The Developmental-Play Function of Young Adult Fiction as Seen through Phantastes, The Water Babies, The Chronicles of Narnia, and This Is All

Stockholm University Department of English The Developmental-Play Function of Young Adult Fiction as Seen through Phantastes, The Water Babies, The Chronicles of Narnia, and This Is All Kevin Frato D-Essay Spring 2008 Supervisor: Anna Uddén The attempt to define literature for young readers has engaged many literary theorists, but one thing their proposed definitions lack, in their effort to assert what this literature is, is an acknowledgement of what literature for young readers does, ie how it functions Nonetheless these same theorists, in other contexts, identify the psychological development of young readers as this literature's primary function Tracing the genesis of young-adult literature back to its modern-fairy-tale roots in George MacDonald's 1858 Phantastes and other novels which followed the pattern devised by MacDonald, and showing how the genre has recently come full circle with realistic "crossover" novels such as Aidan Chambers's 2005 This Is All, this essay will seek to redefine literature for young readers in terms of its developmental or self-actualizing, play-process functionality More specifically, I will define the primary function of young adult literature as developmental make-believe or play, and show how this function has (from the Victorians to the present and from fantasy to realism) maintained a similar pattern in inviting young readers to imagine or mentally simulate crossing the threshold between youth and adulthood In this essay I avoid the misleading term "children's literature", which is generally used as a catch-all to include everything from board-books to young-adult novels; instead I choose the more inclusive, reader-addressoriented phrase "literature for young readers", by which I mean literature which effectively acts as such for young readers – actual young readers The address-signifier "for" allows me to sidestep the debate concerning the necessity of young people themselves which sometimes occurs in discussions of "children's literature", as in this assertion by David Rudd that for writers addressing young readers and imagining their responses, "The physical response of a child is not necessary The dialogic process of anticipating answering words must still occur, as authors construct notional readers" (38) These hypothetical, notional readers, including adults connecting with their younger selves when reading literature for young reader, are treated as legitimate audiences by some theorists But literature for young readers loses its adressee without actual young readers themselves it becomes, as Rudd later concedes , "a generic plaything for adults" (39) Literature for young readers can legitimately provide cathartic, artistic experiences for adults as both authors and readers, but in order to have the effect of literature for young readers upon young readers, it must engage this actual readership Two other proposed reader effects currently hold sway in the debate concerning the nature of literature for young readers, but these functions art (efferential or easthetic reading) versus pedagogy (didactic reading) (cf Weinreich 123) appear neither in his nor other theorists’ proposed definitions of this body of literature These cannot be the only two alternatives, though: neither proposed effect matches with what theorists themselves, at other times, identify as this literature's primary purpose for existing Instead the definition-debate has focused on two central issues, namely the search for 1)"degree or kind" indicators, ie the measuring of literary or linguistic simplifications, or the search for an indicative pattern of narrative elements in literature for young readers (Cadden 59) versus 2) a definition based upon authorial address, the process by which adult authors address actual (or even "notional") young readers (Rudd 38-39) The degree side of the definition-debate is represented by theorists who assume a structuralist standpoint and therefore place their emphasis on young readers' ability to decode linguistic and literary structures One prominent degree-theorist is Torben Weinreich who cites evidence showing a slight yet quantifiable pattern of simplification in literature for young readers, including an increased frequency of verbs as opposed to nouns, decreased lexical diversity, increased use of terms applying to young people's environs, and fewer descriptions or reflective passages in favor of more dialogue and action (52) Others look at the different kinds of literary simplifications involved and note a pattern of reduced diversity or complexity of literary devices: Leila Christenbury notes of young-adult novels, that "the compressed plot, the limited number of characters, and the length of the works themselves distinguish YA lit [young adult literature] from classic literature and make it more accessible and often more immediately understandable" to young readers (18) Defining literature for young readers based upon patterns of simplification in its linguistic and literary structures requires the assumption that young people are less knowledgable, and therefore less capable of decoding complex structures, than adult readers Some theorists state this belief in young people’s limited ablilities directly For instance in calling for the adaptation of adult texts to the reading levels of young people, Weinreich voices a belief in what