Childhood, Youth and Emotions in Modern History

Palgrave Studies in the History of Emotions

Series editors:
David Lemmings, Professor of History, University of Adelaide, Australia
William M. Reddy, William T. Laprade Professor of History, Duke University,
USA
Palgrave Studies in the History of Emotions includes work that redefines past
definitions of emotions; re-conceptualizes theories of emotional ‘development’
through history; undertakes research into the genesis and effects of mass emo-
tions; and employs a variety of humanities disciplines and methodologies. In this
way it produces a new interdisciplinary history of the emotions in Europe
between 1100 and 2000.

Titles include:

Edited by Rob Boddice

PAIN AND EMOTION IN MODERN HISTORY
Kyra Giorgi
EMOTIONS, LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY ON THE MARGINS OF EUROPE
Edited by Andrew Lynch, Stephanie Downes and Katrina O’Loughlin
EMOTIONS AND WAR
Edited by Claire McLisky, Daniel Midena and Karen Vallgårda
EMOTIONS AND CHRISTIAN MISSIONS
Historical Perspectives
Edited by Stephanie Olsen
CHILDHOOD, YOUTH AND EMOTIONS IN MODERN HISTORY
National, Colonial and Global Perspectives
Forthcoming titles include:

Erika Kuijpers
TRAUMA, MEMORIES AND EMOTIONS IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE
Edited by Jennifer Spinks and Charles Zika
DISASTER, DEATH AND EMOTIONS IN THE SHADOW OF THE
APOCALYPSE, 1400–1700

Palgrave Studies in the History of Emotions

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Childhood, Youth and
Emotions in Modern
History
National, Colonial and Global Perspectives

Edited by

Stephanie Olsen
Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin
Selection, introduction and editorial matter © Stephanie Olsen 2015
Individual chapters © Respective authors 2015
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Contents

List of Figures vii

Acknowledgments viii

Notes on Contributors x

1 Introduction 1
Stephanie Olsen

2 Emotions and the Global Politics of Childhood 12

Karen Vallgårda, Kristine Alexander and Stephanie Olsen

3 Feeling Like a Child: Narratives of Development and the

Indian Child/Wife 35
Ishita Pande

4 Teaching, Learning and Adapting Emotions in Uganda’s

Child Leprosy Settlement, c. 1930–1962 56
Kathleen Vongsathorn

5 Settler Childhood, Protestant Christianity and Emotions

in Colonial New Zealand, 1880s–1920s 76
Hugh Morrison

6 Architecture, Emotions and the History of Childhood 95

Roy Kozlovsky

7 Space and Emotional Experience in Victorian and

Edwardian English Public School Dormitories 119
Jane Hamlett

8 Emotional Regimes and School Policy in Colombia,

1800–1835 139
Marcelo Caruso

9 Feeling Like a Citizen: The American Legion’s Boys State

Programme and the Promise of Americanism 158
Susan A. Miller

v
vi Contents

10 Disciplining Young People’s Emotions in the Soviet

Occupation Zone and the Early German Democratic
Republic 178
Juliane Brauer

11 Inscribing War Orphans’ Losses into the Language of the

Nation in Wartime China, 1937–1945 198
M. Colette Plum

12 Everyday Emotional Practices of Fathers and Children in

Late Colonial Bengal, India 221
Swapna M. Banerjee

13 Anti-vaccination and the Politics of Grief for Children in

Late Victorian England 242
Lydia Murdoch

Index 261
List of Figures

4.1 Page from the photograph album of Margaret Laing 60

6.1 Illustration from ‘Post-war Builders at Work at the
Camberwell Junk Playground’ 105
6.2 Single room with sleeping accommodation for mothers 107
6.3 ‘Responding Easily and Fearlessly to the Thoughts
within’. Photograph illustrating the 1949 Education
Pamphlet Story of a School 113
7.1 Photograph showing the interior of a dormitory,
possibly in the Sanatorium 125
7.2 Photograph showing boys packing at the end of term by
Alexander Hay Tod 127
7.3 Sketch from the notions book of H.E. Campbell, 1866 130
7.4 Photograph showing a study by Alexander Hay Tod 132
7.5 Photograph showing the interior of Second Chamber 133
10.1 Cover of the songbook: Zentralrat der Freien Deutschen
Jugend, Abt. Junge Pioniere (ed.), Wir singen neue Lieder 187

vii
Acknowledgments

This book would not exist without the contribution of many people.
First of all, I would like to thank the participants of the Childhood,
Youth and Emotions in Modern History conference at the Max Planck
Institute for Human Development (MPIB), who travelled to Berlin from
near and very far. Their participation, enthusiasm and fresh ideas
spurred on this project in its initial stages. Equal thanks go to the book
contributors who agreed to come on board after the conference. Your
contributions have made the project a richer one.
I am thankful for the generous support of the MPIB and the Director
of the Centre for the History of Emotions, Ute Frevert, for the confer-
ence. I appreciate her participation, that of several colleagues and of our
keynote speaker, Peter N. Stearns. Special thanks go to my co-organizer,
Juliane Brauer, with whom discussing the nexus of the history of emo-
tions, childhood and education is always a pleasure and an inspiration.
Our five years of office sharing have been fun, and productive too, as is
evidenced by this book.
Many thanks to the enormously supportive staff and student assis-
tants at the MPIB, Karola Rockmann, Christina Becher, Matthew Scown
and Adam Bresnahan, who have valiantly translated, proofread and
checked every reference. In the final stages, Jon Lloyd has saved the
book from many errors. No writer could ask for better help.
Kristine Alexander and Karen Vallgårda, my co-writers of Chapter 2,
thought through some sticky issues with me in Berlin and in Montreal,
and in countless video conferences from Copenhagen and Lethbridge.
Our collaboration has built upon our individual strengths and has
allowed us to discover new ways forward in our thinking; I also thank
them for their contribution to the book as a whole. Writing a chapter in
three different countries proved to be an exhilarating experience, and
one which I would happily repeat.
My interest in the history of childhood was first peaked while writing
my MA at the University of British Columbia, under the guidance of
Joy Dixon, and was further developed at McGill with the help of Brian
Lewis, Elizabeth Elbourne and Michèle Cohen.
The Palgrave Macmillan History of Emotions series editors, Bill Reddy
and David Lemmings, have been enthusiastic supporters of this project
from the start. I am grateful for their guidance, as well as that of

viii
 Acknowledgments ix

the anonymous peer reviewers. My thanks go to Palgrave Macmillan,

and especially to Jenny McCall and Jade Moulds, for seeing this book
through to completion.
As always, I am thankful for my parents’ support and sound example.
Finally, Rob Boddice’s shrewd judgment, intelligence and energy have
elevated this and every one of my projects. I am looking forward to the
next adventure.
Contributors

Kristine Alexander is Canada Research Chair in Child and Youth

Studies at the University of Lethbridge. Her scholarship focuses on
young people, colonialism and war in the early twentieth century. Her
publications include studies of Canadian girls and the First World War,
summer camps across the British Empire, the imperial and interna-
tional history of the Girl Guide movement, and the methodological and
epistemological challenges involved in archival research on childhood.

Swapna M. Banerjee, Associate Professor of South Asian History at

Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, researches gen-
der, domesticity, family history and class relations in colonial India. Her
current research is on the history of fathers and children in colonial
India with special focus on the ideas and practices of fatherhood as a
cornerstone of colonial patriarchy and masculine ideology. Her book
Men, Women, and Domestics: Articulating Middle-Class Identity in Colo-
nial Bengal (2004) employs the lens of employer–servant relationships
to examine the construction of national identity in colonial Bengal.
Her articles and reviews on domesticity, domestic service, children and
youth have appeared in several edited volumes and journals such as
Paedagogica Historica, History Compass and the Journal of Social History.

Juliane Brauer is Research Scientist at the Max Planck Institute for

Human Development, Centre for the History of Emotions, Berlin. She
studied Modern History and Musicology at Humboldt University and
the University of Bielefeld. In 2007 she completed her PhD in History at
the Free University of Berlin on Music in Sachsenhausen Concentration
Camp. In 2012 she had a temporary professorship of Modern History
and Didactics of History at the Department of History, University of
Erfurt. She is currently working on her habilitation project, ‘Youth,
Music and the Cultivation of Feelings in a Divided Germany’. Her
other research interests include the history of education and practices
of remembrance.

Marcelo Caruso, Professor of History of Education at Humboldt Univer-

sity, Berlin, holds a degree in Educational Studies from the University of
Buenos Aires, a PhD from the University of Munich and a habilitation

x
 Notes on Contributors xi

from Humboldt University. He researches the transnational history of

educational technologies and power-knowledge constellations in edu-
cational history, with a focus on Western Europe and Latin America.
Recent publications include: Geist oder Mechanik. Unterrichtsordnungen
als kulturelle Konstruktionen in Preußen, Dänemark (Schleswig-Holstein) und
Spanien, 1800–1870 (2010) and the edited volumes Internacionalización.
Políticas educativas y reflexión pedagógica en un medio global (together
with Heinz-Elmar Tenorth, 2011) and Classroom Struggle: Organizing
Elementary School Teaching in the 19th Century (2015).

Jane Hamlett is Senior Lecturer in Modern British History at Royal

Holloway, University of London. Her research interests include the his-
tory of gender, visual and material culture, and families and emotional
life. Her first book, Material Relations: Middle-Class Families and Domestic
Interiors in England 1850–1910, was published by Manchester University
Press in 2010. She recently led the ESRC ‘At Home in the Institution’
project, and the resulting monograph, At Home in the Institution: Mate-
rial Life in Asylums, Lodging Houses and Schools in Victorian and Edwardian
England, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2014.

Roy Kozlovsky is Senior Lecturer at the Tel Aviv University School of

Architecture. He received his PhD in the history and theory of archi-
tecture at Princeton University in 2008. He specializes in the history of
post-war architecture in Great Britain, with a concentration on architec-
ture built for children. His monograph, The Architectures of Childhood;
Children, Modern Architecture and Reconstruction in Postwar England, was
published in 2013.

Susan A. Miller is Associate Professor of Childhood Studies at Rutgers

University, Camden. She is the author of Growing Girls: The Natural Ori-
gins of Girls Organizations in America (2007) and has contributed chapters
to Scouting Frontiers: Youth and the Scout Movement’s First Century (2009)
and Rendering Nature: Animals, Bodies, Places, Politics (2015). Her reviews
have appeared in Enterprise & Society, The Lion and the Unicorn, the Journal
of American History and the Winterthur Portfolio. Her current work focuses
on children, patriotism and nationalism in the period 1890–1945.

Hugh Morrison is Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of

Otago and a research associate in History at the University of Waikato,
New Zealand. His research and writing foci are: New Zealand mission
and religious history; missions and education; religious historiography;
xii Notes on Contributors

and histories of British world childhood and religion. Amongst a range

of publications, he is the author of From Colonial to Global Citizens?:
New Zealand Protestants and Overseas Missions, 1827–1939 (forthcoming,
2016) and is the co-editor of two other books: with Geoffrey Troughton,
The Spirit of the Past: Essays on Christianity in New Zealand History (2011);
and with Lachy Paterson, Brett Knowles and Murray Rae, Mana Maori
and Christianity (2012).

Lydia Murdoch is Professor of History at Vassar College. She is co-editor

of a special issue of the Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth
(forthcoming, 2015) on childhood and death, and is author of Daily
Life of Victorian Women (2014) and Imagined Orphans: Poor Families, Child
Welfare, and Contested Citizenship in London (2006), a cultural and social
history of children in poor law schools and Dr Barnardo’s institutions.
Her current book project is entitled Called by Death: Child Mortality and
the Politics of Grief in Nineteenth-Century England, and she has started
work on a new study of the cultural and medical uses of children in
early campaigns against smallpox.

Stephanie Olsen is Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for

Human Development, Center for the History of Emotions (Berlin). She
was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the Minda de Gunzburg Center
for European Studies at Harvard University. She is the author of Juvenile
Nation: Youth, Emotions and the Making of the Modern British Citizen (2014)
and the co-author of Learning How to Feel: Children’s Literature and the His-
tory of Emotional Socialization, c. 1870–1970 (2014). She has published a
number of articles on the history of masculinity, childhood, education
and the emotions. Her new research, funded by the Social Science and
Humanities Research Council of Canada and based at McGill University
in Montreal, focuses on children’s education and the cultivation of hope
in the First World War.

Ishita Pande is Associate Professor of History and Gender Studies at

Queen’s University and is the author of Medicine, Race and Liberalism in
British Bengal: Symptoms of Empire (2010). Her essays on childhood have
appeared in the Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, South Asian
History and Culture and History Compass. Her article ‘Coming of Age: Law,
Sex and Childhood in Late Colonial India’, Gender and History (2012) was
awarded the Society for the History of Childhood and Youth’s prize for
best article in 2012. She is currently at work on a monograph that traces
the place of ‘the child’ in ideologies of development.
 Notes on Contributors xiii

M. Colette Plum is Program Director of International Initiatives at

the University of California, Berkeley. She was previously a lecturer of
Chinese history at the Hopkins-in-Nanjing programme and the Stanford
Programme in Beijing, and Assistant Professor of World History at
Widener University. She has published articles and chapters on orphans,
war and the development of China’s modern child welfare system. She is
currently writing a manuscript on children and orphans during China’s
war with Japan (1937–1945).

Karen Vallgårda is Assistant Professor of History at the University

of Copenhagen. Her current research focuses on divorce, childhood,
emotions and the making of social hierarchies in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. Her publications include Imperial Childhoods and
Christian Mission: Education and Emotions in South India and Denmark
(2014) as well as articles on topics such as childhood, colonialism,
gender, race, divorce and emotions.

Kathleen Vongsathorn is Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at the Uni-

versity of Warwick. She was previously a postdoctoral research fel-
low at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin.
Her research interests centre on the history of mission medicine in
twentieth-century Uganda and, in particular, on leprosy and maternal
and infant health. Her recent publications include articles and chapters
in edited volumes on the motivations of leprosy humanitarianism; the
cooperation between missionaries and the colonial government over
medical mission; and shifting perceptions of leprosy in colonial Uganda.
1
Introduction
Stephanie Olsen

Where could modern children find joy? In Uganda, some found it

in a leper home. In New Zealand, others found it through Christian
faith and their minister’s sermons. Where did young people learn
about fear, but also about defiance? Some learnt in family settings, by
their fathers’ examples, while others learnt in public school. Where
could late nineteenth-century Indian girls learn ‘reasoned emotion’?
Some ‘experts’ maintained they could learn it through marriage and
conjugal love. In England after the Second World War, other ‘experts’
insisted that architecture could condition or facilitate a child’s emo-
tional self-governing. Where could children seek out ‘healing feelings’
after wartime fear, grief and deprivation? Some found them in singing
together, some found them in their lived spaces, while others found
them through feelings of patriotism. Still others did not feel what they
were ‘supposed’ to feel at all. Were ‘hot’ or ‘cold’ feelings desirable in
early republican Colombian children? What was an effective way to get
American boys to really feel American? Was grief for deceased children
an effective means to lobby for legislative change in England? This book
introduces such a rich heterodoxy of childhood and emotional devel-
opment and experience, contextualized by an equally diverse range of
pedagogical, parenting and policy approaches to childhood emotions.
But where there is empirical diversity, the scholars assembled here have
found new, common questions and novel approaches, which suggest
innovative theoretical and methodological ways forward for the history
of childhood, through the history of emotions.
The chapters in Childhood, Youth and Emotions in Modern History:
National, Colonial and Global Perspectives demonstrate how to do a history
of childhood and the emotions and suggest why combining these fields
affords historians from both approaches a valuable and more complete

1
2 Introduction

picture. Topics were chosen to provide as comprehensive a whole as pos-

sible, to represent the best new scholarship in the field and to encourage
future research on the intersection of childhood and emotions as they
relate to war and conflict, politics and policy, space and material culture,
youth organizations and institutions, and relationships with families,
authority figures and peer groups. While the chapters each provide par-
ticular nuance to the overarching theme, they were also chosen because
of their overlap. Taken together, they demonstrate that neither the cate-
gory of childhood nor the emotions associated with it are universal; they
are dependent on time, place and a host of other historical contingen-
cies. The contributors to this volume show that while a top-down focus
on children’s emotional education and socialization was emphasised in
many different times and places, children themselves are central to any
analysis of childhood experience. In fact, it is in the dynamic relation
between stakeholders of childhood (including, most importantly, chil-
dren) and childhood itself that a new narrative of children’s emotions
emerges.
The genesis of this volume was a conference on Childhood, Youth
and Emotions in Modern History held at the Centre for the History
of Emotions at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in
2012. The reaction to the call for papers was enormous: we received over
200 applications, mostly from historians of childhood. My co-organizer,
Juliane Brauer, and I realized that there was something particularly rel-
evant about emotions to historians of childhood, but that until quite
recently there had not been any rigorously developed historiograph-
ical means to get at them. We wanted to ask if there are particular
emotions that are principally relevant in childhood. Can a focus on
the history of emotions, its fundamental questions and its method-
ological approaches be a productive exercise for historians interested in
childhood and youth? Can it open up new ways to uncover children’s
voices? And, conversely, can the participation of historians of childhood
and youth further the field of emotions history? The conference was
successful in mobilizing these questions, and it has taken some time
for those involved to develop the ideas we explored together and to
apply them to their respective research. This book is the product of our
labours and demonstrates a radical increase in sophistication from our
first conversations.
We have found that it is impossible to conjure with modern concepts
of childhood without also engaging with ideas about emotion and emo-
tional education. As Nina Verheyen points out, over time ‘greater value
[was] placed upon feelings in the educational process, educationalists
 Stephanie Olsen 3

emphasising that a child was in no respect capable of bringing its feel-

ings under control without external assistance’.1 Parents, informed by
‘experts’, were pressured to take the lead. At the same time, this empha-
sis on emotional education seemed to narrow possibilities for children’s
acceptable emotional expression. In the estimation of Peter Stearns: ‘The
new standards were hardly invitations to emotional freedom.’2
Yet any temptation we may have felt to focus only on those exercising
authority over children has been resisted. Just as historians of emo-
tion argue that emotional norms cannot be separated from emotional
experience or that emotional structures are contingent upon individ-
ual emotional practices, historians of childhood have pointed to the
artificiality of the binary between childhood – an historically and geo-
graphically contingent category – and children themselves.3 Children
and the cultural category of childhood are mutually interdependent.
As Joseph Hawes and N. Ray Hiner have put it: ‘Childhood without
children is by definition impossible, and children have no meaningful
existence outside childhood. Each must be examined with a continual
awareness of the other, not as separate, dualistic categories.’4 Moreover,
Peter Stearns has recently pointed to parallels in the historiographi-
cal trends of the history of childhood and of the history of emotions.
‘Modern emotional trends’, he argues, coincided with ‘broader cultural
changes – such as the idea of children as innocent blank slates, to
be protected from fearsome discipline, rather than slaves of original
sin – which in turn helped translate larger modern shifts into personal
and emotional standards’.5 At different times and in different cultures,
children have been the particular targets of emotional education, of
which the ideal of childhood, in its historical and cultural specificity,
is especially informative.
Emotions allow us to access children’s agency and children’s voices
in a new way. Several of the chapters in this book focus at least in
part on children’s own emotional experiences, while others explore the
emotional valence of children and their symbolic value. Other chapters
explore adults’ efforts to cultivate or control children’s emotions, and
the effects these had on children. Several chapters deal with the rela-
tionship between children and parents, or children and other authority
figures. Where we witness a heightened effort to cultivate children’s
emotions and a focus on their emotional education, we are alerted to a
modern perception of the child as more malleable than an adult. Various
steps were taken, depending on differences of time and place, to shape
children while they were presumed to be still young enough to shape.6
It is up to historians to lend specificity to, and point to the historical
4 Introduction

contingency of, these important questions of emotional cultivation, but

the questions themselves have a global relevance.
Historical scholarship is slowly becoming aware of the importance of
such work. In my own work, for example, I have explored the ways
in which children, and especially boys, were informally educated for
their future roles as parents and citizens in Britain and in colonial
India. This was especially accomplished through various appeals to the
emotions. And in Learning How to Feel, a multi-authored volume that
also emerged from the Centre for the History of Emotions in Berlin,
the authors examine the ways in which children and youth learnt
how to feel, through intricate interaction with their social and cul-
tural settings, and specifically through their reading. Childhood and
adolescence were the crucial life stages for this process. Rather than
the existence of latent internal emotions, given specific cultural form,
children are shown to have acquired competences in feeling itself.
The insights that emotional repertoires develop through the social and
cultural context, and that this happens principally in childhood, are
critically important.7
In much of the world, as conceptions of childhood increasingly sepa-
rated it from the other stages of the lifecycle, adults increasingly focused
on children and youth who did not conform to the expectations of
childhood. Modernity has witnessed an increasing number of youth
experts and groups intervening with children and youth in order to
work towards making new concepts of childhood universal (though
these ‘universals’ have often remained class, caste, race or gender-
specific).8 Children are portrayed as being the ‘hope for the future’ by
the protagonists in many of the chapters here. Most of the contributions
concern some form of emotional education, but the focus is primarily
on evidence outside of formal schooling, picking up on a remarkably
common perception of the inadequacy of school curricula to impart
emotions. Several chapters analyse efforts to turn children’s hearts to the
nation. But what struck us clearly as we advanced our collaboration was
the need, within the history of childhood, for a new analytical toolbox
in order to open up the question of emotions in a global context. How
could we make seemingly ‘closed’ case studies ‘talk’ to one another?
How could we deal with the complexities of transnational encounters,
both in terms of dissonant concepts of childhood and their attendant
emotions, and in terms of the experiences of children in a diversity of
contexts? Could we not find a key to bring our research into line, mak-
ing for viable comparative analysis without flattening out the richness
of discrete cases?
 Stephanie Olsen 5

These questions have led to the somewhat novel organization of this

book. This introduction serves not only as intellectual background, but
also as the guide for how to read the rest of the volume. Chapter 2
is the essential starting point. While each of the remaining chapters
can be read individually, they will all be read more deeply through the
lens of Chapter 2. Karen Vallgårda, Kristine Alexander and I have pro-
vided a new theoretical approach for the combined fields of the global
history of childhood and the history of emotions, which supplies the
analytical key for navigating other chapters, both individually and as
they interrelate. At the centre of this chapter are the concepts of ‘emo-
tional formation’ and ‘emotional frontiers’, which repurpose existing
history-of-emotions tools – emotional communities, emotional regimes
and emotives – for the history of childhood. We did not, however, want
to impose our constructions on the individual contributors to the book.
They have brought their own research and their own sets of questions
to the fore, and it only makes sense that the interpretations they make
remain theirs. Nevertheless, I brought the contributors together pre-
cisely because their work makes a coherent and novel contribution as
a whole. This is not merely the art of juxtaposition, but a long and care-
ful process of internal dialogue, through which individual contributors
have been exposed to theories, methods and questions they had per-
haps not faced before. This is reflected in the thematic coherence of the
chapters read collectively. That notwithstanding, a concern remained
that without careful handling, the reader might easily refragment a book
that had taken so long to unify. The impetus behind Chapter 2 was
therefore to come up with a framework that would bind the chapters
together, using them to forge a new historiographical direction. To that
end, Chapter 2 can be read as an organizing principle for the book as a
whole, in advance of any or all chapters that follow, or it can be read as
a summation of the work in the rest of the book, as an analytical conclu-
sion. Certainly, the intention of Chapter 2 is not merely to explain this
volume, but to set the agenda for future research in the global politics
of childhood and in the history of emotions relating to childhood in
particular.
The book as a whole is therefore somewhat more than the sum of its
parts. But the individual parts themselves were material in inspiring the
innovations of Chapter 2 and are respectively packed with research that
indicates the incredible potential of the history of emotions in open-
ing up new fronts in the history of childhood. In Chapter 3, Ishita
Pande analyses the clash over the issues of child marriage and the age
of consent between administrators of the British Raj and segments of
6 Introduction

the native elite. Classifying precocious sexuality as unnatural, a new

colonial law (1891) called for the systematic ‘emotional re-education’
of Indians. This led to a reconfiguration of both marriage and girl-
hood in late nineteenth-century India, and raised important questions
about the universality of both childhood and the emotions. But by
‘evoking emotions’, Bengali authors strongly defended traditional early
marriage, as it encouraged emotional concord between spouses. Particu-
larly interesting is Pande’s discussion of conjugal love as an age-specific
‘reasoned emotion’, which was to be attained through proper education
in childhood.
Similarly complicating ideas about colonial transfer and exchange
on emotions and childhood, Kathleen Vongsathorn analyses the inter-
connected emotional framework of Ugandan child leper patients, their
families and British missionaries in Chapter 4. She raises the question
of differing, sometimes conflicting, views of British and native (mainly
Iteso) childhood. Happiness, as the ‘right of childhood and the gift of
the mission’, was a predominant emotion both in the young patients’
education and in missionaries’ accounts. Lending nuance to this argu-
ment in an important section on ‘children’s responses’, Vongsathorn
makes clear that children sometimes performed happiness and other
desired emotions in order to gain favour, but the chapter as a whole
demonstrates that the distinction between ‘performing’ and ‘feeling’
emotion in this colonial context was not clear-cut. The young patients’
outward markers of childhood, however, were often transformed in the
leper home, making the contrast between native notions of childhood
and the ideals of ‘British’, ‘civilized’ childhood plain.
Both Chapters 4 and 5 emphasize the desire to cultivate positive emo-
tions through Protestant Christianity. This was done not through fear
and loathing, but rather by the encouragement of cheerfulness and
joy. Through a micro-study of one parish in colonial New Zealand,
in Chapter 5 Hugh Morrison explores the important nexus of reli-
gion, childhood and emotions, highlighting the specificity of ‘settler’
and ‘indigenous’ childhoods. Transcending the analytical confines of
examining only religious institutions, he argues that religion was more
about emotional experience than it was about theological ideas. Impor-
tantly, the messages children received were designed to teach them
how to feel what was ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. Morrison also points to
the broader resonance of childhood religion, ostensibly binding chil-
dren of different nations to a common religious, emotional framework,
though this cohesion was always marked by racial, class and other
hierarchies.
 Stephanie Olsen 7

The emotional impact of war is the background to Chapter 6,

and indeed is thematically important in several other chapters. Roy
Kozlovsky provides us with a novel and useful framework to think about
the relationship between children’s spaces and emotions. Through a
study of several child-centred spaces, the playground, the hospital
and the school, Kozlovsky demonstrates how new understandings of
the special needs of childhood and of the specific emotions of chil-
dren, especially in the aftermath of the Second World War, led various
experts to reconceptualize childhood spaces in order ideally to pro-
vide an ‘emotional refuge for children to navigate the new demands
and responsibilities of citizenship’ and to ensure the ‘ideal of a happy,
secure childhood’. Moreover, he discusses children’s reactions to vari-
ous spaces, showing that there was sometimes tension and transgression
on the emotional frontier between children’s expression and ‘official
behaviour norms’.
In Chapter 7, Jane Hamlett continues the discussion on children’s
spaces and objects, and their complicated emotional valence, through
a study of boys’ public school dormitories. The aim of dormitory plan-
ners was ‘a moral system, in which the discipline of the self, body and
emotions played an important part’, and where the space itself would
encourage boys to discipline themselves. The focus of the chapter is on
boys’ experiences and the emotional responses of children to their envi-
ronments, and is especially important in highlighting the relationship
between spaces/objects and the emotional practices that these things
encouraged and discouraged. However, as Hamlett innovatively points
out, this is by no means a simple story of cause and effect. Boys’
emotions were influenced by their spaces, but they also subverted the
intended use and feelings of those spaces.
In Chapter 8, Marcelo Caruso also explores the emotional effects of
education, but in a vastly different context. Hamlett’s discussion of the
‘right’ kind of emotional expression, in her case linked to Christian
morality and virtue, finds a parallel in Caruso’s discussion of republican-
ism in Colombia in the early years of independence from Spain. School
policy and public examinations of youth were hotly contested topics
in this era, precisely because, as Caruso argues, they were the decisive
indicators of a shift in emotional regime. Questions of whether ‘heating
up’ or ‘cooling down’ passions should be stressed in children’s educa-
tion were the focus. Children, then, were put at the emotional frontier
created by a clash of leaders with competing ideas in a time of major
political upheaval. Emotional education took on the utmost importance
in carving out the new regime and in creating the ‘right’ sort of citizens.
8 Introduction

These future citizens were meant to support republican ideals and reject
despotism.
In a similar way, in Chapter 9, Susan A. Miller shows the importance
of education in the formation of emotions in youth, but in her case the
focus is not on formal education, but rather on a youth organization
specifically designed to instil ‘correct’ feelings and values associated with
being American, and to combat communist ideas. By encouraging the
feeling of American patriotism in boys, the American Legion’s Boys State
Programme also combatted apathy by showing boys that they had a
stake in their nation. Importantly, this emotional education was, to a
large extent, directed by youth and instrumental in the formation of an
‘emotional community’.
Nationalist education is also the theme of Chapter 10 by Juliane
Brauer, which focuses on the Soviet Occupation Zone and the early
German Democratic Republic. The duty to be ‘joyful’ and ‘jolly’ was
promoted through the state-sponsored organization for children and
youth, the Freie Deutsche Jugend (Free German Youth). Brauer focuses
on collective signing within this organization as a powerful conveyor of
emotional education. She argues that, in the first generation, evidence
points to the measured success of such a strategy in assisting children
and youth to recover from the trauma of war and deprivation, and to
encourage hope for their own futures and for the socialist state. Interest-
ingly, she demonstrates that ultimately this project at least partly failed
and that more coercive means were necessary in order to ensure youth
participation.
Following this, in Chapter 11 M. Colette Plum explores the Chinese
Nationalist party’s wartime propaganda efforts in children’s homes to
mobilize war orphans and to reconfigure them from potential threat
to integral members of the ‘family of the nation’. These new ‘emo-
tional communities’, Plum shows, replaced the ‘affections and bonds’ of
old familial emotional communities, making them stronger for nation
building. Chapters 8–11 all indicate the importance of children as hope
for the future of their respective nations. Adults responsible for working
with children were skilled in transforming the emotional repertoire of
youth. In the case presented by Plum, young orphans’ excessive fear,
rage and grief were redirected into ‘positive’ emotions for nationalist
goals: patriotism, self-sacrifice, loyalty and love of labour were especially
stressed. Unusually, in this context a feeling of revenge was cultivated
among children as a desirable quality. Similar to the rituals in the Kumi
home in Uganda described in Chapter 4, ritualized bodily practices
promoted emotional conditioning. Though the goal was to bind war
 Stephanie Olsen 9

orphans to the nationalist collective, Plum innovatively argues through

a wonderful exploration of their own voices that they ‘utilized the
language of nationalism to articulate more subjective narratives of sur-
vival, inclusion and redemption, giving meaning and purpose to their
post-war lives’.
Rather than exploring feelings of the nation as family, in Chapter 12
Swapna M. Banerjee examines the expression of childhood emotions
from a different angle: the changing father–child relationship in colo-
nial India as a representation of the incipient nation, specifically from
the point of view of children’s adult remembrances of those relation-
ships. Both this chapter and Chapter 3 discuss how Bengali authors
were informed by contact with the ‘West’ through British imperialism,
but more importantly how this influence was adopted, changed and
made acceptable in a local context. Especially relevant are ideas about
childhood, sexuality and family relations. Fathers, especially those from
elite, public families, were shaped by, and helped to shape, ideas and
practices around the emotional involvement between fathers and chil-
dren. The modern Bengali middle class was in large part defined by such
changing relationships, yet children’s experiences were nowhere near
universal. Banerjee specifically pinpoints filial fear and defiance as the
defining emotional experience of colonial Indian childhood, but effec-
tively points to the specificity of the emotional relationship between
individual fathers and children. In the end, this redefining of father–
child relationships served political ends as much as familial cohesion
as it aimed to redefine the public status of Bengali men through their
children.
In the last chapter, Lydia Murdoch addresses an important issue: the
instrumentalization of emotions related to children for political ends.
Anti-vaccinationist campaigners and parents took to the streets publicly
to mourn children who, so they claimed, had died needlessly because
of forced vaccination. Emotions tied to childhood by mourning and
through public displays of grief, combined with the fight to protect
children’s lives, arguably legitimatized protesters’ political claims for
recognition of their campaign and held the state accountable for child
harm. Vocal supporters of vaccination, however, claimed that the emo-
tions on display were inauthentic and vulgar. The anti-vaccinationist
appeal was closely tied to the new ideal of childhood, both in terms
of the children who participated in the campaign and in framing the
larger issue. ‘The innocence, happiness and health of child marchers’,
Murdoch argues, ‘became equated with English liberty, just as expres-
sions of mourning for premature child death stood for state tyranny.’
10 Introduction

Yet both sides appealed to ideals of childhood innocence in staking out

their positions for and against vaccination.
Informing and undergirding all the contributions presented here is
the conviction that notions of childhood and children’s emotional
formation are mutable. By analysing the spaces and places of the emo-
tional encounter at the ‘emotional frontier’ – where cultural friction
and transfer take place – the intellectual architecture of childhood and
the experiences of children can be reconstructed. While many of the
authors are concerned with a nation or colony in apparent isolation,
their analyses expose the extent to which national narratives have,
embedded within them, multinational or transnational exchanges that
were often fraught.9 And where there appears to be a genuine case
of national isolation, a comparative reading suggests that an absence
of cultural encounter is, in itself, a silence that expresses an implicit
understanding of the mutability or malleability, and therefore the high
stakes, of childhood emotional formation. The 11 individual contribu-
tors to this volume were encouraged to explore similarities and points
of comparison with other chapters, and therefore with other historical
times and places. The chapters have been carefully selected to question
assumptions about the export of ‘Western’ monolithic ideals of child-
hood, replete with an emphasis on emotional education, to the rest of
the world as a one-way flow. As Chapter 2 demonstrates, juxtaposing
these varied contexts often heralds surprising results. By foreground-
ing transnational exchange and cultural transfer concerning childhood
and emotions, this volume sets a new agenda for the history of child-
hood, while at the same time exploring new possibilities in the history
of emotions.

Notes
1. Nina Verheyen, ‘Age(ing) with Feeling’, in Ute Frevert et al. (eds), Emotional
Lexicons: Continuity and Change in the Vocabulary of Feeling, 1700–2000 (Oxford
University Press, 2014), 151–176, here 168.
2. Peter N. Stearns, ‘Childhood Emotions in Modern Western History’, in Paula
S. Fass (ed.), The Routledge History of Childhood in the Western World (London:
Routledge, 2013), 158–173, here 165.
3. See, for example, Peter N. Stearns and Carol Z. Stearns, ‘Emotionology: Clar-
ifying the History of Emotions and Emotional Standards’, American Historical
Review 90(4) (1985), 813–836; Monique Scheer, ‘Are Emotions a Kind of Prac-
tice (and is that What Makes Them Have a History)? A Bourdieuan Approach
to Understanding Emotion’, History and Theory 51(2) (2012), 193–220; Joseph
M. Hawes and N. Ray Hiner, ‘Hidden in Plain View: The History of Chil-
dren (and Childhood) in the Twenty-First-Century’, Journal of the History of
Childhood and Youth 1(1) (2008), 43–49.
 Stephanie Olsen 11

4. Hawes and Hiner, ‘Hidden in Plain View’, 46.

5. Peter N. Stearns, ‘Modern Patterns in Emotions History’, in Susan J. Matt and
Peter N. Stearns (eds), Doing Emotions History (Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 2014), 17–40, here 18 and 30–31.
6. For a discussion of the British example, see Stephanie Olsen, Juvenile Nation:
Youth, Emotions and the Making of the Modern British Citizen, 1880–1914
(London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 4. This was also true in the Raj, although Indian
children were sometimes perceived as small adults and thus were not granted
the privileges of childhood. See, for example, Olsen, Juvenile Nation, 118; and
Satadru Sen, Colonial Childhoods: The Juvenile Periphery of India, 1850–1945
(London: Anthem Press, 2005), 51.
7. Olsen, Juvenile Nation; Ute Frevert, Pascal Eitler, Stephanie Olsen et al., Learn-
ing How to Feel: Children’s Literature and Emotional Socialization, 1870–1970
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2014); Thomas Dixon, ‘Educating the
Emotions from Gradgrind to Goleman’, Research Papers in Education 27(4)
(2012), 481–495; Peter N. Stearns, ‘Girls, Boys and Emotions: Redefinitions
and Historical Change’, Journal of American History (June 1993), 36–74; Peter
N. Stearns, ‘Defining Happy Childhoods: Assessing a Recent Change’, Journal
of the History of Childhood and Youth 3(2) (2010), 165–186; Peter N. Stearns
and Timothy Haggerty, ‘The Role of Fear: Transitions in American Emotional
Standards for Children, 1850–1950’, American Historical Review 96(1) (1991),
63–94; Karen Vallgårda, Imperial Childhoods and Christian Mission: Education
and Emotions in South India and Denmark (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,
2015); Juliane Brauer, ‘Clashes of Emotions: Punk Music, Youth Subculture,
and Authority in the GDR’, Social Justice 38(4) (2012), 53–70.
8. John Gillis, ‘Transitions to Modernity’, in Jens Qvortrup, William A. Corsaro
and Michael-Sebastian Honig (eds), The Palgrave Handbook of Childhood Studies
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 114–126, here 118–119.
9. For an approach that uncovers these global processes in novel ways, see
Heather Ellis (ed.), Juvenile Delinquency and the Limits of Western Influence,
1850–2000 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
2
Emotions and the Global Politics
of Childhood
Karen Vallgårda, Kristine Alexander and Stephanie Olsen

Focusing on emotional shifts in childhood ideals and practices over the

past two centuries, this chapter seeks to understand child subjecthood,
the instrumentalization of children’s emotions for religious or ideologi-
cal ends, and children’s importance as agents of change. Because of their
assumed malleability, young people were often at the heart of social
anxieties and debates about the future of nations and empires. The inter-
relation of authority figures’ understanding of childhood and children’s
own experiences is a principal focus of this book. In this chapter, we
explore novel ways to approach the history of childhood and the emo-
tions more broadly by laying out a framework for how to understand
these fields in global terms, using the concepts of emotional formations,
emotional frontiers and the sentimental/innocent child. Reflecting on
the scholarship represented in this volume, which covers a diversity of
national and transnational contexts, and bringing to bear our own expe-
rience in global histories of childhood and of the emotions, we hope to
capitalize on an unprecedented opportunity to start thinking globally
about the politics of childhood.
Whereas for decades, historians of childhood focused predominantly
on Europe and North America, in recent years a growing number of
scholars have begun to explore histories of childhood in various non-
Western, colonial and post-colonial contexts. This work has brought to
light sometimes parallel and overlapping, sometimes radically different
histories. The turn to emotions in childhood history takes us even fur-
ther, allowing us to explore how childhood emotional formation tied
in with the making of social identities within and between different
national and colonial settings. Taking stock of recent scholarship and
setting out a new research agenda, we reflect on a number of questions.

12
 Vallgårda, Alexander and Olsen 13

How, for example, did situated emotional practices of childhood con-

nect to larger global processes or specific transnational exchanges? How
‘universal’ was the imagined child whose emotional, physical and spir-
itual well-being and development motivated reform efforts around the
world? In what ways did childhood become a means of forging emo-
tional communities predicated on race, gender, religion and nationality?
How did childhood – and the emotional practices related to it – figure in
the construction of social hierarchies? How should historians approach
the global? Why are emotions essential for a new global history of
childhood?
In addition to introducing a new analytical framework with which
to read and understand the different contributions in this book, this
chapter points to fruitful avenues for future research in the intercon-
nected fields represented here. Though each chapter in the volume deals
with a particular national, imperial or colonial context, the questions
and issues they raise have much broader implications. Here we begin
to tease these out, stimulating and posing new questions, and refram-
ing and revising old ones. Combining the history of emotions with the
history of childhood, we suggest, triggers important new questions of
global historical relevance.

