The Children's Culture Reader

Henry Jenkins

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 1998
• ISBN:
  9780814743454
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Children's Studies in Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Every major political and social dispute of the twentieth century has been fought on the backs of our children, from the economic reforms of the progressive era through the social readjustments of civil rights era and on to the current explosion of anxieties about everything from the national debt to the digital revolution. Far from noncombatants whom we seek to protect from the contamination posed by adult knowledge, children form the very basis on which we fight over the nature and values of our society, and over our hopes and fears for the future.

Unfortunately, our understanding of childhood and children has not kept pace with their crucial and rapidly changing roles in our culture. Pulling together a range of different thinkers who have rethought the myths of childhood innocence, The Children's Culture Reader develops a profile of children as creative and critical thinkers who shape society even as it shapes them. Representing a range of thinking from history, psychology, anthropology, sociology, economics, women's studies, literature, and media studies, The Children's Culture Reader focuses on issues of parent-child relations, child labor, education, play, and especially the relationship of children to mass media and consumer culture. The contributors include Martha Wolfenstein, Philippe Aries, Jacqueline Rose, James Kincaid, Lynn Spigel, Valerie Walkerdine, Ellen Seiter, Annette Kuhn, Eve Sedgwick, Henry Giroux, and Nancy Scheper-Hughes.

Including a groundbreaking introduction by the editor and a sourcebook section which excerpts a range of material from popular magazines to child rearing guides from the past 75 years, The Children's Culture Reader will propel our understanding of children and childhood into the next century.

Part I
Childhood Innocence

Chapter One
From Immodesty to Innocence

Philippe Ariès

One of the unwritten laws of contemporary morality, the strictest and best respected of all, requires adults to avoid any reference, above all any humorous reference, to sexual matters in the presence of children. This notion was entirely foreign to the society of old. The modern reader of the diary in which Henri IV’s physician, Heroard, recorded the details of the young Louis XIII’s life is astonished by the liberties which people took with children, by the coarseness of the jokes they made, and by the indecency of gestures made in public which shocked nobody and which were regarded as perfectly natural.¹ No other document can give us a better idea of the non-existence of the modern idea of childhood at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

Louis XIII was not yet one year old: ‘He laughed uproariously when his nanny waggled his cock with her fingers.’ An amusing trick which the child soon copied. Calling a page, ‘he shouted “Hey, there!” and pulled up his robe, showing him his cock.’

He was one year old: ‘In high spirits,’ notes Heroard, ‘he made everybody kiss his cock.’ This amused them all. Similarly everyone considered his behaviour towards two visitors, a certain de Bonières and his daughter, highly amusing: ‘He laughed at him, lifted up his robe and showed him his cock, but even more so to his daughter, for then, holding it and giving his little laugh, he shook the whole of his body up and down.’ They thought this so funny that the child took care to repeat a gesture which had been such a success; in the presence of a ‘little lady’, ‘he lifted up his coat, and showed her his cock with such fervour that he was quite beside himself. He lay on his back to show it to her.’

When he was just over a year old he was engaged to the Infanta of Spain; his attendants explained to him what this meant, and he understood them fairly well. ‘They asked him: “Where is the Infanta’s darling?” He put his hand on his cock.’

During his first three years nobody showed any reluctance or saw any harm in jokingly touching the child’s sexual parts. ‘The Marquise [de Verneuil] often put her hand under his coat; he got his nanny to lay him on her bed where she played with him, putting her hand under his coat.’ ‘Mme de Verneuil wanted to play with him and took hold of his nipples; he pushed her away, saying: “Let go, let go, go away.” He would not allow the Marquise to touch his nipples, because his nanny had told him: “Monsieur, never let anybody touch your nipples, or your cock, or they will cut it off.” He remembered this.’ Again: ‘When he got up, he would not take his shirt and said: “Not my shirt, I want to give you all some milk from my cock.” We held out our hands, and he pretended to give us all some milk, saying: “Pss, pss,” and only then agreeing to take his shirt.’

It was a common joke, repeated time and again, to say to him; ‘Monsieur, you haven’t got a cock.’ Then ‘he replied: “Hey, here it is!”—laughing and lifting it up with one finger.’ These jokes were not limited to the servants, or to brainless youths, or to women of easy virtue such as the King’s mistress. The Queen, his mother, made the same sort of joke: ‘The Queen, touching his cock, said: “Son, I am holding your spout.” ’ Even more astonishingis this passage: ‘He was undressed and Madame too [his sister], and they were placed naked in bed with the King, where they kissed and twittered and gave great amusement to the King. The King asked him: “Son, where is the Infanta’s bundle?” He showed it to him, saying: “There is no bone in it, Papa.” Then, as it was slightly distended, he added: “There is now, there is sometimes.” ’

The Court was amused, in fact, to see his first erections: ‘Waking up at eight o’clock, he called Mlle Bethouzay and said to her: “Zezai, my cock is like a drawbridge; see how it goes up and down.” And he raised it and lowered it.’