he feels is the "incomplete" nature of children: "Writers not primarily adapt because children have other experiences and knowledge, but because they lack experiences and knowledge Childhood is a state of incompleteness" (49) Where does this type of reasoning come from? Certainly not all adults read at the same level of linguistic and literary complexity, just as young people themselves enjoy varying degrees of cognitive ability – how can Weinreich make such a categorical assertion concerning young peoples’ ”lack” of experiences and knowledge? This is the same type of incomplete reasoning given by another well-known structuralist to explain the existence of value-judgements in adult literature Failing to take into account variables such as personality, developmental stages, and the process by which the brain prunes away unused neural pathways (making some experiences much less accessible, even though we have experienced them) Northrop Frye postulates that In value-judgement, the context of the work of literature is the reader's experience When knowledge is limited, the sense of value is naive; when knowledge improves, the sense of value improves too, but it must wait upon knowledge for its improvement When two value-judgements conflict, nothing can resolve them except greater knowledge (Frye 66) Frye’s contention sounds reasonable, but understanding its basic fault lays bare the crux of the problem in defining literature for young readers according to the type or complexity of its structures According to Frye, one’s sense of value improves along with one’s level of knowledge, and thus when two readers share the same knowledge, their literary tastes or value-judgements will coincide Thus those with a limited working knowledge of how to decode linguistic and literary structures should appreciate a simpler literature, while those with a greater working knowledge ought to appreciate a more complex literature As a practical outcome of this notion, literature for adults ought to be marked with suggested reading levels in the same way as literature for young readers, i.e ”High-school diploma and above” or ”Doctoral-level literature.” But Frye’s idea has not had this effect on adult literature His cause-andeffect relationship is unsupported: he fails to describe the mechanism by which knowledge supposedly translates into judgements of value Yet Frye’s is an attitude which continually crops up in pop-culture debates Can the musically uneducated sense the value of Mozart? Can those who have never studied literary criticism appreciate Virgina Woolf? Can young readers – who lack education – decode and sense the value of complex linguistic and literary structures? In the case of literature for young readers, Weinreich feels the linguistic and literary structures must be limited or "adapted" in order to compensate for what he views as young readers' incompleteness His definition describes literature for young readers as having been selfcensored by authors (or afterwards by adapting editors) to fit children's "assumed reading skills and encyclopaedic, intertextual and rhetorical competence different from that of adult literature" (128) This approach to literature for young readers reaches the shelves of libraries and bookstores every year in the form of limited-vocabulary adaptations and books with reading ages printed on the cover; as young readers are not the primary purchasers of this literature, these age-suggestions do, in practise, define what reached the hands of many young readers The second theoretical tactic in the effort to define literature for young readers involves focusing on authorial address or intent Some theorists also claim that works for young people must be "written for children" (Weinreich 128), or "written with young readers in mind" (Christenbury 19) or written "anticipating that children will participate in its utterance" (Hollindale 23)1 Others steer a course between imagined and real, or "constructed and constructive" young readers (Rudd 39), allowing for the broadening of this literature's hypothetical readership Still others cite the practise of double or dual address in literature for young readers (examples of which will be discussed later in this essay), which further broadens the range of what literature for young readers might be (Cadden 59) This attempt to extend the definition of who young readers are, and therefore what literature for young readers might be, has historical antecedents: as Rudd points out, the tradition of oral narratives told directly to young audiences allowed for a direct-feedback situation whereas printed books allow for less interaction between author and reader (38), and therefore authors sometimes attempt to address various potetnial audiences at once Another problem with defining literature for young readers on the basis of authorial intent is that this provides no indication of how texts or will in the future function with young readers Some "adult" texts have become de facto literature for young readers whereas other texts, originally intended for young people, have now entered the world of adult literature For instance "adult" novels such as To Kill a Mockingbird, Animal Farm, 1984, Brave New World, The Catcher in the Rye, Things Fall Apart, The Great Gatsby and Lord of the Flies are so prevalent in schools -and in my experience as a teacher help constitute a de-facto canon for young readers that it is easy to forget these novels were originally One difficulty with authorial-intent