Histories of emotions and of childhood: towards a global

perspective

The history of childhood and the history of emotions share several

methodological challenges. Similar binaries such as childhood/children
and emotionology/emotional experience have haunted both fields in
ways that have ultimately proved more problematic than enabling.
Merging these fields and exploring their common problems requires
theoretical creativity. The history of emotions has emerged relatively
recently, but has already assumed an ambitious agenda. Various, some-
times competing approaches have been proposed,1 but for our purposes
here, the broad proposition that emotions have a history, and that
they also play a role in shaping history, is essential. Children and
childhood, of course, also have a history, and young people have
shaped history, though often not in conditions of their own choos-
ing.2 Combining these two areas of study is both fruitful and necessary,
not least because, as Stephanie Olsen and others have shown, adults
in different times and places have often pinpointed childhood and
youth as the most important life stages for emotional formation and
education.3
14 Emotions and the Global Politics of Childhood

As the chapters in this volume demonstrate, there is much to be

gained by thinking globally about the history of childhood and the
emotions. The history of modern childhood and its associated emo-
tional formations and experiences is a global story, shaped by impe-
rialism, transnational networks, circuits of consumer culture, mass
migration and war. Yet most histories of childhood and the emo-
tions focus on single national contexts, an approach that can obscure
or fail to take into account important patterns, similarities, connec-
tions and points of difference.4 Wherever they lived, young people
both shaped and were shaped by processes, events and exchanges that
crossed cultural, national and imperial boundaries, and historians of
childhood and the emotions need to take this seriously.5 Global influ-
ences, as Raymond Grew has written, ‘affect the promise and purpose
of childhood and change its very meaning’.6 While his analysis is not
concerned with the emotions, Grew is one of the few scholars who
have noticed that the insights offered by global history and the his-
tory of childhood have the potential to shape both of these fields
equally.
The methods and insights of global history therefore have much
to offer historians of childhood and the emotions. Looking beyond
national and colonial boundaries, the many ways in which mobility
and cross-cultural encounters have shaped commodities, political and
economic systems, and national and individual identities are revealed.
Like much of the new imperial history, this work traces networks, webs
and circuits of goods, people and ideas. As Ann Laura Stoler has pointed
out, thinking comparatively or globally can ‘identify unexpected points
of congruence and similarities of discourse in seemingly disparate sites’.7
Perhaps most importantly, recent world history scholarship has also pro-
duced sophisticated critiques of historical narratives that link modernity
with the so-called rise of the West. This work, as Tony Ballantyne and
Antoinette Burton have written, shows that ‘history cannot be imagined
as an inexorable march to Western dominance and global homogeneity,
but is a more complex and ambiguous set of interwoven and overlap-
ping processes driven by a diverse array of groups from a variety of
different locations’.8 A global-historical approach forces us to reckon
with a multicentred world, characterized by ambiguity and contradic-
tion. Contingency and cultural-temporal specificity are key concepts
in this geographically broad approach to the past. World history, the
practitioners of which have preferred economic and political subjects to
histories of culture and gender, would benefit from a more serious and
sustained engagement with research on young people and the emotions.
 Vallgårda, Alexander and Olsen 15

Likewise, historians of childhood and of the emotions need to meet

them halfway.
While some historians of childhood and youth have begun to employ
more global approaches, many of them have not been immune to the
simplistic appeal of the ‘rise of the West’ framework. A number of schol-
ars have assumed that significant age-based social and political changes
occurred first in the West and were gradually transported from there to
other parts of the world.9 Paula Fass, for example, has written that glob-
alization ‘continues patterns of development that began much earlier
in the West, and most conspicuously in the United States’.10 Similarly,
while Peter Stearns’ Childhood in World History allows for unevenness
and complexity in global development, it nevertheless presents mod-
ernization as a process that spread outwards from the West.11 From this
perspective, research questions essentially remain bounded by when and
how other societies transitioned to modern childhood according to a
‘Western’ model. Developments that deviate from this model are charac-
terized by ‘lack’ or incompleteness. As Dipesh Chakrabarty has famously
argued, such approaches to non-European history are linked to the fun-
damentally teleological premises that structure the academic discipline
of history.12
Recent scholarship on the ‘Modern Girl’, though not fully engaging
with the historiography of childhood and youth, provides a template for
scholars interested in challenging the assumption that only European or
North American powers have had the capacity of (progressive) innova-
tion when it comes to childhood.13 As Su Lin Lewis writes, the Modern
Girl ‘did not come from any one centre, but emerged in cities every-
where, as a worldwide phenomenon consolidated through the newly
international media of newspapers and cinema’.14 Lewis’ work, like the
scholarship produced by the Modern Girl around the World project, is
an instructive example of how looking globally at young people can
complicate and undermine scholarly assumptions about periodization
and the relationship between Western metropoles and their so-called
peripheries.15
Spontaneous, parallel emergences and new departures within the
meaning of childhood in different parts of the world reflect a modernity
only partially controlled by metropolitan authority, engaged with
organically by children and filtered through or checked against local
knowledge, local customs and local ways of feeling. The modern child
is everywhere the same and everywhere different, forging itself in the
teeth of forces that would forge it. If there is a conflict here, much
can be ascribed to the assumption among adult agencies that the child
16 Emotions and the Global Politics of Childhood

is eminently makeable: tabula rasa in terms of knowledge, but inno-

cent in terms of emotion. This particularly modern assumption about
the emptiness of childhood comes along with the equally troublesome
attribution of dependence.

Childhood innocence and lovability: delineating global

hierarchies

Thinking globally about the history of childhood and the emotions

reveals the constructed and contingent nature of the feelings young
people have inspired and been taught to cultivate. It can also produce
important new insights about the relationship between childhood, the
emotions and the construction of social hierarchies. An example of this
can be found in the modern association of childhood with innocence
and dependence, which, as Viviana Zelizer showed in her groundbreak-
ing work on the United States, increased adults’ emotional expectations
of children.16 In this context, seeing children as vulnerable beings in
need of protection and love meant that caring for them became an eco-
nomic as well as an affective investment.17 As Peter Stearns has shown,
American children were increasingly expected to smile and ‘be happy’,
and parents were expected to raise their children with gentle educative
methods and loving care.18
Historians of Europe and North America have since echoed Zelizer’s
identification of the emergence of an economically dependent but
emotionally ‘priceless’ ideal child, although some argue that the devel-
opment began somewhat earlier than she suggested.19 Scholars have
likewise pointed to the ways in which mainly white middle-class
observers in these contexts, often the first to espouse these new ideals of
childhood, not only initiated new legislation to safeguard children, but
also became progressively more critical of the ways in which working-
class and/or non-white parents raised their young ones.20 Many chapters
in this book examine the concept of innocence as a motivating and jus-
tifying factor for efforts to reform childhood in places as diverse as India,
Uganda, Britain and China.
The category of innocence has been useful to historians of childhood
studying many different locations and time periods, but it is proving
equally useful to historians of emotions. It explains adults’ efforts to
train and educate children’s emotions, and in the ‘right’, loving and
gentle way. In this manner, the association of childhood with innocence
and love became a forceful mode for emerging middle classes every-
where to describe themselves in contrast to the poorer and supposedly
 Vallgårda, Alexander and Olsen 17

less cultivated parts of their respective populations, but also for other
groups to claim rights for themselves by appealing to the universality of
the concept.21
The broad reach of this assumed relationship between childhood,
innocence and love could be seen as an example of the rise of uni-
formity that C.A. Bayly has identified as a consequence of increasing
global interconnectedness and interdependence during the long nine-
teenth century.22 During the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
the presumed links between childhood, innocence and a particular ver-
sion of familial love were used to justify child removal, a practice in
which poor and non-white children in different national and colonial
contexts were separated from their families and raised in institutions
run by governments, churches and voluntary organizations. As Lydia
Murdoch has written in her work on poor children and child welfare
in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century London, British ‘reform-
ers continued to assert that poor children needed to be separated from
their impoverished parents in order to be fashioned into citizens’.23
While there were numerous differences between the emotional expecta-
tions/motivations behind, and experiences of, child removal in different
sites across the modern world, many of these projects were also linked
by a uniform belief that emotional norms and parent–child relation-
ships in less ‘civilized’ families were harmful to individual children and
to the nation-state as a whole.
In their study of child rescue discourses in England, Canada and
Australia, Shurlee Swain and Margot Hillel have pointed to such a
dynamic. By the early twentieth century, they argue, ‘Using notions of
childhood innocence that were transcended even as they were being
constructed’, child rescuers in Britain and the settler colonies ‘reinforced
notions of the rightness of empire and the superiority of white Britons
to whom God had entrusted large portions of the world’s landmass’.24
While criticizing poor, non-white and Indigenous homes as unhealthy
and dirty, social reformers and missionaries often demonized the emo-
tional relationships that they encountered in the families they sought
to reshape.
These dynamics worked in particular ways in white settler societies
like Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States. Children and
families – both symbolic and real – were central to settler colonialism,
not least because of the imagined link between young people and futu-
rity.25 The stakes were high for these societies, and Indigenous children
became politically central to questions of national identity and land.
The idea that supposedly less ‘civilized’ families did not love their
18 Emotions and the Global Politics of Childhood

children was widely expressed by the white reformers and settler states,
as was the belief that Indigenous families were unwilling or unable to
provide the material and affective conditions for childhood innocence –
which, it was thought, was important for a successful transition to adult-
hood. In the process, how a society or community cared for its children
came to function as a measuring stick for evaluating its civilizational
status.26
Protestant missionary books for American children similarly justified
imperial expansion with references to the depravity of women and chil-
dren in ‘savage’ cultures. As Karen Sánchez-Eppler has shown, these texts
emphasized the affective failure of ‘heathen’ mothers who, instead of
loving their children, fed ‘their babies to fish and alligators’.27 There-
fore, the spread of uniformity could also heighten ideas about racial
difference: the popular association of childhood with love and inno-
cence was closely tied to ideas about whiteness and civilization, and was
mobilized to support particular imperial political agendas.
A belief in the importance of children’s innocence pervaded under-
standings of specific sets of emotions for children within national
contexts and within smaller groupings like communities and families.
It was also applied globally to ‘civilize’ non-white children and to serve
imperial and political ends, as in the case of child rescuers both in
Britain and abroad. A global perspective compels us to examine whether
and to what extent the modern conception of the child as innocent
and lovable was universalized and how it related to the making of social
hierarchies on a global scale. Under what conditions were children seen
as innocent, dependent and lovable? Through what kinds of exchanges
and circulations were these new emotional childhood ideals developed,
translated, adapted or rejected?
In some contexts, the exclusion of non-white children from the child-
hood category was dependent on their supposedly different sensitivity
or capacity of feeling. As Robin Bernstein has argued for the United
States, although childhood innocence supposedly transcended social
lines of division, it was in fact a marker of whiteness. Specifically,
‘pain, and the alleged ability or inability to feel it, functioned in the
mid nineteenth century as a wedge that split white and black child-
hood into distinct trajectories. The white, tender, vulnerable angel-child
co-emerged with (and depended on) the “pickaninny”, who was defined
by . . . juvenile status, dark skin, and, crucially, the state of being comi-
cally impervious to pain’.28 From the late nineteenth century, Western
medical science was more likely to stress the anaesthetic qualities of all
children, although whiteness remained a more sensitive category on the
‘Great Chain of Feeling’.29
 Vallgårda, Alexander and Olsen 19

The concept of childhood innocence could therefore not completely

trump hierarchies of race, class and gender. Consequently, it also did
not universalize the emotional formation, expectations and cultivation
of children globally, nor did it affect children’s emotional experiences in
uniform ways. There is much to suggest that even though childhood was
ostensibly a category defined solely by age, in various global contexts it
was nevertheless fractured by class, gender, religion and race.
In his study of colonial childhoods in India, Satadru Sen has pointed
to the ambivalence with which colonial observers in the late nineteenth
century discussed and handled native children: ‘Even as some colonial
observers “discovered” the native child, the sites of discovery produced
a widespread conviction that “native childhood” was an oxymoron.’
These observers operated with an assumption that Indian children were
more malleable than the adult members of their society, yet they also
harboured anxieties that ‘native children were essentially small, perverse
adults’.30
In late nineteenth and early twentieth-century white settler societies,
politicians and educators engaged in the transnational attempt to cre-
ate ‘countries for white men’ likewise excluded Asian children from the
emotional and material privileges associated with childhood.31 In the
Canadian province of British Columbia, for instance, the decision to
segregate Chinese students in separate schools was frequently explained
as a way to protect the innocence of white children.32 In other words,
by essentially barring some children from the childhood category, such
discursive and emotional constructions served globally to bolster racial
hierarchies.
Yet in other contexts, those groups of adults who promoted the new,
sentimental notion of childhood innocence explicitly insisted on its
universality. As Karen Vallgårda has shown, the Danish evangelical mis-
sionaries who worked in South India in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, for instance, repeatedly described Indian children
as at least as cute, gifted, sweet and lovable as Danish children, thereby
self-consciously seeking to constitute childhood as a universal category.
The emotional labour of missionaries and their supporters, she argues,
played an important part in this process.33 However, this did not amount
to a levelling of racial hierarchies. While Indian children were included –
at least temporarily – in the missionaries’ emotional community, many
missionaries continued to conceive of the children’s ‘heathen’ parents
as fundamentally and irredeemably different. Age thus became a pri-
mary axis of differentiating between different emotional formations,
placing Indian adults in an outside and supposedly inferior position.
Furthermore, the emotional universality of the childhood category
20 Emotions and the Global Politics of Childhood

was also continually undermined by educative practices that remained

uneven across racial lines of division, making it fundamentally fragile.
Global historical perspectives, in sum, deepen our understanding of the
complicated politics of the childhood/emotions nexus.

Global emotional formations

In order to grasp, on a global scale, the reach and depth of collective

standards for emotions in and across social groups to which children
belonged, we have devised the concept of emotional formation. The con-
cept refers simultaneously to a pattern and a process, both of which are
of equal importance. On the one hand, an emotional formation is a set
of emotional structures ordered in a particular pattern. Such a configu-
ration exists at an overarching societal, national or even regional level,
and the boundaries between emotional formations may be either murky
or clear. Emotional formation in this respect thus resembles William
Reddy’s notion of an ‘emotional regime’ or Barbara Rosenwein’s con-
cept of an ‘emotional community’, which have been shown to have a lot
in common.34 The point is that within this large-scale collective, there
exists a certain level of coherence in people’s conception of appropri-
ate or even fathomable emotional comportment in different situations.
Yet the concept of emotional formation as a pattern also allows for
internal variation. Emotional formations, while distinguished by cer-
tain overall hierarchies of feeling, also tend to be characterized by a
high degree of diversity across space, class, ethnicity, age and gender.
Analysing the interrelationships and conflicts between different spaces
and social groups within and between different emotional formations is
thus an important task for the historian.35 In doing this, we must also
interrogate how emotional patterns reflect and help sustain relation-
ships of power.36 As Sara Ahmed has famously pointed out, ‘emotions
work to align some subjects with some others against other others’.37
Keeping this in mind, we need to interrogate how the structures of
feeling that characterize a particular emotional formation helped to
secure a hierarchically ordered set of social categorizations, as in the
case of the modern emotional association of childhood with innocence,
dependence and love.38
On the other hand, an emotional formation only exists through
the reiterated everyday emotional practices of individuals and collec-
tives. Therefore, it is also a process that depends on each individual
learning the imparted codes of feeling. The concept thus signals force-
fully that emotion structures are never fixed, but rather are continually
 Vallgårda, Alexander and Olsen 21

consolidated or altered as individuals acquire and seek to align them-

selves with – or contest – given hierarchies of emotion.
The process of emotional formation of an individual or a group
happens as a result of varying degrees of intentionality. The acts and
utterances of individuals that produce and reproduce an emotional for-
mation may be designed to foster in oneself, or in others, particular
sensibilities and habits of feeling.39 Because children have often been
considered particularly malleable, parents, educators and even other
young people have frequently sought to promote in them a programme
of feeling that accorded with a particular set of moral standards and
relationships of power. In this manner, children were taught to express
certain feelings in specific situations (such as grief at a funeral or grati-
tude when receiving a gift), and they were expected to eliminate or at
least curtail and refrain from expressing other feelings (such as envy at
other people’s luck or pleasure at their pain).
The scheme of emotional re-education in East Germany after the
Second World War that Juliane Brauer examines in Chapter 10 might
fruitfully be understood as a (not entirely successful) project of emo-
tional formation. The socialist youth leaders she studies believed that
they could teach the young people who had been disillusioned by the
war to feel joy and jolliness, and thereby transform them into a living
and enthusiastic testament to the greatness of the new East German
nation and the political ideology that underpinned it. The notion of an
emotional formation helps us grasp this attempt to promote a particular
political constellation by shaping emotional experience and expression
at individual and group levels.
What is worth noting, however, is that children in most histori-
cal contexts have been subject to a variety of attempts at emotional
enculturation. The emotional prescriptions and proscriptions of differ-
ent groups of educators tend to differ markedly even within emotional
formations. Rosenwein has argued that emotional mobility is limited
to ‘emotional communities’ that are not ‘radically different’ from each
other.40 Yet in the crucible of revolution and war, imperial encounters,
global knowledge transfer and population movements, the problem of
emotional navigation would be insurmountable if this claim were true.
For children, whose emotional practices are being formed, but whose
exposure to a variety of affective codes may be no less than for the
adults around them, the problem would seem to be even more acute.
It is likely, for example, that the socialist project of emotional forma-
tion that Brauer examines was a partial failure because of the collision
between new public emotional expectations and the emotional norms
22 Emotions and the Global Politics of Childhood

and atmospheres that East German youths encountered at home or

among their peers.
In Chapter 11, M. Colette Plum explores a similar process of emo-
tional formation among orphans in Chinese Nationalist children’s
homes during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Nationalist state builders
had clear goals in reconfiguring orphans emotionally, transforming
them from potential threats to the nation into essential and valued
children of the nation. The children themselves, however, while some-
times embracing this collective emotional formation, also related on an
individual level to their treatment in the institutions where they lived.
Across time periods and in different geographical settings, young peo-
ple have thus had to learn to navigate diverse emotional spaces and
collectives. They have learnt that the emotional standards in school or
in the orphanage differed from those in the playground or that the types
of emotional interaction in the factory were dissimilar to those at home.
Ugandan child lepers, as Kathleen Vongsathorn argues in Chapter 4, had
to adapt to the sometimes vastly different emotional formation pat-
terns and processes they encountered with their British teachers and
carers, and at home from their families. Even the emotional training
they received from their British carers might have sometimes conflicted,
with either loyalty/respect or joy/hope predominating. Along the same
lines, children in any number of contexts will have met one set of emo-
tion rules among friends and another within their families. This raises
important questions about how children have experienced and handled
encounters with such contradictory emotional expectations.
The differences between distinct emotional formation patterns may
appear so commonsensical or natural that the child remains unaware
of them, instinctively adjusting to the shifting emotional formation
processes. At other times, especially when a child in his or her quotid-
ian life moved between different class, gender or ethnic milieux, the
contrast between emotional formation patterns have often been felt
sharply. Such a contrast is best understood as taking place at an emotional
frontier.41

Emotional frontiers

By examining the emotions of children and youth in a global-historical

framework, we have determined that many children share the experi-
ence of having to traverse various emotional frontiers and that, com-
pared with adults, they are especially charged with such a role. An emo-
tional frontier is a boundary between different emotional formations.
 Vallgårda, Alexander and Olsen 23

It may be encountered in various ways, from a minor misunderstanding

to a seemingly insurmountable conflict. In encounters between people
raised in different emotional formations, emotional frontiers are likely
to be particularly difficult to traverse.
When studying the histories of children and childhood in various
global and transnational settings, it is therefore paramount to exam-
ine how emotional frontiers have materialized and how historical actors
have reacted to them. This is particularly relevant in colonial and
imperial encounters, in which different sets of formal and informal
educators42 often sought to teach children particular habits of feeling,
in accordance with the role envisioned for them in the future of the
nation, colony and empire. This is why the debate over emotional edu-
cation in schools can be such a hotly contested topic, as in the case of
early republican Colombia in Chapter 8. At the same time, colonists and
other imperial agents frequently portrayed indigenous ways of educat-
ing and caring for children as inadequate or even harmful.43 The British
missionaries in charge of the Ugandan leper children, as Vongsathorn
describes, perceived that their charges were often ‘worse’ off after a visit
home, and sometimes delayed permission for family visits.
Encounters among Protestant Christian missionaries, who worked
across the colonized world, and the young people they sought to convert
offer numerous examples of emotional frontiers.44 These self-conscious
agents of religious and cultural transformation often directed much of
their educative and proselytizing work at children, who were generally
seen to offer greater hope than the adults of their societies for profound
interior change. Hence, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
Christian missionaries opened countless institutions – orphanages, day
schools, Sunday schools, boarding schools, high schools and industrial
schools – catering to children in what they perceived to be the ‘hea-
then’ lands.45 The hope was that children would not only be reformed
and converted, but that they would also contribute to the spread of
Christianity throughout their ‘heathen’ societies. In this way, children
became important targets in the global missionary movement’s ulti-
mate goal of conquering ‘the world in the name of Christianity and
civilisation’.46
In addition to learning how to read, write and familiarize themselves
with the catechism and prayer, Indigenous children were to undergo
a fundamental transformation. They were to dress according to the
missionaries’ standards of propriety, to develop industrious habits and
to comport themselves in manners consistent with gender and class-
specific notions of respectability. Most importantly, perhaps, they were
24 Emotions and the Global Politics of Childhood

often expected to develop new ways of feeling that accorded with a

different emotional formation. They were to respect the missionaries,
to feel gratitude when receiving gifts, to feel guilt and remorse when
they sinned, to feel shame when hearing indecent talk and even to
feel disgust or sadness when witnessing superstition or idolatry. Hugh
Morrison gives an example of this in Chapter 5 on settler children and
Protestant Christianity in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century
New Zealand, noting that settler churches ‘placed a premium on invest-
ing in the lives of children and young people, and in which particular
modes of emotion helped to further shape children’s religious sensibili-
ties or attitudes’.47 In a parallel case, as Vongsathorn shows in Chapter 4,
British missionaries working in leprosy homes in mid-twentieth-century
Uganda were keen to administer to the children, expecting nothing less
than a profound physical, spiritual and emotional transformation. In
particular, Vongsathorn maintains, the missionaries sought to engen-
der a set of emotions that would support the British imperial project.
In Chapter 11, Plum shows a parallel development for wartime China,
whereby a focus on orphans’ emotions served to bolster the nation.
Ishita Pande in Chapter 3 examines the confrontations between British
administrators and parts of the educated colonized elite over the issues
of child marriage and age of consent in late nineteenth-century India,
putting girls at the frontier of two very different emotional formations.
In late colonial Bengal, meanwhile, Swapna M. Banerjee (Chapter 12)
shows that fathers employed particular (and changing) emotional prac-
tices relating to their children. These practices were based on new,
outward-looking ideals of fatherhood, but also on bhadralok families’
perceived roles as representatives, and leaders, of the burgeoning nation.
In settler societies like Canada and Australia, some Indigenous chil-
dren were physically removed from their homes by the state. Separat-
ing children from their families and communities, a central plank in
these states’ assimilation policies, was a physical and affective rupture.
In nineteenth and twentieth-century Canada, the nationwide effort to
assimilate and ‘civilize’ First Nations, Metis and Inuit children by sepa-
rating them from their parents and training them in the Euro-Canadian
cultural, social, occupational and emotional norms would have been
experienced as an emotional frontier.
Residential schools, funded by the Canadian government and run by
Protestant and Catholic churches, subjected Indigenous youngsters to
harsh discipline, regimentation and gender-specific practical training.
These institutions, at which many Indigenous children also experi-
enced hunger and abuse, were ‘unhappy spaces’: particularly stark
 Vallgårda, Alexander and Olsen 25

environments that were characterized by alienation, loneliness and fear.

They were often explained, to their students and the Canadian pub-
lic, as an attempt to save Indigenous children from maternal neglect.
Along with sewing and agriculture, the students at Canadian residen-
tial schools were taught to feel hatred and shame for their own families
and cultures. While most studies of residential schooling have focused
on the material hardships students endured, these spaces also forced
Indigenous children to grapple with an especially harsh emotional fron-
tier.48 This is illustrated perfectly by the 1952 cover of the Indian School
Bulletin, a magazine for residential schoolteachers published by the Edu-
cation Division of the Indian Affairs Branch. The goals of assimilatory
education, the publication boasted, covered ‘the whole child, body and
soul, intellect and will, sense, imagination, and emotions’.49
In all such situations, children and young people were placed at an
emotional frontier between expectations stemming from contrasting
emotional formations.50 They were taught habits of feeling derived from
an emotional formation in contrast to the one according to which they
were raised. No matter where they settled, missionaries and child wel-
fare and education workers as well as social leaders never operated in a
social or political vacuum; rather, they encountered collaboration and
adaptation, but also subtle or fierce resistance from the people whose
worldviews, ways of living and modes of feeling they sought to change.51
In this manner, children often became important symbols in battles
among groups of adults in their attempts to shape the future of society.
What were the consequences for children of finding themselves at an
emotional frontier? As Peter Burke, among others, has noted about cul-
tural frontiers, they can function as either ‘barriers’ or ‘contact zones’.52
The same applies to emotions and, indeed, an emotional frontier might
be a barrier and a contact zone all at once. Most likely, there were
many different ways of facing such emotional frontiers. Some children
probably more or less consciously learned to navigate the different sets
of emotional expectations. For others, it may have seemed impossible;
they may have felt disjointed, torn, inadequate, confused or alienated.
Rob Boddice has conceived of such difficulty in emotional navigation
as an ‘emotional crisis’.53 However, crossing an emotional frontier also
has the potential to denaturalize certain ingrained types of feeling and
practice. The individual at the emotional frontier becomes aware of the
priority of visceral experience; the contingency of the variegated emo-
tional codes of the different sets of adults is revealed; what had passed
for authenticity is exposed. As Sara Ahmed has compellingly argued
in her discussion of ‘the feminist killjoy’, questioning the emotional
26 Emotions and the Global Politics of Childhood

consensus in a particular collective can be a forceful mode of social

critique.54
Historians should therefore consider situations in which more-or-
less open confrontations among different sets of authorities implicated
and ensnared children. What did it mean for children, who had been
brought up within one emotional formation pattern and according to
one dominant emotional formation process, to be exposed to a new and
very different set of emotional expectations? What kind of potential
was embedded in the experience and the space of such an emotional
frontier?

Approaching the global

Emotions provide a different critical lens with which to cut through con-
ventional geographical boundaries, providing new ways to explore the
history of childhood. This chapter has so far argued for a new way to
approach global history, one that combines a focus on the local with
larger transnational trends concerning childhood and the emotions.
When historians remove the nation as our de facto analytical bound-
ary, different analytical categories emerge that may in turn help revise
how historians approach the history of nations. Several chapters in this
book deal with colonial encounters, especially with the British Empire,
but also with the Spanish Empire and with Japanese imperial pursuits.
In the case of the British Empire, we have chapters from three continents
and three types of colonies: Africa (Uganda), the subcontinent (India)
and in the settler colonies (New Zealand). These colonial encounters
were often marked by similar efforts to educate children within native
populations. Faith, work and school patterns, changing legal and wel-
fare standards all intersect with imperial encounters, but also transcend
them in myriad ways. Several chapters, including Chapters 7 and 13,
show that boundaries delineating which children were allowed a safe
and ‘innocent’ childhood, and which were allowed freedom and pri-
vacy were not only predicated by race, but also most emphatically by
social class.
We see childhood itself emerging as a contested category with global
reach. The political capital of this category is explored in several
chapters, but most explicitly in Chapter 13, as Lydia Murdoch dis-
cusses how conceptions of the child as emerging citizen in Victorian
England led to demands for legislative action in the case of the anti-
vaccination movement. Equally, in Chapter 6 Roy Kozlovsky shows
that in post-Second World War England, the demands of the child as
 Vallgårda, Alexander and Olsen 27

citizen encouraged the reconceptualization of space and architecture,

and the investment in spaces specifically for children. In Chapter 7,
Jane Hamlett shows that youth-controlled spaces and objects could
be decisive in emotional education, but sometimes ambiguously or
negatively so.
Changing childhood spaces are reflective of changing ideas about
childhood, but also about emotions. Chapters 6 and 7 explicitly deal
with these issues, but several other chapters hint at the emotional
valence of particular spaces, like familial homes, children’s homes,
schools, places of worship, streets and youth-directed places. Chang-
ing family norms are also significant on a global scale. Bengali fathers
shared a similar generational shift to British fathers in terms of emo-
tional involvement with their children. What it meant to be a wife in
late nineteenth-century India, as Ishita Pande shows, was influenced by
global debates and had great impact on what it meant to be a girl.
Several chapters also demonstrate the political potential of children’s
emotions. In Chapter 13, Murdoch demonstrates that the public dis-
play of grief for children who died ostensibly from enforced vaccination
policies was contested precisely because of its volatile political potency
for legislative change. From a vastly different perspective, the struggle
for primacy of an emotional regime in post-revolutionary Colombia
(Chapter 8), reflected in debates over school policy and children’s public
examinations, went to the very core of questions of what the new repub-
lic should be. These were of course also questions of who would have
political control over the nation, for the present and, more importantly,
in the hearts of its future citizens. The United States and independent
Colombia sought to teach ‘republican’ emotions, though the mean-
ing of this term was specific to the respective national contexts. As
Susan A. Miller argues in Chapter 9, ‘Americanism’, a heady combina-
tion of free-market capitalism and democracy, was disseminated in part
through the Boys State programme. The link between children’s positive
emotions and regime success and propagation was also exploited in East
Germany and in China.
In a similar vein, several chapters reveal the insights produced by
studying war, and the aftermath of war, in a global perspective. Wars
of independence and related nationalist movements, the two World
Wars and the Cold War all precipitated efforts by educators, politi-
cians and policy makers, youth and social workers in Colombia, China,
East Germany and the United States to train patriotic young citizens.
Their love for their countries was not just demonstrated, but really
felt. They felt they had a stake, and a contribution to make, in their
28 Emotions and the Global Politics of Childhood

country’s future. In general these chapters demonstrate that children’s

outward emotional states and their education mattered to national
morale. In times of international and global strife, getting children
over an emotional frontier and on board with a prescribed emotional
formation process became a matter of high priority.
By thinking globally, we change how we understand the history of
childhood and the emotions. The figure of the child is placed at the
heart of nation-building and empire-building projects, in a context of
international exchange, transfer and conflict. The political importance
of educating and emotionally shaping the child in prescribed ways
becomes clear, as do the risks of exposing children to the emotional
frontier. Implicit in the global politics of subjecting or exposing chil-
dren to processes of emotional formation is a clear conception of what
the child is that rarely, if ever, comes from the child. Paula Fass has
rightly pointed to the unevenness of children’s experiences, but has
also stressed childhood’s ‘continuing privileges’ and ‘aspiring universal-
ism’.55 Who aspires? When thinking about more-or-less rigid emotional
formations, competing amongst themselves for the emotional loyalty of
children, in what sense – and for whom – is childhood a ‘privilege’? And
can universalism ever be a desirable end?

Conclusion

For historians, the stakes of this work are high. Whose voices do we
choose to write about? Whose are not represented in conventional
textual archives? What are the political implications of our choice of
analytical strategy? Who gets to have a childhood? Whose emotions
are valid and how are they captured historically? These questions are
equally relevant for scholars examining historical actors’ discourses and
practices, and for self-reflexive historians, who seek to have a more com-
plete and inclusive narrative of the past. This self-reflexivity is essential
in order not to take historical evidence at face value, and is espe-
cially important when dealing with historical actors whose voices are
notoriously difficult to find, their silencing made more acute by the
intersection of (young) age, class, gender and race. Emotional forma-
tions, as we have shown, tend to sustain particular relationships of
power. This means that the negotiation of an emotional frontier might
have significant political potential. When children (or adults) have the
opportunity to question what has so far been taken for granted, they
may also become agents of change. Children are sites of political strug-
gle concerning emotional formation, but also have their own agency in
 Vallgårda, Alexander and Olsen 29

the power dynamics in play. This is not to say, necessarily, that theirs is a
politics of intention, but nor is a child a tabula rasa, ready to be inscribed
by the ascendant institutions and individuals who wish to fertilize their
influence in youth.
Pointing to the continuities of the imagery of child rescue within
present-day humanitarian campaigns and discourses on transnational
adoption, for example, we might uncover the continued global politi-
cal significance of the sentimental notion of the universal child. Further
inquiries into the imperial and post-colonial reconfigurations of child-
hood and the significance of emotions in these processes in various
global contexts would be a fruitful trajectory for future research. Further,
a focus on the emotional formations of the child, and the emotional
frontiers she or he had to cross in familial, institutional, cultural and
racial settings, will provide historians with a much more complete
picture.
This is important and challenging work – not least because it forces
us to reckon with historiographies, frames of reference and analytical
questions that have, to a large extent, evolved separately. Doing global
childhood and emotions history, then, means getting beyond national
and disciplinary conventions and paradigms. It also requires critical
and creative engagement with a wide variety of primary sources and
archives. In some respects, historians of young people and the emo-
tions are especially well-suited to this kind of work, as their methods
already include questioning and looking beyond state-based archives,
and reading sources along and against the grain.

Notes
1. For introductions, see e.g. Jan Plamper, ‘The History of Emotions: An Inter-
view with William Reddy, Barbara Rosenwein, and Peter Stearns’, History and
Theory 49(2) (2010), 237–265, esp. 243; Rob Boddice, ‘The Affective Turn:
Historicizing the Emotions’, in Cristian Tileagă and Jovan Byford (eds), Psy-
chology and History: Interdisciplinary Explorations (Cambridge University Press,
2014), 147–165, esp. 153–155; Ute Frevert, Emotions in History: Lost and Found
(Budapest: Central European University Press, 2011); Jan Plamper, The His-
tory of Emotions: An Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2015); Susan J. Matt
and Peter N. Stearns (eds), Doing Emotions History (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 2014).
2. Kristine Alexander, ‘Can the Girl Guide Speak? The Perils and Pleasures of
Looking for Children’s Voices in Archival Research’, Jeunesse: Young People,
Texts, Cultures 4(1) (2012), 132–145; Joseph M. Hawes and N. Ray Hiner,
‘Hidden in Plain View: The History of Children (and Childhood) in the
Twenty-First-Century’, Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 1(1)
(2008), 43–49.
30 Emotions and the Global Politics of Childhood

3. Stephanie Olsen, Juvenile Nation: Youth, Emotions and the Making of the Mod-
ern British Citizen, 1880–1914 (London: Bloomsbury, 2014); Ute Frevert,
Pascal Eitler, Stephanie Olsen et al., Learning How to Feel: Children’s Literature
and Emotional Socialization, 1870–1970 (New York: Oxford University Press,
2014).
4. Some excellent work fits into this category; examples are too numer-
ous to cite. See e.g. Steven Mintz, Huck’s Raft: A History of American
Childhood (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
2004); Anna Saunders, Honecker’s Children: Youth and Patriotism in East(ern)
Germany, 1979–2002 (Manchester University Press, 2007); Andrew Donson,
Youth in the Fatherless Land: War Pedagogy, Nationalism, and Authority in
Germany, 1914–1918 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010);
Harry Hendrick, Images of Youth: Age, Class, and the Male Youth Problem 1880–
1920 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990); Anthony Fletcher, Growing Up in
England: The Experience of Childhood 1600–1914 (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2008); Colin Heywood, Growing Up in France: From the Ancien Régime
to the Third Republic (Cambridge University Press, 2007); Neil Sutherland,
Children in English-Canadian Society: Framing the Twentieth-Century Consensus
(Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2000).
5. Some recent edited collections have paid attention to the global history of
childhood, and global and colonial girlhoods, though these have little to
say about the emotions. See e.g. Heidi Morrison (ed.), The Global History of
Childhood Reader (London: Routledge, 2012); Jennifer Helgren and Colleen
A. Vasconcellos (eds), Girlhood: A Global History (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press, 2010); Kristine Moruzi and Michelle J. Smith (eds), Colonial
Girlhood in Literature, Culture and History, 1840–1950 (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2014).
6. Raymond Grew, ‘On Seeking Global History’s Inner Child’, Journal of Social
History 38(4) (2005), 849–858, here 854.
7. Ann Laura Stoler, ‘Tense and Tender Ties: The Politics of Comparison in
North American History and (Post) Colonial Studies’, Journal of American
History 88(3) (2001), 829–865, here 847.
8. Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette Burton, ‘Introduction: Bodies, Empires, and
World Histories’, in Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette Burton (eds), Bodies in
Contact: Rethinking Colonial Encounters in World History (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2005), 1–15, here 12.
9. See e.g. Viviana A. Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value
of Children (New York: Basic Books, 1985); Hugh Cunningham, Children and
Childhood in Western Society since 1500, 2nd edn (Harlow: Pearson Longman,
2005); Peter N. Stearns, Childhood in World History (New York: Routledge,
2006).
10. Paula S. Fass, Children of a New World: Society, Culture, and Globalization
(New York University Press, 2006), 203–204.
11. Stearns, Childhood in World History.
12. Dipesh Chakrabarty, ‘Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks
for “Indian” Pasts?’, Representations 37 (1992), 1–26. For a related critique of
anthropology, see Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology
Makes its Object (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002).
 Vallgårda, Alexander and Olsen 31

13. Alys Eve Weinbaum, Lynn M. Thomas, Priti Ramamurthy et al. (eds), The
Modern Girl around the World: Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008). Other examples include Birgitte
Søland, Becoming Modern: Young Women and the Reconstruction of Woman-
hood in the 1920s (Princeton University Press, 2000); Barbara Sato, The New
Japanese Woman: Modernity, Media, and Women in Interwar Japan (Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, 2003).
14. Su Lin Lewis, ‘Cosmopolitanism and the Modern Girl: A Cross-cultural Dis-
course in 1930s Penang’, Modern Asian Studies 43(6) (2009), 1385–1419, here
1386.
15. Weinbaum, Thomas, Ramamurthy et al., Modern Girl around the World.
16. Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child.
17. On the concept of ‘affective economies’, see Sara Ahmed ‘Affective
Economies’, Social Text 22(2 79) (2004), 117–139.
18. On childhood happiness, see Peter N. Stearns, ‘Defining Happy Childhoods:
Assessing a Recent Change’, Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 3(2)
(2010), 165–186.
19. Cunningham, Children and Childhood in Western Society since 1500.
20. See e.g. Anna Davin, ‘Imperialism and Motherhood’, in Frederick Cooper
and Ann Laura Stoler (eds), Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bour-
geois World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 87–151; Bengt
Sandin, ‘“In the Large Factory Town”: Child Labour Legislation, Child
Labour and School Compulsion’, in Ning de Coninck-Smith, Bengt Sandin
and Ellen Schrumpf (eds), Industrious Children: Work and Childhood in the
Nordic Countries 1850–1990 (Odense University Press, 1997), 17–46.
21. In Juvenile Nation, Olsen argues that important organizations for youth were
specifically run for and by working-class members for the betterment of their
own communities, using similar concepts of childhood to those employed
by the middle classes.
22. C.A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914: Global Connections and
Comparisons (Malden: Blackwell, 2004).
23. Lydia Murdoch, Imagined Orphans: Poor Families, Child Welfare, and Contested
Citizenship in London (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006), 7;
see also 3.
24. Shurlee Swain and Margot Hillel, Child, Nation, Race and Empire: Child Rescue
Discourse, England, Canada and Australia, 1850–1915 (Manchester University
Press, 2010), 74.
25. Daiva Stasiulis and Nira Yuval-Davis’ claim that the impulse to create a sense
of common future or destiny (in the absence of a shared past) is a common
feature of settler nations; Daiva Stasiulis and Nira Yuval-Davis, ‘Introduc-
tion: Beyond Dichotomies – Gender, Race, Ethnicity and Class in Settler
Societies’, in Daiva Stasiulis and Nira Yuval-Davis (ed.), Unsettling Settler Soci-
eties: Articulations of Gender, Race, Ethnicity and Class (London: Sage, 1995),
1–39, here 19.
26. Here one can detect a distinct parallel to the way in which ‘the women’s
question’ functioned as a marker of national and colonial identities in var-
ious colonial contexts. See e.g. Lata Mani, ‘Contentious Traditions: The
Debate on Sati in Colonial India’, Cultural Critique 7 (1987), 119–156;
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, in Cary Nelson and
32 Emotions and the Global Politics of Childhood

Lawrence Grossberg (eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Urbana:

University of Illinois Press, 1988), 271–313.
27. Karen Sánchez-Eppler, Dependent States: The Child’s Part in Nineteenth-Century
American Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2005), 214.
28. Robin Bernstein, Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery
to Civil Rights (New York University Press, 2011), 20.
29. Joanna Bourke, The Story of Pain: From Prayer to Painkillers (Oxford University
Press, 2014), 214–230.
30. Satadru Sen, Colonial Childhoods: The Juvenile Periphery of India 1850–1945
(London: Anthem Press, 2005), 1.
31. Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line: White
Men’s Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality (Cambridge
University Press, 2008).
32. Timothy J. Stanley, Contesting White Supremacy: School Segregation, Anti-
racism, and the Making of Chinese-Canadians (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011).
33. Karen Vallgårda, Imperial Childhoods and Christian Mission: Education and
Emotions in South India and Denmark (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,
2015), 156–180.
34. Reddy’s concept is developed in William M. Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling:
A Framework for the History of Emotions (Cambridge University Press, 2001).
Rosenwein’s concept was first developed in Barbara H. Rosenwein, ‘Worry-
ing about Emotions in History’, American Historical Review 107(3) (2002),
821–845. For their similarities, see Boddice, ‘Affective Turn’, 153–5.
35. Similarly, Peter Stearns has recently argued that historians of emotions
should pay ‘attention to the interplay between larger emotional patterns and
particular emotional communities and subgroups’; Peter N. Stearns, ‘Modern
Patterns in Emotions History’, in Susan J. Matt and Peter N. Stearns (eds),
Doing Emotions History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014), 17–40,
here 23.
36. As Reddy has aptly phrased it, ‘Emotional control is the real site of the exer-
cise of power’; William M. Reddy, ‘Against Constructionism: The Historical
Ethnography of Emotions’, Current Anthropology 38(3) (1997), 327–351, here
335.
37. Sara Ahmed, ‘Collective Feelings: Or, the Impressions Left by Others’, The-
ory, Culture & Society 21(2) (2004), 25–42, here 25. See also Sara Ahmed, The
Cultural Politics of Emotion (New York: Routledge, 2004).
38. See also the work of Ann Laura Stoler, particularly Race and the Education of
Desire: Foucault’s History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things (Durham,
NC: Duke University Press, 1995); Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race
and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (Berkeley: University of California Press
2002); Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense
(Princeton University Press, 2009).
39. This idea bears William Reddy’s ‘emotives’ (1997) or what Monique Scheer
might call ‘emotional practices’; Monique Scheer, ‘Are Emotions a Kind of
Practice (and is that What Makes Them Have a History)? A Bourdieuan
Approach to Understanding Emotion’, History and Theory 51(2) (2012),
193–220.
40. Rosenwein, ‘Worrying about Emotions in History’, 842–843; Plamper, ‘His-
tory of Emotions’, 256.
 Vallgårda, Alexander and Olsen 33

