Date of Award
Fall 2015
Document Type
Thesis
College
College of Arts and Sciences
Degree Program
English
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Thesis Advisor
Casey A. Cothran
Committee Member
Siobhan Brownson
Committee Member
William F. Naufftus
Keywords
Charles Kingsley, The Water-Babies, Ecocriticism, Victorian literature, Children's literature
Abstract
Though Charles Kingsley’s mid-nineteenth century children’s book, The Water-Babies, is generally out of favor with canons of Victorian or children’s literature, I argue that The Water-Babies is a highly adaptable text because it is made up of conjoined opposites. The text’s multiplicity of form and content as well as its emphasis on imagination make the The Water-Babies malleable for variation and adaptation, while the approach Kingsley took to the child audience prepared the text for an indefinite future readership. Moreover, the work’s initial intent to be utilized for social change and the proto-environmentalist messages already present in the text situate The Water-Babies as particularly prone to ecocritical readings. By reading into Kingsley’s own life and varying influences, observing the inconsistencies in style and genre in the work itself, and arguing that the book’s ideological moral is to merge dualisms, I consider the possibility that The Water-Babies has potential staying power as an adaptation suited to modern environmental and humanitarian concerns mapped onto the narrative of a boy who explores, learns, and grows.
Recommended Citation
Handy, Emily, "The Industrial Fairy Tale: The Adaptable Narrative in Charles Kingsley's The Water-Babies" (2015). Graduate Theses. 17.
https://digitalcommons.winthrop.edu/graduatetheses/17