By the age of four, ‘he was taken to the Queen’s apartments, where Mme de Guise showed him the Queen’s bed and said to him: “Monsieur, this is where you were made.” He replied: “With Mamma?” ’ ‘He asked his nanny’s husband: “What is that?” “That,” came the reply, “is one of my silk stockings.” “And those?” [after the manner of parlour-game questions] “Those are my breeches.” “What are they made of?” “Velvet.” “And that?” “That is a cod-piece.” “What is inside?” “I don’t know, Monsieur.” “Why, a cock. Who is it for?” “I don’t know, Monsieur.” “Why, for Madame Doundoun [his nanny].” ’

‘He stood between the legs of Mme de Montglat [his governess, a very dignified, highly respectable woman, who however did not seem to be put out—any more than Heroard was—by all these jokes which we would consider insufferable today]. The King said: “Look at Madame de Montglat’s son: she has just given birth.” He went straight away and stood between the Queen’s legs.’

When he was between five and six, people stopped talking about his sexual parts, while he started talking more about other people’s. Mlle Mercier, one of his chambermaids who had stayed up late the night before, was still in bed one morning, next to his bed (his servants, who were sometimes married, slept in his bedroom and do not appear to have allowed his presence to embarrass them). ‘He played with her, toyed with her toes and the upper part of her legs, and told his nanny to go and get some birch twigs so that he could beat her, which he did . . . His nanny asked him: “What have you seen of Mercier’s?” He replied calmly: “I have seen her arse.” “What else have you seen?” He replied calmly and without laughing that he had seen her private.’ On another occasion, ‘after playing with Mlle Mercier, he called me [Heroard] and told me that Mercier had a private as big as that (showingme his two fists) and that there was water inside.’

After 1608 this kind of joke disappeared: he had become a little man—attaining the fateful age of seven—and at this age he had to be taught decency in language and behaviour. When he was asked how children were born, he would reply, like Molière’s Agnès, ‘through the ear’. Mme de Montglat scolded him when he ‘showed his cock to the little Ventelet girl.’ And if, when he awoke in the morning, he was still put in Mme de Montglat’s bed between her and her husband, Heroard waxed indignant and noted in the margin of his diary: insignis impudentia. The boy of ten was forced to behave with a modesty which nobody had thought of expecting of the boy of five. Education scarcely began before the age of seven; moreover, these tardy scruples of decency are to be attributed to the beginnings of a reformation of manners, a sign of the religious and moral restoration which took place in the seventeenth century. It was as if education was held to be of no value before the approach of manhood.

By the time he was fourteen, however, Louis XIII had nothing more to learn, for it was at the age of fourteen years two months that he was put almost by force into his wife’s bed. After the ceremony he ‘retired and had supper in bed at a quarter to seven. M. de Gramont and a few young lords told him some broad stories to encourage him. He asked for his slippers and put on his robe and went to the Queen’s bedchamber at eight o’clock, where he was put to bed beside the Queen his wife, in the presence of the Queen his mother; at a quarter past ten he returned after sleeping for about an hour and performing twice, accordingto what he told us; he arrived with his cock all red.’

The marriage of a boy of fourteen was perhaps becoming something of a rare occurrence. The marriage of a girl of thirteen was still very common.

There is no reason to believe that the moral climate was any different in other families, whether of nobles or commoners; the practice of associating children with the sexual ribaldries of adults formed part of contemporary manners. In Pascal’s family, Jacqueline Pascal at the age of twelve was writing a poem about the Queen’s pregnancy.

Thomas Platter, in his memoirs of life as a medical student at the end of the sixteenth century, writes: ‘I once met a child who played this trick [knotting a girl’s aiguillette when she married, so that her husband became impotent] on his parents’ maidservant. She begged him to break the spell by undoing the aiguillette. He agreed and the bridegroom, recovering his potency, was immediately cured.’ Père de Dainville, the historian of the Society of Jesus and of humanist pedagogics, also writes: ‘The respect due to children was then [in the sixteenth century] completely unknown. Everything was permitted in their presence: coarse language, scabrous actions and situations; they had heard everything and seen everything.²

This lack of reserve with regard to children surprises us: we raise our eyebrows at the outspoken talk but even more at the bold gestures, the physical contacts, about which it is easy to imagine what a modern psycho-analyst would say. The psycho-analyst would be wrong. The attitude to sex, and doubtless sex itself, varies according to environment, and consequently according to period and mentality. Nowadays the physical contacts described by Heroard would strike us as bordering on sexual perversion and nobody would dare to indulge in them publicly. This was not the case at the beginning of the seventeenth century. There is an engraving of 1511 depicting a holy family: St. Anne’s behaviour strikes us as extremely odd—she is pushing the child’s thighs apart as if she wanted to get at its privy parts and tickle them. It would be a mistake to see this as a piece of ribaldry.³