41. The concept is inspired by Kathleen Brown’s notion of ‘gender frontiers’.

See Kathleen M. Brown, ‘Brave New Worlds: Women’s and Gender History’,
William and Mary Quarterly 50(2) (1993), 311–328.
42. For a development of the concept of ‘informal educators’, see Stephanie
Olsen, ‘Informal Education: Emotional Conditioning and Enculturation in
British Bands of Hope 1880–1914’, in Marcelo Caruso and Ute Frevert (eds),
Schwerpunkt: Emotionen in der Bildungsgeschichte (Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt,
2012), 110–125.
43. Satadru Sen, ‘The Savage Family: Colonialism and Female Infanticide in
Nineteenth-Century India’, Journal of Women’s History 14(3) (2002), 53–79;
Satadru Sen, ‘The Orphaned Colony: Orphanage, Child and Authority in
British India’, Indian Economic Social History Review 44(4) (2007), 463–488;
Karen Vallgårda, ‘Between Consent and Coercion: Danish Missionaries and
Tamil Parents in Late Nineteenth Century South India’, Review of Develop-
ment and Change 14(1&2) (2009), 87–108.
44. On such cross-cultural emotional mission encounters, see e.g. Claire
McLisky, Daniel Midena and Karen Vallgårda (eds), Emotions and Christian
Missions: Historical Perspectives (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
45. See e.g. Rhonda A. Semple, ‘“The Conversion and Highest Welfare of
Each Pupil”: The Work of the China Inland Mission at Chefoo’, Journal
of Imperial and Commonwealth History 31(1) (2003), 29–50; Heike Liebau,
‘Faith and Knowledge: The Educational System of the Danish-Halle and
English-Halle Mission’, in Andreas Gross, Y. Vincent Kumaradoss, and Heike
Liebau (eds), Halle and the Beginning of Protestant Christianity in India,
vol. iii, Communication between India and Europe (Halle (Saale): Verlag der
Franckeschen Stiftungen, 2006), 1181–1214; Larry Prochner, Helen May and
Baljit Kaur, ‘“The Blessings of Civilisation”: Nineteenth-Century Mission-
ary Infant Schools for Young Native Children in Three Colonial Settings –
India, Canada and New Zealand 1820s–1840s’, Paedagogica Historica 45(1&2)
(2009), 83–102; Jana Tschurenev, ‘Incorporation and Differentiation: Popular
Education and the Imperial Civilizing Mission in Early Nineteenth Century
India’, in Carey A. Watt and Michael Mann (eds), Civilizing Missions in Colo-
nial and Postcolonial South Asia: From Improvement to Development (London:
Anthem Press, 2011), 93–124; Karen A. Vallgårda, ‘Adam’s Escape: Children
and the Discordant Nature of Colonial Conversions’, Childhood 18(3) (2011),
298–315.
46. Hilde Nielssen, Inger Marie Okkenhaug and Karina Hestad Skeie (eds), Protes-
tant Missions and Local Encounters in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries:
Unto the Ends of the World (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 1–22, here 9.
47. See Chapter 5. See also Vallgårda, Imperial Childhoods and Christian Mission.
48. On emotional reactions to the separation of Canadian Indigenous chil-
dren from their families, see Kristine Alexander, ‘Picturing Girlhood and
Empire: The Girl Guide Movement and Photography’, in Kristine Moruzi
and Michelle J. Smith (eds), Colonial Girlhood in Literature, Culture and History,
1840–1950 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 197–213. Important
works on the history of residential schooling in Canada include John
S. Milloy, A National Crime: The Canadian Government and the Residen-
tial School System: 1879–1986 (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press,
1999); Mary-Ellen Kelm, Colonizing Bodies: Aboriginal Health and Healing in
34 Emotions and the Global Politics of Childhood

British Columbia, 1900–50 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press,

1998); J.R. Miller, Shingwauk’s Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools
(University of Toronto Press, 1997).
49. Quoted in Sarah de Leeuw, ‘“If Anything is to Be Done with the Indian,
We Must Catch Him Very Young”: Colonial Constructions of Aboriginal
Children and the Geographies of Indian Residential Schooling in British
Columbia, Canada’, Children’s Geographies 7(2) (2009), 123–140, here 131.
50. As Jane Haggis and Margaret Allen have shown in their work on British
Christian missionaries in India, in the missionary ontology, emotional
comportment became a crucial parameter of identity and the supposedly
unbalanced emotional expressions of the natives came to define their hea-
thenism; Jane Haggis and Margaret Allen, ‘Imperial Emotions: Affective
Communities of Mission in British Protestant Women’s Missionary Publica-
tions c1880–1920’, Journal of Social History 41(3) (2008), 691–716. Vallgårda
develops this argument with particular reference to the education of chil-
dren in the context of colonial South India and Denmark: Vallgårda, Imperial
Childhoods and Christian Mission, 39–73, 123–155.
51. Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff, Of Revelation and Revolution, vol. 1,
Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa (University of
Chicago Press, 1991); Anna Johnston, Missionary Writing and Empire: 1800–
1860 (Cambridge University Press, 2003). See also several of the contribu-
tions to McLisky, Midena and Vallgårda, Emotions and Christian Missions.
52. Peter Burke, What is Cultural History?, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Polity, 2008),
119–20.
53. Boddice, ‘Affective Turn’, 158–162.
54. Sara Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
2010).
55. Paula S. Fass, ‘Is There a Story in the History of Childhood?’, in Paula
S. Fass (ed.), The Routledge History of Childhood in the Western World (London:
Routledge, 2013), 1–14, here 3.
3
Feeling Like a Child: Narratives
of Development and the Indian
Child/Wife
Ishita Pande

‘Please let me sleep with you, didi [elder sister], don’t make me go to his
bed; I beg of you, save me; that weight crushes me; I simply cannot sleep
in that room.’1 Thus opens a novella-in-verse, written by a male author,
in the form of a series of dialogues between the 12-year-old Sarojbala
and a slew of female relatives, who appear in sequence to chide her for
her misplaced reticence and to educate her on the duties and pleasures
of conjugal sex. While a didi rebukes her with a not-so-friendly threat
of a kick to the face, an aunt consoles her that even though the ‘first
connection might hurt a bit, that would ultimately melt into the glow
of marital bliss’.2 An older relative encourages her with salacious details
from her own childhood when, as a young bride, she willingly – no,
insistently – slept with her husband starting from the age of 11. Do the
words of the reluctant young bride allow us to gauge the feelings of a
child, forced into premature marriage and precocious sex, in the late
nineteenth century? Do they alert the reader to the greatest scandal of
child-marriage – of wives confronted with the prospect of marital rape –
a phenomenon that was widely discussed after the death of a child-
wife ‘on her wedding night’ in 1889?3 Or does the author’s twisted plot
simply offer insights into an emotional regime that saw no conflict in
the 12-year-old’s assumption of conjugal duties? Did a 12-year-old feel
like a child or was she expected to love like a wife in late nineteenth-
century India?
Sarojbala was published in 1891, the very year in which the colonial
government in India raised the age of consent to 12 years for unmar-
ried girls and to 11 for wives. In mandating a minimum age for marital
sex, and thus separating the marriage rite from sexual consummation,

35
36 Feeling Like a Child: Narratives of Development and the Indian Child/Wife

the 1891 law had departed from English law and attempted to avoid
direct interference in the Hindu rite of marriage.4 In effect, therefore, the
lines between ‘child’ (below the age considered capable of consenting
to matters regarding the person) and ‘wife’ (‘belonging’ to the husband
under both Hindu religion and Anglo-Indian law) remained slippery and
uncertain in 1891. It was only in 1929 that the line was solidified, at
least in theory, with the passage of the Child Marriage Restraint Act that
prohibited the marriage of a child, defined as ‘a person who, if a male,
is under eighteen years of age, and if a female, is under fourteen years of
age’.5 Using the term child/wife to capture a shifting legal and affective
subjectivity, this chapter asks if, how and when female persons between
the ages of 12 and 14, who could be legally married until 31 March 1929,
came to be reconfigured as children within the domestic, familial and
societal realms in response to the new law.
The sheer social conflict and emotional crisis unleashed by the laws
passed in 1891 and 1929 would have been intense: how was a husband
to approach a wife? What was a mother to teach her daughter about
marriage? How was the married 11- or 12-year-old to feel? When and
how was she to become a wife and stop feeling like a child? The figure of
the Indian child/wife, perched on the brink of precocious wifehood and
precious childhood, provokes questions of interest both to historians
of childhood and of emotions – about the transcultural disposition of
children, the universality (or not) of emotions, the power of laws to
recalibrate emotions and the crisis wrought in emotional communities
by rapid transformations in legal norms. How were emotions such as
love and desire subjected to redefinition and re-education in India, in
the period roughly between 1891 and 1929, in order to disarticulate the
figure of the child from the wife?
To answer this question, in the first section of this chapter, I track
the 11-year-old protagonist’s feelings in Ratanbai: A Sketch of a Bombay
High Caste Hindu Young Wife (1895), which depicted a young wife’s
life as a narrative of development from childhood to adulthood. The
Bildungsroman form served to reconfigure the ‘young wife’ as a child,
thereby naturalizing a certain temporality of personal development.
For the metropolitan audience, the novel captured India’s difference
in the present, and rationalized colonial legal intervention as a mecha-
nism for restoring a natural order of universal human development in
the future. For the local readership, the Bildungsroman drew attention
to the ‘unnaturalness’ of early marriages, fulfilling a pedagogic func-
tion without embracing an overt, reformist stance. Yet, as this chapter
suggests, the narrative of Bildung itself seemed to collapse in Ratanbai,
 Ishita Pande 37

which, appearing soon after the Age of Consent Act of 1891, mirrored
the cautious, obfuscating or perhaps simply confusing idiom of the law
that had stopped short of separating the child and the wife. A fuller
story of a transition from childhood to adulthood was to await the idea
of adolescence, defined as an intermediate period of life and dissemi-
nated through a range of sex education manuals in the early decades
of the twentieth century. In the second section, I read two such tracts
addressed to girls and adolescents to ask how sex education might have
captured (or even enabled) the disarticulation of the child and wife
newly mandated by the law in 1929. Finally, I suggest that a sexological
discourse on emotion enabled the disaggregation of the figure of the
child from the wife. Since the sexological understanding of emotion
rested on a narrative of corporeal development and shored up the tele-
ology of conjugal partnership, it also served, paradoxically, to sexualize
the child.6

Becoming child: the desire for education and a truncated

narrative of development

The enormity of the emotional re-education demanded by the Age of

Consent Act of 1891 becomes evident when considering the tone of
marriage manuals from the 1880s and 1890s. While the unabashed
promotion of precocious sexuality in Sarojbala, cited in the opening
sentence to this chapter, might have constituted a deliberate retaliation
against the Act of 1891, Bengali authors had long cast the youthfulness
of wives in a ‘warm, suffusing glow’.7 Reflecting this trend and counter-
ing the reformists’ citation of medical and ethnographic facts to critique
precocious sexuality and early marriages, Sasibhushan Guha defended
youthful marriages by evoking emotion: ‘Shut your scientific eyes for a
moment’, he beseeched the reader, ‘and look at the issue through the
eyes of love.’8 Despite the objections of social reformers, another author
insisted, the ages between 10 and 14 were far from being unsuitable
for marriage; if a girl came of age before marriage and was educated in
her natal family, no mutual affection could possibly develop between
the conjugal couple or the extended family because of the differences
in opinion that would invariably arise.9 Since early marriages offered a
proper education for conjugal and familial happiness in this view, the
best education was that provided by a husband to his wife.10 Exem-
plifying this ideal pedagogy for conjugality, Yuvatijivana unfolded in
the form of a dialogue between husband and wife. The fictitious hus-
band offered lessons on marriage and reproduction, emphasizing the
38 Feeling Like a Child: Narratives of Development and the Indian Child/Wife

emotional benefits of early marriages, to ward off his wife’s increasingly

sceptical queries:

The girl who gets married young treats her in-laws as she would her
own parents; a deep affection is born between them. The tender girl
can be molded to fit the family. This can’t happen at an older age.11

While recommending youthful marriages for promoting deeper affective

ties within the family, the author nonetheless conceded, in an apparent
nod to the new legal regime, that young wives of 11 or 12 ought to
be kept from sexual activity for some years.12 The manuals mentioned
above were composed in Bengal, where the backlash against the 1891
law was strongest, but in other parts of the country as well, and amongst
the most ‘reformed’ of families, childhood did not appear to be in con-
flict with wifehood as such, as long as young wives were given access to
letters.13
A young wife’s education was the narrative driver in Ratanbai: A Sketch
of a Bombay High Caste Hindu Young Wife (1895), written by Shevantibai
Nikambe, ‘one of the pioneers of the Indian women’s literary canon in
English’.14 An Indian Christian woman, born in Poona in western India,
Nikambe attended St Peter’s Girls’ High School in Bombay and began
teaching at Sharada Sadan High School upon graduating in 1890. The
latter, established by the prominent woman reformer Pandita Ramabai,
was a Christian institution that catered mainly to high-caste girls and
young widows. In 1912, Nikambe established her own Married Women’s
High School, through which over 1,000 women passed during the first
16 years of its existence. Her involvement with and support of social
reform in general, and of women’s education in particular, is signalled in
the essay she published in 1929 about her reformist role model, entitled
‘Pandita Ramabai and the Problem of India’s Married Women and Wid-
ows’. It is no surprise, then, that her only published novel, Ratanbai, also
reflects these concerns and draws upon her experiences at the Married
Women’s High School, as indicated by the inclusion of two photographs
featuring her students as illustrations for her novel.
Much like her contemporary Krupabai Satthianadhan, hailed as the
first Indian woman writing in English, Nikambe would have been read
by ‘educated Indians, Christian converts, British colonialists and educa-
tors, Indian and British missionaries, and British women interested in
reform both in India and in Britain’.15 The work was acclaimed in its
time for providing a realist account of Indian girlhood by one of India’s
daughters. The reformist potential of the novel was amply signalled
 Ishita Pande 39

by the paratextual materials offered to the reader in 1895 – from the

author’s dedication to the Queen for ‘brightening and enlightening the
lives and homes of many Hindu women’ to the foreword by Lady Ada
Harris (wife of Lord Harris, Governor of Bombay from 1890 to 1895)
detailing Nikambe’s endeavours.16 The 2004 edition of the novel, edited
by Chandani Lokugé, emphasizes a particular reading of the novel: as
an ethnographic account of high-caste Hindu life concerned with social
reform and representing an early feminist position. Seeking to locate
Ratanbai in its historical context, Lokugé provides a neat list of the leg-
islative social reform that preceded its writing: the act permitting the
remarriage of widows in 1856, and the raising of the age of consent
to 10 years in 1860 and to 12 in 1891. Reading Ratanbai as ‘primar-
ily a social novel’ that ‘comprises the reformist agenda’, Lokugé credits
it for confronting ‘three of the most controversial colonialist reforms
of nineteenth-century India: child marriage, widowhood, and women’s
education’.17 While these themes certainly loom large in the novel set
against the backdrop of the daily domestic ritual and socio-religious
customs of a Brahmin Maratha community, Lokugé reinforces her inter-
pretation of the novel as one concerned with the trifecta of social reform
by modifying its paratextual context, most dramatically by altering the
title from Ratanbai: A Sketch of a Bombay High Caste Hindu Young Wife to
Ratanbai: A High Caste Child-Wife.
The original Sketch trod more cautiously on the reformist terrain, mak-
ing few claims to offering a comprehensive treatment of the Hindu
child-wife; the original title did not even configure Ratanbai as a ‘child-
wife’. While the altered paratext of the 2004 edition renders the novel
as an ‘intervention’ into a ‘social problem’ that is already in existence,
the 1895 original would have captured a time of flux and formed part
of a corpus of works that were instrumental in constituting ‘child mar-
riage’ as a recognizable social problem. While Nikambe’s rich account
of high-caste Brahmin life – with a detailing of particular festivals and
rituals, a recapitulation of religious chants and popular songs, a repeti-
tion of vernacular words parenthetically translated into English – might
have fed the ‘insatiable liberal appetite for non-Western alterity, cus-
tom, and female misery’,18 it doubtless also addressed English India –
an English-educated Indian audience in other parts of the vast subconti-
nent – who turned to the novel for insights into Hindu life in a distinct
regional setting. Making multiple mediations between a local and a pan-
Indian context, between India and a foreign audience, Nikambe helped
render ‘child-marriage’ as a problem worthy of scrutiny and interven-
tion at a trans-local level and as a ‘common’ concern despite variations
40 Feeling Like a Child: Narratives of Development and the Indian Child/Wife

in distinct locations. Far from offering a ledger of miseries of ‘the Hindu

child-wife’, however, as the altered subtitle might suggest, the novel was
engaged with the hesitant and difficult separation of the figures of child
and wife.
The opening page of Ratanbai paints a vivid portrait of the epony-
mous protagonist, a ‘pleasing girl of eleven’, who appears ‘dressed, as all
Hindu girls are, in a skirt of the khan material, and a short-sleeved satin
jacket’, her hair ‘brushed, well oiled and tied into a neat knot’. She is
blessed not only with a ‘fair complexion’ that ‘made her to be classed
amongst the pretty girls of Bombay’ but also with a wealthy family, an
enlightened father and an adoring mother. She is laden with gold, dia-
monds and pearls from head to toe. A piece of jewellery around her
neck, the mangalsutra, is not singled out for notice by the author, but
serves as an indication that ‘little Ratanbai’ is married.19 Promised to a
family by her mother before her birth, Ratanbai has been married for a
year as the novel opens. A linear narrative of development from child
to wife is thus already disrupted: Ratanbai appears as a wife on the very
first page. In the rest of the novel, Nikambe provides for her protagonist
an extended period of childhood. Ratanbai thus made its most powerful
intervention not through its contents – the detailing of everyday life –
but through its form. In this hesitant tracing of a child’s coming of age,
Ratanbai made the reformist cause appear as natural, as consistent with
a seemingly universal trajectory of personal development.
To delineate an appropriate emotional space of childhood, Nikambe
draws attention to young Ratanbai’s feelings. Instances of her feelings
(admittedly somewhat scanty) appear in the novel as her devotion to
her father, her kindness towards a young widowed aunt, her affection
for her mother and, most overwhelmingly, in the context of her desire
for an English education. Young Ratanbai wakes up each morning look-
ing forward to riding to school with her father in a horse-drawn carriage.
The daily schedule of her life as a child is routinely thwarted by events
such as weddings, religious fasts and festivals, the birth of children and,
more occasionally, a death in her extended family. We learn that on
these occasions, Ratanbai longs to return to her books. She does ‘not feel
happy’ in the home of her in-laws, where she finds herself: ‘Sitting idly
for hours, helping to clean the vegetables and grain, gossiping with the
neighbouring girls of her age, listening to all sorts of talk of the elderly
women.’20 She ‘feels unhappy’ and flings ‘herself into her mother’s lap,
weeping most bitterly’ when she overhears her mother and aunt con-
templating the wisdom of educating the young wife against the wishes
of her mother-in-law.21 She admits to ‘feel[ing] strange’ as she is sent
 Ishita Pande 41

away for a holiday in the company of a maternal aunt – an arrangement

made to delay the announcement of her suspended education. Receiv-
ing this devastating news upon her return, Ratanbai is overcome with
misery: ‘I wish I had known how to converse in English . . . [N]o plea-
sure or interest for me now. Oh! What shall I do with myself the whole
day?’22
At her husband’s home, Ratanbai becomes ‘most miserable . . . How
often, with an aching heart, she would sit dreaming about her school
life! Her teachers, her companions, her singing lesson, the English les-
son, the translation class, came before her, and then the longing would
come: “Oh! could I but go to school once again!”’23 Her life thus robbed
of ‘pleasure or interest’, Ratanbai descends into misery, until she is per-
mitted to return to school, thanks to the machinations of a family friend
who seeks her out as a companion for his own daughter. Here again,
Ratanbai ‘feel[s] ashamed to go to school now’, given the unfortunate
gap in her education.24 While she ‘keeps silent’ when she is removed
from the school once again on account of her husband’s poor per-
formance in his college examinations, she ‘did feel so sorry’ that ‘the
disappointment could be seen in her sad face’.25 In a novel that is rela-
tively inattentive to its character’s interiority, it is worth pondering that
the few instances of the word ‘feeling’ with regard to Ratanbai appear
overwhelmingly with reference to English education. English appears as
the object of her pleasure, interest and longing; education is fetishized as
the foundation of an ideal childhood.26
With the thoroughly asexualized object of the young wife’s desire
established and her childhood amply signified in the disproportionately
long beginning to the novel, the years run into one another without
distinction in its highly abbreviated middle and abrupt ending. While
replicating some of the key components of the classic Bildungsroman –
which delineates the formation of a coherent identity of an individual,
following a period of self-exploration and crisis – Ratanbai deviates from
the form in obfuscating seemingly crucial years of development. Much
of the novel (72 out of 78 pages in the 1895 edition) is concerned with
Ratanbai’s life as an 11-year-old, with her quest for education and the
conflict with her conjugal family recurring as sources of tension. There
is, however, no gradual resolution with a formulaic harmonization of
the self and society with the passing years.
While the Bildungsroman form has been considered ‘exemplary in the
degree to which its conventions overlap with the image of human per-
sonality development articulated by the law’27 (in this example the 1891
law), the form itself collapses in Ratanbai. Time itself appears compressed
42 Feeling Like a Child: Narratives of Development and the Indian Child/Wife

in the last few pages of the novel, with a quick resolution to the prob-
lem of Ratanbai’s education following the death of her mother.28 Having
spent considerable ink on a year (or so) in Ratanbai’s life, Nikambe
simply glosses over the next five:

Five years have rolled away . . . Ratan’s husband has been to London,
and has studied during three years for the Bar. At the time of his
departure he left strict instructions, which were carried out, that
Ratan should be sent to school until his return home . . . There was
a great blank in the family circle while Ratan’s husband was in
England.29

Crucial years of development in a lifecycle, roughly between the ages

of 11 and 16 in this instance, appear as a ‘great blank’ in emotional
and narrative terms, with the mother dead, a widowed aunt away on a
pilgrimage, a younger aunt off in a Widow’s Home and the husband in
England.
The abbreviated form of this Bildungsroman – its long beginning, brief
middle and abrupt ending – capture the oddly collapsed personhood
of the child/wife. The reader is denied a satisfactory narrative middle
detailing a journey from the petulant desires of the child to the har-
monious longings of the adult. In the long beginning, Nikambe fully
fleshes out the young wife’s childhood. Appearing in the very first
page of the novel as a young wife, Ratanbai only becomes a child as
the novel proceeds – throwing tantrums, being spoilt by her father,
going to a tea party with her school friends. At the same time, she
develops into a wife – learning the ropes of housework, patiently bear-
ing the harsh words of her in-laws and registering the presence of a
husband. In abbreviating the crucial middle years into a single para-
graph, Nikambe hints at the absence that characterizes Ratanbai’s life
and suggests the impossibility of Bildung with regard to the truncated
personhood of the child/wife.
A single passage separates the figure of the child from that of the
wife, and the novel is brought to an abrupt end with the ‘consum-
mation’ of Ratanbai’s marriage. In keeping with the rest of the novel,
the concluding pages are replete with ethnographic details about ritu-
als performed in preparation for Ratanbai’s ‘wedding night’. The bride
appears ‘dressed in the most charming ruby-colored pilao, with jewels
and flowers’ and faces her husband ‘bashfully and gracefully’.30 She pro-
ceeds with the ordered rituals: washing the husband’s feet, applying a
scented powder, exchanging garlands, handing over a bouquet, while
 Ishita Pande 43

chanting prayers to secure his fame, joy and prosperity. As the guests
depart at the end of the evening, the couple retreats to ‘the newly fur-
nished room upstairs’.31 Entering the husband’s room in the final scene,
Ratanbai’s eyes are caught by one present amongst the many laid out on
a table. She reaches out to grasp ‘a beautifully bound gilt-edged Book’.32
Her husband, Prataprao Khote, newly returned from England, his cos-
mopolitanism awkwardly signalled by his circuitous journey home via
America, China and Japan, accepts this gesture with equanimity:

‘I must have this book on my table every day; there are a great many
nice things in it which you must know.’ To this Ratanbai said: ‘I have this
Book too.’ ‘Well,’ said her husband as he looked into his young part-
ner’s face, ‘then let yours be out too, and we shall make it our guide
in life.’ Thus Prataprao Khote claims young Ratanbai as his partner
in life. They begin life together, recognising the responsibilities and
duties which lie before them, and which concern not only themselves
but their people and their country.33

Ratanbai’s desire for the Book is consummated just as her husband

claims her as his wife.
Commenting on this significant coincidence, Shefali Chandra has
suggested that despite its disruptive potential and reformist message,
Ratanbai leaves intact the caste/sex/gender hierarchy of Hindu life and
testifies to ‘the benign and entirely conservative benefits of an English
education’.34 While Ratanbai’s deep longing for English initially appears
to disrupt traditional gender and familial norms, Prataprao Khote enters
the narrative with the final act to commit her to a life of ‘heterosexual
romance, reproduction, and a nationalist sensibility’.35 Taking on board
Chandra’s insights, we can see how Ratanbai served as a manifesto for
a ‘new heterosexuality’ based on the ruse of a ‘partnership’. But we can
also discern Nikambe’s subtle plug for an idealized childhood marked
by a desire for education giving way to an age-appropriate monogamous
sexuality, for the Bildungsroman ascribes to the young wife a period of
childhood, even as it continues to naturalize heterosexual monogamy
as the logical end to her personal development. While the truncation of
the middle years reflects how the boundaries erected between child and
wife by the law of 1891 had remained fuzzy, Ratanbai represents an early
attempt to formulate an age-stratified life-course premised on graduated
stages of sexual and emotional development. Something was changing.
The clue to a coming transition lies in the unnamed ‘Book’ with which
Prataprao claims the young wife as his ‘partner in life’. Was the Book
44 Feeling Like a Child: Narratives of Development and the Indian Child/Wife

that appears in the final page simply a metonym for ‘English educa-
tion’ or ‘an indirect promotion of Christianity’, as Lokugé tentatively
suggests?36 While Nikambe might well have left the Book unnamed to
avoid appearing as a champion for Christian conversion, the obfusca-
tion of the title tantalizes with other possibilities. What ‘gilt-edged Book’
might be given to a couple on their wedding night? What Book might
have contained ‘a great many things’ that a young wife ‘must know’?
What Book would allow Prataprao to claim Ratanbai as a ‘partner in
life’? What Book offered advice to couples on their ‘responsibilities and
duties’ towards ‘not only themselves but their people and their coun-
try?’ Might the unnamed (or perhaps unnameable?) Book have been
one of the gilt-edged copies of the Kama Sutra, recently translated, newly
resurrected and surreptitiously circulated as a modern guide to love?37
While it is admittedly unlikely that Nikambe would have placed the
Kama Sutra in the hands of her young protagonist, her silence on the
title might be just as significant as the other narrative elisions and for-
mal abbreviations in the novel. The unnamed Book might be read as
a placeholder for a genre-in-making. Within the next three decades,
marital-advice manuals and tracts on sex education would become ubiq-
uitous. Many of these would claim to contain ‘a great many things’ to
enable young couples to become ‘partners in life’, to find pleasure in
marriage and eugenic reproduction and thus to fulfil their responsibili-
ties towards the family, race and nation. Crucially, such texts would also
scrupulously detail the very years of emotional and sexual development
that had appeared as a ‘great blank’ in Ratanbai. In doing so, such works
would elaborate on a stage of adolescence and would drive a deeper
wedge between the state of childhood and the stage of conjugality.

Loving like a wife: an education of desire and the staging of

adolescence

Yet unarticulated as a discrete stage of life in the 1890s, adolescence

began to emerge as an object of scientific scrutiny in a range of works
on sexology and sex education published across the subcontinent in the
1920s and 1930s in several Indian languages.38 This section is concerned
with two such works, written in English, which appeared soon after
the passage of the Child Marriage Restraint Act of 1929. Sex Knowledge
for Girls and Adolescents (1931) was written by A.P. Pillay, a Bombay-
based medical doctor, editor of the international journal Marital Hygiene,
director of the Sholapur Eugenics Society and one of the most prolific
writers on sexology, known for such works as The Art of Love and Sane
 Ishita Pande 45

Sex Living and Ideal Sex Life.39 Writing soon after the 1929 law had for-
mally pushed the end of ‘childhood’ for women back from 12 to 14
years, Pillay underlined the sexological rationale for such a move: at
the age of 12, ‘the body begins to grow rapidly but the sex organs
continue on their infantile state’, only in adolescence do ‘the body,
mind and sex organs . . . attain functional maturity and the girl becomes
a woman’.40 Towards Womanhood (1929) was written by G. Sumati Bai,
well known for her fiery attacks on gender inequality and child-marriage
that circulated through Stri Dhrama – the journal of the Women’s Indian
Association – and Revolt, the mouthpiece of the Self-Respect Move-
ment in southern India, which had at its heart a radical critique of
the entwinement of gender and caste inequalities, of nationalism and
Brahminism. Pushing for transformations well beyond the scope of the
1929 law, Sumati Bai insisted that ‘a girl’s body is not fully mature till
she is at least twenty-one and the pelvis – the body cavity containing
the organs of sex and generation – is the last to complete growth’.41
Sumati Bai’s medical training was thus foregrounded in Towards Wom-
anhood (1929), a work written in ‘simple language’ to instruct girls on
their passage to adulthood.
While Pillay promoted an elitist project centred on middle-class
health, conjugal sexuality, small families, population control and
national development,42 Sumati Bai subjected the man–woman rela-
tionship to a fundamental critique and addressed women directly in
a call to arms against Hindu law. Describing Hindu law as something
‘devised for a colony of men’, she urged women to ‘crush these laws
and conventions that have cowed women and curbed their growth’.43
Despite the crucial differences in their tone and politics, both sought
to complete the task of dissociating childhood and wifehood by deal-
ing extensively with the very age group that had appeared only as
an absence in Nikambe’s Ratanbai. Reiterating the sexological narra-
tive of development and formulating adolescence as a discrete stage
of life, Pillay described his reasons for devising a course of instruc-
tion specifically for those caught between childhood and adulthood:
whereas parents and girls of a certain age found his Sex Knowledge for
Girls and Adolescents too elementary in its treatment of the ‘physical
aspects and problems of sex’, some educationists felt his highly popu-
lar Art of Love and Sane Sex Living, ‘being too elaborate and intimate,
should be read by adults only’.44 For her part, Sumati Bai also described
adolescence as a stage of transition and education, providing simple
instructions on ‘how a girl can consciously evolve to full womanhood
to occupy a time honoured place of Mother and Teacher of the Race’.45
46 Feeling Like a Child: Narratives of Development and the Indian Child/Wife

Adolescence was staged as a time of emotional turmoil that accompa-

nied physical transformations of ‘the comely child . . . into a gawky girl’.
At this perilous stage, a girl could ‘form a passionate attachment for
some girl friend or other’, become ‘thoughtful and sad without know-
ing why’, be overcome by ‘unusual weariness’ or take to daydreaming,
or even religion.46 Sumati Bai emphasized the need for frank lessons on
sex during this period of emotional chaos: ‘It is KNOWLEDGE of facts
and functions and not ignorance and suppression of those that build
character.’47
Both put forward a model of sex education organized along age-
stratified lines that was gaining popularity around the globe and that
depicted adolescence as the time of physical and emotional upheaval,
and also the time for an education on sexual desire. As per this schema,
the very young were taught indirectly about sex with lessons about the
‘birds and bees’ to satiate their natural curiosity; adolescents were pro-
vided with biology lessons on puberty and reproduction in the human
body; and adults were offered a frank and dispassionate discussion of
the sex act and sex hygiene to ensure conjugal bliss.48 Pillay followed
up his generic illustrations of the naturalness of sex with examples
from the plant and animal kingdom, with lessons on basic biology
and human sexual development, before ending with advice on conjugal
sex and wifely love. Sumati Bai also emphasized the naturalness of the
sex instinct with examples from the animal world, concluding: ‘It is
sex that preserves and propagates the race-progeny; it is sex that cre-
ates in man that exuberance of spirit which bursts forth into art and
music; it is sex that gives the impetus for grand achievements.’49 Yet
she followed this up with a strict warning of its dangers: ‘But remember
sex can also be destructive burning everything to ashes . . . when ill-used
and given undue liberty.’50 The characterization of sex as eminently nat-
ural – but potentially dangerous – is best clarified in their discussion of
masturbation.
Boys and men had been warned of the dangers of masturbation and
had been instructed on the spiritual and material benefits of semen
conservation in the vernacular public sphere since the late nineteenth
century.51 Pillay and Sumati Bai brought the conversation to girls and
women, addressing them with a twentieth-century sexological idiom
that was no longer as preoccupied with anxieties about insanity, debility
and death. This new discourse emphasized not surveillance, but educa-
tion. While warning girls that the practice ‘corrodes the very heart of
your being’ and advising self-control ‘to combat self-abused sex per-
version’, Sumati Bai conceded that the practice of masturbation was
 Ishita Pande 47

common and brought a ‘sensation of pleasurable excitement’.52 Going

further in dismissing the cluster of medicalized fears that had long circu-
lated under the rubric of semen anxiety or masturbation panics, Pillay
boldly claimed that ‘more rubbish’ had been written on masturbation
than on any other aspect of sex by those who ‘blame all manner of ail-
ment, from pimples to anemia to insanity’ on it.53 More significantly, he
used a Freud-influenced understanding of the universality of infantile
masturbation to conclude that ‘masturbation and some other forms of
auto-eroticism are natural occurrences at a certain stage of development’.54
This twentieth-century discourse did not so much reject or surpass pre-
vious biomedical understandings of masturbation as make it ‘a part
of ontogenesis: we pass through masturbation, we build on it, as we
become sexual adults’.55 It was not the act of solitary sex as such, but its
survival into a later developmental stage, or a failure to pass into sexual
adulthood, that was deemed a problem.
To this end, Pillay listed the ways in which masturbation went against
the course of personal and social development towards wifehood and
motherhood: it made a girl self-centred and likely to avoid society; a
girl habituated to taking her sex pleasures by herself might grow up
to shun marriage; and, finally, ‘really speaking, the generative organs
are primarily meant for the purpose of reproduction and masturba-
tion in no account can be considered a part of this purpose’.56 Pillay
envisaged masturbation in opposition to sexual activity aimed towards
the future, that is, the long-term stability of a conjugal relationship
and the procreation of children. Pillay and Sumati Bai depicted ado-
lescence as a time of tremendous physical transformation and of mental
and emotional turmoil, and drew a distinction between ‘natural’ sexual
instincts (that might include masturbation or same-sex entanglements)
and their ‘normal’ expression (directed towards the opposite sex, to
an exclusive sex object and within marriage). This gap opened up
between the natural and the normal can be better understood in anal-
ogy with the distinction between instinct and emotion highlighted in
these works.
Underlining such a distinction, Pillay had commented on the per-
fectly natural tendency for adolescents to ‘form a passionate attachment
for some girl friend or other’, but emphasized the need to avoid ‘sex
thoughts directed towards members of her own sex’.57 Sumati Bai, in her
turn, warned girls about their choice of friends with regard to their ‘char-
acteristic traits and tendencies’ and informed them of ‘sex-inverts . . . in
whom the sex instinct is so perverted as to feel sensuous passion
towards those of the same sex’.58 Masturbation and same-sex desire
48 Feeling Like a Child: Narratives of Development and the Indian Child/Wife

were closely linked in sexological discourse in diverse contexts: some

depicted adolescent homosexual experimentation as the gateway to
excessive masturbation and a failure to enjoy conjugal sex, while oth-
ers perceived homosexuality as the fatal end of excessive masturbation
in childhood and youth.59 Masturbation stood not only for a failure
of self-control, but also of the inability to direct emotions towards an
appropriate object. Both were condemned as unproductive behaviour.
In other words, the course of ‘normal’ emotional development was to
be geared towards conjugality; sexual perversions signified the failure to
educate the natural instincts of childhood.
While pronouncing sexual desire a natural phenomenon in adoles-
cence, Pillay warned girls not to ‘create a sex urge artificially or satisfy
it whenever you feel it’.60 Ideally, a girl was to control her instincts by
avoiding ‘all factors causing over-sexual stimulation, such as thinking,
reading and talking of sex’.61 Failing this, girls and adolescents ‘trou-
bled with excessive sex instinct’ were advised to direct their interests
and energy to other channels – ‘intellectual pursuits, interesting hob-
bies, sports and social life’.62 While Pillay defined this as sublimation –
or ‘the transformation of the libido into some impulse of higher psychic
activity so that it ceases to be urgent as a physical need’,63 Sumati Bai
put it more plainly, advising girls to avoid ‘vulgar novels’ and ‘coarse
allusions to sex’.64 She advised girls to keep their mind off sex by taking
‘a plunge in cold water’ when desires were aroused, following a proper
regime of diet, sleep and cleanliness, by trying out physical exercise to
‘relieve you of sex tension’ and by cultivating hobbies such as garden-
ing, art, music, stamp collecting or minding babies for others.65 The
true purpose of sex was not ‘to gratify the brute in you’, she told the
girl, but ‘the sacred purpose of procreation’.66 The message was straight-
forward: the sex instinct – natural in childhood – was to be cultivated
towards realizing social goals such as the procreation of the race and
nation.
Both Pillay and Sumati Bai thus contrasted the untamed, even child-
ish, sex instinct with conjugal love, which they represented as an
educated, adult emotion. Writing of adolescence as ‘the stage when the
instinct of sex draws on you’, Sumati Bai posed the rhetorical ques-
tion: ‘Although desires are natural, does it mean that we must gratify
every one of them? A child, for instance, might want to eat the whole
day but do you tolerate that saying that it is natural?’67 Sex instinct,
like the child’s hunger, was to be curtailed. ‘What is an unconscious
occurrence in plants, an instinctive impulse in animals, should be a
wise union of love in men and women’, she reiterated.68 Likewise, Pillay
 Ishita Pande 49

carefully parsed conjugal love – which he considered a learnt emotion –

as opposed to what Sumati Bai had posed as it its untrained expression –
sexual desire:

Everyone can understand what affection, respect, devotion, sympa-

thy and protective feelings are, as they are more or less concrete
factors. These are present even in children, though in the early years
of life they are directed to parents, friends, pets, and so on. After the
adult age, these feelings are directed towards a person of the opposite
sex. The term love is difficult to define and may signify to some affec-
tion combined with respect, to others devotion combined with any
other qualities, but behind them all is sexual desire. When sexual
desire is entirely repressed, due usually to faulty early training, love
would mean only companionship or friendship and this alone is not
conducive to a permanent or happy marriage. A marriage based on
lust alone is also bound to prove unhappy.69

Conjugal love – a happy combination of romantic affection and sexual

desire – directed towards an appropriate object in adulthood – was to
be attained through the proper education during childhood. In Pillay’s
words: ‘Happy adolescence, happy wifehood and happy motherhood
would mean a sane outlook on sex the foundation for which should be
laid in childhood.’70 As a learnt emotion par excellence, marital love was
thus set apart from other, more ‘concrete’ emotions such as affection,
devotion or sympathy.
Whereas Ratanbai, composed soon after the 1891 law, had struggled
to delineate a stage of life yet to be detailed or even named, Pillay and
Sumati Bai used a proliferating literature on sexology and sex education
to describe adolescence as the phase that intervened between childhood
and wifehood. This temporal delinking of childhood from wifehood –
via the theorization of adolescence as a stage of self-control and sex
education – matched the efforts of the Child Marriage Restraint Act of
1929. In the end, however, adolescence remained the phase for ‘lay-
ing the foundations’ of a future wifehood and motherhood. Girls and
adolescents continued to be provided with handy tips for the marital
bedchamber and were taught that the foundations of an emotionally
stable married life lay in ‘mutually satisfying physical sex relations’.71
Pillay’s work remained haunted by the figure of the child/wife inas-
much as the child or adolescent was still configured as a wife-in-making
and conjugality remained the logical culmination of her narrative of
personal development.
50 Feeling Like a Child: Narratives of Development and the Indian Child/Wife

Grasping emotion: pedagogy for conjugality and the

figuration of the child/wife

Let us return, in concluding, to the pensive cry of the 12-year-old

child/wife Sarojbala: ‘Please let me sleep with you, didi [elder sister],
don’t make me go to his bed.’72 While appearing to capture a young
wife’s aversion to sex, the novella had ended with strict instructions to
the young wife to embrace her conjugal duties. The perverse message of
the novella might be understood in the context of the debate on child
marriage that raged in Bengal in the 1890s – and the backlash in that
region against the Age of Consent Act of 1891. While critiques of child
marriage had relied on ethnological and anatomical facts that proved
the biomedical and eugenic damage caused to the person and the race
by precocious sex, a curious defence of the practice, as we have seen,
had come to rest on the grounds of emotion. Increasingly, reformers
too occupied these same grounds, pointing to the emotional damage
caused by premature conjugality, the most important of which was a
loss of childhood itself.
To capture the enormity of this loss, novels such as Ratanbai
attempted to track the thwarted desires of a child forced into wife-
hood. But operating in a context where the wedge between child and
wife was yet to be made firm, Ratanbai could only take an abbreviated
form, with the years of formation between childhood and wifehood sig-
nalled as an absence of narrative. These ‘blank’ years were gradually
detailed in a new genre – sex education for girls and adolescents – in the
1920s and 1930s. The ‘universal’ trajectory of formation articulated in
the Bildungsroman and the ‘natural’ narrative of personal development
offered by sexology, I have suggested, were examples of the informal
means by which a newly legislated separation of child and wife came
to be disseminated. Sexological works formulated a seemingly univer-
sal narrative of age-stratified personal development to emphasize the
contradiction between childhood and wifehood.
A discourse of emotion was crucial to the parsing of the figure of the
child/wife in the 1920s. Pillay depicted educated emotions as a tam-
ing of childish instincts in a manner that was reformist in its intent,
even if it was socially conservative in its promotion of monogamous
conjugality. In her more radical critique of the gender/caste structure
of Hindu society, Sumati Bai evoked emotion to promote marriages of
partnership and to criticize marriages based on the other, more dubi-
ous imperatives of caste, money or family.73 These distinct evocations
of emotion relied on the contrast between the image of the child with
 Ishita Pande 51

uninhibited sexual instinct and the adult trained for conjugality by a

proper education of desire. In other words, neither author depicted the
course of personal development as one from innocent childhood to
knowing adulthood, but as the very opposite – a move from uncon-
trolled instinct to controlled emotion. ‘Childhood’, in other words, was
conceptualized in sexualized terms. Reformers in the 1890s, drawing on
biomedical statistics, had amply documented that the child was not
physically prepared for marital sex. In the 1920s, sexologists suggested
that the child was not emotionally prepared for conjugal love. In doing
so, paradoxically, they configured the child in highly sexualized terms.
The figuration of the child/wife thus offers some food for thought
to historians of emotions, as well as those of childhood. For historians
of emotions, the sexological casting of instinct and emotion points to
their mutual imbrication. As the works by Pillay and Sumati Bai demon-
strate, while the distinction between the sex instinct and conjugal love
was rhetorically invaluable, it was frail: both authors spilt consider-
able ink placing sexual desire at the heart of happy conjugality and
in educating their readers on conjugal love while insisting on its pre-
discursive essence. Both also acknowledged the corporeality of emotion
while insisting on its transcendence of the body. In contrasting natu-
ral instinct with reasoned emotion (instead of highlighting a duality of
emotion and reason), these works stopped short of naturalizing conjugal
love, even as they insisted on a stadial theory of human development.74
For historians of childhood, the figuration of the child/wife points to
the epistemic co-constitution of sexual norms and ideas of childhood,
and suggests that a discourse on ‘childhood innocence’ was constituted
under the shadow of its other – the spectre of the sexualized child.
Appearing to move well beyond the uncertain morality of the Bengali
manual from 1891 that had normalized a child/wife’s experiences in
the marital bedchamber, Pillay and Sumati Bai argued for a dissocia-
tion of the periods of childhood and wifehood. And yet they insisted
that child sexuality had to be controlled and managed through a robust
educational apparatus. Paradoxically, then, even in the new reformist
discourse that foregrounded emotion, the sexualized child characterized
by an untamed lust provided the beginning to a narrative of personal
development, to which wifehood remained the foretold end.