was made particularly clear to me recently when a novel of mine was accepted by a publisher I thought I had written a young adult novel, but the publisher read it as an adult – or perhaps crossover – novel, and explained that she could sell more copies that way Here, literary theory fails to take profit into account written for adults Other times this practise is less successful or even damaging to young people's future desire to read books, such as the habit of publishers cheaply reissuing "fictional warhorses" such as The Last of the Mohicans as works for young readers (Tucker 183) And some youngreader classics themselves were never intended to be appreciated solely by the young one literary historian writes that Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland was from the beginning "fully appreciated only by grown-ups" (Mathews 17) This and other inconsistencies call into question the authorial-intent model Finally, young readers themselves also create inconsistencies in the authorial-intent-model by reading adult narratives as their own (Weinreich 17) In the end, an insistence upon authorial intent as a hallmark of literature for young peple leads to theoretical cul-de-sacs such as Bodil Kamp's essay justifying Weinreich's inclusion of The Catcher in the Rye as a canonical work for young adults (Kamp 58) Kamp aknowledges that the novel has been called "an archetypical pubertal novel", a cult-book of youth and a standard in schools, as well as having been named " the first young adult novel" in various international encyclopedias (46) But despite presenting such a solid basis for our present tendency to read The Catcher in the Rye as a young adult novel, her theoretical defense is necessitated by Weinreich's own insistence upon authorial intent In addition to defending The Catcher in the Rye as suitable for young adults, Kamp also shows how it functions as a young adult novel, and here she abandons the search for indicators of "degree or kind" or authorial intent Kamp shows how The Catcher in the Rye functions as young adult literature through language, themes and motifs, as well as narrative voice and a vision of "what it means to be young" (47) She also shows how young readers are invited into the text through the then-revolutionary use of contemporary youth slang and a young person's narrative voice (ibid.), giving the narration the feel of a monologue enacted by the protagonist This narrative technique of adult authors writing in the voice of young people has been criticized as "schizophrenic" (McCulloch 14), or even "textual paedophilia" hiding behind "the faỗade of discursive innocence (ibid 6); but a more benign way to make sense of the dynamics of this process is by viewing The Catcher in the Rye's narrator Holden Caufield as a role author J D Salinger is acting This theatrical view helps us understand the functional similarity of written and theatrical literature, and helps explain why Salinger's use of slang so effectively invites young readers into the world of the narrator The theater itself, with its plays and players, functions through make-believe; the idea of all literature as makebelieve has been discussed for centuries, for instance through Coleridge's notion of the "willing suspension of disbelief" required by readers of poetry (Ryan, "Narrative" 105), and more recently and most ambitiously, in the context of adult literature, by Kendall Walton (ibid 106) The theater openly engages in make-believe and the suspension of disbelief, but literature? Accepting literary make-believe as a form of play, as Ryan elsewhere suggests ("Narrative, Games and Play" 355), feels like a theoretical curiousity in the context of adult literature, but in terms of literature for young readers it provides us with the means to understand the developmental effect literature potentially has on young readers Viewed in the context of literature for young readers, the notion of literary make-believe as play necessarily has implications beyond what Walton and Ryan suggest, because play itself is for young people a developmental activity In fact literature’s psychological role in the lives of young people is precisely what some theorists have long hinted at Fairy tales, believes Jack Zipes, help us mature by allowing us to "overcome the repressed trauma of childhood without dealing with its consequences in our everyday lives" (222) Spurring development in young people is a function of literature noted by Maria Salvadore: "Books shared with young children stimulate intellectual development" in the ways outlined by psychologists such as Jean Piaget and Arnold Gesell, she writes (537) And the potential of George MacDonald's novel Phantastes to assist in young people's transition from puberty to adulthood is highlighted by Ruth Jenkins (326) These proposed effects are all developmental, whereas a pedagogical effect would instead involve the transmission of knowledge; and an artistic function would involve a purely aesthetic role for literature If, as these theorists' statements suggest, the development of the psyche is the primary effect of literature for young readers, then literature viewed as play is especially applicable to young readers, who by nature develop more rapidly than adult readers If we study the evolving nature of books for babies on up to young adults, we can view narratives as play-scripts aided by props first physical, later literary Books for the youngest are often hard to distinguish from toys, because their