Vicious infants : dangerous childhoods in antebellum U.S. literature / Laura Soderberg.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Soderberg, Laura, author.

Series:

Childhoods: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Children and Youth

Childhoods: interdisciplinary perspectives on children and youth

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--19th century--History and criticism.

American literature.

Children in literature.

Social problems in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 200 pages)

Place of Publication:

Amherst, Massachusetts : University of Massachusetts Press, [2021]

Summary:

"Childhood as scholars often recognize it-innocent, vulnerable, and above all, precious-is anchored in the cultural imagination of the early nineteenth-century United States, when an attitude of child worship drove sentimental politics and literature. But, not all childhoods were defined by love, education, and nurture. Singled out by nineteenth-century legal and medical establishments, children already marginalized by slavery, ethnicity, and poverty were increasingly branded as "incorrigible," delinquent, and antisocial. Vicious Infants offers a counterhistory of literary childhood as both perceived social threat and site of resistance, revealing that many children were not only cut off from family and society, they were also preemptively excluded from the rewards of citizenship and adulthood. Turning to prison documents, medical journals, overlooked periodical fiction, and literary works from William Apess, Harriet Wilson, Herman Melville, Susan Paul, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Laura Soderberg recovers alternate narratives of childhood and provides an important window into the cultural links between race, reproduction, and childhood in the antebellum period"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Bound Children: Sidestepping the Social Contract in Apprenticeship Literature

The Incorrigible Child: Juvenile Delinquency and the Fearful Rise of the Child Self

Prodigious Births: Black Infancy, Antebellum Medicine, and the Racialization of Heredity

Too Many Children: U.S. Malthusianism, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Novel-Ending Births

Conclusion.

Notes:

Based on the author's dissertation (doctoral)--Univeristy of Pennsylvania, 2016.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-61376-844-3

OCLC:

1238131787