Notes
1. Hemchandra Kunda, Rupasi Bala Hudaki Somotto Sarojbala Arthat Atyanta
Sundari Navayuvati Kulabadhur Swamir Shayan Grihe Pratham Prabesh Lila
52 Feeling Like a Child: Narratives of Development and the Indian Child/Wife

(Benares: Amar Press, 1891), 1. The English title in the British Library
catalogue is Sarojbala: A Tale in Verse Describing a Hindu Girl-Marriage.
2. Kunda, Rupasi Bala Hudaki Somotto Sarojbala, 45.
3. Tanika Sarkar, ‘Conjugality and Hindu Nationalism: Resisting Colonial Rea-
son and the Death of a Child-Wife’, in Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Community,
Religion, and Cultural Nationalism (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001),
191–225.
4. Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity: The ‘Manly Englishman’ and the ‘Effem-
inate Bengali’ in the Late Nineteenth Century (Manchester University Press,
1995).
5. For a comprehensive treatment of the 1929 law, see Mrinalini Sinha, Specters
of Mother India: The Global Restructuring of an Empire (Durham, NC: Duke Uni-
versity Press, 2006); for a comparison of the laws of 1891 and 1929, see Ishita
Pande, ‘Coming of Age: Law, Sex and Childhood in Late Colonial India’,
Gender and History 24(1) (2012), 205–230.
6. For a particular, Anglo-American history of the development of conjugal
love – from ‘true love’ to ‘sex love’ to ‘heterosexuality’ – see Jonathan
Ned Katz, ‘The Invention of Heterosexuality’, in Michael S. Kimmel and
Anny L. Ferber (eds), Privilege: A Reader (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2003),
83–98.
7. Sarkar, ‘Conjugality and Hindu Nationalism’, 205–208.
8. Sasibhushana Guha, Dampatya Prema (Calcutta: n.p., 1886).
9. Purnachandra Gupta, Bangalibau, or the Instructive Lessons on the Career or Life
of the Native Females (Calcutta: AK Banerji, 1885).
10. For a historical contextualization of romantic and conjugal love, see William
M. Reddy, The Making of Romantic Love: Longing and Sexuality in Europe,
South Asia, and Japan, 900–1200 CE (University of Chicago Press, 2012);
for a critical view on marriages as a key to happiness in modern times, see
Sara Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
2010).
11. Vipradasa Mukhopadhyaya, Yuvatijivana (Calcutta: n.p., 1902), 21–23.
12. For the radical multiplicity in family forms that constitutes the context in
which the Indian debate on marriage, coupling and domesticity unfolded,
see Indrani Chatterjee (ed.), Unfamiliar Relations: Family and History in South
Asia (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004).
13. The prominent Bombay reformer Justice M.G. Ranade was instrumental in
the education of his wife, Ramabai Ranade. In The High-Caste Hindu Woman
(1887), Ramabai wrote how ‘girls of nine and ten when recently out of
school and given in marriage are wholly cut off from reading or writing’;
Pundita Ramabai Sarasvati, The High-Caste Hindu Woman (Philadelphia: Jas.
B. Rodgers, 1887), 103. Note that the denial of access to writing, not the fact
of marriage itself, is being critiqued. In contrast, in Amar Jiban, Rassundari
Debi writes of her struggles to acquire the word against the wishes of her
conjugal family; see Tanika Sarjar (ed.), Words to Win: The Making of Amar
Jiban: A Modern Autobiography (Delhi: Kali for Women, 1999).
14. Shevantibai Nikambe, Ratanbai: A High-Caste Child-Wife, Chandani Lokugé
(ed.) (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004), xiii.
15. Priya Joshi, In Another Country: Colonialism, Culture, and the English Novel in
India (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 174.
 Ishita Pande 53

16. Shevantibai M. Nikambe, Ratanbai: A Sketch of a Bombay High Caste Hindu

Young Wife (London: Marshall Brothers, 1895), viii.
17. Chandani Lokugé, introduction to Ratanbai: A High-Caste Child-Wife (New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004), xv, xiv.
18. Shefali Chandra, The Sexual Life of English: Languages of Caste and Desire in
Colonial India (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), 152.
19. Nikambe, Ratanbai, 9–11. All quotations are from the original 1895 edition.
20. Nikambe, Ratanbai, 22.
21. Nikambe, Ratanbai, 31.
22. Nikambe, Ratanbai, 62–63.
23. Nikambe, Ratanbai, 63.
24. Nikambe, Ratanbai, 69.
25. Nikambe, Ratanbai, 73.
26. For a critical appraisal of Western-centric, mutually enforcing ideals of edu-
cation and childhood in our times, see Sarada Balagopalan, ‘Memories of
Tomorrow: Children, Labor, and the Panacea of Formal Schooling’, Journal
of the History of Childhood and Youth 1(2) (2008), 267–285.
27. Joseph R. Slaughter, Human Rights, Inc.: The World Novel, Narrative Form, and
International Law (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007), 4.
28. Nikambe, Ratanbai, 81.
29. Nikambe, Ratanbai, 83–84.
30. Nikambe, Ratanbai, 85.
31. Nikambe, Ratanbai, 87.
32. Nikambe, Ratanbai, 87.
33. Nikambe, Ratanbai, 87–88, emphasis added.
34. Chandra, Sexual Life of English, 154.
35. Chandra, Sexual Life of English, 154.
36. Lokugé, introduction to Ratanbai, xxx.
37. Richard Burton, The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana (London: Kama Shastra
Society, 1883).
38. Ishita Pande, ‘Time for Sex: The Education of Desire and the Staging of
Adolescence in Global/Hindu Sexology’ (forthcoming).
39. For more on Pillay and sexology in India, see Sanjay Srivastava, Passionate
Modernity: Sexuality, Class, and Consumption in India (New Delhi: Routledge,
2007); Sanjam Ahluwalia, Reproductive Restraints: Birth Control in India, 1877–
1947 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008).
40. A.P. Pillay, Sex Knowledge for Girls and Adolescents (Bombay: D.B. Taporewala
Sons and Co., n.d.), 39. I have not been able to date Sex Knowledge with pre-
cision, but the 1931 date provided on Worldcat, based on a record of library
acquisitions, is likely to be accurate for an early edition and is certainly con-
sistent with other contemporaneous texts. Internal evidence suggests that
the edition I have consulted dates from after 1936.
41. G. Sumati Bai, Towards Womanhood (Tungabhadra: Prema Literature Society,
1929), 59.
42. Ahluwalia, Reproductive Restraints.
43. Sumati Bai, Towards Womanhood, 70–71.
44. Pillay, Sex Knowledge for Girls and Adolescents, ii.
45. Sumati Bai, Towards Womanhood, x.
46. Pillay, Sex Knowledge for Girls and Adolescents, 39.
54 Feeling Like a Child: Narratives of Development and the Indian Child/Wife

47. Sumati Bai, Towards Womanhood, ix.

48. For a sense of the simultaneity of such developments in multiple locations,
see Jennifer Burek Pierce, What Adolescents Ought to Know: Sexual Health Texts
in Early Twentieth-Century America (Amherst: University of Massachusetts
Press, 2011); Sabine Frühstück, ‘Managing the Truth of Sex in Imperial
Japan’, Journal of Asian Studies 59(2) (2000), 332–358; Frank Dikötter, Sex,
Culture and Modernity in China: Medical Science and the Construction of Sexual
Identities in the Early Republican Period (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,
1995), 146–179.
49. Pillay, Sex Knowledge for Girls and Adolescents, x.
50. Pillay, Sex Knowledge for Girls and Adolescents, 17.
51. Joseph S. Alter, Moral Materialism: Sex and Masculinity in Modern India (New
Delhi: Penguin, 2011).
52. Sumati Bai, Towards Womanhood, 18–19.
53. Sumati Bai, Towards Womanhood, 55.
54. Sumati Bai, Towards Womanhood, 58.
55. Thomas W. Laqueur, Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation (New York:
Zone Books, 2003), 394.
56. Pillay, Sex Knowledge for Girls and Adolescents, 60.
57. Pillay, Sex Knowledge for Girls and Adolescents, 82.
58. Sumati Bai, Towards Womanhood, 41–42.
59. Lesley A. Hall, ‘Forbidden by God, Despised by Men: Masturbation, Medical
Warnings, Moral Panic, and Manhood in Great Britain, 1850–1950’, Journal
of the History of Sexuality 2(3) (1992), 365–387.
60. Pillay, Sex Knowledge for Girls and Adolescents, 65.
61. Pillay, Sex Knowledge for Girls and Adolescents, 61.
62. Pillay, Sex Knowledge for Girls and Adolescents, 86.
63. Pillay, Sex Knowledge for Girls and Adolescents, 80–81.
64. Sumati Bai, Towards Womanhood, 19.
65. Sumati Bai, Towards Womanhood, 33.
66. Sumati Bai, Towards Womanhood, 23.
67. Sumati Bai, Towards Womanhood, 16.
68. Sumati Bai, Towards Womanhood, 54.
69. Pillay, Sex Knowledge for Girls and Adolescents, 72, emphasis added.
70. Pillay, Sex Knowledge for Girls and Adolescents, i.
71. Henry M. Grant, ‘The Possibilities of Modern Marriage’ Marriage Hygiene
2(3) (1936), 308–319, reproduced in Pillay, Sex Knowledge for Girls and
Adolescents, 73.
72. Kunda, Rupasi Bala Hudaki Somotto Sarojbala, 1.
73. Mytheli Sreenivas, ‘Emotion, Identity, and the Female Subject: Tamil
Women’s Magazines in Colonial India, 1890–1940’, Journal of Women’s
History 14(4) (2003), 59–82.
74. The duality of instinct/emotion was common in sexological and psychoana-
lytical writing by the 1920s, with the two often understood as bodily change
and psychical phenomenon, respectively. While emotion was explained as
the ‘subjective’ aspect of instinct, debates raged into the 1920s as to which
took precedence. See e.g. Henry C. Link, ‘Emotions and Instinct’, American
Journal of Psychology 32(1) (1921), 134–144. The problem was frequently
 Ishita Pande 55

discussed in India, as evidenced by articles such as S. Ghosh, ‘Child Psychol-

ogy: Play Instinct’, Indian Journal of Psychology 9(4) (1936), 72–76. I thank
Stephanie Olsen for pushing me to reflect further on this distinction; a
fuller response will take me well beyond the limited parameters of this brief
chapter.
4
Teaching, Learning and Adapting
Emotions in Uganda’s Child
Leprosy Settlement, c. 1930–1962
Kathleen Vongsathorn

The Kumi Children’s Leper Home was founded by the Anglican Church
Missionary Society (CMS) in 1930 for the purpose of saving children
from leprosy and transforming them into happy, healthy and faithful
Christian citizens of the British Empire. Leprosy was a popular imperial
philanthropic cause and child leprosy sufferers were particularly promi-
nent within this cause, in part because doctors believed children must
be at the foundation of any successful effort to eradicate leprosy, but pri-
marily because child leprosy patients presented a special opportunity.1
As children and as victims of leprosy, child leprosy sufferers were con-
sidered to be doubly vulnerable and thus their potential salvation was
an especially attractive prospect for philanthropists.
For the first half of the twentieth century, European philanthropy
for leprosy was directed primarily towards missionary run, in-patient
leprosy settlements in the colonial world. Most of these in-patient
leprosy settlements were founded to isolate leprosy patients not because
they were infectious, but rather because their isolation created a rela-
tively stable population of long-term residents who were ideal targets
for the colonial civilizing mission. In fact, by the 1920s, expert medical
opinion advised against the compulsory segregation of leprosy patients,
and missionaries tended to prioritize the admission of advanced leprosy
cases, who had been disfigured and debilitated by the disease, but who
were also less likely to be infectious.2 Children were the most common
exception to this trend and were usually admitted in the early stages
of leprosy, with very few visible symptoms. Kumi’s missionaries hoped
to save these children from leprosy before the disease permanently dis-
figured them. Of equal importance, these missionaries hoped to save

56
 Kathleen Vongsathorn 57

child leprosy patients from backwardness by separating children from

their supposedly dangerous and ‘primitive’ parents at a time in their
lives when they were perceived as especially malleable. They wanted
to mould these children into Christian citizens of the British Empire.
Though they cooperated closely with the colonial government, as well
as representatives from British leprosy charities, Kumi’s missionaries had
a great deal of autonomy in this endeavour.3 While the CMS was one of
the biggest missions in Britain, its global presence meant that few of its
staff were available for rural missions like Kumi’s. Until the 1950s, the
Kumi Children’s Leper Home – along with a counterpart adult settle-
ment nearby – was run by two missionaries, usually two female nurses.
Kumi’s missionaries perceived emotion as a means and an end in the
physical and mental improvement of their child leprosy patients. They
expected that life at the Kumi Children’s Leper Home would engender
certain emotions in their child leprosy patients. Happiness, for example,
was both an aim and an expectation, essential to healing children of
their leprosy and to the experience of a real childhood, which the home
purported to provide. Other emotions, like loyalty, courage and nation-
alism, were expected to develop in conjunction with specific character
traits that the missionaries encouraged in order to create healthy citi-
zens of the British Empire. Kumi’s missionaries employed a wide range
of tactics in an attempt to create these emotions, from recreational activ-
ities meant to instil happiness, to drill exercises intended to promote
British imperial pride, to a strict daily timetable meant to encourage
respect and loyalty. These tactics were varied in their success and Kumi’s
child patients responded to the missionaries’ emotional agendas in a
variety of ways, sometimes embracing or rejecting certain parts, while
at other times performing emotions of happiness, enthusiasm, service
and obedience, which were often ambiguously felt, in order to win the
missionaries’ favour and thus an opportunity for further education and
economic advancement.

Happiness, joy and hope

Happiness, joy and hope were emotions that the missionaries of the
Kumi Children’s Leper Home expected all of its child patients to feel,
even if its civilizing mission was unsuccessful in promoting emo-
tions such as love, loyalty and respect towards the mission and the
broader British Empire. The goal of the home was to save children from
leprosy and from their dangerous parents, and, in so doing, to provide
them with real childhoods and healthy futures as civilized, Christian
58 Teaching, Learning and Adapting Emotions in Uganda

adults. The experience of happiness was pivotal both to healing and

to childhood, and missionaries at Kumi endeavoured to promote this
happiness through activities, learning and the creation of a ‘home-like’
atmosphere.
Of equal importance to saving children from leprosy was saving chil-
dren from the dangerous influence of their ‘primitive’ parents and
giving them a real and happy childhood. CMS missionaries blamed par-
ents for exposing their children to leprosy, failing to pursue effective
treatment for the disease and exposing them to the ‘evil living’ of their
‘backward’ lifestyles.4 Of course, families were not so irresponsible as the
missionaries believed. The Iteso, the ethnic group from whom most of
the earliest child patients at Kumi were drawn, did not believe leprosy
to be a distinct, single disease. They categorized leprosy as several differ-
ent ailments, depending upon its visible symptoms, and treated those
ailments accordingly.5 Children were certainly a very important part of
Iteso households; apart from any affective ties to their kin, children were
valuable sources of labour and thus wealth. The labour requirements of
colonialism, in particular cotton cash cropping, directed men’s labour
away from the homestead, which increased the value of – and neces-
sity for – a child’s labour for the household economy.6 Girls, whose
labour as a woman was appropriated through bride wealth payments
from a groom to her family upon marriage, were perceived as an espe-
cially valuable source of wealth, and in the pre-colonial period, women
and children were the focus of raids between rival groups in the Teso
region.7 In fact, the potential increase in the value of a child’s labour
was the primary reason that families sent their children to a leprosy
settlement because of the education and vocational training that chil-
dren received there. But it was not the labour of Iteso children to which
Kumi’s missionaries objected. In fact, they appropriated that labour for
the duration of a child’s stay in the settlement and, in the case of
women who married from the settlement, they even appropriated bride
wealth payments.8 Nor did they question parents’ love of their children.
As nurse Margaret Laing, who was in charge of Kumi from 1932 to 1948,
wrote, it ‘is of great importance to us, and . . . makes this work easier
[that] they show that they are willing to trust us with their children.
You will understand of course that it is not easy for these people to give
up their children, for they have a great love for them’.9 Rather, the mis-
sionaries were concerned with the ignorance of parents, and the idea
that child leprosy patients who remained with their families would suf-
fer ‘not only a slow rottening of the body from the dread disease, but
also mental and perhaps spiritual decay’.10
 Kathleen Vongsathorn 59

The desire to save children from their supposedly degenerate parents,

taking them in as miserable, suffering creatures and shaping them into
joyful children, was shared by British humanitarians worldwide, who
sought to give poor children a ‘proper childhood’. As the voluntary
impulse merged with the creation of a new ideal for a happy and care-
free childhood in the nineteenth century, British philanthropists looked
first to the poor children who filled the streets of industrial cities. They
were frequently shocked by the difference between the ideal childhood
experienced by middle- and upper-class children, and the perceived
absence of childhood experienced by the children of the urban poor.11
Across Europe and the colonies, philanthropists created institutions
where children could be housed, taught, and given a happy and produc-
tive childhood. They believed that a nurturing, domestic environment
within these institutions would be able to regenerate the childlike inno-
cence that had been lost through hard living and the improper care of
parents.12
In Uganda, the Kumi Children’s Leper Home was a part of this philan-
thropic desire to bestow a childhood upon children, and happiness was
a key ingredient in this new childhood. The CMS missionaries wrote
frequently of the poor physical and mental state of new patients, often
linking these symptoms to an absence of childhood. For example, nurse
Adelaide Kent, who worked with Miss Laing at Kumi from 1937 to 1948,
described ‘a very bad case’, a boy aged 12, as ‘looking more like an old
man than a boy’.13 Miraculous was the transformation that occurred
when one of the dressers took him in hand and ‘soon he returned with
face shining and clad in clean garments, ready for examination and
treatment, and looking like the boy he really was. That same evening
this boy was found on the football field, and looking as happy and at
home as if he had been with us for years’.14 Time in the settlement sup-
posedly transformed children’s aged appearance and demeanours into
happiness: ‘That sad, unchildlike look with which they came gives place
to a cheery smile, and once more they look like children.’15
This idea of the transformation of children, from miserable and sick to
happy and healthy, was common to children’s philanthropy in Europe,
and the missionaries at Kumi consciously patterned themselves after
this model. Although the photographs were never published, Miss Laing
transposed ‘before’ and ‘after’ photos of child patients on several pages
of her album (see Figure 4.1). On this page, notice this girl’s transition
from a sad, shadowed expression to a smile; from a waistcloth tied up
with string to an appropriately modest, English-styled dress; and from
the protruding belly evidencing hunger to a covered figure. This trend of
60 Teaching, Learning and Adapting Emotions in Uganda

Figure 4.1 Page from the photograph album of Margaret Laing, Cadbury
Research Library: Special Collections, University of Birmingham, CMS/ACC/356/
Z1; permission of Church Missionary Society Archives

‘before’ and ‘after’ figures was popularized by children’s charities in late

nineteenth-century England, and even though the photographs were
never published, their placement indicates that the nurse who ran Kumi
for 16 years conceived of the home and its transformative possibilities
in a manner similar to children’s institutions at home in Britain.16
Not only did patients look more like children after several months
within the leprosy settlement, they supposedly began to act and feel dif-
ferently, as children should: ‘They come in ragged, dirty, some without
clothing at all, some with many ulcers, [but with] clean surroundings,
they are entirely different. It is good to see them learn to laugh and
play as only children can. It is good to see expressions of unhappi-
ness disappear from their faces.’17 In letters written back to their donors
in Britain, Kumi’s missionaries wrote about their efforts to ensure that
‘these children [are], as children should be, full of joy and happiness’.18
This happiness was in spite of any debilitating or painful symptoms that
 Kathleen Vongsathorn 61

leprosy might cause them: ‘Hundreds of little children, all afflicted with
the worst of all diseases, some terribly disfigured, with swollen ugly faces
and rotted limbs, yet all as happy as children can be and ought to be.’19
The happiness of leprosy sufferers who were being treated in a leprosy
settlement was a common theme in the writings of all of Uganda’s
leprosy missionaries, but in children it was especially pervasive and was
tied to the idea that this happiness was the right of childhood and the
gift of the mission.20 There is no evidence – apart from the word of a
handful of missionaries intent on creating a transformative experience
for children at Kumi – that these children actually were unhappy upon
entering the home, but there is certainly evidence to suggest that the
children at Kumi more closely resembled civilized, British children than
they had upon entry.
Happiness was not only an end in the process of transforming these
sick, suffering and ‘primitive’ children into healthy beacons of civi-
lization, but also a means. Missionaries, backed up by expert medical
opinion, believed that happiness was integral to the healing process.21
Medical treatment for leprosy was available in the form of chaul-
moogra oil injections, but the efficacy of these injections was unclear,
and Kumi’s missionaries pursued the health of their child patients by
choosing to ‘concentrate chiefly upon a good diet, cheerful environ-
ment, fresh air, good sanitation, [and] exercises’.22 These areas were also
emphasized by philanthropists attempting to transform poor, sickly,
urban British waifs into healthy children, though the way in which
Kumi’s missionaries pursued these goals was particular to their perceived
relationship with the disease of leprosy and to the environment in and
resources with which they were operating. While the link between hap-
piness and healing was by no means uncommon in this period, the link
between leprosy and joy was particularly strong.
For most of the colonial period – and, indeed, for millennia before –
leprosy was a chronic and incurable disease, and missionaries thus
assumed that the occasionally disfiguring and debilitating symptoms of
leprosy would lead to stigma, suffering and a sense of hopelessness in all
leprosy patients. To counteract that suffering, patients needed joy, and
to counteract hopelessness, patients needed a reason to hope. So mis-
sionaries drew on medieval conceptions of the ‘leper saint’: individuals
who received special compensation from God for their suffering in life.
In the context of medieval Catholicism, this meant that leprosy sufferers
would ascend straight to Heaven after death without experiencing Pur-
gatory. In the context of the Anglican mission in Uganda, this meant
that leprosy patients could be brought out of their suffering through
62 Teaching, Learning and Adapting Emotions in Uganda

their experience of Christianity and the knowledge of their salvation.

As one CMS missionary wrote of another leprosy settlement in Uganda:

Though terribly pathetic, it is a wonderful experience to see how

some of these suffering lepers hold tight to their faith in the Lord
Jesus through their ghastly agony, and the eyes fast becoming sight-
less will lift up with joy at His name. The terrible neuritic leprous pain
is much more resistant to sedatives than any other form of suffering
I have met. Yet if the lepers are Christian they can take it. An atheist
writer came to the Island, and when he left he said: ‘For the first time
I have seen some real reason for religion.’ Truly they are being made
perfect through suffering.23

Joy was brought to the leprosy patient through their knowledge of

Christ, and CMS missionaries often wrote of how happy leprosy suffer-
ers were in their Christianity, going so far as to suggest they were lucky
to have leprosy because, as some patients said, ‘they can thank God for
their leprosy because in it they have found Christ’ and, in Christ, joy
and hope.24
Kumi’s missionaries employed a variety of strategies in order to
encourage happiness among their child patients. Christianity was one
such strategy:

The children’s leper home – although it may sound repulsive to

some – is full of joyous work. Perhaps it is because we have the real-
ization of the presence of Christ in the home. There certainly is a
real spirit of love and happiness among the children, in spite of their
rather loathsome disease. A happier band of youngsters it would be
difficult to find anywhere.25

Child leprosy patients converted to Christianity in far greater num-

bers than their adult counterparts, and the missionaries did worry that
‘although a great keenness is shown, one feels if anything, they are too
eager, little grasping the very big step they are taking’.26 But Christianity
was consistently linked to the emotions of joy, love and happiness, and
it was at the root of the mission’s endeavours to create happy, civilized
and healthy children.
Activity was equally essential to promoting happiness among Kumi’s
child patients, for missionaries believed that enjoyment of planned
activities would increase the children’s happiness and would distract
them from sadness over their ill health or separation from family. They
 Kathleen Vongsathorn 63

endeavoured to make their child patients ‘ideally happy – land culti-

vation – school – games etc never leaving a moment for discontent’.27
In order to avoid the ‘brooding and depression’ that were assumed to
accompany leprosy and to keep ailing bodies fit, missionaries occupied
children with ‘exercises’, such as drill, and work, such as cultivation,
which were respectively convenient sources of imperial regimentation
and food.28 They believed a ‘happy school life’, work and a wide vari-
ety of games, including elements of both British and ‘native’ customs,
were the path to the ‘ideally happy’ childhood that they wished child
leprosy patients to experience.29 They also endeavoured to create a new
family for the children within the home, with the hope of replacing
the dangerous, primitive families that the children had left behind, and
distracting them from their sadness over that separation. Kumi was:

A huge home of helpless children entirely dependent upon the care

and counsel of these two women, yet everywhere a freedom of spirit
and an eagerness to be helpful; everyone conscious of being part of a
whole; each member of the community contributing in small or large
degree to the welfare of the whole. A truly happy family, though its
numbers are so great.30

This happiness, supposedly achieved through Christianity, recreation,

schooling and the formation of new relationships, was paramount to
the success of the Kumi Children’s Leper Home, because without that
happiness, children could not be healed, moulded into civilized adults
or be justifiably separated from their parents.

Civilizing emotions

The British civilizing mission, which was such a large justification for
colonialism and missionary work, was premised upon the idea that the
British were inherently superior to the people of the tropics, and that it
was therefore their right and responsibility to promote those character
traits that defined the ideal British citizen for the benefit of their ‘prim-
itive’ colonial subjects. For the CMS missionaries at Kumi, the civilizing
mission was about moulding young leprosy patients into adults who
were Christian, educated and embodied the character traits that defined
the British, and specifically the English, as a superior nation – at least
to the extent that they believed supposedly inferior Ugandans capable.
Much like the residential charitable institutions in Britain that strove to
remake poor children by separating them from their parents and placing
64 Teaching, Learning and Adapting Emotions in Uganda

them in a new domestic environment, the CMS missionaries used Kumi

to try to create ‘healthy and useful citizens’ of empire, as British in char-
acter as possible, but prepared to undertake their subordinate imperial
status.31 Key to the development and expression of these character traits
were emotions such as love, loyalty, courage, fortitude and nationalism.
Service and, by extension, love were particularly strongly emphasized
by the missionary ladies at Kumi, who deemed it such a positive charac-
teristic that they often linked it to descriptions of intelligence.32 One
young woman, Priscilla, who spent five years in treatment at Kumi
before being released symptom-free and going to Mengo to train in the
CMS nursing school, was reported to be ‘exceptionally good, especially
in her thought for others. And is this not the spirit which we are aim-
ing at, thinking for and serving those in need?’33 Priscilla’s story is one
example of many in which the missionaries chose one young man or
woman, a former child patient, who early showed ‘a real desire to love
and serve Jesus’ and followed a vocational path that would allow her
to express that love through service to others.34 The missionaries also
wrote occasionally of large groups of children displaying their devotion
through a ‘labour of love’: usually carrying stones and bricks for a new
building.35 An ‘eagerness to be helpful’ was often mentioned and lauded,
as were patients’ endeavours to use the education and training that they
had acquired in the settlement for the sake of other leprosy patients.36
The greater the personal sacrifice of the patient, the greater the praise
that the missionaries heaped upon them. For example, Miss Laing was
‘filled with admiration’ for the first Kumi girls who stepped forward
to train for dispensary work, overcoming the ridicule of their peers in
their desire to serve others.37 She specified that: ‘It is the Christians who
volunteer, and probably it is because they are Christians that they are
prepared to help their suffering neighbours.’38
The demonstrations of love encouraged or required by Kumi’s mis-
sionaries could also link the children of Kumi to the British Empire in
a far more tangible way: through charitable donations. However small
their own earnings, the children were encouraged to think of those who
were suffering in other parts of the Empire. For the leprosy patients of
the Lui settlement in Sudan: ‘The children had been earning money by
doing little tasks, and even the smallest had 2 cents . . . ready to put into
the collection plate.’39 On this occasion, the children would have been
forewarned that a charitable collection would take place and encour-
aged to bring some of their money with them to the prayer service.
In nineteenth-century Britain children became increasingly involved
in charity work and, in pushing the children of Kumi to donate to
 Kathleen Vongsathorn 65

charitable causes, the lady missionaries were thinking of the chil-

dren in Britain who raised so much money for missionary societies in
particular.40 Religious philanthropy was an established means of emo-
tionally influencing children, and charity was a desirable attribute for
the civilized ‘little Britons’ at Kumi.41
The Boy Scout and Girl Guide movements were also perceived as par-
ticularly effective means of encouraging the emotion and practice of
love for others at Kumi.42 During the Second World War, troop lead-
ers told their Scouts and Guides about the trials faced by children in
England, and the Kumi children correspondingly fundraised for their
distressed English counterparts:

These invalid Guides are very keen, not only on the actual guide work
but in carrying out the real principle of all guiding, that of helping
other people not only in this Home amongst their fellow sufferers,
but in other parts of the world.
These Guides, too, are trying to do their share to help in the
War Effort. They have cultivated their Cotton Patch, the proceeds
of which has [sic] been given to the War Fund.43

When Lady Baden-Powell visited these girls, they presented her ‘with a
cheque for Shs. 30/- which they had earned entirely themselves. And at
their own request, the money was to be used for distressed Guides in
England. Quite a number of these Guides are without fingers or toes’.44
The Guides were also active in service to other causes, for example, rais-
ing money for Lord Baden-Powell’s Memorial Fund on Poppy Day and
doing community work for Red Cross Day.45 Love was thus a useful emo-
tion for the missionaries to cultivate, in that it encouraged increased
labour, for the settlement and for others, and connected Kumi’s chil-
dren to other parts of the British Empire. It was also an emotion that
the missionaries felt for the children that they cared for, and one that
was integral to the ultimate goal that they held for themselves and the
children: to follow in Christ’s footsteps.46
Respect and loyalty also ranked high on the missionaries’ emotional
agenda for their child leprosy patients. Obedience, unlike love and
service, was mentioned relatively rarely by Kumi’s missionaries and it
might therefore be fair to assume that it was the characteristic that
they were least successful in teaching. On rare occasions, however,
the missionaries would write of how ‘orderly’ the children were at
church services, and outside visitors would comment on the ‘marvellous
discipline’ of the children at Kumi.47 The Guide and Scout movements
66 Teaching, Learning and Adapting Emotions in Uganda

were a supplement to endeavours to instil respect for authority in the

child leprosy patients of Kumi; the Scout Law called specifically for
boys to be loyal and obey.48 This discipline and loyalty were not only a
demonstration of commitment to Christianity, the Scouting or Guiding
movement and the authority of the missionaries within the settlement,
but also a preparation for adult life as a citizen in the British Empire.49
Obedience was taken very seriously by the colonial government in
Uganda. When the CMS applied for permission for two young men,
former Kumi patients, to go for teacher training, a government medical
officer recommended against one of the boys because he was ‘not very
intelligent’ and was ‘said to be disobedient’.50 In attempting to prepare
the children for lives as subordinates in the British Empire, the mission-
aries endeavoured to instil in them loyalty and respect for the authority
of civilized British and Ugandans.51
When directed through appropriate avenues, enthusiasm, keenness
and eagerness were emotions that were particularly valued by Kumi’s
missionaries. The best avenue through which child patients could direct
their enthusiasm was work. When Dr Wheate, who replaced Miss Laing
as head of the settlement in 1949, wrote of the mission’s success in sav-
ing and educating a boy who had nearly died of leprosy, his highest
praise was: ‘When he is sent on an errand he runs.’52 The same doctor
wrote of a teenage patient who wanted to learn the carpentry trade that
‘wild horses would not drag him from the carpentry shop’.53 This praise
was consistent with the notion common in child welfare institutions in
Britain that work and perseverance were a child’s best assets in the strug-
gle to avoid the fate of his or her indigent parents.54 Given the similarity
in some British middle-class views towards the lower classes in Britain
and the colonial subjects in the Empire that both the poor and the ‘sav-
ages’ were lazy, backwards and a danger to their innocent children, it is
unsurprising that Kumi’s missionaries saw a solution in industriousness
and dedication, and made a virtue of them.55
Kumi was a school as well as a hospital, and since the missionaries
aimed to educate children for vocational work or for more ‘intellec-
tual’ professions such as teaching and nursing, they particularly valued a
keenness for learning. Kumi’s missionaries hoped that children would be
‘keen to learn something which will help them as they grow up’, which
to their minds included an emphasis on handwork and vocational train-
ing.56 Children appear to have valued a different set of skills more
highly, as missionary reports of their interest in learning spoke more
often of children as ‘all keen to learn to write and read more than any-
thing else’.57 When the development of a ‘keen mind’ was accompanied
 Kathleen Vongsathorn 67

by a responsible and Christian character, however, the CMS valued the

combination enough to sponsor young men and women for secondary
and even higher education outside the settlement after their treatment
was finished.58
Kumi’s missionaries broadly encouraged and praised enthusiasm,
beyond a keenness for learning and work. A keenness for games con-
firmed the missionaries’ expectations that children were experiencing
happy childhoods in the settlement, while an ‘eagerness to be helpful’
affirmed their dual goals of evangelization and civilization.59 A ded-
ication to hygiene, which was even ascribed to toddlers, confirmed
that children were receiving the missionaries’ lessons. As one mission-
ary wrote of a one-year-old girl: ‘Sabiti is evidently benefitting by the
hygiene taught, for her whole thought was centred on waving the flies
off the bottle which had been prepared and brought to the Chapel.’60
An enthusiasm for a smart appearance and a keen interest in improv-
ing one’s health were further evidence of the supposedly successful
reception of the missionaries’ civilizing agenda.
Courage and fortitude were also seen as desirable characteristics in
Christians and citizens of the British Empire. The stoic endurance of
suffering was particularly admired by the missionaries at Kumi:

Each child undergoes a regular course of treatment – and Tuesday

morning alas! Is [illegible] a day of dread – HYPODERMIC INJEC-
TIONS !!! – To give 148 takes no little time, and I must confess I am
quite as thankful as the children when this is all over. They are excep-
tionally good – absolute little ‘Britons’ if one may use this term of our
small African kiddies!61

Miss Laing also wrote: ‘They have one black day in the week, and
that is injection day, but some of them are very brave and really keen
to get better, for I think they are beginning to realize all that this
treatment means to them.’62 The high praise of comparing Ugandan
children to ‘little Britons’ was about more than bravery; it also cele-
brated obedience in the face of suffering and a growing awareness of the
value of biomedicine. ‘Crippled’ Girl Guides were especially likely to
be recommended for the Fortitude Badge on the basis of their ‘courage
and perseverance and cheerful outlook, which . . . has been an encour-
agement . . . to all the children in the Home’.63 It might even be said
that the attempt to be cheerful was perceived as a virtue. A visitor
to Kumi reported that: ‘The Kumi Leper Colony, Uganda, is one of
the brightest and yet the saddest of places. Sad because of the terrible
68 Teaching, Learning and Adapting Emotions in Uganda

disease. Bright because everyone is trying to be cheerful – even the worst

cases.’64
Becoming a citizen of the British Empire was not just about the devel-
opment of certain character traits, but also about feeling British imperial
pride and embracing the imperial mentality.65 Like children in Britain,
the children of Kumi performed imperialism through physical activi-
ties that expressed the ideologies of British nationalism, for example,
through drill, singing the national anthem and the raising of the British
flag.66 In Britain, flag-raising ceremonies and drills were meant to incul-
cate a sense of national pride and responsibility in children. Many
schools incorporated symbols of empire or nationalism into drill for-
mations, like children making up a living Union Jack or a Christian
crucifix.67 At Kumi, too, the children were asked to put on displays of
imperial pride on special occasions such as Empire Day, a war remem-
brance ceremony or the visit of a distinguished colonial officer. Another
example was the organization of an exhibition of leprosy patients’
handwork in 1947, to which the lady missionaries invited local chiefs
and CMS missionaries from around the diocese to view the handwork
and attend the prize-giving ceremony:

As they [guests] were seated on the verandah at the back of the

Dispensary, strains of a band as yet unseen were heard. Soon from
behind the Dormitories appeared the Scouts, Guides, and Rangers,
who marched smartly up the centre of the compound, and halted at
the Flag Staff and then all sang the National Anthem in English. Then
from the hidden corners out rushed the Brownies and Cubs, and
made their Grand Salute. It was a very pretty and colourful sight. The
Scouts and Cubs in their Khaki suits and yellow scarves, the Guides
in a very pretty blue uniform with green and red ties, the Rangers in
a darker blue with red scarves, and the Brownies in their little brown
uniforms with bright yellow ties.68

On such occasions, the bodies of Kumi’s child leprosy patients were

displayed as a sign of the intentions and successes of the missionar-
ies’ civilizing mission.69 Kumi’s children were performing the ideology
of empire: a Union Jack was on the flagstaff, Scouts and Guides car-
ried their flags and wore the same uniforms worn by children around
the world, a band played and ‘God Save the King’ was sung in English,
though most of the children did not know the language.
Drill was also a part of the Kumi students’ daily timetable and was one
of the only classes that the missionaries taught themselves. Drill was the
 Kathleen Vongsathorn 69

marching of students into specific formations, with the accompaniment

of dance, folk or military music. Its emphasis on physical repetition
and conformity was meant to encourage discipline, physical fitness and
devotion to the Empire, and across Britain it was regarded as an impor-
tant tool for building children’s national character and moulding them
into citizens of empire.70 Displays of drill, or physical exercise, were also
put on for special occasions, and Scouts and Guides in particular were
taught a variety of formations with which they could demonstrate their
devotion to the Empire.71
From all their descriptions of the young leprosy patients at Kumi, it is
evident that the settlement’s missionaries endeavoured to promote cer-
tain characteristics and emotions in the children: the qualities of good
Christians and Britons, who bore suffering with fortitude, served oth-
ers and remained steadfast in faith, and were enthusiastic to learn more
of the trades and values that civilization had to offer. Less frequently
recorded but equally powerful were the missionaries’ desires to deter
emotions that they perceived of as counter-productive.