props are sensory: they include tactile, olfactory, musical, and visual features2 picture books themselves were even referred to as ”toy books” by the Victorians (Klingberg 13) But as books direct themselves to increasingly older readers, these props are internalized into the text bits of fur and sandpaper, scratch-and-sniff patches, squeaky diaphrams and battery-operated speakers, and full-color pop-ups gradually give way to literary texs visually complemented solely by simple line drawings, until finally the only non-literary sensory prop left is the cover illustration Instead narratives rely upon descriptions and poetic devices to linguistically mime what the theater uses physical objects and sets for As these sensory props become embedded in the text, young readers themselves are invited to immerse themselves in an increasingly linguistic rather than tactile world – full immersion in fictional worlds, as theorized by Ryan, will be discussed later in this essay Seen in the context of literature for young readers, then, we can better understand the increasing textualization and thus abstraction from the physical world and its need for tactile props of literary play This increasing linguistic and literary textualization is the process structuralist "degree or kind" thinking like Weinreich's, with his emphasis on writing or adapting to meet young people's presumed reading levels (48), attaches the greatest significance to But this is working from an adult-centered view of young people's needs; young people themselves can and make whatever narratives suit them into their own (Weinreich 17) This again suggests that the primary attraction of literature for young readers is not See (and play with) for instance the titles Spot’s Marching Band, an “Interactive Play-aSound” book by Eric Hill (London: Frederick Warne, 2004), or Animal Hide and Seek (with flaps), written by Jenny Tyler and illustrated by Stephen Cartwright (London: Usborne, 2003) reading skills or pedagogy but psychological development the ingenuity of The Catcher in the Rye, for instance, is not its linguistic adaptation to the reading levels of young people, but rather its psychological portrayal of a young person's "desperate" struggle in the face of impending adulthood (Kamp 47), and its successful invitation to readers to play along with Holden as he develops This invitation, if accepted by the reader, then makes possible other mental shifts in their consciousness In literature, this psychological development occurs through a vicarious system of mental simulation (Ryan, "Narrative" 111), ie through our mentally enacting narratives which place us in Holden Caulfield's and other peoples' shoes This process of simulation involves a "recentering" of the consciousness of the reader within that of literary characters, during which we emotionally participate in these characters' lives (ibid.) This is at once the fundamental, though also criticized, attribute of literature: it allows us to project ourselves into other characters to comprehend, for better or worse, their decision-making processes (ibid.), and it is the same play-process that is at work in makebelieve games of dress-up or cops-and-robbers: it is the process of immersion So far the theory of literature as play or make-believe has been applied to literature for adults, but again, literature for young people presents us with the opportunity to make greater use of this theory The process of projection or mental simulation tends to occur more strongly in young people than in adults due to the nature of young people's brains: their "rapid and constant learning is made possible because their brain is different from an adult's; it is more active, more flexible, and more sensitive It is much more affected by experience" (Duncan and Lockwood 32) Young people, then have a neurological basis for experiencing literature and its mental simulation more intensely than adults And this vicarious experience, being a form of play, is by nature developmentally formative: for young people, play is by definition "self-actualization, a holistic exploration of who and what they are and know, and of who and what they might become" (Duncan and Lockwood 1) Thus mental 10 cathedral in Chapter 23, only Anodos whose shadow now functions heroically, enabling him to see past illusion recognizes the "evil" of the human sacrifices of youths in progress (XXIII:177) He rips aside a rotten, "great wooden image" on the throne to reveal a hole "like the hollow of a great tree", and out of this threshold emerges "a great brute, like a wolf, but twice its size" (ibid 178) Anodos dies throttling it, but his consciousness lingers: he has broken the illusion and emerges, after a series of metamorphoses, painfully "as of death" (XXIV:182) reborn out of the Fairy Land onto his own family estate, without having been followed by his shadow (XXV:183) The circle has been completed, and readers as well as Anodos can return to their regular lives, hopefully taking the mentally simulated, developmental experiences of the Fairy Land with us At the end of the story, the reborn, adult Anodos asks, "Could I translate the experience of my travels there, into common life? This was the question Or must I live it all over again, and learn it all over again?" (XXV:184) As Jenkins suggests (326), this is also the question for young readers of Phantastes Thus the novel has the potential to function as developmental play or make-believe for these readers, and the final Christian