives of all who lived through it. Although active self-censorship is observed in the behaviour and attitudes of adults at this time, this book demonstrates how fictional children are able to articulate feelings such as anxiety and fear that adults were under pressure to conceal or to repress and at times, the figure of the wartime child becomes a surrogate for the writer herself or her suppressed fears and anxiety. Wh
Table of Contents
1. Adventures and Analysis: Anxiety, Danger and Psychoanalysis in three 1940s Children’s Adventure Novels 2. Containment and Mothering 3. Social Reform, Welfare and the Child at Mid-Century 4. Evacuation and Enuresis: The Chameleon Child 5. Literary Mothers 6. Postwar Parenting and Ambivalence