Children’s responses

The child leprosy patients at the colonial Kumi Children’s Leper Home
have left no remaining written accounts of their experiences at the
home, and outside of contemporary interviews with several former child
patients, it is impossible to gain firsthand knowledge of the way in
which children experienced emotions there. The extensive missionary
documentation of life in the settlement, however, points to a variety
of emotions felt by the child residents, both in accordance to and in
deviance from the emotional experiences that missionaries expected.
Taking missionaries at their word, all of the children at Kumi were
truly happy, but looking beyond mission publications, it is evident that
children at the settlement experienced both happiness and unhappi-
ness. Some children undoubtedly were happy at Kumi, with all the
recreational, educational and religious opportunities available. When
told that they were ready to be released symptom-free, some chil-
dren wept and asked if they could return to the settlement if they
were unhappy at home.72 On more than one occasion, Margaret Laing
obstructed parents who came to collect their children from the settle-
ment, as in one case where ‘the Boy Paulo cried so bitterly at the thought
of going back to Toroma, that I have had to keep him a little longer’.73
It is impossible to know why this boy was unhappy at the thought of
going home. Perhaps he was happy at Kumi, with the entertainment,
70 Teaching, Learning and Adapting Emotions in Uganda

camaraderie and schooling available. Perhaps he had become a sincere

Christian and faced the unhappy prospect of returning home to a com-
munity as yet untouched by Christian mission.74 Perhaps he wanted
to continue with school or perhaps he had been unhappy at his home
before entering the settlement years before. Whatever the reason, it is
evident that there were many causes for happiness at Kumi. Equally,
however, there were causes for unhappiness.
Chief among the causes of unhappiness was separation from family,
as exemplified by one child, when asked on his deathbed what he would
like most, answering: ‘Sister I want to go home, just go home and see
my people.’75 In these instances, love was an emotion missionaries dis-
couraged. If children were dying, missionaries did write to their relatives
with an invitation to visit, but in general they did their best to dis-
place relationships between children and their families, and lamented
the necessity of allowing children to go home to visit their parents:
‘Some of those who have come back . . . are very much the worse for their
“leave”, as they return dull looking and covered with sores, very differ-
ent to the bright, clean little creatures who went out. We cannot refuse
this leave, but it is a great pity that we cannot.’76 Some other causes of
unhappiness were a dislike of school and the enforced routine that the
children had to live under, disliking the painful injections they received
as medical treatment, and forcing girls to eat eggs, which were culturally
taboo for women.77 The latter is another example of the kind of emotion
missionaries were trying to redirect: they hoped to transform respect
for ‘native customs’ into respect for Christianity and British authority.
They were not necessarily successful in this endeavour, however, as chil-
dren acted out their unhappiness in a variety of ways, whether through
‘bad behaviour’ such as lying, stealing or evading class, or through run-
ning away from the settlement, which about one in 50 children did
annually.78
Whatever emotions Kumi’s child patients may actually have felt, some
certainly learned what emotions the missionaries expected of them
and performed them accordingly. Children were adept at manipulating
the discourse of expected emotions and behaviour that the missionar-
ies extolled, for example, by frequently offering such explanations for
wrongdoing as ‘Satan did enter my heart and take hold of me, and
I am sorry’.79 Thinking towards longer-term advantage, responsibility
and dependability were prerequisites to any kind of advance within the
hierarchy of the settlement, and the missionaries saw them as traits that
could only be learned by a minority of Kumi’s young patients. Particu-
larly responsible and intelligent young men and women were selected
 Kathleen Vongsathorn 71

to be the heads of children’s dormitories and to undertake specialized

training that would give them greater abilities and status within the
settlement. Training as a nurse, midwife or teacher required a high stan-
dard of behaviour as the mission had to find the resources to send these
young men and women away from Kumi for schooling. If they ever
failed to uphold these standards, their education was terminated:

I have 2 leper girls training as leper nurses. They were both doing
extremely well, but one, I am sorry to say, has not fulfilled our
expectations, so another is chosed [sic] to take her place. Zerida the
remaining helper is doing a really good work and is showing an
intelligent interest amongst the sick girls.80

Reading between the lines, it seems most likely that the errant
trainee nurse proved to be undependable in maintaining the behaviour
expected of a civilized Christian. But if children demonstrated the emo-
tions of love, keenness, respect, loyalty, obedience, happiness and faith,
then they had an opportunity for economic advancement that they
most likely would not have had otherwise, as the vast majority of child
patients came from families too poor to afford even the cheapest of pri-
mary schooling. It is difficult to know the extent to which children felt
the emotions that they were performing. Some may have wholeheart-
edly embraced these emotions, and certainly many went on to become
respected members of the Anglican Church. One former patient was
even appointed by the government as a chief. Others, perhaps includ-
ing these exemplars of Kumi’s civilizing graces, would have experienced
conflicting emotions. One former child patient expressed resentment
towards Miss Laing for damaging her relationship with her relatives,
while in the same interview she expressed great pride in her education
and the responsibilities that she discharged as a nursing assistant, and a
love for Miss Laing who ‘became like her mother’.81 What is certain,
however, is that children did not always experience emotion in the
ways that the missionaries hoped and wanted, that they were capable
of enacting emotions that they did not necessarily feel, and that those
emotions that they did feel were often ambiguous or conflicted.

Conclusion

The Kumi Children’s Leper Home was an unusual institution, in that its
existence was entirely premised upon the salvation of a group of peo-
ple perceived by philanthropists as particularly vulnerable: child leprosy
72 Teaching, Learning and Adapting Emotions in Uganda

patients. Missionaries, and their supporters in Britain, hoped to take

advantage of the supposed malleability of these children in order to
transform them into healthy, civilized, Christian citizens of the British
Empire. In pursuing the salvation and transformation of these chil-
dren, emotions were an important part of the missionaries’ agenda.
Happiness, joy and faith were both a means to improving the health
of these children and a means through which to bestow upon these
children a real childhood, which justified the mission in separating
them from their parents and increased the attractiveness of the cause
to donors. Emotions such as respect, loyalty, love, service and keenness
were central to the mission’s civilizing agenda, and the missionaries also
attempted to engender these emotions among their child patients in
order to promote their vision of character growth.
The CMS missionaries at Kumi were by no means unique in believing
that these emotions were the foundation of a civilized, Christian char-
acter. As Hugh Morrison discusses in Chapter 5, preachers in other parts
of the British Empire saw emotions such as happiness, joy, faithfulness
and love as an expression of a Protestant faith grounded in the New
Testament. Philanthropists, administrators and missionaries believed in
emotions as a transformative force for delinquent or unhealthy chil-
dren, whether street waifs in Britain, students in missionary boarding
schools across Africa or juvenile delinquents in the Dutch East Indies.82
While Kumi was an unusual institution, the missionaries’ vision for the
emotional life and future of their child residents was shared.
The children at Kumi reacted very differently from the missionaries’
emotional agendas; some felt happiness, love and loyalty to Christianity
and the missionaries, some felt sadness and alienation, and many were
ambiguous about their experience of these often conflicting emotions.83
However, whatever they felt, many children were able to take advan-
tage of their time in the settlement, demonstrating what missionaries
expected of them in order to pursue further education and define their
own place as the newest generation of civilized, Christian Ugandans.

Notes
1. Rod Edmond, Leprosy and Empire: A Medical and Cultural History (Cambridge
University Press, 2006); Kathleen Vongsathorn, ‘Gnawing Pains, Festering
Ulcers, and Nightmare Suffering: Selling Leprosy as a Humanitarian Cause
in the British Empire, c. 1890–1960’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth
History 40(5) (2012), 863–878.
2. Leonard Rogers and Ernest Muir, Leprosy, 3rd edn (Bristol: J. Wright & Sons,
1946), 98–100.
 Kathleen Vongsathorn 73

3. Kathleen Vongsathorn, ‘“First and Foremost the Evangelist”? Mission and

Government Priorities for the Treatment of Leprosy in Uganda, 1927–48’,
Journal of Eastern African Studies 6(3) (2012), 544–560.
4. J.E.H., ‘Is it Nothing to You?’, Mission Hospital 33(373) (February 1929), 42;
Leprosy Mission Archives, Brentford, UK, ‘Letter from E.B. Bull to Anderson,
Secretary, Mission to Lepers, 17 July 1934’, 119/4.
5. M. Mallinga, ‘Attitudes Towards Leprosy in Kumi District’ (BA dissertation,
Makerere University, 1980), 38–39.
6. Joan Vincent, Teso in Transformation: The Political Economy of Peasant and
Class in Eastern Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 230.
7. Vincent, Teso in Transformation, 68, 93.
8. Interview with Sicola (7 July 2010).
9. Margaret Laing, ‘Children’s Leper Home’, Mission Hospital 40(464) (Septem-
ber 1936), 245. Laing will be referred to alternately as Lang according to her
own preference in the sources.
10. University of Birmingham Special Collections, Adelaide Kent (1938)
CMS/G3/AL.
11. Hugh Cunningham, Children and Childhood in Western Society since 1500
(London: Longman, 1995), 136.
12. University of Birmingham Special Collections, Adelaide Kent (1938)
CMS/G3/AL.
13. Adelaide Kent, ‘Leper Children’s Home’, Mission Hospital 42(486) (July 1938),
162.
14. Kent, ‘Leper Children’s Home’, 162.
15. Kent, ‘Leper Children’s Home’, 162.
16. Lydia Murdoch, Imagined Orphans: Poor Families, Child Welfare, and Contested
Citizenship in London (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2006), 36–37;
Monica Flegel, ‘Changing Faces: The NSPCC and the Use of Photography in
the Construction of Cruelty to Children’, Victorian Periodicals Review 39(1)
(2006), 1–20.
17. Leprosy Mission Archives, ‘Letter from M. Laing, April 1935’, 119/4.
18. Margaret Lang, ‘Notes from the Children’s Leper School’, Mission Hospital
37(420) (January 1933), 7.
19. Gertrude Hopkins, ‘Leper Work at Kumi and Ongino’ (1945), 119/5, Leprosy
Mission Archives.
20. Darrin M. McMahon, Happiness: A History (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press,
2006), 288; Peter N. Stearns, ‘Defining Happy Childhoods: Assessing a Recent
Change’, Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 3(2) (2010), 165–186.
21. ‘The Fight against Leprosy’, British Medical Journal 1(3981) (April 1937), 864.
22. Laing, ‘Children’s Leper Home’, 245.
23. University of Birmingham Special Collections, Janet Metcalf (1947)
CMS/G3/AL.
24. University of Birmingham Special Collections, Esther Sharp (1946)
CMS/G3/AL.
25. Lang, ‘Notes from the Children’s Leper School’, 7.
26. University of Birmingham Special Collections, Marjorie Atkinson (1931)
CMS/G3/AL.
27. Leprosy Mission Archives, ‘Letter from M. Laing, April 1935’, 119/4.
28. Rogers and Muir, Leprosy, 247.
74 Teaching, Learning and Adapting Emotions in Uganda

29. Lang, ‘Notes from the Children’s Leper School’, 7.

30. Gertrude Hopkins, ‘A Kenya Picture’, BELRA Quarterly (April 1946), 26–27.
31. Franciscan Missionary Sisters for Africa, Dundalk, Ireland (FMSA), e. Nyenga,
Dr. Edward Muir, ‘Report on Uganda’ (1938); Murdoch, Imagined Orphans,
41–42; Lionel Rose, Erosion of Childhood: Child Oppression in Britain 1860–
1918 (London: Routledge, 1991), 134.
32. Leprosy Mission Archives, ‘Letter from M. Laing, 12 March 1934’, 119/4;
Leprosy Mission Archives, ‘Letter from M. Laing, April 1935’, 119/4.
33. University of Birmingham Special Collections, ‘Letter from M. Laing, January
1942’, CMS/G3/A10/m1A.
34. Laing, ‘Children’s Leper Home’, 244.
35. Lang, ‘Notes from the Children’s Leper School’, 7.
36. Hopkins, ‘A Kenya Picture’, 27; Leprosy Mission Archives, ‘Letter from
M. Laing, April 1935’, 119/4.
37. Laing, ‘Children’s Leper Home’, 246.
38. ‘“The Healing of His Seamless Dress”: Annual Report Number’, Mission
Hospital 41(476) (September 1937), 211.
39. Leprosy Mission Archives, ‘Dedication of the Chapel at the Leper Children’s
Home’ (1935), 119/4.
40. F[rank] K. Prochaska, ‘Little Vessels: Children in the Nineteenth-Century
English Missionary Movement’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History
6(2) (1978), 103–118, here 103.
41. Jane Haggis and Margaret Allen, ‘Imperial Emotions: Affective Commu-
nities of Mission in British Protestant Women’s Missionary Publications
c1880–1920’, Journal of Social History 41(3) (2008), 691–716, here 709; Uni-
versity of Birmingham Special Collections, Marjorie Atkinson (1931–1932)
CMS/G3/AL.
42. Timothy H. Parsons, Race, Resistance, and the Boy Scout Movement in British
Colonial Africa (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2004), 31; Allen Warren,
‘“Mothers for the Empire”? The Girl Guides Association in Britain, 1909–
1939’, in J.A. Mangan (ed.), Making Imperial Mentalities: Socialisation and
British Imperialism (Manchester University Press, 1990), 96–109, here 106.
43. University of Birmingham Special Collections, ‘Kumi Annual Report 1941’,
CMS/G3/A10/m1A.
44. University of Birmingham Special Collections, ‘Kumi Annual Report 1941’,
CMS/G3/A10/m1A.
45. University of Birmingham Special Collections, ‘Kumi Annual Report 1944’,
CMS/G3/A10/m1A.
46. See Chapter 5.
47. Leprosy Mission Archives, ‘Dedication of the Chapel at the Leper Children’s
Home’ (1935), 119/4; Hopkins, ‘Kenya Picture’, 26.
48. Parsons, Race, Resistance, and the Boy Scout Movement, 55, 259.
49. Warren, ‘Mothers for the Empire’, 100.
50. Uganda National Archives, Entebbe, Uganda, ‘Letter from Director of Med-
ical Services to Teso Acting Chief Secretary, Campbell’ (5 November 1938),
4001.
51. Murdoch, Imagined Orphans, 63.
52. ‘Here and There’, BELRA Quarterly (July 1950), 30.
53. Harold Wheate, ‘Here and There’, BELRA Quarterly (October 1951), 76.
 Kathleen Vongsathorn 75

54. Murdoch, Imagined Orphans, 121.

55. Catherine Hall, Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imag-
ination, 1830–1867 (University of Chicago Press, 2002); Susan Thorne,
Congregational Missions and the Making of an Imperial Culture in Nineteenth-
Century England (Stanford University Press, 1999).
56. Lang, ‘Notes from the Children’s Leper School’, 7.
57. Leprosy Mission Archives, ‘Letter from M. Laing’ (April 1935), 119/4.
58. University of Birmingham Special Collections, ‘MMA Year in Review’
(1938–39), CMS/H/H5/E2.
59. Hopkins, ‘Kenya Picture’, 27.
60. Leprosy Mission Archives, ‘Dedication of the Chapel at the Leper Children’s
Home’ (1935), 119/4.
61. University of Birmingham Special Collections, Marjorie Atkinson (1930)
CMS/G3/AL.
62. Lang, ‘Notes from the Children’s Leper School’, 7.
63. University of Birmingham Special Collections, ‘Kumi Annual Report 1944’,
CMS/G3/A10/m1A.
64. ‘Leper Colony’, Empire Digest (October 1946), 9.
65. FMSA, ‘Report on Uganda’ (1938).
66. Anne Bloomfield, ‘Drill and Dance as Symbols of Imperialism’, in Mangan
(ed.), Making Imperial Mentalities, 74–95, here 74.
67. Bloomfield, ‘Drill and Dance’, 74–82.
68. Leprosy Mission Archives, ‘Exhibition of Handwork’ (August 1947), 119/5.
69. Annelieke Dirks, ‘For the Youth: Juvenile Delinquency, Colonial Civil Soci-
ety and the Late Colonial State in the Netherlands Indies, 1872–1942’ (PhD
dissertation, Leiden University, 2011), 230.
70. Bloomfield, ‘Drill and Dance’, 82.
71. Leprosy Mission Archives, ‘Letter from M. Laing’ (April 1935), 119/4;
Gertrude Hopkins, ‘Leper Work at Kumi and Ongino’.
72. Leprosy Mission Archives, ‘Letter from M. Laing’ (February 1938), 119/4.
73. Soroti District Archives, Soroti, Uganda, ‘Letter from Laing to DC Teso,
15 September 1947’, X/NAF/9.
74. Christianity was reported as a reason for staying at other leprosy settlements
in Uganda, and in other colonial contexts, conversion made reintegration
into the home community more difficult; Dirks, ‘For the Youth’, 310.
75. Hopkins, ‘Leper Work at Kumi and Ongino’.
76. Leprosy Mission Archives, ‘Letter from Wiggins to Anderson, Secretary,
Mission to Lepers’ (17 November 1931), 118/16.
77. University of Birmingham Special Collections, Ailsa Pank (1951),
CMS/G3/AL; Soroti District Archives, Soroti, Uganda, ‘Letter from Chief
Otuboi Parish to DC Teso, 26 April 1946’, X/NAF/9.
78. Leprosy Mission Archives, ‘Letter from M. Laing’ (April 1935), 119/4;
Rubaga Cathedral Archives, Kampala, Uganda, ‘Kumi Annual Report 1948’;
Murdoch, Imagined Orphans, 99.
79. Leprosy Mission Archives, ‘Letter from M. Laing, April 1935’, 119/4.
80. Leprosy Mission Archives, ‘Letter from M. Laing, April 1935’, 119/4.
81. Interview with Sicola (7 July 2010).
82. Murdoch, Imagined Orphans; Dirks, ‘For the Youth’.
83. Interview with Sicola (7 July 2010).
5
Settler Childhood, Protestant
Christianity and Emotions in
Colonial New Zealand,
1880s–1920s1
Hugh Morrison

In November 1880 Protestant settler children and their teachers

gathered in the southern New Zealand city of Dunedin to celebrate the
centenary of the British Sunday school movement. The first event was
a ‘mass meeting of children’ that incorporated hymns from Bateman’s
Hymn Book ‘sung with very great spirit by the children’, Bible readings
and a series of addresses.2 One speaker lamented that many children
thought that being a Christian meant they had to become a ‘parson’ or
‘very old men and women’. That was a mistake; to be true disciples of
Christ, they ‘must get to be like Christ was when he was at their age’.
He then observed that:

It would not be a very desirable thing that the clergymen on the

platform should go away playing leapfrog all down Princess street
[sic], but he would not think it at all a wrong thing for the boys to do
it, but would think they had enjoyed the meeting and were in really
good spirits. He wished boys and girls to understand that they had
not to give up play, but to be like Christ when He was a child. They
were not asked to be Christ’s men and women, but Christ’s boys and
girls, and they had Christ’s example as a boy, and would have His
help.3

Boys were his focus, but this was not gender-specific. In the sensibilities
of late nineteenth-century colonial society, there was a clear adult expec-
tation both that play was intrinsic to childhood and that Christ was

76
 Hugh Morrison 77

the exemplar par excellence. Jesus was qualitatively different (as a child
he allegedly ‘never thought evil and never did wrong’) and children,
like adults, were equally important because of what the adult Jesus later
did on the cross.4 Here the relationship between settler children and
religion was viewed through the mixed lenses of old-world Calvinism,
late-Bushnellian optimism about the religious nature of childhood5 and
the emerging notion of the psychological child.6 Children were more
central in the thinking of colonial church leaders, childhood religion
was construed to be both a thing of the heart and of the mind, and
play was a legitimate element of religious expression.7 With this specific
focus on childhood, cultivating the ‘right’ emotions was key to instilling
religious feeling and conduct.
This chapter focuses on the intersection of religion and emotions for
Protestant settler children and young people in one British colonial con-
text. It begins to explore this idea through a focused case study of an
urban Presbyterian parish in Dunedin. It argues that there is value in
thinking about childhood religion in terms of the emotional communi-
ties to which children belonged. These communities were characterized
by emotionally framed narratives that defined or redefined their lives
from childhood well into adulthood. This is still a relatively underex-
plored dimension of juvenile religion. Christianity was an important
influence that shaped many children’s and young people’s lives and
identities in British settler societies, albeit mixed with notions of empire,
nation and cultural superiority.
As this chapter will illustrate, childhood by the late nineteenth cen-
tury was viewed as an intrinsically unique stage of life, and therefore
was strategic in terms of spiritual and moral formation for adulthood.
Colonial childhood and religion have been approached traditionally
from an institutional angle, with most emphasis on Sunday schools
or on the many sites of missionary, religious or state education.8 This
is understandable given the wide impact of these institutions or sites
on indigenous and settler children in the nineteenth and early twen-
tieth centuries. Sunday schools across the British world, for example,
became ‘omnipresent social institutions’ embracing large numbers of
colonial and colonized children, but also working-class children in the
British metropole.9 The number of children impacted by the Sunday
school movement was impressively large by any measure. By 1911,
there were an estimated 15 million children involved in Sunday schools
across Canada and the United States.10 In New Zealand high rates
of participation plateaued in the 1910s and 1920s.11 In turn, colo-
nial Sunday schools were increasingly bolstered by a wide array of
78 Settler Childhood, Protestant Christianity and Emotions

other groups ranging from Christian Endeavour, Bible classes and the
YWCA/YMCA to uniformed groups like the Boys’ Brigade, the Boy
Scouts and the Girl Guides. As such, all of these institutions were
an important expression of globalized Protestant Christianity that was
both uniform and yet differently configured. If the New Zealand and
Canadian contexts are typical, such institutions had a major influence
on the moral, social and cultural sensibilities of children growing up in
settler contexts.12
At the same time, there were also other domains in which chil-
dren were religiously formed, enculturated and socialized. Juvenile
religious formation occurred in the home, amongst peer networks and
was influenced by a wide array of artefacts (literary and non-literary)
through an increasingly pervasive child or youth-centred consumer
culture. Childhood religion was as much a matter of experience, emo-
tion or embodiment as it was one of intellectual engagement. Children
‘imbibed feelings about religion as much as they absorbed information’
and these ‘feelings’ were remembered both positively and negatively
in later life.13 While the institutions were important, just as significant
were the ways in which religion was communicated, received, perceived
or experienced both emotionally and intellectually within and beyond
institutional boundaries.14 One way by which to gain a fuller view of
childhood and religion is to consider the intersection of these emotional
and institutional perspectives as they played out in the colonial con-
text. While the colonial religious context was not exclusively unique
(these patterns also pertain to the British metropole), children were dif-
ferentiated in colonial settings in terms of race and culture in particular.
In New Zealand there was a clear division between ‘indigenous’ and ‘set-
tler’ childhoods by the early twentieth century.15 Religious children were
further differentiated by the Protestant–Roman Catholic divide. This
chapter focuses on settler Protestant children.

Settler churches as emotional communities

St Andrew’s Church was among five new Presbyterian parishes estab-

lished in Dunedin in 1863, less than 20 years after initial settlement in
1848 and spurred on by urban and economic growth in the 1860s.16
Despite Dunedin’s particular economic circumstances, this growth was
by no means unique. Church-building absorbed the energies of all set-
tler denominations from the 1840s until at least the early twentieth
century.17 While much money, time and energy was invested in build-
ings and infrastructure, the abiding focus was on the creation of local
 Hugh Morrison 79

worshipping communities. These fledgling pioneer congregations often

required the energetic leadership of individual ministers to consolidate
further growth. In the case of St Andrew’s, the figure of the long-
serving Rev. Rutherford Waddell loomed large. Waddell was central to
St Andrew’s emphasis on home and foreign missions, and on ministry
to children and young people from 1879 to 1919.18
Settler churches like St Andrew’s were variously defined as ‘com-
munities’, primarily in terms of denomination, ethnicity, geography,
theology, gender and class, or by social and political engagement.19
Religious communities have often also been presented, or have rep-
resented themselves, as sites of circumscribed emotional expectations
and expressions.20 In these terms settler churches can also be recon-
ceptualized as theological-emotional communities, which were partially
defined by commonly accepted ‘systems of feeling’21 and by shared emo-
tional values. In the case of St Andrew’s, this is hinted at in the pages
of a promotional booklet asserting that any church’s aim was to ‘cre-
ate and feed that life which, in Scripture, is described by such words
as “Spiritual,” “Divine,” “Eternal.” . . . The Church gathers about the life
hid with Christ in God, and it exists to nourish and strengthen that life
in its own members’.22 As such, churches were communities that placed
a premium on investing in the lives of children and young people, and
in which particular modes of emotion helped to further shape children’s
religious sensibilities or attitudes. In turn, although the evidence is often
more circumstantial than direct, church life both contributed to juvenile
internalization of accepted emotional norms (both positive and nega-
tive) and afforded the opportunity to test the boundaries of acceptability
across the spectrum from child to young adult.23
While the idea of emotional communities is relatively unexplored for
the context of nineteenth- and twentieth-century colonial religion,24
it has been applied more widely in other settings (religious and non-
religious) – especially in the work of Barbara Rosenwein25 – and therefore
might be useful for the study of childhood religion. There are two issues
to consider. First, in exploring children’s and young people’s incorpo-
ration into religious emotional communities, we face the dilemma of
all historians of childhood: whose voices do we hear and how can
we properly evaluate the impact of these voices? There is merit, then,
in thinking about Rosenwein’s strategy of compiling a broadly con-
ceived ‘dossier of sources produced by the group in question’, one
which attends to different voices, to changes over time and to partic-
ularly persuasive individuals.26 For St Andrew’s, there are three types
of sources: sermons delivered to children, news sheets partly produced
80 Settler Childhood, Protestant Christianity and Emotions

by the children and young people, and material relating to a tem-

porary juvenile group named ‘Young Soldiers of the Cross’. Second,
there is a danger that a single case study will misrepresent the wider
colonial church. St Andrew’s fits the mould of mainstream colonial
Presbyterianism. Broadly evangelical and quite middle class, it reflected
the norms and expectations of the dominant white settler, British cul-
ture of the colony. St Andrew’s also represented a large segment of
colonial Protestantism in that Presbyterians were historically dominant
at both the local and national levels.27 At the same time, it was atypical
in its outreach to Chinese, Lebanese, poor white families and larrikin
young folk; nor did it represent the growing numbers of Presbyterian
Māori in the North Island.28

Emotions and community: Rutherford Waddell’s children’s

sermons

The emotional messages that children received from adults within this
religious community are instructive. Other than the Sunday school
or the Bible class, one important vehicle for these messages was the
carefully crafted and engaging weekly children’s sermon. One con-
temporary American writer noted that children’s preachers were most
effective when they had ‘a smile that children love’ or, like the Rev.
Alexander Fletcher, carried ‘into manhood all the taste and feelings of
their childhood years’.29 Head and heart were to be doubly engaged.
By the late nineteenth century, Anglo-American Protestants placed a
high value on engaging children through interesting, simple, relevant
and emotionally framed sermons. Precedents for the sermonized appeal
to children’s minds and hearts were to be found, for example, in the
eighteenth-century preaching of American Puritan Jonathan Edwards
and the English Dissenter Philip Doddridge.30 The scholarly literature is
undeservedly sparse and the importance of children’s sermons by the
twentieth century is perhaps more assumed than well documented. The
emergence of such adjunct child-focused ministries as Scripture Union
in Britain from the 1870s and their eventual reception in such colonial
contexts as New Zealand served to reinforce both the importance of a
central message (that children were important to God) and the necessity
that this message should be packaged in ways that would intrinsically
and uniquely make sense to children.31 Children’s sermons, then, sat
within a wider commitment to multi-faceted and meaningful engage-
ment with the worlds of children in an era of increasing specialization
and professionalization.
 Hugh Morrison 81

Rev. Rutherford Waddell brought to his sermons a conviction that

children and young people were important.32 Early in his career, reflect-
ing a popular notion, he told Dunedin Sunday School teachers that
childhood was the crucial stage in which to prepare youngsters for adult-
hood: ‘We know the value of teaching youth to be truthful, honest, pure.
We know that if childhood is allowed to pass without its being taught
these cardinal virtues, it is vain to begin it when character is formed.’33
Late in his career, he more simply stated his conviction that ‘children
were [Christ’s] particular care and delight while on earth’ and that ‘in
them’ adult believers ‘get nearest to Him’.34 Waddell also emphasized
that juveniles’ Christian faith should be defined and experienced in
ways that were directly relevant to their own lives. He commonly used
emotional motifs, for they afforded many points of contact with his
young listeners. He also had a deep love of nature and of both classical
and Romantic literature, which he frequently deployed in his children’s
sermons. He commonly drew on natural history, classical legends, nov-
els, historical and biblical stories, and the character of Jesus Christ. He
was also humorous and interacted with his listeners.
The range of emotional references in these sermons was quite stagger-
ing: happiness and unhappiness, joy, laughter, love, kindness, sympathy
and care, gratitude and thankfulness, fear, frowning, smiling and envy.
Waddell regularly moved from the illustration to its application for life
and finally to its connection with the Bible. In one of many sermons
on the snowdrop, he painted a verbal picture of a flower that ‘looks
on the bright side of things’ by flowering in winter, and which might
inspire children to be cheerful despite their circumstances. Its message
was ‘that in being cheerful we shall not only bring cheer to others but
we shall bring cheer to ourselves’. At home children could make a dif-
ference by deciding to be bad tempered (by ‘frowning’) or cheerful (by
‘smiling’). This was only possible if children kept the ‘company of opti-
mists’. Therefore, Jesus Christ was worth keeping company with, as ‘the
greatest optimist of all’ who ‘came into the world to die for our sins’ and
who ‘told us then to cheer up’.35
Waddell also made connections between nature and children’s lives:
sunshine was equated with exhibiting a radiant joy, cheerfulness and
happiness to others; and sweet peas were used to illustrate how a joyful
adult disposition might come from seeds sown in younger life.36 Lessons
were also drawn from common childhood experiences or from contem-
porary events. Nightmares, for example, could be terrifying experiences
or presage even darker things like death – all of which engendered fear.
Therefore, he suggested that by belonging to Christ, ‘the darkness shall
82 Settler Childhood, Protestant Christianity and Emotions

be light about you; you shall have no need to fear any darkness’. Like-
wise, the events of the First World War prompted him to talk about the
heroism of Christ and to bring comfort to children struggling with the
emotional impact of the never-ending lists of war casualties.37
‘Happiness’ emerged as a frequently occurring motif.38 This was by no
means unique. By the early twentieth century, in America at least, there
was a newly emerging emphasis on the relationship between happiness
and childhood. Parents were increasingly urged to protect childhood
as a time of intrinsic happiness, joy and pleasure, and to nurture a
state of happiness as a desired disposition for life. Happiness became
‘a central purpose, a leading quality of childhood, and an essential obli-
gation for parents’.39 Comparative studies suggest that this emotional
turn may have occurred slightly earlier and differently in the American
context than elsewhere.40 Even so, the existence of happiness as a motif
throughout Waddell’s sermons in the early 1900s suggests that this was
a contemporaneous change in the colonial New Zealand context.
Here, however, happiness was more than a state of mind or a child’s
right, and it was commonly associated with such other emotions as
cheerfulness, joy, gladness or emotional responses like laughter. Intrin-
sically being happy, joyous or cheerful was taken for granted – albeit an
emotion susceptible to mood or circumstance – and thus was preferable
to being unhappy or feeling miserable. Happiness, as a disposition, had
a theological as well as a psychological element, emanating from the
ongoing work of God in children’s lives. Being ‘truly happy’ was vari-
ously equated with being divinely ‘blessed’. He suggested at one point
that: ‘Blessed are they that give themselves to Christ when they are
young, that find a home in Him. Their lives, and theirs only, are happy,
enduringly happy – they are better than happy. They are blessed.’41
Moreover, while it was a disposition, it was one that should also gener-
ously benefit others. God gave Isaac to Abraham and Sarah, for example,
‘to make them happy, to make them joyous, to be a right gladsome boy
to them’.42 Thus, children were an emotional gift, given for their par-
ents’ joy and happiness. Alternatively, the story of Narcissus contrasted
the unselfish life (that is, a generous and happy life) with the selfish
life. Jesus’ example of sacrificial love was the ultimate sign of a happy
life. Those who rejected Christ’s unselfish example would become ‘nar-
rower, and thinner, more miserable, more unhappy, [with] less fidelity,
less power, less freedom, less joy’.43
It is unclear whether Waddell randomly combined or conflated
emotional and theological imagery to engage children or deliber-
ately employed emotional language to emphasize important theological
 Hugh Morrison 83

messages. Theological imperatives were important. There appeared to

be, for instance, a strong similarity between emotions and the so-called
‘fruit of the Holy Spirit’ that are outlined in the New Testament as
the commonly accepted outward signs of Christian lifestyle and com-
munity – qualities of love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness,
faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.44 Many of these ‘fruit’ appeared
in his talks as expressions of individual emotions which, in turn, were
theologically defined in terms of their application in children’s lives and
as markers of the community to which they belonged.
This interplay of emotions and theology, however, was more complex
than simply the one taking precedence over the other. In the Christian
community there were, for example, right and wrong emotions, and
children were given clear and practical lessons about these. Right emo-
tions were not just transitory feelings, but rather habits of heart and
mind to be cultivated over a lifetime, shaped in the light of Christ’s life,
example and words.45 In turn, these right emotions defined an intergen-
erational community of people who would live thoughtfully, generously
and sacrificially in reference to each other, to wider society and to the
whole world.
As a consequence, this community could only be sustained by a
proper motive: God’s love that was individually activated and practi-
cally expressed through the church. In 1926 Waddell reminded Sunday
school teachers that love was an emotion that was more dependent
on the will than on whimsy, that was embodied through the life and
sacrifice of Christ, and that would only be genuinely activated when
every child or adult was truly motivated or ‘possessed’ by the ‘spirit
of Christ’.46 Furthermore, this community was to be a place of emo-
tional safety and rest. During the First World War, he spoke feelingly
that:

we are all trying to get . . . a nest, a place of safety, a place of rest, a

place of security, a home . . . Let us say that that is the church. Well, it
is a good thing for boys and girls to find a home in the church, to be
comfortable there, to make it a rest . . . [Church helps people get closer
to Christ and] build our life upon Him . . . that is the true foundation
for you and me . . . Blessed are they that dwell in Thy House.47

Waddell thought that theological and emotional understandings were

equally important and that, for children, theological lessons only made
sense through the lenses of human emotions and of practical real-life
examples.
84 Settler Childhood, Protestant Christianity and Emotions

Emotions and community: the St Andrew’s Bible

School News

How far did children and young people ‘buy in’ to these adult-generated
messages and emphases? While this is difficult to answer, due to the
paucity of juvenile-produced sources, in the St Andrew’s case there
is one possibility worth considering. This was a newsletter – the St
Andrew’s Bible School News – which began circulation in August 1916.
In 1912 church-run programmes for the young were consolidated archi-
tecturally within the St Andrew’s Bible School: a dedicated two-storey
building with both shared and separated pedagogical, gendered and
social spaces.48 The newsletter was a way of forging a sense of commu-
nity and was contributed to by a combination of teachers and pupils.
Furthermore, it was designed to connect juvenile ministry and the wider
church ‘through knowledge to stimulate interest and enthusiasm for all
branches of the work’.49 We find traces of children’s voices and enough
congruity with the theological-emotional appeal of Waddell’s sermons
to suggest that both were important for the longer-term definition of
the wider emotional community.
First, in the St Andrew’s Bible School News the same kinds of emotional
imagery were commonplace. A 1918 editorial compared inward with
outward actions, appealing to the emotions both to disabuse young
readers of certain misconceptions and to promote a positive theologi-
cal message. The writer, drawing on the story of Hagar in Genesis 16
and the text ‘Thou God seest me’, argued that ‘good and pious peo-
ple sometimes make a very wrong use of [it, by which they] try to
frighten boys and girls . . . and picture God as a great policeman watch-
ing to catch them if they go wrong’. The story was more about God
accompanying, ‘comforting’ and keeping watch over Hagar in her des-
olation, and about God making ‘beautiful promises’ to her. The writer
stressed that it is ‘our greatest happiness’ to have God’s all-seeing pres-
ence, in whose company there can be ‘fulness of joy’ and ‘pleasures for
evermore’. Furthermore, God’s presence could be either ‘pleasure’ or ‘ter-
ror’ for individuals depending on whether or not they were ‘abiding in
[God’s] love’.50 Likewise, happiness as an anticipated state of mind and
an accepted expression of Christ-like character was iterated in various
other contexts that emphasized its practical outplay in everyday life.51
Again there was an enduring emphasis on the theme of love. This love
was centred in Christ, ‘the very greatest king to serve for He loves each
of his soldiers’ and whose love for humanity was worthy of mutual ‘love
and devotion’ from all his followers. Love was a quality bracketed with
 Hugh Morrison 85

others like ‘devotion’, ‘enthusiasm’ and ‘faith’, and was best expressed
through actions.52 Because its definition was equally theological and
emotional, love was both about ‘being’ and ‘doing’. Altruism (loving
actions) was predicated on personal conversion as a mark of Christ’s
indwelling love. Echoing one of Waddell’s children’s sermons in 1916
and with the trauma of war echoing around, the writer argued that
followers of Christ:

must be something for Christ before they can do anything for Him.
They must be converted themselves before they can convert others.
That is, they must have something done in them by Christ, that they
may be fit to do something for their fellows. What we are therefore is
the father of what we do. If you are nasty in your thoughts, you will
do nasty things. If you are full of love, you will do loving deeds.53

Second, writers in the St Andrew’s Bible School News conveyed how they
understood their community through a mixture of emotional and the-
ological language. It was to be an intergenerational community that
centred on or was defined by the stories and ideals of the Christian
faith, and which made the Bible School’s motto – ‘That I may know
Him’ – real in daily life. The Old Testament example of Israel was
upheld as one in which children ‘tried to live worthily of their fathers’
and to ‘obey those voices of the past’, which they then handed on to
the next generation. St Andrew’s people likewise handed on to others
what they had learnt, as missionaries, teachers and people in ‘other use-
ful positions’. This was also the responsibility of children and young
people.54 In a brief description of the Sunday school, one pre-teen
girl evoked a juvenile community marked more by inclusiveness, for-
bearance and acceptance than by gender.55 Knowing Christ involved
communal relationships as much as acquiring knowledge. There were
clear expectations with emotional resonances: reverence, serious study,
punctuality, full participation through joining ‘gladly in the singing,
and sincerely in the prayers’, generous giving and loyalty.56 Exercis-
ing that relationship within the community of the church, then, was
no different from doing so amongst family or friends. It was to be
a community marked by such things as ‘keeping [Christ’s] company,
by obedience, by love, trust, sympathy etc.’. In other words, it was
made real by the collective act of exercising ‘the faculties that enable
you to know other persons’.57 The motto was the community’s defini-
tive ‘marching orders’,58 while theological and emotional parameters
provided its defining characteristics regardless of age or gender.
86 Settler Childhood, Protestant Christianity and Emotions

Emotions and community: ‘Young Soldiers of the Cross’

Reference to ‘marching orders’ reflected the martial atmosphere of New

Zealand’s total war effort, a cause to which colonial churches were no
less devoted.59 Around 147 men and women at St Andrew’s enlisted for
war service and the Roll of Honour contained 28 names by the war’s
end.60 As elsewhere, children and young people were energetic and patri-
otic supporters of the war effort. In September 1917 the St Andrew’s Bible
School News announced that a group called the ‘Young Soldiers of the
Cross’ had been formed, overseen by an assistant minister and meet-
ing on alternate Sundays ‘after the close of ordinary [Sunday] school’.61
Despite its somewhat jingoistic overtones, the emphasis was on forming
a group of children devoted to their Christian faith. Around 90 girls and
boys signed up as members in 1917. While ongoing numbers are hard
to ascertain, within two months ‘a large number’ of ‘soldiers’ attended
fortnightly meetings. The group ceased to function in early 1919.62
Here was a cadre of children who had ‘definitely decided to take
sides with Christ’ by ‘promising to try to be [His] good soldiers’.63
In turn, they would be exemplars of vibrant, engaged and practical
faith amongst their peers. The emotionally potent military language
was unashamedly co-opted by those who led the group, framing the
expectations of its members. The motto was to ‘Endure hardness, as
a good Soldier of Jesus Christ’, and the vows focused on Jesus’ love
made real for each member and the divine help offered to be a ‘good
Soldier’.64 Membership was more tightly defined than for the wider Sun-
day school. Obedience, regular attendance, active participation, mutual
care, promotional activities and recruitment of others were clear expec-
tations. In particular, members were to ‘show proper reverence’ in all
church-related activities by ‘not whispering or laughing during singing,
prayer, or the delivering of an address’. Parents were expected to sup-
port and encourage by ensuring their children’s regular membership and
through active ‘observance of family worship’.65 As well as regular meet-
ings and church involvement, members typically participated through
letter-writing to soldiers serving overseas, practical projects supporting
missionary activity in New Zealand or abroad and social events.66
Hence, the wider religious community to which children belonged
was disrupted and disturbed by the juxtaposition of differing expecta-
tions. On the one hand, church was to be a community of emotional
rest, safety and security for children. At the same time, its expectations
of sacrificial service and of emotional prescription tied to moral imper-
atives re-drew it for children as a community that had a slight edginess
 Hugh Morrison 87

about it. Christian faith, communally defined in theological-emotional

terms, was to be experienced as both a source of comfort and a disrupter
of social expectations. Furthermore, the creation of the ‘Young Soldiers
of the Cross’ suggests that we should attend to the notion of commu-
nities within communities and ask to what extent these mirrored or
differed from their parent community, set one group off against another
or, indeed, created a hegemonic divide.
This was by no means a new phenomenon. ‘Bands of Hope’ and
‘Christian Endeavour’ groups had long been prominent vehicles for
capturing and channelling juvenile energies and spirituality within
churches in New Zealand from the 1880s onwards.67 At St Andrew’s,
both types of groups were well established.68 Just like the ‘Young Sol-
diers’, they were specialist communities within communities, focused
around an issue, a cause or a defined sense of mission, and with a strong
emphasis on experiential and activist religion. Critically, they were often
run by older teenagers or young adults who, in the case of Christian
Endeavour, had to be ‘enthusiasts’, ‘inventive and persistent, courageous
and prayerful’, and not ‘mere theorists’.69 The children they incorpo-
rated were drawn from the wider church community, but also often
interacted with those of other churches and denominations through
local and national unions, and were bound together by a common set
of theological expectations, emotionally and practically framed.
Membership further defined those who were truly devoted Christians,
creating a potential power differential between ‘them’ and ‘us’ within
the wider church community. Australian historians Jane Haggis and
Margaret Allen indicate how this might have worked itself out in reli-
gious contexts; in their case women’s missionary support in relation to
India. They highlight how missionary texts for British women ‘discur-
sively constructed “emotional communities” of religion’ that became
‘raced, classed and gendered’.70 They argue that religion provided ‘the
vocabulary of emotion’ underpinning ‘[British women’s] constructions
of community – the “freedom”, “joy”, and “love” true religion offers
a fellowship of believers’. In turn, however, this supposedly inclu-
sive Christian community of European and non-European women was
effectively ‘fractured hierarchically along the lines of “race”, caste and
class’, thus differentiating the British woman supporter, ‘English lady
missionary [and] Indian bible woman’.71
In the case of St Andrew’s it is difficult to discern that this was the
case. At St Andrew’s, the ‘vocabulary of emotion’ did underpin con-
structions of community for children and adults. In reality, both the
rhetoric and expectations of the ‘Young Soldiers’ were little different
88 Settler Childhood, Protestant Christianity and Emotions

from what was encountered by children in the wider church commu-

nity. However, it is less easy to discern the ways in which this may have
created hierarchies of power. Furthermore, the ‘Young Soldiers’ grouping
was both an extension of an established model of enculturating juvenile
faith (Christian Endeavour) and a response, possibly, to a lack of people
power during wartime. This could explain its curtailment shortly after
the war’s end. It also fed off the notion that children and young peo-
ple were the adults of the future and valuable assets for the community
in their own right. Yet we cannot discount that this theologically and
emotionally defined grouping was seen by other children as different
from the rest of the community and that perceived power differen-
tials did indeed exist. We might speculate, for example, how far this
group was more homogeneous than the wider community of children
and young people catered for at St Andrew’s, especially with respect to
working- and middle-class representation, and to white settler composi-
tion compared with the children of neighbouring Chinese and Lebanese
families.