The practice of playing with children’s privy parts formed part of a widespread tradition, which is still operative in Moslem circles. These have remained aloof not only from scientific progress but also from the great moral reformation, at first Christian, later secular, which disciplined eighteenth-century and particularly nineteenth-century society in England and France. Thus in Moslem society we find features which strike us as peculiar but which the worthy Heroard would not have found so surprising. Witness this passage from a novel entitled The Statue of Salt. The author is a Tunisian Jew, Albert Memmi, and his book is a curious document on traditional Tunisian society and the mentality of the young people who are semi-Westernized. The hero of the novel is describing a scene in the tram taking him to school in Tunis:

‘In front of me were a Moslem and his son, a tiny little boy with a miniature tarboosh and henna on his hands; on my left a Djerban grocer on his way to market, with a basket between his legs and a pencil behind his ear. The Djerban, affected by the warmth and peace inside the tram, stirred in his seat. He smiled at the child, who smiled back with his eyes and looked at his father. The father, grateful and flattered, reassured him and smiled at the Djerban. “How old are you?” the grocer asked the child. “Two and a half,” replied the father. “Has the cat got your tongue?” the grocer asked the child. “No,” replied the father, “he hasn’t been circumcised yet, but he will be soon.” “Ah!” said the grocer. He had found something to talk about to the child. “Will you sell me your little animal?” “No!” said the child angrily. He obviously knew what the grocer meant, and the same offer had already been made to him. I too [the Jewish child] was familiar with this scene. I had taken part in it in my time, provoked by other people, with the same feelings of shame and desire, revulsion and inquisitive complicity. The child’s eyes shone with the pleasure of incipient virility [a modern feeling, attributed to the child by the educated Memmi who is aware of recent discoveries as to early sexual awakening in children; in former times people believed that before puberty children had no sexual feelings] and also revulsion at this monstrous provocation. He looked at his father. His father smiled: it was a permissible game [our italics]. Our neighbours watched the traditional scene with complaisant approval. “I’ll give you ten francs for it,” said the Djerban. “No,” said the child. “Come now, sell me your little . . .” the Djerban went on. “No! No!” “I’ll give you fifty francs for it.” “No!” “I’ll go as high as I can: a thousand francs!” “No!” The Djerban assumed an expression of greediness. “And I’ll throw in a bag of sweets as well!” “No! No!” “You still say no? That’s your last word?” the Djerban shouted, pretending to be angry. “You still say no?” he repeated. “No!” Thereupon the grown-up threw himself upon the child, a terrible expression on his face, his hand brutally rummaging inside the child’s fly. The child tried to fight him off with his fists. The father roared with laughter, the Djerban was convulsed with amusement, while our neighbours smiled broadly.’

This twentieth-century scene surely enables us to understand better the seventeenth century before the moral reformation. We should avoid anachronisms, such as the explanation by Mme de Sévigné’s latest editor that the baroque excesses of her mother love were due to incest. All that was involved was a game whose scabrous nature we should beware of exaggerating: there was nothing more scabrous about it than there is about the racy stories men tell each other nowadays.

This semi-innocence, which strikes us as corrupt or naive, explains the popularity of the theme of the urinating child as from the fifteenth century. The theme is treated in the illustrations of books of hours and in church pictures. In the calendars in the Hennessy book of hours⁴ and the Grimani breviary,⁵ datingfrom the early sixteenth century, a winter month is represented by the snow-covered village; the door of one house is open, and the woman of the house can be seen spinning, the man warming himself by the fire; the child is in full view, urinating on to the snow in front of the door.

A Flemish ‘Ecce homo’ by P. Pietersz,⁶ doubtless intended for a church, shows quite a few children in the crowd of onlookers: one mother is holding her child above the heads of the crowd so that he can have a better view. Some quickwitted boys are shinning up the doorposts. A child can be seen urinating, held by his mother. The magistrates of the High Court of Toulouse, when they heard Mass in the chapel in their own Palace of Justice, could have had their attention distracted by a similar scene. They had before them a great triptych depicting the story of John the Baptist.⁷ On the centre volet the Baptist was shown preaching. There were children in the crowd; a woman was suckling her child; there was a boy up a tree; a little way away, facing the magistrates, a child was holding up his robe and urinating.

The frequency with which one finds children in crowd scenes, and the repetition of certain themes (the child being breast-fed, the child urinating) in the fifteenth and especially the sixteenth century, are clear signs of a new and special interest.

It is noteworthy too that at this time one scene of religious iconography recurs frequently: the Circumcision. This scene is depicted in almost surgical detail. It seems in fact that the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple and the Circumcision were treated in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as festivals of childhood: the only religious festivals of childhood before the solemn celebration of the First Communion. In the parish church of Saint-Nicolas we can see an early seventeenth-century painting which comes from the Abbey of Saint-Martin-des-Champs. The scene of the Circumcision is surrounded by a crowd of children, some of them with their parents, others climbing the pil...