Socialistinspired eucatastrophe then functions developmentally for the reader, as well, preparing readers to recenter themselves out of the narrative and be reborn back into their own lives, more self-actualized than before In addition to its Christian symbolism, the notion of eucatastrophe was also in circulation in Victorian England as a folkloric fairy-belief The work of folklorists was at the time helping popularize the belief that dead babies were reincarnated as fairies: McDonagh notes that these ideas came from "the Celtic fringes of Britain" (118-119), and MacDonald, as well as being a socialist minister, was raised in Scotland and so might well have been aware of this superstition In addition to Anodos's good death and rebirth, the folkloric notion of eucatastrophe resonates in the story Anodos reads in Chapter Twelve, in which fairies who fall in love with one another "wander away, each alone, to solitary places, and die of their desire But it seems to me, that thereafter they are born babes upon our earth" (XII:81) In fact Victorian Britain was, writes MacDonagh, gripped by a wave of infantice 24 which contemporary social activists blamed on the New Poor Law (118) One writer in 1839 claimed these babies were being "scientifically slaughtered by the high priests of Moloch, the blood-thirsty monster" (ibid.) which eerily echoes the youth-sacrifice scene in the cathedral of the woods which Anodos reacts against But at the same time as social activists were raising their voices against the Malthusian notion of a surplus population, writes MacDonagh, the folkloric idea of the rebirth of murdered babies as fairies was actually smoothing over the problem by spreading the notion of death as good (ibid.) In Phantastes, MacDonald's Christian Socialist ideals function together with a contemporary folkloric belief to provide a structure for Anodos's crossing the threshold from youth and being reborn, through a process of good death or eucatastrophe, into adulthood Developmental Fiction for Young Readers in the Tradition of Phantastes The pattern of eucatastrophic development established by MacDonald’s proto-fantasy novel would soon be recycled in fellow Christian Socialist Charles Kingsley's 1863 The Water Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby, which is considered one of the pioneering works of fiction for young readers alongside narratives by MacDonald, Hoffman, and Carroll (Nikolejeva 139) In Kingsley's novel, protagonist Tom drowns and is reborn as a fairy or "water baby": "They found a black thing in the water, and said it was Tom's body, and that he had been drowned They were utterly mistaken Tom was quite alive; and cleaner, and merrier than he had ever been The fairies had washed him" (II:36) After Tom's good death, the novel follows the pattern established by Phantastes: Tom undertakes a quest towards maturity which eventually ends with his crossing the threshold into adulthood after which he, like Anodos, is reborn into his own world The quotation from the novel above shows the beginnings of Tom's development he is apprenticed to a chimney sweep 25 symbolically named Grimes, and in drowning receives at once a baptism as well as a bath McCulloch calls this "purging" and links it both to Kingsley's Christian Socialist activism for sanitary reform as well as to Tom's psychological development: "In The Water Babies, efforts to purge Tom are as much for a Utilitarian social benefit as for his personal development" (128) And the way in which Tom proceeds to develop echoes Anodos’s inital care-free adventures in the Fairy Land, as well as resonating with the play-function of literature for young people For the first time in his life, not only is Tom clean or purged, he is also allowed to play: ”It is only after death, in his new form as a water baby, that Tom can ’play’” (Makman 121) This switch from realism to fantasy, and from child-labour to child’s play, at the end of Chapter Two, also signals the beginning of a new stage in the reader’s play alongside Tom: his immersion in the water as a water baby deepens the reader’s immersion into his world, adding to young people’s possibilities of development Once Tom is fully recentered and has finished playing in his new world, he must like Anodos set out upon a long and perilous quest towards maturity in which serving others is the key to his final admission into the world of adulthood When Tom has proven himself as a water baby, he is given a mission of societal service: ”You will learn to like going where you don’t like, and helping someone you don’t like” (VI:107) Tom’s period of play has led to his development and the fairy explains he must leave because ”he had been in the nursery long enough, and must go out now and see the world, if he intended ever to be a man” (VI: 109) Tom luckily agrees to leave the nursery, otherwise, says the fairy Mrs Doasyouwouldbedoneby, ”I am not sure but that you would have ended as an eft in a pond” (VI:115) Here, in a parallel to structuralist thinking, the novel does present a view of young people – or at least Tom – as incomplete, but developmentally and not linguistically He is threatened with devolution, or evolving backwards, if he fails to develop Tom’s quest is to rescue his former master Grimes, who is stuck in a chimney-sweeper’s purgatory Makman writes that the aim of Tom’s 26 voyage is the ”moral purification of the master who formerly abused him” (122) Tom appears to fail in his quest – he is unable to help Grimes