Conclusion

This chapter has argued that the concept of emotional community

is worth further consideration when we think about the relationship
between childhood and institutional religion. While the focus has been
on an exploratory study of one urban parish in a settler society setting,
this quasi-microhistorical context provides a window into wider modes
of thought and behaviour operative across other settler churches and
denominations. It will also have resonances in wider Anglo-American
Protestant historical settings from which settler churches were often
influenced.72 Certainly these churches in the New Zealand context were
influenced by a broadly stated and somewhat irenic form of evangel-
icalism that bought into similar theological frameworks with respect
to children and young people, and that emphasized (to the chagrin of
some) a brand of religion that was both experiential and pragmatic in
outlook. Even the conservative evangelicalism that took hold in many
churches by the 1930s continued to hold both orthodoxy (right belief)
and orthopraxis (right behaviour) together, but often with a practi-
cal emphasis on the latter.73 This inevitably applied to the modes of
emotional expression and consequent individual or public behaviour
variously expected of children, young people and adults.
Adults’ memories of religious childhood, consequently, were often
constructed from within a shared theological-emotional discourse. Their
 Hugh Morrison 89

juvenile lives were shaped in similarly defined emotional-religious

communities.74 Equally clear, however, is that any further analysis needs
to find and take account of what children thought of these commu-
nities and how they responded or resisted, through both written and
oral testimony.75 Such research, which is in its infancy, further points
to children’s religion being as much embodied and experienced as it
was intellectualized, and perhaps even more so. As such, an emotional
approach helps to redress the imbalance of an institutional empha-
sis. It also causes us to think more critically both about the local
and the global contours of childhood religion. As global Protestant
networks expanded from the late nineteenth century, emotional con-
structions of childhood religious thinking, conventions of behaviour
and actions were activated in local settings, but also crossed national
boundaries, thus rendering those divisions fluid rather than concrete.
Children of different nations were bound together, at least in theory,
by these common understandings or experiences. Differences wrought
by colonization, however, are a warning that any such constructions
of religious emotions were culturally or racially configured, and thus
variously imposed, rejected, misconstrued or reappropriated. An emo-
tional approach appropriately serves to problematize childhood religion
beyond the neat boundaries of such things as denomination, institu-
tion, nation or culture, and therefore helps to further liberate both its
practice and our understanding.

Notes
1. This chapter was initially presented as an exploratory paper for a panel
on childhood and religion at the ‘Childhood, Youth and Emotions in His-
tory’ Conference, November–December 2012, hosted by the Centre for the
History of Emotions at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development,
Berlin, Germany. I gratefully thank the conference organizers for the oppor-
tunity to air some of these ideas and to then re-craft the paper for this
chapter. In turn, I am also grateful to the editor and various readers who
have constructively helped to refine the chapter even further.
2. ‘Mass Meeting of Children’, Supplement to the N.Z. Christian Record (3
December 1880), 1.
3. Rev. J. Upton Read, ‘Childhood and Christ’s Children’, Supplement to the N.Z.
Christian Record (3 December 1880), 2.
4. Read, ‘Childhood and Christ’s Children’, 2.
5. Later in his life, the influential Horace Bushnell held a high view of chil-
dren and their natural susceptibility to religious formation; see Margaret
Bendroth, ‘Horace Bushnell’s Christian Nurture’, in Marcia J. Bunge (ed.), The
Child in Christian Thought (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2001),
350–364, here 359.
90 Settler Childhood, Protestant Christianity and Emotions

6. Geoffrey Troughton, ‘Religious Education and the Rise of Psychological

Childhood in New Zealand’, History of Education Review 33(2) (2004), 30–44.
7. For more on the perceived usefulness of children’s play to cultivate emotions,
see Chapter 6.
8. See e.g. Christine Weir, ‘“Deeply Interested in These Children Whom You
Have Not Seen”: The Protestant Sunday School View of the Pacific, 1900–
1940’, Journal of Pacific History 48(1) (2013), 43–62; Helen May, Baljit Kaur
and Larry Prochner, Empire, Education, and Indigenous Childhoods: Nineteenth-
Century Missionary Infant Schools in Three British Colonies (Farnham: Ashgate,
2014).
9. Jeffrey Cox, The British Missionary Enterprise since 1700 (New York:
Routledge, 2008), 101; Hugh McLeod, Religion and Society in England, 1850–
1914 (Houndmills: Macmillan Press Ltd, 1996), 78–80; Susan Thorne,
Congregational Missions and the Making of an Imperial Culture in Nineteenth-
Century England (Stanford University Press, 1999).
10. Robert T. Handy, A History of the Churches in the United States and Canada
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 281–282.
11. Geoffrey Troughton, ‘Religion, Churches and Childhood in New Zealand,
c.1900–1940’, New Zealand Journal of History 40(1) (2006), 39–56, here 39, 40.
12. David Stuart Keen, ‘“Feeding the Lambs”: The Influence of Sunday Schools
in the Socialization of Children in Otago and Southland, 1848–1901’ (PhD
thesis, University of Otago, 1999); John Webster Grant, The Church in the
Canadian Era (Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 1988), 58–59; Neil
Semple, ‘“The Nurture and Admonition of the Lord”: Nineteenth-Century
Canadian Methodism’s Response to “Childhood”’, Histoire Sociale: Social
History 14(27) (1981), 157–175.
13. Troughton, ‘Religion, Churches and Childhood’, 50.
14. See e.g. Grace Bateman, ‘Signs and Graces: Remembering Religion in Child-
hood in Southern Dunedin, 1920–1950’ (PhD thesis, University of Otago,
2014).
15. Helen May, ‘Mapping Some Landscapes of Colonial-Global Childhood:
[email protected]’, European Early Childhood Education Research
Journal 9(2) (2001), 5–20.
16. John McKean, The Church in a Special Colony: A History of the Presbyterian
Synod of Otago & Southland, 1866–1991 (Dunedin: Synod of Otago
and Southland, Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand, 1994),
38–40.
17. For differences between missionary and settler Christianity in New
Zealand, see Allan K. Davidson, ‘The Interaction of Missionary and Colo-
nial Christianity in Nineteenth Century New Zealand’, Studies in World
Christianity 2(2) (1996), 145–166.
18. Ian Breward, ‘Waddell, Rutherford’, Dictionary of New Zealand Biogra-
phy: Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/
biographies/2w1/waddell-rutherford (date accessed 15 June 2015); J. Collie
(ed.), Rutherford Waddell: Memoir and Addresses, 2nd edn (Dunedin: A.H. Reed,
1933).
19. See e.g. John Stenhouse, ‘Christianity, Gender, and the Working Class in
Southern Dunedin, 1880–1940’, Journal of Religious History 30(1) (2006),
18–44.
 Hugh Morrison 91

20. See e.g. Matthew Sigler, ‘“Our Hearts Reply”: Charles Wesley’s Lyrical Tech-
nique as a Prescription for Rooted Emotion’, Liturgy 28(2) (2013), 39–47;
Ardjan Logmans and Herman Paul, ‘Hercules at the Crossroads: Confirma-
tion as a Rite of Passage in the Nineteenth-Century Netherlands Reformed
Church’, Church History and Religious Culture 93(3) (2013), 385–408; Lynn
Bridgers, ‘Emotion, Experience and Enthusiasm: The Growing Divide in U.S.
Religion’, Modern Believing 50(4) (2009), 6–24; Timothy J. Nelson, ‘Sacri-
fice of Praise: Emotion and Collective Participation in an African-American
Worship Service’, Sociology of Religion 57(4) (1996), 379–396.
21. Barbara H. Rosenwein, ‘Problems and Methods in the History of Emotions’,
Passions in Context: Journal of the History and Philosophy of the Emotions 1(1)
(2010), 11–12.
22. St Andrew’s Church, Brief Notes on Some of the Privileges and Duties of Church
Members and Adherents [pamphlet] (n.p.: Crown Printing, n.d. [c. 1908]),
from the Bible School Correspondence & Reports 1910–1920, St Andrew’s Parish,
P19/6, Archives Research Centre, Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa, New
Zealand.
23. Bateman, ‘Signs and Graces’; Charlotte Greenhalgh, ‘The Church as a Site
of Romance in Interwar New Zealand’, in Geoffrey Troughton and Hugh
Morrison (eds), The Spirit of the Past: Essays on Christianity in New Zealand
History (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2011), 126–141; Florence S.H.
Young, Pearls from the Pacific (London: Marshall Brothers, 1925).
24. The one recent exception is Jane Haggis and Margaret Allen, ‘Imperial
Emotions: Affective Communities of Mission in British Protestant Women’s
Missionary Publications c1880–1920’, Journal of Social History 41(3) (2008),
691–716.
25. See e.g. Maud Anne Bracke, ‘Building a “Counter-community of Emotions”:
Feminist Encounters and Socio-cultural Difference in 1970s Turin’, Modern
Italy 17(2) (2012), 223–236; David Hendy, ‘Biography and the Emotions as a
Missing “Narrative” in Media History: A Case Study of Lance Sieveking and
the Early BBC’, Media History 18(3/4) (2012), 361–378; Barbara H. Rosenwein,
Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univer-
sity Press, 2006); Rosenwein, ‘Problems and Methods’; Barbara H. Rosenwein,
‘Worrying about Emotions in History’, American Historical Review 107(3)
(2002), 821–845, here 835; Jan Plamper, ‘The History of Emotions: An Inter-
view with William Reddy, Barbara Rosenwein, and Peter Stearns’, History and
Theory 49(2) (2010), 237–265.
26. Rosenwein, ‘Problems and Methods’, 12–13.
27. See further Ian Breward, A History of the Churches in Australasia (Oxford
University Press, 2001), 66–67; Hilary M. Carey, God’s Empire: Religion
and Colonialism in the British World, c.1801–1908 (Cambridge University
Press, 2011), 35–37; Stuart M. Lange, A Rising Tide: Evangelical Christianity
in New Zealand 1930–1965 (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2013),
16–21.
28. Presbyterian Māori were missionary ‘subjects’ well into the twentieth cen-
tury. See selected essays in Hugh Morrison, Lachy Paterson, Brett Knowles et
al. (eds), Mana Māori and Christianity (Wellington: Huia Publishers, 2012).
29. Rev. Edward Payson Hammond, The Conversion of Children (London: Morgan
and Scott, n.d. [1870s]), 68.
92 Settler Childhood, Protestant Christianity and Emotions

30. Catherine A. Brekus, ‘Children of Wrath, Children of Grace: Jonathan

Edwards and the Puritan Culture of Child Rearing’, in Marcia J. Bunge
(ed.), The Child in Christian Thought (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans,
2001), 313–320; Françoise Deconinck-Brossard, ‘Representations of Children
in the Sermons of Philip Doddridge’, in Diana Wood (ed.), The Church and
Childhood (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 379–389.
31. Peter J. Lineham, No Ordinary Union: Centenary History of Scripture Union in
New Zealand (Wellington: Scripture Union in New Zealand, 1980), 5–20.
32. The following observations are based on an extant body of his children’s
sermons (some in his own hand and some transcribed by a Sunday school
superintendent) for the years 1906–1916: Rev. Dr Rutherford Waddell,
‘Children’s Talks’, Folder, Personal Collection, Archives Research Centre,
Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa, New Zealand.
33. Rev. R. Waddell, ‘The Sabbath-School and Missions’, New Zealand Missionary
Record (February 1884), 44–49, here 45.
34. Rutherford Waddell, The Dynamic of Service (Dunedin: A.H. Reed, 1928), 16.
35. Rutherford Waddell, ‘The Snowdrop’ (22 July [no year]); Waddell, ‘Children’s
Talks’.
36. Rutherford Waddell, ‘Eve’ (undated); Waddell, ‘Children’s Talks’; Rutherford
Waddell, ‘Sow Your Sweet Peas Now’ (6 August 1911); Waddell, ‘Children’s
Talks’.
37. Rutherford Waddell, ‘Nightmares and Darkness’ (13 May 1906); Waddell,
‘Children’s Talks’; Rutherford Waddell, ‘Heroism’ (5 June 1917), Waddell,
‘Children’s Talks’. For children’s responses to the First World War, see
Charlotte Bennett, ‘“Now the War is Over, We Have Something Else to Worry
Us”: New Zealand Children’s Responses to Crises, 1914–1918’, Journal of the
History of Childhood & Youth 7(1) (2014), 15–41.
38. For more on happiness as a desirable emotion specifically in childhood and
in various contexts, see also Chapters 4 and 10.
39. Peter N. Stearns, ‘Defining Happy Childhoods: Assessing a Recent Change’,
Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 3(2) (2010), 165–186, here 172.
In the American context Stearns links this change to: the influence of pro-
fessionals on definitions of childhood; declining birth rates and thus smaller
families; wider emphases on cheerfulness in American adult culture; the
impact of consumerism and industrialization; and the impact of compulsory
schooling.
40. Stearns, ‘Defining Happy Childhoods’, 182–183.
41. Rutherford Waddell, ‘Snowdrops and Purity’ (20 August 1911); Waddell,
‘Children’s Talks’; Rutherford Waddell, ‘Lessons from the Sparrow’
(17 December 1911); Waddell, ‘Children’s Talks’.
42. Rutherford Waddell, ‘Boys and Girls of the Bible’ (12 May–1 August 1912);
Waddell, ‘Children’s Talks’.
43. Waddell, ‘Boys and Girls of the Bible’; Rutherford Waddell, ‘The Narcissus’
(17 September 1911); Waddell, ‘Children’s Talks’.
44. These fruit are explicitly outlined in Galatians 5:22–23 (New International
Version).
45. For similarities in the British context, see Stephanie Olsen, Juvenile Nation:
Youth, Emotions and the Making of the Modern British Citizen, 1880–1914
(London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 8.
 Hugh Morrison 93

46. Waddell, Dynamic of Service, 24–29.

47. Rutherford Waddell, ‘Lessons from the Sparrow’ (17 December 1911);
Waddell, ‘Children’s Talks’.
48. Editorial Committee, St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church: A Brief Survey of the First
Sixty Years and an Illustrated History of the Years 1923–1963 (Dunedin: Editorial
Committee, 1963), 9.
49. Editorial, St Andrew’s Bible School News (July 1916), 1.
50. ‘Editorial: Truth in the Inward Parts’, St Andrew’s Bible School News (March
1918), 1.
51. ‘In Memorium’, St Andrew’s Bible School News (October 1917), 2–3; ‘Farewells
to Rutherford Waddell’, St Andrew’s Bible School News (December 1919), 3.
52. ‘Soldiers of the Cross’, St Andrew’s Bible School News (October 1917), 2;
‘In Memorium;’ ‘Rutherford Waddell 40th Anniversary’, St Andrew’s Bible
School News (April 1919), 2.
53. ‘Being and Doing’, St Andrew’s Bible School News (June 1919), 1; Rutherford
Waddell, ‘Palm Sunday’ (16 April 1916); Waddell, ‘Children’s Talks’.
54. A.R.C., ‘Keep up the Standard’, St Andrew’s Bible School News (April 1917), 1.
55. Rua Rata Papakura [pen name], ‘Our School’, St Andrew’s Bible School News
(December 1916), 1; P.R.N., ‘A Visit to St Andrew’s Sunday School’, St
Andrew’s Bible School News (August 1917), 1–2.
56. G.F.I., ‘School Ideals’, St Andrew’s Bible School News (March 1917), 1.
57. ‘Our Motto – That I May Know Him’, St Andrew’s Bible School News (April
1918), 1.
58. ‘Our Motto – That I May Know Him’, 1.
59. Allan Davidson, ‘New Zealand Churches and Death in the First World War’,
in John Crawford and Ian McGibbon (eds), New Zealand’s Great War: New
Zealand, the Allies and the First World War (Auckland: Exisle Publishers, 2007),
447–466.
60. Diamond Jubilee St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church: Historical Narrative, 1913–
1923 (Dunedin: Coulls Somerville Wilkie Ltd., 1923), 11–12.
61. ‘Young Soldiers of the Cross’, St Andrew’s Bible School News (September
1917), 2.
62. ‘Soldiers of the Cross’, St Andrew’s Bible School News (November 1917), 1;
‘Open Letter to Parents, 1917’, St Andrew’s Parish, P19/6, Bible School Cor-
respondence & Reports 1910–1922, Archives Research Centre, Presbyterian
Church of Aotearoa, New Zealand.
63. ‘Open Letter to New Members, 1917’, St Andrew’s Parish, P19/6, Bible School
Correspondence & Reports 1910–1922, Archives Research Centre, Presbyterian
Church of Aotearoa, New Zealand.
64. ‘St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Young Soldiers of the Cross Rulebook’,
St Andrew’s Parish, P19/6, Bible School Scrapbook, c.1916–1920, Archives
Research Centre, Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa, New Zealand.
65. ‘Young Soldiers of the Cross Rulebook’; ‘Open Letter to New Members’;
‘Open Letter to Parents’.
66. ‘Young Soldiers’, St Andrew’s Bible School News (May 1918), 2; ‘Young Sol-
diers’, St Andrew’s Bible School News (June 1918), 2; ‘Young Soldiers’, St
Andrew’s Bible School News (November 1918), 4.
67. Geoffrey Troughton, ‘Richard Booth and Gospel Temperance Revivalism’, in
Geoffrey Troughton and Hugh Morrison (eds), The Spirit of the Past: Essays
94 Settler Childhood, Protestant Christianity and Emotions

on Christianity in New Zealand History (Wellington: Victoria University Press,

2011), 112–125; Mark H. Senter, When God Shows Up: A History of Protestant
Youth Ministry in America (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2010); Henry Bush
and Walter J.E. Kerrison (eds), First Fifty Years: The Story of Christian Endeavour
under the Southern Cross (Sydney: National Christian Endeavour Union of
Australia and New Zealand, 1938).
68. Editorial Committee, St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, 8.
69. Amos R. Wells, The Missionary Manual: A Handbook of Methods for Missionary
Work in Young People’s Societies (Boston: United Society of Christian Endeavor,
1899), 10.
70. Haggis and Allen, ‘Imperial Emotions’, 692.
71. Haggis and Allen, ‘Imperial Emotions’, 709.
72. Again, see further Olsen, Juvenile Nation.
73. For a broad and balanced treatment of evangelical Protestantism in New
Zealand, see Lange, Rising Tide.
74. This is clear, for example, from a range of published memoirs and autobi-
ographies, and also from such unpublished records as the applications of
prospective missionaries in the Presbyterian Church and the Anglican-based
New Zealand Church Missionary Society.
75. That work has begun, but only in part, with published results still to appear.
See e.g. Bateman, ‘Signs and Graces’; Sylvia Yang Yuan, ‘“Kiwis” in the Mid-
dle Kingdom: A Sociological Interpretation of the History of New Zealand
Missionaries in China from 1877 to 1953 and Beyond’ (PhD thesis, Massey
University, Albany, 2013), 212–224.
6
Architecture, Emotions and the
History of Childhood
Roy Kozlovsky

Can buildings readily be interpreted as cultural documents that encode

attitudes towards children and their emotions? Or do they perhaps play
a more active, dynamic role in the emotional construction of child-
hood? This chapter explores the place of architectural culture within
the field of childhood studies and the history of emotions. The use of
architecture as a document of emotional and childhood history was pio-
neered by Philippe Ariès. In Centuries of Childhood, he counterpoised
textual documents with material artefacts such as paintings, clothing,
toys and, pertinent to our subject, architecture to chart the historical
development of a caring and loving sentiment towards children. He
compared the layout of the medieval house with that of the eighteenth-
century mansion to historicize the crystallization of the modern family
as an emotional unit. The pre-childhood house was a heterogeneous
social unit that was public in character. It was occupied by the master,
his wife and their children, as well as servants and apprentices, and was
frequented by a multitude of people. Consequently, ‘nobody was left
alone’ in the house.1 With the advent of the modern ideal of childhood,
which entailed a different emotional and caring attitude towards one’s
children, there emerged a ‘need’ to separate the affairs of the family from
the intrusion of others by rearranging the house into private and public
zones. Ariès tied the specialization of rooms in the house, as well as the
invention of the corridor, to such emotional ‘need’ for intimacy.
Centuries of Childhood has been the subject of rigorous scholarly
scrutiny and many of its claims have been contested or revised, yet some
of the problems raised by Ariès’ methodology still engage the field and
provide incentives for interdisciplinary exchange. This is especially valid
with regard to the practice of reading emotions from cultural documents
such as literary texts or pictorial representations. Critics schooled in

95
96 Architecture, Emotions and the History of Childhood

the methods and modes of interpretation of art history have suggested

that Ariès misattributed artistic conventions for emotional ‘truths’.2 The
debate over the status of cultural artefacts as historical documents is
relevant to the question of how to incorporate architecture into the
history of emotions. Ariès assumed that there was a cause and effect
relationship between changes in building types and social processes that
occurred during the same historical timeframe. Architectural history no
longer works under the assumption that there is a direct, mirroring rela-
tionship between spatial and aesthetic configurations and specific social
and emotional relationships. Architecture, like other works of culture, is
structured by artistic codes of representation that do not necessarily cor-
respond with actual practices or sentiments. Moreover, buildings may be
experienced and used in many different ways, depending on the context
and the agency of those who interact with them; this makes it problem-
atic to deduce, as Ariès did, that architectural layouts that provide for
privacy enable, even determine, a more intimate attitude to children.
A focus on children and their emotions entails broadening the scope
of inquiry beyond the architectural object and the intentions of its
producer in order to include the subject interacting with it. It sug-
gests incorporating into the history of emotions (and of architecture) a
study of how children think of and engage with the built environment,
including acts such as vandalism or stealing. These acts do not necessar-
ily indicate the presence of aggression or hate: they could be interpreted
as emotives, the calling up of an emotion or its communication to oth-
ers. Such rethinking of children’s interaction with architecture in terms
drawn from emotional history raises the question of what can be gained
by utilizing concepts developed by the history of emotions in architec-
tural history. How does historically grounded research into emotions
reflect on claims made by child-centred architects in the 1950s that
a certain school design satisfies the ‘emotional needs’ of children or,
conversely, ‘stunts’ their emotional development? Could references that
architectural historians make to emotions, such as associating shifts in
styles and modes of seeing with the emotional structure of a given
period or portraying architectural movements as undergoing psycho-
logical processes (as a recent publication entitled Anxious Modernism
seems to suggest),3 be analysed within the disciplinary framework of
the history of emotions?
Bearing in mind these challenges and opportunities, this chapter has
a dual trajectory. First, it expands on those methods of architectural
scholarship that are conducive to the historical study of childhood and
emotions. Second, it examines the usefulness of historical analysis of
 Roy Kozlovsky 97

emotions for an academic discipline whose discussion of emotions is

based on ahistorical concepts drawn mainly from aesthetic theory.

The architectural discourse of emotions

The modern discipline of architecture has been ambivalent towards

defining its aesthetic performance in language that draws upon emo-
tions. The seminal modernist architect Le Corbusier differentiated the
art of architecture from mere construction by pointing to its essence
as a ‘poetic emotion’ that ‘affects the core of our being’.4 Avant-garde
movements such as New Objectivity in turn have rejected, without too
much reflection on objectivity as affect, outward emotional expression
in architecture: the architect Hannes Mayer proclaimed that ‘archi-
tecture as “an emotional act of the artist” has no justification’.5 Yet
emotions are integral to the ways in which historians have narrated
modernism’s emergence. In Time, Space and Architecture, the architec-
tural historian Sigfried Giedion diagnosed modernity as a condition of
radical separation between feeling and thinking; its ‘split personality’
was reflected in the disharmonious and confused ‘content of feeling’
of nineteenth-century architecture. He defined the cultural project of
modern architecture as that of reintegrating the modern personality
and ‘curing its fatal disease’.6 Such statements regarding emotions by
architects have been discussed in terms that are internal to the disci-
pline: Marxist-oriented critics condemned the expression of emotions
in architecture as a reactionary ideological byproduct of capitalism and
the bourgeois cult of individuality, while phenomenological interpreta-
tions commended the emotional and sensory experience of architecture
as a response to a world desensitized by mass culture.7 Architectural
scholarship is in the process of assuming a more historical approach
towards emotions, as can be seen in studies that detail the psychological
and aesthetic models underpinning diverse architectural practices such
as Étienne-Louis Boullée’s association of geometric forms with sublime
emotions, Richard Neutra’s psychoanalytical interpretation of space or
Aldo Rossi’s engagement with Jung’s analogical thought. This interest
has been carried over to a more reflexive examination of architec-
tural history’s incorporation of emotions as historical forces that shape
architectural change. Post-structuralist historians trace this practice to
Giedion’s teacher, the art historian Heinrich Wölfflin, whose influential
formalist approach is shown to have internalized psychological con-
cepts such as empathy, in which the observer projects his or her inner
emotions and bodily sensations into the inanimate object. This type
98 Architecture, Emotions and the History of Childhood

of history, and its reliance on psychological explanations of aesthetic

affect, is criticized for creating a space for individualistic-humanistic
action that is based on the ‘stabilizing historiographic unity of the
synthesizing ego’.8
As these examples make evident, emotions have been analysed in
architectural discourse mainly through the paradigm of intellectual his-
tory. In their seminal paper on emotionology, Carol and Peter Stearns
cautioned that intellectual history, with its focus on cultural ideas devel-
oped in elite circles, does not reflect social reality and thus cannot be
interpreted as evidence of a widely shared and experienced emotional
‘style’.9
Psychologists in turn have challenged the architectural discourse of
emotions on empirical grounds. David Canter questioned the ‘esoteric,
private language’ developed by architects for ascribing to buildings an
emotional effect, concluding that ‘there is no possibility of providing
evidence to test these statements’.10 He was especially critical of archi-
tectural practice that presupposes a deterministic, innate relationship
between an external sensorial stimulus (such as colour or texture) and
emotional states. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, in turn, contrasted claims
made by artists and theorists regarding the beneficial emotional effect
of aesthetic environments with empirical studies of how average people
responded to them. He concluded that ‘Most people create their own
private set of references, singling out objects that will give order to what
they have experienced’ in a way that is unrelated to the ‘thoughts and
feelings of a small minority’ of artists.11 He also argued that the meaning
of objects is actively formed by social agents, as a technique for connect-
ing with one’s feelings, aspirations and memories, and for that reason
‘are not determined by objective characteristics of visual stimuli’ of the
object.12
Csikszentmihalyi’s critique of the practice of establishing a direct
cause and effect relationship between architecture and emotions is espe-
cially pertinent to the study of the environments of childhood, as there
is a longstanding tradition that ascribes to the formal properties of edu-
cational environments an emotional effect. In England, such association
between the aesthetic qualities of the building and children’s emotions
appears together with the move towards universal education in 1870.
The architect E.R. Robson, who designed England’s first Board Schools,
maintained that:

children whose manners, morals, habits of order, cleanliness, and

punctuality, temper, love of study and of the school, cannot fail to
 Roy Kozlovsky 99

be in no inconsiderable degree affected by the attractive or repulsive

situation, appearance, out-door convenience and in-door comfort,
of the place where they are to spend a large part of their most
impressionable period of their lives.13

The widely held ‘impressionable’ theory stipulated that children were

more susceptible than others to the civilizing effect of art and were
predisposed to experience it in a direct, unmediated manner. It has
become difficult to accept at face value such claims in relation to the
emotional effect of architecture. Yet the question of the status of the
architectural discourse of emotions as documents of emotional history
remains open, as it is viable to historicize such claims as material embod-
iments of prevailing attitudes towards children. For example, the ideal
of a happy, secure childhood could be documented in buildings that
organize children’s activities along child-centred principles.
There are other ways in which architecture, childhood and emotions
more profitably intersect. One such place is related to the ‘spatial turn’
in the social sciences and the humanities. In this theoretical frame-
work, space is understood as a social practice conducive to the study
of power relations and the production of the self, since ‘the ordering
of space in buildings is really about the ordering of relations between
people’.14 This approach is indebted to Michel Foucault, whose Disci-
pline and Punish examined the architecture of schools alongside that of
prisons to account for the disciplinary regime of power that ‘proceeds
from the distribution of individuals in space’.15 Following Foucault, spa-
tiality has been conducive to research aimed at uncovering the array of
disciplinary practices that act upon the bodies of subjects. The archi-
tectural historian Thomas Markus explored the role of school buildings
in producing character and ‘emotional bonds’ by examining the ways
in which their layouts regulate communication between individuals
through patterns of circulation, spatial partitioning and lines of sight.16
As noted by Jane Hamlett in Chapter 7, one of the limitations of this
methodology is that it excludes the possibility that these spatial mech-
anisms of power are negotiated by those who come under their sway.
Building upon Pierre Bourdieu’s spatial concept of habitus, the sociolo-
gist Kim Rasmussen developed the analytical distinction between ‘spaces
for children’ and ‘children’s spaces’ to highlight the tension between
the intentions of authorities for children as they are inscribed in spaces
such as playgrounds or schools, and how children, as legitimate social
actors, perceive and appropriate them.17 The interplay between spaces
for children and children’s spaces teaches us about expectations and
100 Architecture, Emotions and the History of Childhood

norms concerning children’s emotions, as well as their production and

expression of emotions when interacting with these prerogatives as
active, creative agents. For this purpose, the concept of the ‘activity
arena’, developed by architectural historians to account for how spaces
are created and given meaning by human action, would be particularly
useful for interpreting the child’s interaction with objects and spaces.18
The child’s reaction could be understood as a form of expression and
communication that is performed by agents, often in tension with,
if not transgressive of, official behavioural norms, taking place on an
‘emotional frontier’.19
Methods and concepts developed by historians of emotion may solve
some of the difficulties of discussing the emotional content of archi-
tecture. The concept of emotional communities developed by Barbara
Rosenwein, which is defined by overlapping, multiple emotional styles
which one must navigate, could be calibrated to account for the spatial
disposition of emotions in childhood. Since space is essentially a rela-
tional concept, its shifting, unstable meaning and emotional resonance
are contingent upon the spatial dynamics between, for example, the
home, the classroom and the street. This brings attention to emotional
ambivalence and conflict that occurs in constructed spaces. In respect
to William Reddy’s suggestion that emotional utterances, taken from
the repertoire of emotional expression available to a person in a given
society, may fail to express one’s inner emotions, informing the devel-
opment of alternative emotional spaces,20 the architectural study of
childhood and emotions may expand Reddy’s emotional geography to
include emotional spheres beyond his binary model of spaces of emo-
tional orthodoxy and emotional refuges. Finally, one may add that
children’s emotions are themselves historical forces that reshape the
organization and design of childhood institutions.

Emotions and post-war governmentality

The second part of this chapter focuses on three types of environments

that were built shortly after the Second World War in England: a school,
a playground and a children’s hospital. Each case brings forth a dif-
ferent methodological dimension of using the built environment as
documents, even agents, of the emotions history of post-war reconstruc-
tion. The historian of childhood Harry Hendrick considered the period
in question to be unique in instituting an intense ‘awareness of and
interest in children’s emotions’.21 He asserted that the wartime evacua-
tion of children, as an act of geographical displacement, highlighted the
 Roy Kozlovsky 101

emotional importance of the home and the family. The result was that
children’s emotions became self-consciously incorporated into post-war
social policy. The 1941 Cambridge Evacuation Survey is a case in point.
It was commissioned to provide the government with feedback on
improving social services for evacuated children. Its authors, among
them John Bowlby, raised alarm over the long-term emotional conse-
quences of separating children from their families and concluded their
survey with an appeal that ‘a true understanding of the feelings and
aims of ordinary human beings is an essential condition of success,
whether we are concerned with . . . the humanizing of our town schools,
the training and teaching of youth, the education of adult citizens’.22
The early post-war period constitutes a unique historical moment when
social policy was concerned with assessing and redressing the long-term
emotional impact of war on the civilian population. In the emphatic
words of Richard Titmuss, who played an important role in formulating
the social policy of the British welfare state:

Perhaps more lasting harm was wrought to the minds and to the
hearts of men, women and children than to their bodies. The dis-
turbances to family life, the separation of mothers and fathers from
their children, of husbands from their wives, of pupils from their
schools . . . of society from the pursuits of peace – perhaps all these
indignities of war have left wounds which will take time to heal and
infinite patience to understand.23

Emotions thus entered the calculations of social policy. In Governing

the Soul, the sociologist Nikolas Rose situated this development within
a broader socio-political shift. He argued that post-war governmental-
ity operated through modes of knowledge and networks of power that
assessed and modified the subjective existence of people and their rela-
tionships with one another. Post-war power worked by inducing subjects
to assume a more productive and responsible behaviour of their own
free will. As Rose noted, ‘childhood is the most intensively governed sec-
tor of personal existence’ and consequently children’s emotions became
the subject of knowledge and expertise.24 Failure of citizenship was
attributed to childhood emotional experience and especially to insuf-
ficient parental affection. Institutions caring for children were reformed
in light of psychological concepts and techniques for assessing chil-
dren’s emotional capacities, to aid the family in providing the emotional
environment needed for the development of a successful and adjusted
citizen. Rose’s historical thesis, despite its limitations,25 is valuable for
102 Architecture, Emotions and the History of Childhood

analysing the role of space in eliciting, managing and observing chil-

dren’s emotions as part of the post-war project of constituting an
emotional model of citizenship.

Play, aggression and love: the post-war playground as

psychodynamic space

The adventure playground was invented during the Second World War
and was promoted as the playground of the future during the period
of reconstruction. Unlike the traditional playground, it had no ready-
made play equipment; children were given a site, building materials
and tools, and it was up to them to construct its content and mean-
ing through their self-initiated activity. Architectural accounts place it
at the pinnacle of evolution from mechanical, ready-made play equip-
ment utilizing mostly kinetic pleasure to imaginative, participatory play
which was thought to be more in tune with the ‘true’ nature of play
and the developmental needs of children.26 Rather than accepting such
essentialist, naturalizing claims, the play activity in the adventure play-
ground is explored historically through the analysis of the agency of
space and materiality in activating and managing emotions. Play activ-
ity is uniquely positioned to be appropriated as a technique for inciting,
observing and governing emotions, since modernity defines it as a realm
of freedom, pleasure and autonomy – hence, it can be used to control
children in a way that is not experienced by them as being imposed from
without. As one play leader stated, ‘we want the cooperation and obedi-
ence of the children to be spontaneous, we want discipline emanating
from within the children and not imposed by authority’.27 Moreover, it
is of significance that these playgrounds in England were first opened on
bombed sites, in contrast with the current belief that exposing children
to violence is traumatic for them. At the time, however, designating
sites of destruction for children’s play was deemed to be curative for
participants and spectators alike.
The idea that aggressive emotions could be healed by returning to the
scene of destruction is indebted to Marie Paneth, one of the early pio-
neers of art therapy and a disciple of Anna Freud. She was the first to
suggest that it ‘could have a very healing effect if one were allowed to
build upon the very spot where damage has been done’.28 Her involve-
ment points to the key role of psychoanalytic theory in interpreting and
managing play during reconstruction. During the war, Paneth operated
a play centre at the Tilbury Shelter. After her success in using art activ-
ity to lessen the tensions between adults and children who were living
 Roy Kozlovsky 103

in overcrowded conditions, she was asked to manage a play centre for

slum children who were deemed too violent to be evacuated. Creativity
seemed to fail with this group:

They climbed on the top of the bunks and shot at us with all sorts of
things, and at the few small ones who still sat at their tables, trying to
paint in this turmoil. Dirty, wet canvas was slung into our faces when
we passed them, they spat at us and tried to hurt us and showered
gross indecencies at us with wild laughter.29

Paneth’s account of children’s emotional outbursts captured the atten-

tion of the press, which interpreted such scenes as a threat to citizen-
ship. The Times Literary Supplement commented that: ‘Meaningless rages
seem to sweep through them, and, largely inarticulate, they were at
the mercy of violent emotions which seemed unaccountable.’30 Paneth’s
method for dealing with aggression was to pursue a ‘non-resistance line’.
The rationale for this practice was twofold: she took from Anna Freud
the conception of the child as naturally asocial and aggressive. The pur-
pose of education was to repress these instincts and force the child to
‘give up his primitive habits, to lessen his aggression, to restrict his
greed’.31 If this were done too severely, the child would come to hate his
parents and would transfer this hostility to society at large. Paneth inter-
preted the violence directed towards her as the transference of the child’s
aggression towards the parent. Thus, observing the child’s destructive
behaviour provided access to the emotional environment of the home.
Second, violent play could be curative in itself. Paneth allowed chil-
dren to act out their aggression until they became, in her words, ‘sick of
their own method’.32 Play assumed a cathartic function, purging violent
emotions by rendering them self-reflexive through parody.33 Afterwards,
the damaged subject could be reintegrated into society by re-enacting
what Paneth termed a ‘second childhood’.34 At adventure playgrounds,
children were provided with a surrogate parental figure, the play leader,
with whom they could reconstruct a more positive emotional relation-
ship to authority and hence to society. Reports written by adventure
playground organizers reflect this mode of reasoning:

Today one little girl complained bitterly about her mother who ‘has
no love for me, she always kicks me out’. We might say that as they
have no place to play inside in the happy setting of a home they
develop a certain antagonism against the home and later follows
boredom and then delinquency.35
104 Architecture, Emotions and the History of Childhood

My contention is that the adventure playground in fact grafts the

dynamics of the psychoanalytic situation onto the outdoor space of
play. Free play was conceived of as a substitute for the talking cure,
as it provided access to the child’s emotions, in order to transform
them through the mechanisms of catharsis and positive transference.
The role of the play leader was to enable the child to engage in this
process of creative self-transformation merely by his or her attentive,
non-judgmental presence. Thus, a social worker in Liverpool observed
that the play leader ‘needs to supply not only bricks and mortar, saws
and hammers, wood and nails, but also those impalpable things, the
emotional demands of children of all ages for security, companionship
and love’.36
To return to the association between citizenship and destruction,
Paneth conceived constructive play as a technique for building com-
munities upon a participatory model of creative citizenship. The act
of building playgrounds on bombed sites established a metaphorical
correspondence between the reconstruction of the nation and the recon-
struction of the self: a form of architectural therapy. Inciting children to
appropriate and master space, to make it their own, was intended to
attach children at risk to the social body by providing them with a sense
of ownership and belonging.
It is important to stress that adventure playground advocates actively
sought media coverage, turning it into a public event. The Times Edu-
cational Supplement presented an image of children playing with bricks
on a site of a bombed church in Camberwell, London with the cap-
tion: ‘Post-war Builders at Work at the Camberwell Junk Playground’
(see Figure 6.1). Such images played a part in constructing an emotional
public through a collective emotional investment in children’s wellbe-
ing. But the study of playgrounds as documents of emotional history
is not limited to their status as spaces for children, where emotions are
the product of an expert discourse. If examined as children’s places, it is
possible to uncover children’s ambivalence towards emotional prescrip-
tions, promoted by free, autonomous play and especially by the ideal of
creative self-construction.
Advocates of the adventure playground always maintained that con-
structive play is an expression of the child’s innate curiosity and
creativity. They celebrated the ingenuity and imagination of children’s
architecture, portraying their towers, caves, huts and lofty treehouses
as embodiments of humanity’s home-making instincts and its propen-
sity to erect monuments. But adventure playgrounds were also places
of violence and destruction, as can be seen in reports drawn by social
 Roy Kozlovsky 105

Figure 6.1 Illustration from ‘Post-war Builders at Work at the Camberwell Junk
Playground’, Times Educational Supplement (5 June 1948), 317; permission of the
Times Educational Supplement

workers and play inspectors, who interpreted them as evidence of the

slum population’s inability to master the behavioural norms associated
with the post-war ideal of an active, productive citizenship: ‘Knock-
ing things down, bashing, combat, aggression, destructiveness had a
much firmer hold on the minds and imagination of the children than
the arduous toils of construction, creation, organization, planning and
design.’37 Adventure playground advocates were reluctant to discuss the
reality of violence, since it contradicted their understanding of violence
as a reaction to the suppression of creativity. Lady Allen of Hurtwood
(Marjory Allen), the main promoter of the adventure playground move-
ment in England, argued that ‘children who have never known the
joy of being engrossingly occupied become emotionally starved and
unstable . . . If children are denied opportunities for adventure and cre-
ative play we cannot hope to reduce the army of delinquent children
that marches into the juvenile court’.38 This idealistic account of cre-
ativity is influenced by what Rosenwein identifies as the ‘hydraulic’
model of emotions.39 If blocked or repressed, so the theory goes,
the child’s vital energies would eventually burst out in a destructive
manner.
106 Architecture, Emotions and the History of Childhood

Paneth provided an alternative reading of the failure of children to

assume the emotional style of creativity. After the children physically
destroyed her play centre, she engaged them in a variety of locations,
including her home and their own secret play space where they burned
Blitz rubble to cook stolen potatoes. She remarked that ‘now I came to
them as somebody who tried to share what they did. It was something
very different from their coming to us, to the strange house and into a
new situation. Their attitude changed completely’.40 Paneth contextu-
alized violence in relation to a conflict over the mastery of space. Her
account suggests that destructiveness towards the built environment
could be considered as a form of emotional communication, drawn from
that group’s dramatic emotional style.
The adventure playground demonstrates the importance of space
for studying the modes of knowledge and mechanisms of power that
enable the production of emotional ‘regimes’, prescriptive orthodoxies
of feeling and emotional expression. Once the playground is situated
in relation to the failed emotional space of the home, it could be seen
as one of those places that were negotiated by child experts, communi-
ties and children to create an emotional refuge for children to navigate
the new demands and responsibilities of citizenship, and the ideal of a
happy, free and creative childhood.

