The Embodiment of Evil in Children¿s Literature. How Villainy and Adulthood are Interconnected in Children¿s Stories
Diplomica Verlag
978-3-96146-802-7 (ISBN)
Almut M. Amberg wurde 1995 geboren. Sie studierte Germanistik und Anglistik an der Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg und schloss im Jahr 2020 ihr Studium mit einem Master of Arts in Englischer Literaturwissenschaft erfolgreich ab. Während des Studiums legte die Autorin ihre Themenschwerpunkte auf das Theater der englischen Renaissance, die Literatur der Romantik und die Kinder- und Jugendliteratur des englischen Sprach- und Kulturraums. Besonders die Auseinandersetzung von Kinderliteratur mit ungewöhnlichen Themen, wie zum Beispiel dem zweiten Weltkrieg oder dem Bösen, weckten ihr Interesse und gaben Anlass zum Verfassen der vorliegenden Studie.
Textprobe:Kapitel 4.2. Miss Trunchbull's Villainy:The villainy of Miss Trunchbull runs deep and is exercised with such sadism that it is still able to shock audiences today and divides opinions whether the novel (and film adaptation) is child appropriate. This controversy mainly derives from Miss Trunchbull's behaviour towards children, though she also is guilty of other capital crimes.Miss Trunchbull's offences against children cover every level from meanness to actual child abuse. She displays a general unfairness towards children - she is unable to admit defeat (MA 127) and guesses culprits (MA 102), for example when she blames the newt in the jug on Matilda (MA 155-158) - and spends a lot of their interaction insulting and verbally abusing them. The worst aspect of this is her use of corporal punishment which often takes on comic-like traits. She is reported to have thrown a boy out of a classroom window (MA 104), demonstrates her skill of hammer-throwing on a little girl (MA 108f), forces a boy to eat a giant cake (MA 121-124) and then hits him with the plate (MA 127) and picks up children by their hair (MA 142ff), ears (MA 146-149) and ankle (MA 212). The grotesqueness of these acts of violence is commented upon by Matilda who sees through the perfidiousness of Miss Trunchbull's violence. The more grotesque and outrageous Miss Trunchbull behaves, the less likely are parents to believe their own children: This is "the Trunchbull's great secret" (MA 111). This mechanism protects her from actual consequences and makes her crimes against children seem even worse: the children are up on their own against this enemy. DAHL's "voyeuristic fascination with the ritual of beating" (HOLLINDALE 2008:281) has been traced down by biographers to his personal experiences in British schools where he suffered from the hands of teachers (see LOVEDAY 2018:90), but a merely biographical interpretation is limiting here. Considered the extensive description of Miss Trunchbull's strength, it seems only appropriate that most of her villainous deeds are directly enabled by this aspect of her adultness. Her strength and size give her power over the children who are unable to fight back physically against adult bodily superiority. While the strength and body size are not in themselves villainous, Miss Trunchbull's use of them certainly is. ALSFORD comments that "[v]illains use their abilities to serve themselves; heroes resist that temptation and serve the world" (ALSFORD 2006:36), suggesting that Miss Trunchbull had a choice. She could have made use of her strength for good or simply not have used it. However, she chooses what is best for her, makes use of her physical properties for egoistic reasons and uses it to enable herself and to live out her greediness and child hate. Miss Trunchbull's superiority is further emphasised by crimes she committed in the past. She has murdered Miss Honey's father (MA 192), abused her niece Miss Honey, who was under her care (MA 193 & 200), pressured her into an unethical salary contract (MA 195) and forged a suicide note to get hold of Miss Honey's inheritance (MA 199). Again, the extensiveness of Miss Trunchbull's villainy is heightened by the fact that a child is witnessing it but unable to do something about it. In Miss Honey's case, Miss Trunchbull's guardianship marks another instance of an adult of having power over the child. Miss Trunchbull, therefore, holds three kinds of power: 1) her role as headmistress, 2) her physical strength, 3) her (past) legal guardianship over Miss Honey. "The villain is characterised by power" (FORBES 2011:18) and Miss Trunchbull proves an excellent villain since her power is overt and makes her invincible.While Miss Trunchbull's violence is said not to be restricted to children and she does not seem to particularly like anyone, her hate for "very small children" (MA 96) is addressed directly. This is, for example, shown in her attack on a little girl for having pigtai
| Erscheinungsdatum | 15.12.2020 |
|---|---|
| Sprache | deutsch |
| Maße | 155 x 220 mm |
| Gewicht | 143 g |
| Themenwelt | Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik |
| Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Sprachwissenschaft | |
| Schlagworte | Childhood • Children's fiction • Children's literature • Evil • Evil in literature • villian • Villiany |
| ISBN-10 | 3-96146-802-8 / 3961468028 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-3-96146-802-7 / 9783961468027 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
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