light his pipe, budge from his spot, or even wipe the soot from his face (VIII:154-6) – but at the sight of Tom whom he has treated so poorly, Grimes himself finally develops and learns to cry, realeasing himself, which also ends Tom’s quest: ”As poor Grimes cried and blubbered on, his own tears did what his mother’s could not do, and Tom’s could not do, and nobody’s on earth could for him; for they washed the soot off his face and off his clothes, and then they washed the mortar away from between the bricks; and the chimney crumbled down; and Grimes began to get out of it” (ibid 157) With Grimes repentant and released, Tom is allowed to leave both the chimney-sweeper’s purgatory and his life as a water baby, and develop into an adult Tom crosses another type of threshold into adulthood, being ushered up the backstairs blindfolded by the fairy (VIII: 158) Reborn as a grown man, he continues working for the good of society – as well as the British Empire: ”He is now a great man of science, and can plan railroads, and steam engines, and electric telegraphs, and rifled guns, and so forth, and knows everything about everything ” (ibid 162) Like Anodos who travels back through a door to his childhood before becoming an adult, Tom regresses in his development – he eucatastropically dies and becomes a baby in order to self-actualize towards adulthood The Water Babies posesses a greatly different tone than Phantastes, but from beginning to end, it parallels the developmental structure of MacDonald’s first novel But Kingsley himself didn’t end the novel at the end The Water Babies contains a developmental afterword The ”Moral” at the end of the novel directs the reader to be kind to efts or salamanders and not ”ill-use them”, in the hopes that efts will one day evolve ”into water babies again; and perhaps after that into land babies; and after that perhaps into grown men” (Moral: 163) This effect of this moral, as Darwinistic as it is, is again 27 neither pedagogical nor artistic, but is in its evolutionary symboliosm instead developmental One final argument for a developmental – as opposed to either a degree or kind, or authorial-intent reading of The Water Babies as literature for young readers can be gleaned from its refusal to adapt its address to a younger readership The absurd lists of vocabulary and bits of social commentary in The Water Babies ignore the incompleteness of young people’s language skills: Spencer and Wordsworth are quoted in chapter inscriptions, and in one section, the novel even includes lines in French (II: 27) whose presence both structuralist and authorial-intent notions of literature for young readers would have difficulty explaining Another author of books for young readers who made use of Phantastes’s developmental structure is C S Lewis himself, whose artistic imagination was ”baptised” by Phantastes Lewis’s development is in a social-Darwinist way5 more concerned with the development of groups than with individuals; nonetheless, he also makes use of MacDonald’s structural pattern of eucatastrophe and developmentally-symbolic thresholds in order to invite young readers to immerse and recenter themselves, and then through the process of mental simulation develop alongside the characters of the Narnia books Following the pattern of Phantastes, the narrative of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe invites readers to recenter themselves along with the protagonists at the beginning and the end, crossing the threshold from realism to fantasy in Chapter One and vice-versa in the final chapter As Lewis himself confessed such a debt to Phantastes, it seems reasonable to understand that he gained artistic inspiration from the novel in an echo of the scene in the ogre’s house in which Anodos releases his shadow by opening the door of a closet which leads to another realm, C S Lewis’s Lucy discovers that the wardrobe similarly lacks a rear wall, leading instead to another world: ”Instead of feeling the hard, smooth wood of the floor of the wardrobe, she felt something soft and powdery and extremely cold” (Lion 13) This tactile sensation of Lucy’s feet on first wood and then Somewhat like Kingsley’s eft-example 28 snow is like a prop or set in the theater, and readers, mentally simulating the sensation, immerse themselves in Narnia along with her This initial immersion in Narnia eventually leads to recentering, both for the children who pass through the wardrobe and for the reader; unlike in Phantastes, though, the developmental gains of the characters will in this particular novel be temporary, with the rug pulled out from under their feet at the end of the novel What starts as a realistic game of ”adventures” (Lion 11) in exploring their new house soon becomes a fantastical quest to aid others – the four siblings are immediately drawn into an intrigue to save the inhabitants of Narnia against the White Witch (ibid 24)6 In the process, the siblings become queens and kings and so fully lose themselves in this adventure, or play or make-believe, that they affect royal speech and forget their own world In the end, finding a lamppost in the woods which marks the way back to the wardrobe, Edmund vaguely recalls their real lives: he says he has seen the lamp ”as it were in a dream, or in the dream of a dream” and agrees with Lucy in his royal voice, ”the like foreboding stirreth in my heart also” (ibid 169) But despite their outward trappings of maturation, in breaking with the pattern established by