Fear, deprivation and the post-war environments of cure

The second case study examines the impact of a discourse on emo-

tions such as fear, despair and deprivation on the planning of the
post-war children’s hospital. It focuses on the hospital plan developed
by the Nuffield Foundation’s Division for Architectural Studies, which
was based on the Platt Committee’s 1959 Report The Welfare of Children
in Hospital. Considered a milestone in childhood and medical history,
the Platt Report pioneered the incorporation of what it considered to
be the child’s basic ‘emotional needs’ into the organization of med-
ical care. The sociologist Lindsay Prior singles out two characteristics
of the post-war children’s ward that resulted from its reorganization
to accommodate the child’s newly defined emotional needs: the pro-
vision of a mother’s divan in the single bedrooms and the provision of
a play space in the open section of the ward.41 Prior situates these two
novel additions in relation to the emotional spaces of the home and the
school. As explained by the Platt Report, the drive to reform hospital
care was initiated by the ‘profound changes . . . in the lives of children,
at home and at school. The child[’s] . . . individuality is recognised and
 Roy Kozlovsky 107

appreciated both at home and in school and there is a growing readi-

ness to understand and care for his [sic] emotional needs’.42 What this
section aims to show is not so much that the post-war hospital plan
was influenced by a shift in attitude towards children’s emotions, but
that the very understanding of children’s emotions and, consequently,
the new emotional style required of different actors – doctors, nurses,
visiting parents and sick children – was based on a spatio-temporal con-
ception of emotions such as fear and despair. These emotions were seen
as developing and changing in time, and triggered by the act of sep-
arating children from the intimate emotional bonds of the home and
placing them in an institutional environment.
The primary reason for commissioning the Platt Report was related to
the post-war controversy over visitation policy. In most British hospitals
until the early 1950s, parental visits were restricted to a weekly schedule:
in some, parents were allowed to see their children only when they were
asleep. The Platt Report called for ‘every effort . . . to preserve continuity
with the home during the time the child is in hospital’ by liberalizing
visitation policy and providing mothers with sleeping accommodations
inside the hospital (see Figure 6.2).43
Historians of medical care have attributed this change in policy to
the action of two different professional coalitions. The first is the dis-
course of maternal deprivation, initiated by the child psychologist John

Figure 6.2 Single room with sleeping accommodation for mothers. Children in
Hospital: Studies in Planning (London: Oxford University Press for the Nuffield
Foundation, 1963), 90; permission of Nuffield Foundation Division for Architec-
tural Studies
108 Architecture, Emotions and the History of Childhood

Bowlby and the social worker John Robertson, which addressed the
problem of prolonged hospitalization as it affected the specific age group
of children under five, whose relationship with the mother was deemed
critical for their emotional development. The second is the advocacy
of doctors from inside the hospital system, led by Sir James Spence.44
Their concern for children’s emotional wellbeing did not depend on
the length of hospitalization or the child’s age, and was expanded to
encompass the entire environment and arrangement of the hospital
beyond the issue of visitation. In his 1946 lecture at the Royal College
of Physicians, Spence provided an influential blueprint for humaniz-
ing the post-war children’s hospital. To alter the ways in which doctors
thought and felt about their young patients, he asked them to imag-
ine ‘in each case that the patient is our own child’.45 To present the
child’s subjective emotional experience of hospitalization, Spence chose
to narrate the daily routine at a children’s ward in relation to its material
features:

The room is vast. It contains twenty beds, spaced along walls tiled
by Doulton or painted chocolate and yellow . . . Some of the beds are
three feet from the ground . . . to the discomfort of the child who has
not slept so far from the ground before.46

The quotidian experience of the child in hospital was assessed in rela-

tion to the spatial norms of the home. Spence, whose father was an
architect, also criticized the design of lockers, which were not within
reach of a bedridden child. The Platt Report explained the significance
of lockers in emotional terms: ‘it is generally desirable to allow chil-
dren to keep with them one or two personal possessions such as toys or
books . . . to provide some visible contact with home, once the parents
have departed’.47 Spence continued his description of the daily rou-
tine at the hospital with a scene in which a child is administered an
emotionally, and perhaps physically, painful treatment: ‘The children
await their dinner, but are distracted by strange events. A white-coated
young man arrives and descends upon the silent occupant of a bed
who, knowing that her penicillin hour is at hand, breaks her silence
in a four-hourly scream.’48 Spence recommended the designation of a
special space for administering a potentially painful or frightening treat-
ment to shield children from such demoralizing scenes. The Platt Report
went even further, instructing the medical staff that ‘it is never safe
to assume that a child will be afraid of an experience that an adult
regards as frightening, or conversely that an experience which has no
 Roy Kozlovsky 109

terrors for an adult will have none for a child’. One such source of fear
distinct to children was identified with darkness, which together with
solitude ‘can seem more terrifying than an operation’.49 The Nuffield
Study dedicated a section on the lighting of children’s wards to alleviate
such fear.
Spence’s temporal framework of the hospital’s daily routine concluded
with the following night-time scene: ‘Night comes on, but there is no
bedtime story, no last moment of intimacy, no friendly cuddle before
sleep.’50 Spence used this scene to draw attention to the emotional states
of loneliness and despair. He was a member of the 1946 Curtis Commis-
sion on the institutional care of children, which defined children living
without their parents or caring guardians as emotionally ‘deprived’. He
extended this concept to the condition of hospitalization, arguing that
hospital environments did not ‘give the sense of personal attachment,
the relationship, the companionship, which are necessary exercises for
the mind of the growing child’.51 To address these emotional needs, he
suggested organizing children in small groups under a house-mother.
The significance of this proposal is that it conceptualized the hospital
as a community of children. It informed the Nuffield Study’s concept
of the open ward, in which children were grouped according to their
capacity for socialization rather than their medical condition. Bedridden
children were intentionally placed next to mobile ones in order to
boost their morale.52 It exemplifies Rose’s claim that during the post-war
period: ‘The group had become a crucial means of conceptualizing the
social behaviours of the individual . . . and of conducting the business of
the cure.’53
While Spence’s analysis was framed by a single, typical day, Bowlby
and Robertson’s notion of maternal separation required a longer time-
frame, which had a decisive impact on the Nuffield Foundation’s
proposed hospital layout. During the War, John Bowlby argued that
the disruption of the maternal bond between the mother and the
young child because of the evacuation could cause ‘severe disturbance
of the personality which may persist throughout life’.54 He later con-
sidered this condition as occurring during prolonged hospitalization of
young infants; children five years or older were not considered to be at
risk. Bowlby’s collaborator, James Robertson, made a documentary film,
A Two Year Old Child Goes to Hospital (1952), to visualize the process
of separation as it enfolded over time. The movie was screened to the
Platt Committee and transformed its understanding of hospitalization
in accordance with Bowlby’s paradigm of separation. The film could be
interpreted as a document of architectural history as much as that of
110 Architecture, Emotions and the History of Childhood

childhood emotional history, as it pioneered a methodology for assess-

ing the emotional condition of patients in relation to the institutional
space of the hospital.
The film documents a routine event, an eight-day-long hospitaliza-
tion of a child named Laura. It commences with a domestic scene, the
family enjoying their togetherness in the sunny garden, thus framing
hospitalization in relation to the home. The film analyses the mother–
child relationship as it enfolds over time. For this purpose, each new day
is introduced with a calendar and a clock. The film interprets the child’s
emotional experience caused by the mother’s daily coming and going
in terms of a cyclic process of withdrawal, breakdown and regained self-
control. At the end of the week, the child has become indifferent to
her mother’s presence, thus illustrating Bowlby’s three-staged model of
Protest, Despair and Denial (later called Detachment).55
The conceptualization of hospitalization as a process that is longer
and more complex than the daily sequence observed by Spence
informed another distinctive feature of the hospital layout developed by
the Nuffield Foundation’s architects: the upfront location of the open
ward near the entrance. The Platt Report suggested that: ‘First impres-
sions are particularly important to a child entering hospital . . . The child
will be very conscious of his [sic] surroundings.’56 Another example
of how the film’s perspective on time influenced medical practice is
the administration of a mandatory bath upon admittance. Laura’s hos-
pitalization commences with a bath. The crying child is handled by
a nurse as if she was an object rather than a subject endowed with
emotions and autonomy. In part due to such representation, this prac-
tice was discontinued, demonstrating the power of film to elicit the
spectator’s emotional identification. The film concludes with a scene
showing Laura and her mother leaving the hospital without touching
each other, suggesting the long-term emotional effects of separation.
Robertson’s method of analysing time and space in hospitals as a
process, made up of stages of admittance, settling down, treatment,
recuperation and discharge, informed the way in which architects and
administrators sequenced hospitalization within its space. The Nuffield
Study recommended incorporating an interview room near the ward’s
entrance, where parents could be instructed on how to conceptual-
ize the child’s emotional experience of hospitalization. It dealt with
what emotional style they should display, in accordance with the Platt
Report’s suggestion that the child’s emotional state is influenced by
the parents’ emotional performance: ‘The recovery of the sick child
may be retarded by emotional disturbance which can be aroused by
 Roy Kozlovsky 111

parents who are anxious.’57 The opposite may hold true as well –
that the new emotional organization of the post-war hospital drew
attention to and amplified the perception and experience of fear and
loneliness, previously regarded as inconsequential, by giving them a
name.
The architectural plan of the post-war children’s hospital not only
reflected new ways of thinking about children’s emotions in relation
to time and space, but also worked to transform the attitudes of par-
ents towards their children. The provision of a bed for the mother and
an interview room promoted new desires and assumptions regarding
the emotional nature of the relationship between parents and children,
demonstrating how the modes of knowledge developed by experts of
subjectivity were internalized.

Motion and emotion: the post-war school

An examination of school architecture in different times and places

involves discerning the complex interrelationship between educational
theories that ascribe to aesthetics an emotional effect, and the pre-
vailing architectural theories and styles of the time. While the Board
School designed by Robson relied on architectural codes drawn from
earlier historical styles (mainly the Queen Anne style), after the Second
World War, modern architecture was promoted in England as having
a direct, unmediated emotional impact on children. Architects repre-
sented the progressive educational ideal of the school as a place full
of life, activity and happiness, with bright, vibrant colour schemes,
informal and flexible classroom arrangements, asymmetrical layouts
and glazed walls that blurred the boundaries between the school’s inte-
rior and exterior, aspects that typify other modernist buildings of the
period.58 How then can the aesthetic dimension of design become a
document of emotionology or emotional style beyond its status as a sig-
nifier? Concepts developed by historians of emotions, such as Monique
Scheer’s notion of emotional practice, suggest a way to integrate aes-
thetics, as an embodied practice, into emotional history. Scheer defines
emotional practice as the habits, rituals and everyday pastimes that
aid the subject in achieving desired emotional states and modifying
emotions that are not desirable.59 This brings into focus the role of aes-
thetic practices intended to mobilize and manage children’s emotions
at the historical moment when physical education became entwined
with an aesthetic project of cultivating a new emotional style for
England’s children through the mastery of a repertoire of exuberant,
112 Architecture, Emotions and the History of Childhood

expressive, harmonious yet unscripted bodily motion. This project was

initiated by educationalists and art theorists who shared the wartime
understanding that values deemed important for social democratic cit-
izenship (such as freedom, social solidarity and tolerance) had to be
made emotionally meaningful if they were to overcome the libidinal
attraction of violent authoritarian movements. Educational theorists
like Herbert Read called to incorporate such sentiments into the citi-
zen’s soul through bodily practices during the most malleable period
of life: that of childhood. Read claimed that art ‘brings grace to the
body and nobility to the mind, and that we must make it the basis
of education because it can operate in childhood, during the sleep
of reason’.60 He insisted that the aim of education was to adjust the
subjective feelings and emotions of the individual with the objective
world, and that this was best done by habituating the child in the
aesthetic principle of harmony: ‘without this mechanism’, he warned,
‘civilization loses its balance, and topples over into social and spiritual
chaos’.61
Read’s ideas on aesthetics had significance beyond the history of
art education, as they were ingrained into everyday practice during
the reconstruction period through education pamphlets such as Story
of a School (1949) and Moving and Growing (1952). These official texts
turned aesthetic practices in schools into documents of emotional and
architectural history.
Story of a School narrated an educational experiment taking place
in a war-damaged, working-class neighbourhood in Birmingham.
It employed artistic activities such as dance, drama, painting and
sculpture to transform children’s emotions through the creation of
beauty and, in that process, liberated them from fears, inhibitions and
aggression.
Arthur Stone, the school’s headmaster, observed that children initially
imitated their teachers and failed to express themselves with their bod-
ies because they feared embarrassment. The teachers trained students
with Rudolph Laban’s modern dance technique to relieve them from
such fear. The abstract vocabulary of motion of this technique was con-
ceived as a means for discovering and expressing to others the child’s
‘authentic self’. Stone explained: ‘It took some time before we could free
the child from his inhibitions, but, when that did occur, the children
made their own patterns in the space about them as dictated by the
individual ideas they wished to express.’62 He claimed that: ‘The body
was responding easily and fearlessly to the thoughts within. There was
a oneness between the emotional self and the physical body.’63 Timid,
 Roy Kozlovsky 113

Figure 6.3 ‘Responding Easily and Fearlessly to the Thoughts within’.

Photograph illustrating the 1949 Education Pamphlet Story of a School

uncreative or destructive movement was attributed to a ‘fear of free-

dom’, a concept developed by Erich Fromm and popularized by Herbert
Read. The task of the teacher was to liberate the child from the fear ‘of
assuming the responsibility of disciplining himself’.64 The students were
encouraged to break all spatial boundaries, using classroom floors and
school corridors to dance, paint, sing and perform dramatic plays. These
practices were later institutionalized into the open plan of the post-
war school, following Read’s assertion that the most important aspect
of school design was to provide an environment that ensured ‘freedom
of movement, freedom to roam. The senses are only educated by endless
action . . . and action requires space’.65
The mobilization of bodily movement to produce emotions through
Laban’s modernist dance aesthetics was officially integrated into
England’s education system with the education pamphlet Moving and
Growing. Laban’s ‘grammatical movement’ was to have given a graceful
and harmonious character to the performance of everyday activities
such as walking, socializing and home-making. This new style of move-
ment was thought to arise from the child’s inner nature, one that was
suppressed by traditional cultural codes that favoured self-restraint:
114 Architecture, Emotions and the History of Childhood

This exuberance of expression is regarded as undesirable and uncivi-

lized; it is described as ‘childish’; and English men and women would
find it a shocking and inconvenient mode of behaviour in everyday
life. So children learn to subdue such expressions.66

Moving and Growing cultivated an expressive grammar of movement for

communal activities. The text referred to the archaic origins of drama
and dance, performance arts that arose from ‘the need felt by people
to come to terms with their exciting experiences and to put them into
shape or pattern of their own creation’.67 This Dionysian notion of col-
lective movement was intended to provide the future citizen of social
democracy with an expressive language with which to fashion an ener-
getic ideal of the self and to forge communal attachments based on
shared, embodied sentiments.
There are currently no studies of children’s responses to this aes-
thetic project, as historical research into physical education in England
is mainly focused on competitiveness and health.68 Did the inability or
unwillingness of children to mobilize the body creatively and harmon-
ically involve a personal sense of inadequacy? At the time, failure was
interpreted psychoanalytically, as a form of unconscious resistance to
‘freedom’.
Thinking of school architecture through its relation to the history
of emotions provides an opportunity to historicize aesthetic concepts
deemed autonomous in architectural thinking, such as harmony or
rhythm. Architectural critics have ascribed the rhythmic, sensuous qual-
ity of post-war school buildings to the influence of modernist painterly
styles. Another explanation could tie them to the project of harmoniz-
ing emotions through an aesthetic interaction with the environment.
Read claimed that: ‘The school in its structure and appearance should
be an agent, however unconscious in its application, of aesthetic edu-
cation.’69 School buildings were designed to modulate the moving sub-
ject’s experience with rhythmic, harmonic alternation between material
textures, light intensities, colours, composed and animated forms, as
a means for what Scheer calls ‘mobilizing’ emotional states, deemed
conducive to England’s emotional reconstruction.

Conclusion

The architectural and spatial analysis of the three types of childhood

institutions suggests that they were designed in relation to the emo-
tional environment of the home, thus highlighting the significance of
 Roy Kozlovsky 115

space, as a relational concept, to the discipline of the history of emo-

tions. The emotional prescriptions associated with these institutions are
typified by the preference of productive over restrictive mechanisms;
they mobilized the child’s psychophysical capacities to elicit emotional
states of happiness, security and liveliness, while managing the more
harmful emotional residues of war, such as fear and aggression. The
project of reconstruction in England was pursued through the creation
of an ‘emotional public’ that defined its humanity through a shared
concern for children’s wellbeing as part of the new emotional economy
of social democracy.
As for the discipline of architectural history, the analysis suggests the
broadening of understanding of architecture beyond interpretations of
how it signifies or affects the beholder, to how it affects, with other prac-
tices, the body and emotions of subjects who inhabit it. In this respect,
the architecture of childhood of the post-war period is well-suited for
exploring how emotions become knowable and governable, precisely
because of the status of the child as a citizen in the making who is in
need of emotional care and is therefore a legitimate subject of indirect
techniques for governing one’s emotional self.

Notes
1. Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (New York:
Vintage Books, 1962), 398.
2. Ariès was especially criticized for claiming that the medieval period lacked
awareness of the particular nature of childhood. As his argument rested in
part on pictorial representations of children in medieval art as ‘little adults’,
his critics relied on art history to challenge his use of pictorial evidence
in order to discredit his thesis. See Colin Heywood, ‘Centuries of Child-
hood: An Anniversary – and an Epitaph?’, Journal of the History of Childhood
and Youth 3(3) (2010), 341–365, here 345–346. A similar criticism regard-
ing the use of literary texts has also been levelled at the work of Barbara
H. Rosenwein, whose essay ‘Worrying about Emotions in History’, American
Historical Review 107(3) (2002), 821–845 is illustrated with pictorial repre-
sentations of children in which they are undifferentiated from adults. Such
representations may have as much to do with painterly conventions as with
social conceptions of children.
3. Sarah Williams Goldhagen and Réjean Legault, Anxious Modernisms: Experi-
mentation in Postwar Architectural Culture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000).
4. Le Corbusier, Toward an Architecture (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute,
2007), 249.
5. Ulrich Conrads, Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-Century Architecture
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 119.
6. Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition,
3rd edn (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1954), 13.
116 Architecture, Emotions and the History of Childhood

7. A contemporary example of a phenomenological reading of architecture and

its emotional significance is Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architec-
ture and the Senses (London: Academy Editions, 1996). See the discussion in
Chapter 7 of this volume.
8. Mark Jarzombek, The Psychologizing of Modernity: Art, Architecture, and History
(Cambridge University Press, 2000), 72.
9. Peter N. Stearns and Carol Z. Stearns, ‘Emotionology: Clarifying the His-
tory of Emotions and Emotional Standards’, American Historical Review 90(4)
(1985), 813–836, here 830–831.
10. David Canter, Psychology for Architects (London: Applied Science Publishers,
1974), 3.
11. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, ‘Design and Order in Everyday Life’, Design Issues
8(1) (1991), 26–34, here 34.
12. Csikszentmihalyi, ‘Design and Order in Everyday Life’, 32.
13. E.R. Robson, School Architecture (Leicester University Press, 1972), 6.
14. Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson, The Social Logic of Space (Cambridge
University Press, 1988), 2.
15. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York:
Vintage Books, 1995), 141.
16. Thomas A. Markus, Buildings and Power: Freedom and Control in the Origin of
Modern Building Types (London: Routledge 1993), 125. See the discussion of
Markus and his impact on the study of emotions in Chapter 7 in this volume.
17. Kim Rasmussen, ‘Places for Children – Children’s Places’, Childhood 11(2)
(2004), 155–173.
18. The term was developed by the architectural historian Elizabeth Cromley. See
discussion of the concept in Abigail A. van Slyck, A Manufactured Wilderness:
Summer Camps and the Shaping of American Youth, 1890–1960 (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2006), xxxi.
19. For an elaboration of this concept, see Chapter 2.
20. William M. Reddy, ‘Against Constructionism: The Historical Ethnography of
Emotions’, Current Anthropology 38(3) (1997), 327–351, here 331.
21. Harry Hendrick, ‘Children’s Emotional Well-being and Mental Health in
Early Post-Second World War Britain: The Case of Unrestricted Hospital Vis-
iting’, Clio Medica: The Wellcome Series in the History of Medicine 71 (2003),
213–242, here 214.
22. Susan Isaac,(ed.), The Cambridge Evacuation Survey; A Wartime Study in Social
Welfare and Education (London: Methuen, 1941), 11.
23. Richard M. Titmuss, Problems of Social Policy (London: HMSO, 1950), 538.
24. Nikolas Rose, Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self (London:
Routledge, 1990), 121.
25. Rose’s Foucaultian approach has several methodological shortcomings for
the study of emotional history. Because subjectivity is seen as being produced
by discourse, emotional regimes appear homogeneous and overreaching.
Consequently, little is known of the subject’s emotional performance.
In addition, Rose divides historical flow into ‘paradigmatic shifts’ in struc-
tures of power and regimes of truth. Historians of emotions such as Stearns
emphasize the continuity of emotional formations, while Rosenwein argues
for overlapping emotional communities and emotional standards; both cau-
tion against assuming that concepts developed by administrators do in fact
 Roy Kozlovsky 117

determine everyday emotional experience. See Jan Plamper, ‘The History of

Emotions: An Interview with William Reddy, Barbara Rosenwein, and Peter
Stearns’, History and Theory 49(2) (2010), 237–265.
26. Marjory Allen, Planning for Play (London: Thames & Hudson, 1968), 18–19.
27. Peter Gutkind, ‘Five Months in Clydesdale Playground’ (1953), MSS
121/AP/3/2/8/1, Modern Records Centre, Coventry.
28. Marie Paneth, Branch Street: A Sociological Study (London: Allen & Unwin,
1944), 120.
29. Paneth, Branch Street, 12.
30. ‘Town Life at its Worst: Social Problems of the Immediate Future’, Times
Educational Supplement (29 July 1944), 362.
31. Anna Freud and Dorothy T. Burlingham, War and Children (New York:
Medical War Books, 1943), 191.
32. Paneth, Branch Street, 34.
33. This approach was developed by August Aichhorn, who pioneered the use of
psychoanalysis for the institutional treatment of delinquents. He allowed
his subjects complete licence ‘to work out their aggression’ to the point
of explosion, figuring that ‘when this point came, the aggression changed
its character. The outbreaks of rage . . . were no longer genuine, but were
acted out for our benefit’; August Aichhorn, Wayward Youth (London: Imago,
1951), 175.
34. Paneth, Branch Street, 47.
35. Gutkind, ‘Five Months in Clydesdale Playground’.
36. John Mays, Adventure in Play (Liverpool Council of Social Service, 1957), 27.
37. Mays, Adventure in Play, 16.
38. Marjory Allen, Junk Playgrounds (London: National Under Fourteens Council,
1948), 3.
39. Barbara H. Rosenwein, ‘Worrying about Emotions in History’, American
Historical Review 107(3) (2002), 821–845, here 834–836.
40. Paneth, Branch Street, 111.
41. Lindsay Prior, ‘The Architecture of the Hospital: A Study of Spatial Orga-
nization and Medical Knowledge’, British Journal of Sociology 39(1) (1988),
86–113, here 101.
42. Ministry of Health, The Welfare of Children in Hospital (London: HMSO,
1959), sec. 6, 2.
43. Ministry of Health, Welfare of Children in Hospital, sec. 15, 4.
44. Frank C.P. van der Horst and René van der Veer, ‘Changing Attitudes Towards
the Care of Children in Hospital: A New Assessment of the Influence of the
Work of Bowlby and Robertson in the UK, 1940–1970’, Attachment & Human
Development 11(2) (2009), 119–142, here 127. Spence, whose memoranda
to the Minister of Health Aneurin Bevan initiated the change in visitation
policy in the early 1950s, was also the person who suggested that the Nuffield
Foundation undertake a study of the children’s hospital.
45. J[ames] C. Spence, ‘The Care of Children in Hospital’, British Medical Journal
1(4490) (1947), 125–130, here 127.
46. Spence, ‘Care of Children in Hospital’, 127.
47. Ministry of Health, Welfare of Children in Hospital, sec. 59, 15.
48. Spence, ‘Care of Children in Hospital’, 128.
118 Architecture, Emotions and the History of Childhood

49. Ministry of Health, Welfare of Children in Hospital, sec. 112, 28. Fear figures as
an important topic in wartime discussions of children’s emotions. The child
psychologist William Blatz, known for his ‘security theory’, maintained in
a 1942 BBC radio lecture that fear is an innate and evolutionarily useful
emotional response to situations with which the individual is incapable of
dealing. To control fear and channel its energies in order to overcome rather
than flee the threat, Blatz recommended restoring a sense of familiarity and
providing the child with ‘sympathetic companionship’, techniques which
were implemented in post-war hospitals and schools. Mary Ainsworth, who
was Blatz’s doctoral student, later worked with John Bowlby on attachment.
50. Spence, ‘Care of Children in Hospital’, 128.
51. Nuffield Foundation Division for Architectural Studies, Children in Hospi-
tal: Studies in Planning (London: Oxford University Press for the Nuffield
Foundation, 1963), 58.
52. Nuffield Foundation Division for Architectural Studies, Children in Hospital,
87.
53. Rose, Governing the Soul, 52.
54. Quoted in van der Horst and van der Veer, ‘Changing Attitudes’, 122.
55. John Bowlby, Attachment and Loss, vol. 1, Attachment (New York: Basic Books,
1969), 27.
56. Ministry of Health, Welfare of Children in Hospital, sec. 55, 14.
57. Ministry of Health, Welfare of Children in Hospital, sec. 41, 11.
58. Catherine Burke and Ian Grosvenor, School (London: Reaktion, 2008),
67–118.
59. Monique Scheer, ‘Are Emotions a Kind of Practice (and is that What Makes
Them Have a History)? A Bourdieuian Approach to Understanding Emotion’,
History & Theory 51(2) (2012), 193–220, here 212.
60. Herbert Read, Education through Art (New York: Pantheon, 1945), 277.
61. Read, Education through Art, 14.
62. Arthur Stone, Story of a School: A Headmaster’s Experiences with Children Aged
Seven and Eleven, Ministry of Education Pamphlet no. 14 (London: HMSO,
1949), 14.
63. Stone, Story of a School, 16.
64. Stone, Story of a School, 11.
65. Read, Education through Art, 292.
66. Ministry of Education, Moving and Growing: Physical Education in the Primary
School: Part One, Education Pamphlet no. 24 (London: HMSO, 1952), 37.
67. Ministry of Education, Moving and Growing, 103.
68. Mick Donovan, Gareth Jones, and Ken Hardman, ‘Physical Education and
Sport in England: Dualism, Partnership and Delivery Provision’, Kinesiology
38(1) (2006), 16–27.
69. Read, Education through Art, 291.
7
Space and Emotional Experience in
Victorian and Edwardian English
Public School Dormitories
Jane Hamlett

In the second half of the nineteenth century, boys at many English

public schools lived apart from their teachers. This was typical in such
institutions at the time, with most schools adopting the ‘house system’.
While notionally under the control of housemasters, within these places
pupils usually inhabited house rooms and open dormitories, which
teachers seldom entered. This was a deliberate policy. Discussions of the
open dormitory reveal that its spatial set-up – where boys were kept iso-
lated from their masters but in very close proximity to their peers – was
intended to have a distinct emotional effect. It was hoped that the judi-
cious guidance of senior boys would set a good example to their juniors,
contributing to their emotional education. Isolation, meanwhile, was
supposed to encourage independence, creating self-governing individu-
als who were able to exercise self-control rather than being disciplined
by the institution. The aim was the production of a moral system, in
which the discipline of the self, body and emotions played an impor-
tant part. This meant learning to control emotional expression, but also
forming the right kind of attachments to others. The prefect system, in
which a chosen group of senior boys were given the right to use physical
discipline, and especially fagging, is notorious. However, it is important
to remember that this had set cultural limits. This is clearly articulated
in the famous schoolboy novel of the era, Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857),
which celebrates the physicality and rough-and-tumble masculinity of
school life, while condemning older boys who resort to extreme vio-
lence.1 The novel is set before the reform of the public schools at
mid-century, the implication being that such excesses were unlikely to
occur under the new prefect system implemented by Thomas Arnold.2

119
120 Space and Emotional Experience

Yet there is a stark contrast between such ideals as articulated by teach-

ers, architects and novelists, and the reality of life as experienced in
these spaces by contemporary schoolboys. The isolation of the open dor-
mitory, and the way in which vulnerable boys were left with nowhere
to hide, produced a turbulent emotional atmosphere that became more
intense as the term wore on. It was certainly emotionally productive –
building pleasure for the bully as well as terror for the victim – but it
bore little relation to the disciplined moral system that the authorities
envisaged.
Public schools – and the emotional climate they produced – have been
seen as fundamental to state and society in Victorian and Edwardian
Britain. These institutions, so the story goes, created a uniform public
school ‘type’, robust and manly, fit to rule home, country and empire.
Historians have charted the significance and power of these places, not-
ing their increasing cohesiveness in the second half of the nineteenth
century, and a new emphasis on team games and inter-house com-
petition.3 For scholars of masculinity such as John Tosh, the schools
produced rough-and-ready manly characters that dominated elite mas-
culinity in this era through their removal of young boys from the
feminine sphere of the home.4 More recently, some important differ-
ences between these schools have been brought to the fore.5 Patrick
Joyce argues that they were competing forces, deriving their power from
their status as individual institutions rather than acting as a uniform
block.6 But he ultimately sees them acting together, producing a trauma-
tized and desensitized governing class, inured to violent punishment,
who went on to create a brutal state and empire.7 What these writers
agree on is that pupils were subject to powerful forces that fundamen-
tally altered their emotional states, creating new forms of character and
behaviour. Yet there has been little work on the material conditions that
helped to bring these changes about.8 This is where this chapter inter-
venes, investigating the built spaces of these schools. Examining the role
that space and material culture played in shaping daily emotional life
brings the contrast between the idealized educational function of these
schools and their impact on pupils into sharp relief. To a certain extent,
incidents like the one recounted above reinforce the idea that public
schools produced desensitized individuals as Joyce describes. But paying
attention to how boys reacted to the spaces around them and brought
in their own material goods can also help us see how they were able to
establish a kind of equilibrium and find some personal autonomy in a
world where person, self and identity were all under threat.
Why use space as a means of furthering our understanding of emo-
tional experiences? Getting at experience has been one of the major
 Jane Hamlett 121

preoccupations of the new history of the emotions and is highly con-

tested.9 As Roy Kozlovsky discussed in Chapter 6, buildings can play
an active, dynamic role in the creation of emotions. Architecture can
have an emotional impact in both aesthetic and experiential terms.
As Juhani Pallasmaa puts it, ‘[a] building is not an end in itself; it frames,
articulates, structures, gives significance, relates, separates and unites,
facilitates and prohibits’.10 Built spaces provoke bodily responses that
are closely linked to emotional states: ‘our bodies respond very directly
to the spatial conditions that we experience. Narrow or cramped spaces
make us physically crouch or hunch over, and in some cases even strike
a chord of terror’.11 The spatial, physical world, then, represents an
important dimension of emotional experience. Enclosure or confine-
ment in space can produce a response. But perhaps more importantly,
space is also fundamental to emotional life in that its arrangement
often determines the positioning of bodies and their relationships to
each other. Emotions are conditioned by interactions with other people,
in which presence or absence plays an important role. The architec-
tural critic Thomas Markus argues that space creates emotional bonds
between individuals: ‘Spaces can be so linked that communication is
free and frequent, making possible dense encounters between classes,
groups and individuals. These are the basis for community, friendship
and solidarity.’12 According to Markus, the organization of space can cre-
ate relationships between individuals – both enmities and affections. For
historians seeking to uncover distinctive sets of emotional experiences
in the past, looking at the changing use of built space over time and how
it could control and place bodies, and hence construct relationships, can
be a very useful tool. This chapter focuses on the atmospheres and pat-
terns of interaction that were enabled by certain uses of space: its impact
on schoolboy relationships, and the contribution of this to the broader
emotional experience of school life.
Exploring the built environment can also show the operation of
contemporary understandings of emotion on several levels, both in
terms of ideals and in practice. Designs and plans, rules and timeta-
bles that set out the daily use of space have much to tell us about
the intentions of school authorities and contemporary expectations
about the emotional effect of the built environment. Here, my account
chimes with Michel Foucault’s influential interpretation of institutional
space. Foucault argued that the surveillance of space was one of the
major tools used to discipline bodies within nineteenth-century carceral
institutions.13 Inmates were induced to believe that they were being
constantly watched, creating self-discipline and emotional restraint.14
As I will go on to discuss, this is an apt description of the imagined
122 Space and Emotional Experience

discipline that school authorities hoped would be produced in the open

dormitory by peer pressure between boys. Yet, as Kozlovsky outlines in
Chapter 6, the spatial turn has also recently led to a rethinking of what
space means to its users. The isolation of the boys from masters often
did not produce the intended disciplined independence, but it was abso-
lutely fundamental to the shaping of relations between schoolboys and
therefore also to their emotional lives. At certain times and places, the
allocation of space could also secure a sense of individual and personal
autonomy within the forced collective life of the public school.
In contrast to Chapter 6, which examined three examples of post-
war architectural design that aimed to shape emotional experience in
childhood, I am fundamentally concerned here with the creation of
historical material worlds through specific lived experiences, and the
emotional responses of children to their environments. To this end, in
addition to considering the ideas of architects and cultural commenta-
tors, I focus closely on institutional records and personal accounts from
three case-study institutions in London and the south-east of England:
Winchester College, Charterhouse and Lancing. The writings of children
themselves, produced both at the time and in adulthood, offer a very
different picture of school life. Personal documents, autobiographies,
letters and diaries open up the emotional culture of the dormitory in
the words of those who actually lived in them. From the early part of
the century, there was a growing demand for institutions to educate the
sons of the well-off middle in addition to the upper classes. During the
1840s and 1850s, reforming headmasters made increasing efforts to cre-
ate better disciplined and, crucially, more moral schools. Arnold’s work
at Rugby, and his prefect system, is the most famous example.15 The
Clarendon Commission was set up to investigate conditions in public
schools – it reported in 1864 and the resulting Public Schools Act of 1868
freed school authorities from some of their constraints. This era saw
substantial building activity at all three schools. The ancient founda-
tion at Winchester was expanded and new boarding houses substantially
raised the school’s capacity.16 Winchester was regarded as inferior only
to Eton. In addition to aristocratic and upper-class boys (known as
commoners), there were usually around 70 scholars at Winchester, the
majority from the professional middle classes. Charterhouse, also a
predominantly elite establishment, moved from London on the recom-
mendation of the Clarendon Commission and substantial new school
buildings were opened just outside Godalming in 1872. Lancing was
established by leading churchman Nathaniel Woodard in 1848 in a
vicarage at Shoreham, before moving to new buildings on the South
 Jane Hamlett 123

Downs in 1857. The institution was part of the Woodard Schools – an

initiative designed to offer a public-school education to a wider social
range. An early prospectus declared the school open to ‘gentlemen
of limited means’ as well as the sons of clergymen, professionals and
tradesmen.17 Looking at these three distinctive establishments allows us
to move away from the idea that public schools operated in a uniform
fashion, revealing significant differences in the use of space that could
have an important impact on the lives of the boys.

The open dormitory and the ‘moral discipline of

common life’

School authorities shared a common philosophy when it came to plan-

ning residential accommodation for pupils. The implementation of the
house system was central to the reform of public schools in the mid-
Victorian period. Rugby in the 1840s sought control by eliminating
Dames Houses (which were often run by local women) and making
boys live in houses headed by assistant masters. The Clarendon Com-
missioners’ report noted that Harrow and Westminster had followed
suit, and called for the removal of the nine remaining Dames Houses
at Eton. The new system, the Commissioners declared, was ‘desirable
for the sake of the boys themselves and for the general discipline of
the school’.18 According to the architect Felix Clay, most public schools
had separate boarding houses by the early 1900s.19 While the house
system was undoubtedly important, schools set it up in different ways.
At Winchester in the mid-nineteenth century, both scholars and com-
moners lived in the college, although houses were built later on for the
commoners while the scholars remained in Chambers. The house sys-
tem was strongest at Charterhouse, which had three houses when the
school first moved to Godalming and 11 by 1904.20 The identification
of Carthusians with their houses was probably strengthened by the prac-
tice of eating within them. At Lancing, there were initially three houses
on the school’s new site, but meals were taken in a central dining hall,
so pupils from different houses saw more of each other.
What the houses and other living spaces for boys shared was a clear
system of spatial organization that created a sharp dividing line between
the territories of pupils and masters. Their plans were modelled on
homes for the upper middle classes, which created separate spaces for
servants and for the family. Green baize doors, often the marker of the
threshold between master and maid in the middle-class home, were used
here to separate housemasters and boys. The two halves of the house
124 Space and Emotional Experience

were known as ‘the boys’ side’ and ‘the private side’. Housemasters
were expected to be involved with the boys, but fundamentally it was
thought that pupils should manage and control themselves. Under the
prefect system, senior boys were encouraged to exercise authority and
to be essentially self-disciplining. Spatial separation from adults was a
crucial part of this. According to the Commissioners in 1864, too close
supervision from housemasters amounted to ‘espionage’.21 Indeed, com-
parative reports on British and French schools were quick to defend the
‘liberty’ that boys had within the English system.22 Masters usually had a
completely separate suite of rooms within the house, and a kitchen and
servants’ quarters apart from the boys’ area. In Saunderites, the head-
master’s house at Charterhouse, for example, the only entrance to the
boys’ side from the private side was through the door of the study.23
Even the kitchen was cut off, as the pupils’ breakfast and supper was
cooked by the scholar’s butler in a separate room on their side. Of course,
a great deal depended on the personality of the housemaster and his wife
(if he had one). At Winchester, Trant Bramston was known for opening
up his side of the house to the boys and allowing them to make use of
his study for their own entertainment.24 But in most houses, pupils were
left to fend for themselves.
Yet while school authorities chose to isolate boys from their masters,
they were offered little privacy from each other. Within the houses,
most schools chose to have open-plan dormitories (see Figure 7.1). There
were strong arguments for this from a health perspective. By 1900,
cubicles within school dormitories were seen as outdated, unhealthy
and even morally dangerous. Felix Clay’s survey of school buildings
(1902) noted that ‘the opinion both of Headmasters and school doc-
tors is very strongly in favour of the open room or small dormitory on
all grounds’.25 But it went further than that. The open dormitory was
thought to produce a self-regulating community, in which all boys ben-
efited from positive peer pressure and emotional discipline. Clement
Dukes, in his Health at School (1883 and 1905), argued that cubicles
kept boys from the good influence of older boys in the dormitory, who
might prevent bad language and loose talk.26 Dean Farrar’s account
of the silencing of smutty chat by the angelic Russell in Eric (1858),
his painfully moral schoolboy novel, makes the same point.27 One of
the advantages of Winchester over Eton, according to the Wykehamist
Spencer Leeson, was its open dormitories and Chambers with toys that
offered ‘privacy together with the moral discipline of common life’.28
The ideal, then, was that the open dormitory would produce boys who
were able to discipline and govern themselves, learning to control their
 Jane Hamlett 125

Figure 7.1 Photograph showing the interior of a dormitory, possibly in the

Sanatorium. The sparse layout is typical of the open dormitory in this era.
Winchester College Archive, M24/3. Permission of the Warden and Scholars of
Winchester College

emotions as they lived constantly under the eyes of their peers. Through
watching the older boys, the younger would learn the kind of emotional
expression deemed acceptable within the school environment, that is,
self-controlled, not overly expressive or feminine. This was linked to
the inculcation of Christian morality and virtue. Control was not, how-
ever, provided by spatial surveillance alone. What gave boys the power
to govern each other was a system of physical discipline, which senior
pupils could mete out to juniors. Corporal punishment for boys, as
Heather Ellis has recently pointed out, was endemic in Victorian public
schools.29 All the schools considered here had ritualized forms of pun-
ishment.30 Yet positive role models were also very important. Boys were
deliberately isolated in the hope that they would forge the right kind
of relationships. Prefects were expected to acquire the habit of com-
mand, and younger boys to be obedient, but there was also to be a great
deal of camaraderie and novels frequently celebrate the role of positive
relationships between pupils.31
It was also thought that dormitory design should be used to control
sexual behaviour by limiting boys’ opportunities to form relationships
126 Space and Emotional Experience

in private. Spatial organization was seen as important here because it

set an immediate control on physical behaviour. Yet it also had an emo-
tional impact, as sexual desire and a boy’s opportunity for expressing
it were closely linked to his emotional state. Certainly for the school
authorities, regulating sexuality was a crucial part of the creation of
a broader moral system that promoted self-control and limited the
expression of desire.
Many shared the view that, as the sanitarian Alfred Carpenter
remarked, ‘the morals of a school are closely connected with the char-
acter of the bedroom arrangements’.32 Advocating the open dormitory,
Clement Dukes writes: ‘The evil, too, of cubicles is serious from a moral
point of view.’33 For Dukes, the main threat posed by the cubicle was
sexual: ‘They allow boys to get together for immoral purposes, unseen
and undiscovered.’34 Dukes was particularly insistent on this point and
it seems he had come into conflict with several school authorities:
‘Their defenders, whose name is legion, deny their defects, and assert
that boys keep to their own cubicles by night. Only let an impartial
inquiry be instituted on this point, and the result will often startle and
shame!’35 However, while Wykehamists and Lancing boys slept in open
dormitories, Charterhouse pupils were given cubicles, despite the gen-
eral consensus against this (see Figure 7.2).36 Few other schools used
them.37 We have little evidence as to why the authorities chose to keep
these cubicles in place. But they were equipped to prevent interaction
and intrusion – each had a catch inside the door, which could not be
opened from the outside except with the housemaster’s key, and panels
at the tops of the partitions were wired, stopping boys from climbing
over the top. Adrian Daintrey, a former pupil at the school, was con-
vinced that they were designed to stall sexual activities: ‘I never heard
the upstanding panels being made fun of (perhaps because the under-
lying ground, that of sexual misbehaviour, was dangerous), nor even
mentioned in my own time at school.’38 Daintrey, and presumably the
school authorities, believed that the cubicles kept residents in their place
at night and discouraged sexual advances. However, as we will see, the
emotional climates that spatial isolation fostered were often far from
these disciplined ideals.

