Writing Violence in Victorian Children’s Adventure Fiction, 1880–1914

Abstract

This dissertation investigates depictions of violence in late Victorian children’s adventure fiction in a range of canonical and obscure texts written between 1880 and 1914. Based on these analyses, I argue for expanding the definitions of adventure, then and now. Traditionally, adventure has been understood as a journey to a foreign locale, followed by tests of skill, and concluding with a return home. Instead, I contend that violence is the crucial component of adventure, regardless of the protagonist’s gender or race, and that at its core, adventure consists of forceful encounters with “others,” wherein “otherness” is composed of the marginalizing factors of race, gender, class and/or caste, disability, and animals. By redefining adventure, this project delineates the various narrative permutations that are possible, which effectively allows for a recovery of female authors (and their female protagonists) whose works have fallen into obscurity or who have been excluded as writers of adventure. Girls are, as I demonstrate, just as capable of committing acts of violence as boys. Critics’ attempts to reinforce gendered divisions of the genre (in terms of subject matter and readership) and late nineteenth-century reading markets are inaccurate. Although the majority of this dissertation explores the disciplinary and dehumanizing function of violence as a method to inculcate children into imperialist ideology, it concludes with an examination of how children’s adventure narratives can also deploy violence to destabilize imperialist attitudes.