MacDonald their development only lasts as long as their stay in Narnia On the last pages of the novel they return to their world unchanged except for their memories – no time has even passed in their world while they were away (ibid 170): ”They all came tumbling out of a wardrobe door into the empty room, and they were no longer Kings and Queens in their hunting array but just Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy in their old clothes” (ibid.) Unlike Anodos or Tom, when they break their immersion in fantasy and cross the threshold back to their world they are just themselves Instead of allowing these characters to mature upon their first fantastical adventure, Lewis stretches the process out over the course of the entire Chronicles of Narnia, only allowing them to eucatastrophically mature in the final installment In The Last Battle, the young people enter With four siblings to choose from, young readers, like Anodos, have ample opportunity to mentally simulate the character who most resembles themselves 29 Narnia through good death, though they don’t even realize what has happened until the very end when they are told: ”Your father and mother and all of you are – as you used to call it in the Shadowlands – dead The term is over: the holidays have begun The dream is ended: this is the morning” (171) Here in the final pages of the Chronicles the children undergo a final development, dying and being reborn into another world – but they are denied adulthood in their own world, which is now referred to as ”the Shadowlands”, and which again is likened having been but a dream Furthermore, the young people’s previous lives and adventures in Narnia are now textualized and viewed simply as the beginnings of a narrative: ” All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story” (172) This is a departure from Phantastes and The Water Babies in which Anodos and Tom take their newfound maturity into the world with them; but it does follow the example of MacDonald’s ”The Golden Key” in which Mossy and Tangle, having journeyed from childhood through to adulthood and death, finally ascend to another world However in MacDonald’s fairy tale, they enter rather than leave the shadow-country: ”They were in the rainbow Stairs beside stairs wound up together, and beautiful beings of all ages climbed along with them They knew they were going up to the country whence the shadows fall” (Golden 78) This pattern of eucatastrophic ascension to another world – rather than back to our own appears to leave less room for readers to recenter themselves back into reality after the story, bringing psychological development with them, because the story never brings them back to our reality But on the other hand every time readers sets down their books they break the effect of immersion, and recenter themselves back into our world A final example of literature for young people displaying a developmental function — and inviting readers to play alongside the protagonist is This Is All: The Pillow-Book of Cordelia Kenn (2005) by Aidan Chambers This is the only realistic title discussed here, but the 30 pattern set by Phantastes still fits: Cordelia is a youth standing on the threshold to adulthood, regressing back into childhood in order to progress on towards adulthood, who plays at being an adult until she finally finds a way to serve society And in the end she dies a death which, if not particularly good, is nonetheless developmental in a way In the beginning of the story, Cordelia is fifteen and still very much a youth, but ”playing at being grown-up and independent” (14) The subsequent story, following the pattern seen in Phantastes, deals with Cordelia’s quest for self-actualization as an adult, including losing her viginity (188), getting her nose pierced (342), having an affair with an older man (510), being abducted and escaping (691), and finally crossing the threshold from youth to adulthood by setting her own needs aside and having a baby (808) As an author, Chambers is aware the novel deals with topics some adults find troublesome because the book takes away their authority to, as Mcculloch put it, pull the strings and direct the play: ”Some of the teachers who’ve read it with their girls – they’re quite troubled with it because it’s right on their nerve ends”, and some male teachers have responded that female students ”shouldn’t be allowed to read it” (Interview).7 Chambers also notes that mental simulation can be exhausting, which puts some readers off Following Cordelia on her developmental journey, young people have ”nothing but ink on paper” and so have to ”dramatize it” themselves, and this is a tiring process: ”Reading stories, it’s not passive If you read even superficially you get tired So it’s bound to disturb you” (ibid.) During the course of her journey, Cordelia struggles with her identity, sometimes choosing to hide behind the faỗade of girlhood and other times presenting herself as a woman During her affair, for instance, Cordelia tries to be both at once:”You always made me feel like a woman” (This Is All 509), she says, but later admits, ”I know I’m not really a woman yet And whatever you say, I know you fancy me because I’m still more a girl This Is All is not what students are used to being asked to read I myself somewhat reluctantly lent out six copies to interested students, five girls and one boy ages 15-17, and was surprised by how quickly – and enthusiastically – they read its more than 800 pages Two girls read it in a weekend It took me more than two months! 