The Political Child

Abstract

In 1755 Johnson’s Dictionary provided two distinct definitions of the word ‘family’: the first referred to people sharing the same house, to a household; the second was a more transgenerational and socially oriented interpretation. It referred to a broader notion of the family to include ‘those that descend from one common progenitor; a race; a tribe; a generation’ (Johnson, 2:4). A similar definition can be found in Burke’s Reflections (1790) in which he suggests that the family itself is a political institution and its domestic structures or attachments are bound to the state and nation (Burke, 49). Applicable to family structures within the gothic novel, this may partially explain the importance of the child’s politicised role in many plots. Apart from its straightforward, literal meaning, the word and concept ‘child’, as well as the depictions of the child in gothic, stand for something more than a mere child, heir and dependant. It is important to see the child both in its literal and figurative sense, as a building block of the gothic family but also as a symbol. This symbol relates to politics, the state and the Empire. The figure of the hero and saviour, of the legitimate heir, the ‘Chosen One’ vanquishing the usurping villain is characterised by references to the child and to childhood. This child-hero originates from certain social classes (middle, bourgeois, upper, aristocratic) and in consequence, the tone and message of many novels change depending on the rise and fall of the child’s social status.