Child Figures, Conceptualisations of Time, and Notions of Progress in Nineteenth-Century British Literature

The vast social and technological transformations of the nineteenth century resulted in both a widespread spirit of optimism and a sense of insecurity in the face of unprecedented change. “The past, the present, and the future of the individual, the nation, and the human race were common topics” in nineteenth-century Britain (Marlow 13), and these coincided with an unprecedented interest in children and childhood. Childhood is, fundamentally, defined in relation to time. It is commonly thought of as “the beginning” from which each individual develops, and it represents the adult’s past. Children themselves, however, also signify the future, and in nineteenth-century literature, child figures—from spectral visions to precocious narrators—often complicated the notion of linear advancement from child to adult, or from past to present. The figure of the child embodied various understandings of time, progress, and decline, functioning as a vehicle for exploring the place of the individual in a rapidly transforming society, the feelings of loss that accompanied sweeping change, and the relationship between the advancements of the era and the new problems they sometimes spawned. While in some instances child figures seem to exemplify the century’s confidence, in others they imply uncertainty, and these different attitudes often co-exist within a single text or character. A study of literature by some of the century’s best-known writers—including Charles Lamb, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Rudyard Kipling, and Thomas Hardy—shows that conceptions of childhood were often integral to understandings of time, individual development, the progress of civilisation, and social decline.