31 than a woman” (ibid.) Not until the end of the story does Cordelia leave her self-centered youth behind and devote herself to serving others, when she sets about re-writing her five years of diaries into book form to give to her child on its sixteenth birthday (ibid 775) There is no fantasy in This Is All, and yet the novel makes use of the same narrative recentering as in the examples of fantasy above Cordelia’s journals are prefaced by a short passage directed to her child (ibid 1-2); they end in the same fashion, the day before this child is born (ibid 774) Between these bookends, readers are invited to immerse themselves in and project or mentally simulate her life by reading what appears to be a private text, meant for someone else And her death, though ostesibly a tragedy, has developmental benefits for those around her and thus contains traces of good death or eucatastrophe Her husband Will takes it upon himself to complete Cordelia’s diary, and the reading of their shared story finally allows him to move past his grief as he realizes that – like Anodos and Tom – Cordelia has indeed been reborn But in this case, like the young people at the end of the Chronicles of Narnia Cordelia is denied adulthood in her own world, having instead crossed a threshold into the textual, rather than real, world (ibid 776) Her rebirth is Chambers’s novel itself This leaves Will stalled in a state of grief, unable to self-actualize let alone take care of his child But like Tom in The Water Babies Cordelia comes to the rescue; and as with Grimes stuck in purgatory, Will’s tears set him free as he rediscovers a living, textualized Cordelia in her notebooks: ”I assumed these were delayed tears of grief, which indeed they were But as the days went by I realized they were also tears of joy Grief with joy I discovered in what I was reading that my beloved Cordelia was vividly alive” (ibid.) Here readers are outside of Cordelia’s world looking back in, having shifted their mental simulation to Will, and are invited to feel his tears along with him And in the same way that Anodos’s leaving the Fairy Land prepares readers to break their immersion at the end of the novel, Will’s tears function as a catalyst to help readers 32 cope with the loss of Cordelia as a literary companion the way Will has lost her as a real companion In Cordelia’s opening address to her child, she confesses she decided long ago against living on through having children, choosing instead to write herself into immortality (ibid 2) But before we leave Will and his grieving, the reader is allowed one final glimpse of her alive before closing the book: Will finishes his narrative with a flashback to their combined wedding and naming ceremony for the baby, stepping out from behind a screen to address an audience of friends and family (ibid 807) The book itself ends with them presenting their baby to the audience; and as readers already know Cordelia will die, this presentation of the baby has the structural effect of a dual rebirth of Cordelia in both the guise of her baby and the novel itself Conclusion Young people develop through play, and literature, as make-believe, is a form of play The novels discussed here – whether seen as young adult novels, crossover novels, or simply novels which potentially address the developmental needs of readers on the threshold between youth and adulthood – provide opportunities to living, not just nominal readers to play at the maturation process Yet they ignore prescriptions for the adaptation or simplification of linguistic and literary structures, choosing instead to employ narrative devices and patterns – in some cases apparently inspired by George MacDonald’s Phantastes whereby young readers, immersing and recentering themselves within these narratives, can mentally simulate crossing this threshold, playing vicariously – and thereby developing or self-actualizing – through literature My belief is that without such access to narratives which convincingly model the maturation process from youth to adulthood and thereby allow young readers to play and develop through literature, young readers are, like Cordelia, more likely to play at being adults outside of literature 33 Works Cited Cadden, Mike ”Children’s Stories (Narratives Written for Children).” In Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, ed David Herman et al Oxon: Routledge Ltd., 2008 59-60 Chambers, Aidan Interview South Woodchester, England: March 2nd, 2006 This Is All London: The Bodley Head, 2005 Christenbury, Leila "Natural, Necessary, and Workable: The Connection of Young Adult Novels to the Classics." 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Trans Don Bartlett Fredriksberg:Roskilde University Press, 2000 Zipes, Jack Creative Storytelling: Building Community, Changing Lives London: Routledge, 1995 37 38 ... self-actualize, this explains one of the dilemnas of the young adult novel, in which some young readers abandon books marketed at them or skip over them altogether Perhaps this is because they find some of. .. death, that of rebirth out of the sky and out of Fairy Land, out of his omniscient hyper-consciousness and into his everyday mind and body, as well as back into his role as the man of his family... adventure, Lewis stretches the process out over the course of the entire Chronicles of Narnia, only allowing them to eucatastrophically mature in the final installment In The Last Battle, the young people