Tunding and foulness

The spatial separation of boys and masters had important consequences

for the behaviour of and relationships between the boys. Sometimes,
the ‘moral discipline of common life’ operated as the authorities hoped,
 Jane Hamlett 127

Figure 7.2 Photograph showing boys packing at the end of term by Alexander
Hay Tod. Most of the houses at Charterhouse had two or three large
dormitories filled with cubicles. Charterhouse School Archive, ‘Tod Albums’,
077/4. Permission of Charterhouse School

but in many places it did not. This varied between schools, times and
even houses. Importantly, the boys’ spatial isolation could produce
atmospheres of intimidation, extreme violence and sexual exploitation
that went far beyond what was viewed as acceptable by contemporaries
128 Space and Emotional Experience

(even given the considerable difference in standards between the nine-

teenth century and today). The emotional responses and reactions felt
and expressed by the boys themselves often overpowered notions of
moral constraint – both for the pleasure-seeking bullies and sadists and
their fearful victims. All three schools witnessed incidents of extreme
behaviour. In the 1870s, Winchester saw the growth of the brutal and
extensive use of corporal punishment and ‘tunding’ by the prefects to
a far greater extent than elsewhere. ‘Tunding’ was the Winchester word
for a beating with the ground ash, delivered by a prefect, for which the
victim would be required to expose their bare shoulders and be ‘cut into’
with the ash. The prefects frequently carried this out on the smallest of
pretexts. Charles Oman, who arrived in Chambers in 1873, recalled that
over 100 thrashings had been inflicted in college on mostly 14 boys
during the first six weeks of that term.39 Oman himself was thrashed
four times during the period, in one instance for putting a cup of hot
chocolate in the wrong place.40 But others fared worse: a fellow boy
who was not able to adapt to the fagging system was beaten 14 times –
when he bathed, Oman observed that his body was covered in black
and blue welts.41 The situation finally came to a head after a particu-
larly brutal beating. In the commoner houses the prefects decided to
examine all boys on their grasp of ‘notions’ (the special vocabulary of
Wykehamists). One boy, McPherson, refused to take the test. When he
would not apologize to the head prefect, he was given a savage beat-
ing – 30 cuts of the ground ash on his bare shoulders, breaking five
sticks in the process. It is a testament to the lack of knowledge of the
pupils’ affairs that was brought about by spatial separation that the
school authorities only learned of the beating after a letter was published
about it in The Times.42 After parental complaints and public scandal, the
school was finally persuaded to act, and Chambers, where the beatings
had been rife, was taken over by a new Second Master, Mr Richardson,
who watched the boys more closely. But this step was only taken after
significant problems.
A second consequence of the absence of masters was increased sex-
ual activity between boys, despite the efforts made to prevent this with
open dormitories and cubicles with special devices. Physical desire, and
the emotional attachments that sometimes but not always accompanied
it, often exerted more power in the everyday world of schoolboys than
the disciplined morality hoped for by the authorities. Taking advan-
tage of their isolation, boys had sex at all three schools. Schoolboy
Sam Brooke, writing in his diary in 1862, expressed his fears over the
sexuality of some of the boys at Lancing and his worries over the
 Jane Hamlett 129

effect of this on his younger brother, soon to arrive at the school:

‘the lower school thrive as beasts thrive, flourishing in their lusts’.43
Robert Graves, in his widely read autobiography Good-Bye to All That
(1929), famously described the sexual atmosphere at Charterhouse as
‘complicated by cynicism and foulness’, where boys ‘used each other
coldly as convenient sex-instruments’.44 Graves makes a clear connec-
tion between this and the absence of masters: ‘the house-masters knew
little about what went on in their houses; their living quarters were
removed from the boys’.45 Sex was also present at Winchester. Raymond
Asquith (the eldest son of the later Prime Minister), a prefect at the
school in 1897, noted in a letter to a friend that in a special prefects’
meeting the headmaster ‘spoke in hushed accents of the abominable
crime and exhorted us with passionate fervour to prefer every known
form of prostitution and bestiality to the sin of Sodom’.46 The boys,
however, remained uncowed – and Asquith registered the annoyance of
some at the headmaster’s support for the government’s plans to increase
the penalty for homosexuality from two to 14 years: ‘The bolder spir-
its muttered that the law was not altered yet, and registered a mental
vow to make the best of the lucid interspace.’47 It’s hard to establish
just how much sexual activity went on – particularly as much would
have gone under the radar and, indeed, might only have come to light
if there was a complaint. Tom Driberg, for example, after many years of
pleasurable liaisons on the hills around Lancing and in the public toi-
lets at Brighton, was finally thrown out of school when he attempted
to lure a younger boy into bed with him in the dormitory – the boy’s
complaint to the housemaster sealed his fate.48 Driberg is probably an
unusual example, but his success in concealing his sexual practices from
the school authorities was part of a larger culture of the spatial isolation
of the boys.

Apple pie beds, cargo and pits

How, then, were boys able to come to terms with living in such tur-
bulent and violent worlds? Outbreaks of the kind discussed above were
not constant, but were part of a ubiquitous larger culture of robust sal-
lies and dormitory tricks that was a vital part of school life. Becoming
inured to this kind of emotional buffeting was fundamental to the shift
in character that being at school could bring about. Indeed, the promi-
nence of this pupil-generated culture can be seen as a success for the
school authorities, as the ability to deal with ragging contributed to the
emotional self-control that they wanted boys to acquire. These japes
130 Space and Emotional Experience

inevitably involved attacks on beds – personal spaces that housed prone

and vulnerable bodies at night.
According to R.E. Grice Hutchinson, an amusing Charterhouse trick
involved removing the bed boards from under a mattress, causing the
unfortunate occupant to plunge to the floor when he attempted to get
in.49 The practice of making an ‘apple pie bed’ (folding the sheets in
such as way as to make it impossible for the bed to be entered) was
well established at Winchester.50 A range of other bed-related tricks
were recorded in the Winchester ‘notions’, introducing boys to vari-
ous ingenious methods of dormitory joshing, just in case they were
unable to invent them for themselves. These included the ‘booby trap’
(a bucket of water positioned over an open door)51 and ‘the launch’
(shown in Figure 7.3). The celebration of dormitory tricks in ‘notions’,
often accompanied by little illustrations, shows the pleasure boys took
in these affairs. Most seem quickly to have become accustomed to the
physicality of the dormitory and used to tolerating such pranks, while
retaining a basic level of trust that their peers would not go too far.
These boys were being conditioned to be able to function in a climate of

Figure 7.3 Sketch from the notions book of H.E. Campbell, 1866. Such japes
were common at all three schools. Winchester College Archive, F3/3/31.
Permission of the Warden and Scholars of Winchester College
 Jane Hamlett 131

constant mild physical threat and to be comfortable there. A few boys,

however, never got used to it. For them, the dormitory was the scene of
constant unease and fear, as they waited, on edge, for the next attack.
There were also more positive forms of consolation. The spatial
arrangements of the dormitory allowed the boys considerable licence
to form friendships. The boys were sometimes supportive as well as
aggressive. When Norman de Bruyne arrived at Lancing, he found that
someone had placed a collection of daddy long legs in his bed. This
was the last straw and he burst into tears, but later recalled that ‘a boy
named Hale removed the insects and tried to comfort’ him.52 Com-
munal life had some benefits. The material world, and in particular
the exchange of food, was an important means of becoming estab-
lished within the dormitory and forging vital alliances. A commoner
at Winchester remembered that in the 1840s, his room was known for
its cookery: ‘We used to light an Etna in a wooden box, and boil eggs
and cook various things, including making negus of port wine.’53 Many
letters refer to the practice of sharing provisions from home in the dor-
mitories at night. At Winchester, it was common to receive cakes in
‘cargo’ and to split these in Chambers at night. ‘I hope you do not think
I am too grasping in the way of cakes’, worried Geoffrey Polson in a
letter to his mother from Charterhouse in 1904.54 He was not alone –
culinary confections were a staple topic in letters between mothers and
sons. Sharing ‘cargo’ with ones’ mates often allowed boys to form bonds
with their peers. Events like this were a means of taking back power in
the dormitory, in creating a safe space, and a temporary sense of comfort
and friendship.
Ultimately, emotional stability at school was also strongly influ-
enced by the sense of security that came with being granted autonomy
through personal space. There were considerable variations in this
among the three schools. Charterhouse, as we have seen, allowed boys
to have their own cubicles, and as they progressed up the school, they
might be allowed their own study. The photograph in Figure 7.4 shows
a study at Charterhouse around 1910. There are numerous personal
objects in the background, and the game of chess in progress conveys
the quiet sociability that the study could foster. At Lancing, sixth form-
ers were granted their own studies, or ‘pits’ as they were known. Max
Mallowan describes his joy in obtaining a study: ‘My happiest time at
school was during my last year when I earned the privilege of enjoying
a “pit” . . . The bliss of solitude in a tiny cubicle was a reward for suffer-
ing years of public pandemonium in the House common room.’55 Sam
Brooke, too, felt that life at Lancing improved considerably when in
132 Space and Emotional Experience

Figure 7.4 Photograph showing a study by Alexander Hay Tod, Charterhouse

School Archive, ‘Tod Albums’, 077/3. Permission of Charterhouse School

1861 he was able to take possession of a ‘recess’ in the dormitory, allow-

ing him a new sense of emotional security: ‘I have wished for a place of
retirement like this for many years, and now I have got it, my satisfac-
tion is really unbounded . . . How one can pursue without molestations
 Jane Hamlett 133

all this quiet pleasure.’56 For the more junior boys, however, personal
space was a great deal more limited. Mallowan, at Lancing some 50 years
later, also remembered the scant respect of the dormitory for objects
from home. He recalls of an Irish boy that ‘his father’s photograph stood
in a frame at the side of the son’s bed and exhibited a bald head which
his bedmates used to polish continually with beeswax’.57
The school that offered the most personal space was Winchester,
where there was a distinctive system of ‘toys’ which consisted of allo-
cating each boy his own desk and lockable bureau on arrival. Figure 7.5
shows desks and toys in Second Chamber in the late nineteenth century.
The significance of this spatial provision is highlighted by the letters
of one pupil, Frank Lucas, who was at the school in the 1890s and
documented his life there in over 200 letters home. Lucas was moved
into Second Chamber in January 1892 after he had already spent a
term at the school. He was delighted with the change: ‘it is excellently
lighted, and to have very nice men is a great point’.58 Part of its supe-
riority lay in its especially commodious toy provision: ‘the great thing
about it is that each person has four drawers a desk to open out and
a cupboard combined into one piece of furniture’.59 During his years
at the school, Lucas continued to enthuse over the decoration of his

Figure 7.5 Photograph showing the interior of Second Chamber, Winchester

College Archive, G5/5/3/2. Permission of the Warden and Scholars of Winchester
College
134 Space and Emotional Experience

toys and often pressed his mother and sisters to supply him with orna-
ments and cloths for it.60 In 1896, Lucas’ final year at the school, he was
moved into ‘very comfortable and roomy quarters in upstairs eleventh
and down-stairs fifth’.61 Writing to his mother, he described his feel-
ings on having satisfactorily arranged his personal possessions in the
space: ‘I am writing this comfortably ensconced in my place, with the
satisfactory feeling that everything is in its place. My washing stool is
in a magnificent condition with scarlet muslin hangings (3d a yard)
freshly washed busts, cut narcissus and geraniums, and two geraniums
in pots red and white. In fact everything is beautiful.’62 This quota-
tion indicates the pride and emotional satisfaction that a boy might
invest in his own space within the school. It offers an example of how
one pupil might use space and material goods to actively exert agency
within institutional space, creating a sense of emotional security and
equilibrium.

Conclusion

Exploring the spatial and material world can help us understand how
emotions were produced in everyday life. This strategy is particularly
useful when assessing the role of institutions in society, like pub-
lic schools, which have been strongly associated with the moulding
of young boys and the creation of a certain emotional ‘type’, which
went on to exert a powerful force in nineteenth-century Britain. Public
schools in Victorian and Edwardian England shared a common system
of spatial organization – boys lived in houses, where a sharp dividing
line was drawn between spaces for pupils and masters, and most schools
employed the open dormitory. This system was supposed to promote a
disciplined atmosphere in which the boys governed themselves through
surveillance and through institutionally sanctioned physical discipline
exercised by prefects. While positive peer influence and camaraderie
were encouraged, the use of space was also designed to discourage sexual
relationships between boys, although schools differed in their methods
of implementing this, some preferring an open dormitory and others
cubicles. In all three schools, at certain times, this system broke down,
and rather than producing disciplined pupils, prefects and juniors alike
ran amok, beating and bullying with fierce violence, and indulging in
sexual activity. Frequently pupils’ own emotional responses to their
situations must have completely overwhelmed the moral ideas the
authorities hoped to encourage. Such turbulence was not total, though.
Nearly all dormitories acquired a rough-and-tumble culture in which
 Jane Hamlett 135

tricks were a constant presence. For some boys at least, becoming used
to living in an atmosphere of mild threat played a role in acquiring
the emotional equilibrium required to survive public school. It was in
the creation of this culture, perhaps, that the authorities were most suc-
cessful in using schools to shape the characters of their pupils. Spatial
isolation also allowed scope for friendship and the exchange of tuck that
were important in acquiring a sense of stability within the dormitory.
Finally, it is worth noting just how important access to personal space
was in determining emotional security within the school environment.
Here the three schools differed markedly – while a Lancing junior was
unprotected in the dormitory, a Charterhouse boy could secure himself
in his cubicle and a Wykehamist could find consolation at his lockable
toys. Instead of creating a single public school type, the spatial idiosyn-
crasies of some schools protected and shielded boys in surprising ways
rather than breaking their spirits.

Notes
1. Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown’s Schooldays (London: Penguin, 1997), 156–157.
2. Fabrice Neddam, ‘Constructing Masculinities under Thomas Arnold of
Rugby (1828–1842): Gender, Educational Policy and School Life in an
Early-Victorian Public School’, Gender and Education 16(3) (2004), 303–326.
3. J.A. Mangan, Athleticism in the Victorian and Edwardian Public School: The
Emergence and Consolidation of an Educational Ideology, 3rd edn (London:
Frank Cass, 2000), 146.
4. John Tosh, A Man’s Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian
England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 118.
5. See Rob Boddice, ‘In Loco Parentis? Public-School Authority, Cricket and
Manly Character, 1855–62’, Gender and Education 21(2) (2009), 159–172.
6. Patrick Joyce, The State of Freedom: A Social History of the British State since
1800 (Cambridge University Press, 2013), 264–266.
7. Joyce, State of Freedom, 291–294.
8. For an architectural history, see Malcolm Seaborne and Rob Lowe, The
English School: Its Architecture and Organization, vol. 2, 1870–1970 (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977).
9. There is no room for a full exploration here, but for a useful introduction,
see Barbara H. Rosenwein, ‘Worrying about Emotions in History’, American
Historical Review 107(3) (2002), 821–845, and for a discussion of the key terms
in use to describe emotional experience and conflicts between them, see Rob
Boddice, ‘The Affective Turn: Historicizing the Emotions’, in Cristian Tileagă
and Jovan Byford (eds), Psychology and History: Interdisciplinary Explorations
(Cambridge University Press, 2014), 147–165, esp. 153–156.
10. Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses (London:
Academy Editions, 1996), 44.
11. Henry Francis Mallgrave, Architecture and Embodiment: The Implications of the
New Sciences and Humanities for Design (London: Routledge, 2013), 144.
136 Space and Emotional Experience

12. Thomas A. Markus, Buildings and Power: Freedom and Control in the Origin of
Modern Building Types (London: Routledge, 1993), 125.
13. Michel Foucault, Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison (Paris: Gallimard,
1976), translated from the French by Alan Sheridan as Discipline and Punish:
The Birth of the Prison (London: Allen Lane, 1977), 170.
14. These theories have been subject to considerable revision and debate. For
discussion, see Jane Hamlett, Lesley Hoskins and Rebecca Preston, ‘Intro-
duction’, in Jane Hamlett, Lesley Hoskins and Rebecca Preston (eds), Resi-
dential Institutions in Britain, 1725–1970: Inmates and Environments (London:
Pickering & Chatto, 2013), 1–16, here 4–9.
15. See T.W. Bamford, ‘Thomas Arnold and the Victorian Idea of a Public School’,
in Brian Simon and Ian Bradley (eds), The Victorian Public School: Studies in the
Development of and Educational Institution (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1975),
58–71.
16. James Sabben-Clare, Winchester College: After 600 Years, 1382–1982
(Southampton: Paul Cave, 1981), 14–17.
17. Brian Heeney, Mission to the Middle Classes: The Woodard Schools 1848–1891
(London: SPCK, 1969), 32.
18. Report of Her Majesty’s Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into the Revenues and
Management of Certain Colleges and Schools, and the Studies Pursued and Instruc-
tion Given Therein: With an Appendix and Evidence, vol. 1, Report (London:
HMSO, 1864), 49.
19. Felix Clay, Modern School Buildings Elementary and Secondary: A Treatise on the
Planning, Arrangement, and Fitting of Day and Boarding Schools (London: B.T.
Batsford, 1902), 217.
20. A.H. Tod, Charterhouse, 2nd edn (London: George Bell & Sons, 1905), 56.
21. Report of Her Majesty’s Commissioners, 42.
22. Christina de Bellaigue, ‘“Educational Homes” and “Barrack-Like Schools”:
Cross-Channel Perspectives on Secondary Education in Mid-Nineteenth-
Century England and France’, in David Phillips and Kimberley Ochs
(eds), Educational Policy Borrowing: Historical Perspectives (Oxford: Symposium
Books, 2004), 89–108.
23. Charterhouse School Archive (CSA), ‘Amended Plan of Saunderites’.
24. Sabben-Clare, Winchester College, 45.
25. Clay, Modern School Buildings, 238.
26. Clement Dukes, Health at School: Considered in its Mental, Moral, and Physical
Aspects, 4th edn (London: Rivingtons, 1905), 136.
27. Frederick W. Farrar, Eric, or Little by Little (London: Ward, Lock & Co.,
undated), 89–90.
28. Spencer Leeson, College: 1901 to 1911 (Winchester College, 1958), 27.
29. Heather Ellis, ‘Corporal Punishment in English Public Schools in the Nine-
teenth Century’, in Laurence Brockliss and Heather Montgomery (eds),
Childhood and Violence in the Western Tradition (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2010),
141–150, here 142.
30. Augustine Courtauld, Man the Ropes (London: Hodder & Stoughton,
1957), 25.
31. Tom Brown’s Schooldays stresses the importance of positive friendships
for the young Tom; Hughes, Tom Brown’s Schooldays, 67–68. His alliance
with successful sportsman East (forged over shared sausages) is particularly
 Jane Hamlett 137

significant; Hughes, Tom Brown’s Schooldays, 104. And the friendship and
support of older boy Diggs lets Tom off fagging duties and helps him recover
after the infamous roasting incident; Hughes, Tom Brown’s Schooldays, 150,
157.
32. Alfred Carpenter, The Principles and Practice of School Hygiene, 4th edn
(London: Abbott, Jones & Co., 1895), 105.
33. Dukes, Health at School, 135.
34. Dukes, Health at School, 136.
35. Dukes, Health at School, 135.
36. Charterhouse School Archive (CSA), ‘Report of the Headmaster, June 1899’.
37. They were used in Catholic schools and were also adopted at Radley as it was
thought they encouraged religious contemplation. Andrew Henderson, The
Stone Phoenix: Stonyhurst College 1794–1894 (Worthing: Churchman, 1986),
33; Alfred Kenneth Boyd, The History of Radley College, 1847–1947 (Oxford:
Basil Blackwell, 1948), 42.
38. Adrian Daintrey, I Must Say (London: Chatto & Windus, 1963), 45.
39. Charles Oman, Memories of Victorian Oxford and of Some Early Years (London:
Methuen, 1941), 32.
40. Oman, Memories of Victorian Oxford, 33–34.
41. Oman, Memories of Victorian Oxford, 33–34.
42. See Sabben-Clare, Winchester College, 44–45; Winchester College Archive
(WCA), ‘Papers Relating to the Tunding Row’, F3/4/1.
43. Sam Brooke, ‘Easter Monday 21 April 1862’, Diary, 498(1), Corpus Christi
College, Oxford (CCCA).
44. Robert Graves, Good-Bye to All That: An Autobiography (London: Jonathan
Cape, 1929), 66.
45. Graves, Good-Bye to All That, 66.
46. ‘Letter from Raymond Asquith to H. T. Baker 28 February 1897’, in
John Joliffe (ed.), Raymond Asquith: Life and Letters (London: Collins,
1980), 24.
47. ‘Letter from Raymond Asquith to H. T. Baker 28 February 1897’, 24.
48. Tom Driberg, Ruling Passions (London: Cape, 1977), 44, 51.
49. Charterhouse School Archive (CSA), 1/8.
50. Charles Stevens, Winchester Notions: The English Dialect of Winchester College,
Christopher Stray (ed.) (London: Athlone, 1998), 26.
51. Stevens, Winchester Notions, 46.
52. Norman de Bruyne, My Life (Cambridge: Midsummer Books, 1996), 26.
53. ‘Commoners, Winton, 1843–1846’, The Wykehamist 461 (February 1909), 90.
54. Charterhouse School Archive (CSA), ‘Letter from Geoffrey Polson to His
Mother, 27 November 1904’, ACC 300/11.
55. Max Mallowan, Mallowan’s Memoirs: Agatha and the Archaeologist (London:
HarperCollins, 2001), 22.
56. Sam Brooke, ‘Thur. 29 Aug. 1861’, Diary, 498(1), Corpus Christi College,
Oxford (CCCA).
57. Mallowan, Mallowan’s Memoirs, 18.
58. Frank Lucas, ‘Letter to His Mother, 28 January 1892’, G14/38, Winchester
College Archive (WCA).
59. Frank Lucas, ‘Letter to His Mother, 28 January 1892’, G14/38, Winchester
College Archive (WCA).
138 Space and Emotional Experience

60. Frank Lucas, ‘Letter to His Mother, 28 January 1892’, G14/38, Winchester
College Archive (WCA); Frank Lucas, ‘Letter to His Sister, 31 January 1892’,
G14/40, WCA; Frank Lucas, ‘Letter to his Mother, 2 February 1892’, G14/41,
WCA; Frank Lucas, ‘Letter to His Mother, 24 September 1893’, G14/92, WCA;
Frank Lucas, ‘Letter to His Mother, 20 September 1894’, G14/135, WCA;
Frank Lucas, ‘Letter to His Sister, 10 October 1895’, G14/178, WCA; Frank
Lucas, Letter to His Mother, September 1896’, G14/208, WCA.
61. Frank Lucas, ‘Letter to His Mother, September 1896’, G14/208, WCA.
62. Frank Lucas, ‘Letter to His Mother, Undated’ [autumn 1896], G14/235, WCA.
8
Emotional Regimes and School
Policy in Colombia, 1800–1835
Marcelo Caruso

Children and their emotional education are at the frontier of major

political upheaval. Learning how to feel ‘correctly’ is paramount to the
success of a regime change. The leaders of Latin American independence
focused a great deal of effort on reworking the education system to
that end. This chapter focuses on the battle to determine which educa-
tional and emotional innovations would prevail, and analyses the role
attributed to education and schools in the governing of these sentiments
as expressed in discussions in the early independent public sphere in the
territory today known as Colombia. It proposes an alternative under-
standing of early republican education and school policies in Colombia,
an understanding not only linked to the politics of the time, but also
to the crucial subject of the management of emotional life in a rather
fragile political and cultural context.
On 26 July 1822, one in the major summits of the process of Latin
American independence took place in Guayaquil (Ecuador). Simón Bolí-
var (1783–1830), who had fought against Spanish troops in the northern
part of South America, and José de San Martín (1778–1850), who had
defeated the Spaniards in what is today Argentina, Chile and Peru, met
to forge post-independence plans. This meeting has an almost mythical
status in the Latin American collective memory, signalling the end of
ambitious plans to reunite all former Spanish colonies as a new conti-
nental republic. One of the few sources related to this crucial meeting,
the description by General Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera (1798–1878)
in a Colombian newspaper in 1861, demonstrates that Bolívar and San
Martín disagreed about what type of government was best for the for-
mer colonies. Bolívar sharply rejected San Martín’s proposal to establish
a monarchy and, referring to a battle against the Spaniards in 1813,
argued that the fragile bond between officers from Venezuela, captured

139
140 Emotional Regimes and School Policy in Colombia, 1800–1835

in Colombia, and soldiers from Colombia was a ‘republican sentiment’.

Bolívar stressed that ‘in spite of their education and their experiences
on the battlefield against us, the republican spirit has come to them, so
that we can count on their loyalty and patriotism’.1
Political independence in Latin America apparently appealed to patri-
otic emotions. Yet shared notions of the fatherland were only provi-
sional because of changes in territories and identities. As an alterna-
tive, Bolívar sought common ground on shared ‘republican’ emotions.
William Reddy’s concept of the emotional regime as a constitutive part
of ‘any stable political regime’ is instructive here.2 I follow his close asso-
ciation between political and emotional regimes3 for analysing the role
attributed to education and schools in the regulation of ‘passions’ – as
emotions were termed in the vocabulary of the time – in early indepen-
dent Colombia. I particularly examine various positions in the nascent
public sphere of this young republic. My piece differs from Reddy’s own
work in two respects. The focus on the public sphere means that norms
about emotions, rather than the rituals and practices governing them,
will be addressed. The emphasis on education and schools implies that
questions related to the inculcation of emotions are in focus rather than
questions related to their expression.
Following a regional print revolution,4 hundreds of newspapers – even
in small towns – were the main force in the formation of a public sphere
around the Latin American revolution (after 1808) and independence,
and, as significant evidence of public discourse, form the basis of my
analysis of the different trajectories of the patriotic and republican pas-
sions evoked by Bolívar. The period in question is limited to the years
of political rupture and the construction of a new republican regime,
when – following Reddy – a new emotional regime may have reflected
the emergence of a new political regime. In turn, in my argument, the
changing configurations of this new regime were linked to significant
changes in education and school policy.

Heating up: struggling for a new emotional regime

The establishment of new polities in Latin America after independence

from Spain faced at least two major obstacles. The limits of each new
polity were highly contested due to the consistent divisive tendencies
of cities, major towns and provinces. The ‘republican invention’ was
unprecedented in the region; only the much-admired North American
model of the United States suggested that its implementation could be
realistic.5 In this context, the rather voluntaristic character of the new
 Marcelo Caruso 141

republican education was evident. To force political and cultural change

under conditions of territorial and social uncertainty became the main
task in the first two decades after independence.6
For this task, liberal leaders of independence movements based their
understanding on the bonds between emotional life and education
inherited from late colonial times, but, as we shall see, also signifi-
cantly altered their recommendations and practical applications. A more
education-friendly attitude had spread over the Spanish colonies in the
last decades of the eighteenth century.7 The links made between emo-
tion and education in these enlightened proposals showed a direction
that consistently returned to a language of heating and cooling pas-
sions. All over the Spanish colonies, ilustrados, the proponents of the
Enlightenment, identified Jesuit education, a rather dominant model of
schooling and instructing, as part of a programme towards ‘ardent’ sen-
timents and a ‘feverish’ search for God.8 The new sensibility implied that
enlightened education should overcome superstition and baroque sen-
sibility, deemed as heating up imagination, and focus on cooling down
the passions.
This programme was particularly clear in articles about emotions
and education published in the only weekly of the city of Bogotá just
two years before the political insurrections began. Traditional class-
room practices, particularly those of the Jesuits, as criticized by one
author, were incendiary to children’s spirits: ‘It is evident to all that
these methods have inspired the spirit of ambition among schoolchil-
dren – and even in colleges – by pursuing high and pre-eminent
appointments and being superior to the others through distinctions of
status naming them “emperors”, “consuls” and “captains”. These ideas
fit very well an inclination of the human heart that usually remains
in young people for the rest of their life.’9 The notion that educa-
tion must necessarily have a cooling effect on these tendencies of the
human spirit was evident: ‘those who drink from this glass remain
thirsty so that sometimes this degenerates into a fever that lasts’.10 For
authors advancing enlightened arguments about rationality and dis-
cernment, the question of how to teach emotions in schools focused
on the paradigm of taming the passions. Accordingly, the author of this
programme intended to cool passions; in his proposal for the estab-
lishment of a new school in Bogotá, he declared that ‘the principal
has to inculcate the spirit of honour, shame, and probity among his
schoolchildren from the very beginning. This will be conducive for
promoting their application to work’.11 These were considered ‘cool’
passions.
142 Emotional Regimes and School Policy in Colombia, 1800–1835

Colonial officials and future fighters for independence alike adhered

to these principles in dealing with emotions. Following theories about
the climatic determination of collective moral character and emotional
life, Francisco Antonio de Ulloa (1783–1816), a lawyer in Bogotá who
became one of the leaders of the independence movement in the
southern city of Popayán, believed that ‘the most meticulous physics
teaches us that heat and cold influence the development or the learn-
ing of human passions’.12 Ulloa clearly preferred the beneficial influence
of cold climates, especially as hot climates seemed to foster despotic
regimes. Hot climates, having a negative effect on the level of activity,
had to be counteracted by providing children with adequate nourish-
ment and with baths alongside extra physical and mental activity. All
educational activity should lead to ‘harmony’ as an antidote to heat.
Fully deploying sensualist assumptions of learning, and claiming music
and singing to be valuable tools with which to cool the passions, Ulloa
proposed banning wind instruments from schools because their dam-
aging sounds affected harmony.13 Only pleasant music could ‘stir the
imagination’ of the ‘phlegmatic’ in a proper way.14 It is not surprising
then that the dominant enlightened attitudes towards the cultivation
of emotions in educational settings stressed self-restraint, prudence
and moderation. In this emotional regime, characteristic of late colo-
nial times, even the term ‘passions’ often has a negative connotation;
we read of ‘horrible passions’ that render the ‘rational being’ a kind
of ‘abominable monster’. This could only be counteracted with ‘very
careful education’ (los esmeros de la educación).15
This focus significantly shifted during the wars of independence and
the first years of republican life. A view which challenged the opposi-
tion between cooling down and heating up of emotions circulated in
the discussion how to correctly manage passions in education. Changes
in political nature did not necessarily cause an epistemological rupture
in concepts of the nature and dynamics of emotional life. Sensualistic
assumptions about the environmental factors influencing emotional life
still prevailed. This combination of sensualistic views and a renewed
vision of the virtues of heating up passions were clearly formulated in
an article about education published in a liberal newspaper in Bogotá
in 1822: ‘In a child there is no more than sensations’, the author stated,
and this included the ‘seeds of the passions’. Yet distancing himself from
this inherited view on emotional life, he explained that: ‘We take here
passions in their most extensive sense of the word, meaning all lively
and ardent inclination towards any object, and not taking them as only
referring to vicious affections.’16
 Marcelo Caruso 143

Ideas about good emotional regimes, centred on heating up and cool-

ing emotions, still circulated widely, but were now interpreted quite
differently. The connection between climates, character and political
regime is certainly a point in case. The link between political institu-
tions on the one hand and ‘the character, the passions, the customs
and the grandeur of the nations (pueblos)’ on the other differed starkly
from inherited assumptions.17 If despotic regimes in 1808 were partly a
result of hot climates, it seems they were now rather associated with a
cold emotional atmosphere: ‘despotic governments suffocate the lights
and suppress the passions; fear extinguishes the sentiments’, wrote an
editorialist from the city of Rionegro when discussing education and
politics.18 In his view, the opposite was true in republican governments:
these are not only coextensive with the spread of knowledge and educa-
tion, but in them, ‘the passions have motivations’ (resortes). Republican
regimes are based on ‘slightly oppressed sentiments, modified in one
thousand ways, and thereby acquire ascendancy, deepness and gentle-
ness’.19 A well-tempered heat being the foundation of republican order,
the new republics could not afford to ignore emotional life.
If supporters of the new republican order had a rather positive view
of the passions and recommended that they merely be subtly dulled
through education rather than being ‘suffocated’ as recommended in
‘despotic’ regimes, this preference was stronger still in the more dra-
matic question of patriotic sentiments, which they had linked to the
very existence of these new independent polities. In a remarkable
Catecismo de una sola pregunta (catechism of only one question), the lib-
eral weekly El Patriota in Bogotá defined patriotism in a series of answers
to a single question: what is a patriot? The answers cited a wide range
of virtues. Of course, civic duties played a major role, but so did the
spirit of sacrifice which developed during the years of military conflict
against the Spaniards. On the whole, to be a patriot was ‘to abjure a cor-
rupted and unjust fatherland, to adopt another liberal one, and to serve
it with loyalty and enthusiasm’.20 This catechism concluded that ‘to be
a patriot is to abandon oneself without limits to the fatherland in times
of war and times of peace’.21 To give oneself over was the critical point
here, and this association reinforced the sense that heated passions were
a pillar of the new political regimes. On the whole, the positive aspects
credited to the passions drawn from patriotic sentiments were a further
consequence of a more positive view of nature. In a fictive dialogue pub-
lished in the newspaper The Match (El Fosforo), a name clearly alluding to
fire and ignition, ‘the tiger cannot do less than to love the woods where
he first opened his eyes’ – consequently ‘the worship of the fatherland
144 Emotional Regimes and School Policy in Colombia, 1800–1835

(patria) is present everywhere in nature and the love to be felt is also

the work of nature. It is the intimate sentiment that obliges you to love
your existence’.22
Heated passions could be a clear asset in the cause of independence.
This is not unexpected given the political context of war. Only heated
spirits could sacrifice themselves for a nascent fatherland. Heated pas-
sions became more problematic, however, in the task of building a
new republican political order, questioning Bolívar’s assertions that a
republican sentiment was at the base of efforts towards independence.

Education as a heater: ambivalences in republican

education

The heat of independence and revolution gave way to the task of

building up a new republican order that largely conditioned the devel-
opment of educational institutions. Many of the new republics in Latin
America – particularly Gran Colombia – advanced ambitious plans to
overcome the distinctions characteristic of colonial society. Political
constitutions introduced a language of equality and emancipation,23
and some of the consequent electoral regulations continued this path
of equalizing political rights.24 A set of ambitious reforms consisting
of the extension of suffrage and education, equality for indigenous
peoples, strong secularization, liberalizing commerce and changing cul-
tural patterns – but not the liberation of slaves, however – marked the
radical-liberal agenda of the 1820s.25
Particularly in the field of education, drafts for reform were overtly
ambitious. The monitorial system of education, deemed as delivering
cheap, quick, basic and mass instruction, received great support as a
strategy for rapidly expanding the group of literate males that, following
electoral provisions, had the right to vote. Similarly, higher education
had to be reformed according to utilitarian and secularized values. How-
ever, due to the difficult financial situation, these transformations were
more often envisioned and proclaimed than consistently carried out.26
Yet the very attempt to transform society along liberal lines led to the
formation of conservative forces composed of the Catholic Church,
elites and even subaltern groups like indigenous communities,27 all
sharing a diffuse feeling that change was occurring precipitously fast.
Bolívar was one of the leading members of an elite group that sided
with moderation and mistrust of the masses early in the process of inde-
pendence. He supported republican ideas and general representations of
equality, but he also remained quite pessimistic about the powers of new
 Marcelo Caruso 145

representative regimes to deal with Latin American realities. An institu-

tional vision to moderate rather than to heat the passions was conveyed
in his proposals for a ‘moral power’. He envisioned a second chamber in
Parliament, elected by the president and the chamber of representatives
and held for life, which would have the function of watching over pub-
lic virtues.28 Education, particularly early education, should be one of
the first concerns of this second chamber. Explicitly a power modelled
after old republican orders in Greece and Rome and the British House of
Lords, this chamber would be a moderating force insofar as it intended
to put democratic principles – like universal adult male franchise – into
action without disrupting social order.29 In this project, the late Enlight-
enment vocabulary of moderation and virtue continued to exist, though
now in a republican context.
Bolívar had outlined some features of this more cautious republi-
can education in his famous Discurso de Angostura (1819). Educating
children and youth in the republican spirit was rather the cultivation
of virtue in a disciplined way and thus education had to be removed
from the political arena. ‘Popular education ought to be the first care
of the Congress’ paternal regard. Morals and knowledge are the cardi-
nal points of a Republic, and morals and knowledge are what we most
want.’ Citing the Aeropagus in Athens, the Roman censors and the ‘aus-
tere’ establishments in Sparta, he declared: ‘Let us give our Republic
a fourth Power with Authority to preside over the infancy and hearts
of men – public spirit, good habits, and Republican morality. Let us
constitute this Aeropagus to watch over the education of youth and
National instruction, to purify whatever may be corrupt in the Repub-
lic – to impeach ingratitude, egoism, luke-warmness in the Country’s
cause, sloth, and idleness – and to pass judgement on the first germs
of corruption and pernicious example.’30 Following the climatologi-
cal understanding of emotions, this political body had to have a real,
clear function: ‘It will be the means of calming the fury and maintain-
ing the harmony betwixt the Members and the Head of this political
body.’31
Since the moderating power had a responsibility to cool down pas-
sions, it is not surprising that liberals opposed it. Liberals accused Bolívar
of coming ‘to the extreme of forming Spartans: he wants honourable
parents, faithful spouses, fair magistrates, virtuous citizens, all of them
eminently temperate’.32 Arguing against this ‘Catonian character’, the
editors of El Fosforo in the southern city of Popayan argued that ‘our
customs . . . are not compatible with the severity of this Areopagus’. They
argued that Latin Americans should not imitate foreign ways: ‘either we
146 Emotional Regimes and School Policy in Colombia, 1800–1835

go back to simple nature and our transformation will be durable, or we

will be corrupted by European customs’.33
Bolívar’s proposal for a moderating power had no immediate conse-
quences. The course of the wars of independence in Peru and Bolivia,
a new country named after him, consumed his energies well into
the 1820s. During this time, his Vice President Francisco de Paula
Santander (1792–1840) – a committed radical liberal – was in charge
of the government and advanced a series of secularist reforms that pro-
voked much agitation among the elites. In particular, the adoption of
Jeremy Bentham’s philosophy, political principles and reform projects
as mandatory at the level of secondary education in 1826 accelerated
the growing political gap between the moderate Bolívar and the radical
Santander. Conservatives voicing strong opposition to the educational
plan from 1826 described ‘Colombia’s evils’ as being the result of a lim-
itless liberty fuelled by the spread of ‘detestable’ authors like ‘Benthan’,
‘Rusó’ and ‘Volter’ (sic). The damaging effect of this situation was to
‘heat up the youthful imagination’ producing and multiplying ‘agitated
and feverish projects’ (proyecto de febricitantes).34
Heating up patriotic and republican sentiments increasingly provoked
disagreements within the newly dominant republican forces. From the
conservative perspective, from which it was desirable to cool down the
passions unleashed by political disruption, education naturally played
a central role. These conservatives evoked virtues that the enlightened
discourse in Spain had advocated in the late eighteenth century. They
focused on the value of industrious behaviour and a rather rational
explanation of the duties men have in relation to God, society and
their fellow men.35 When the Bishop of Maracaibo published a series
about his ‘sentiments’ in the difficult time of radical liberal reforms and
secularization, he described Christian education as pastoral care and dis-
cussed the meaning of apacentar, a verb related to such care. Originally
meaning ‘to graze’ and ‘to pasture’, it acquired an additional mean-
ing. ‘We should not understand apacentar as a material task; we should
not relate it only to the administration of the sacraments; it is true
that instruction preceded even baptism.’36 He suggested understanding
teaching as a kind of apacentar, but his indication of the immate-
rial sense of the word clearly evoked the word pacificar (to appease),
rejecting harmful passions. The construction of the republican order in
Colombia proved so divisive for the former independence fighters that
the more liberal line in favour of heating up sentiments did not win
uncontested support. The crisis of political and, to a limited extent, edu-
cational authority during the 1820s laid the ground for a change in the
 Marcelo Caruso 147

emotional regime, preferring harmony and appeasement to heating up

the emotions.
Even if the proposal to institutionalize moral power was not enthu-
siastically accepted in Colombia, another tenet of Bolívar’s discourse
proved more consequential. Bolívar had in his Discurso de Angostura
(1819) evoked a ‘national’ feeling ‘possessing a uniform inclination
towards two principal points, regulating public will and limiting public
authority’. Of course, this ‘uniform’ inclination was a fiction, serving
solely the formation and publication of the new constitution under
independence. His assertion was more programmatic than a true diag-
nosis, as shown when declaring that: ‘Love of Country, Laws, and
Magistrates ought to be the ruling passion in the breast of every repub-
lican.’ The alternative to the intended uniform attachment to the new
order would be ‘a state of confusion’.37 Even before the formation of
Gran Colombia succeeded, he had sketched out a momentous pro-
gramme for the emotional regime needed in later, contentious times:
‘To save our incipient Republic from such a chaos, all our moral pow-
ers will be insufficient, unless we melt the whole People down into one
mass; the composition of the Government is a whole, the Legislation is
a whole, and National feeling is a whole. Unity, Unity, Unity, ought to
be our device.’38
The meaning of this intended unity may have varied considerably
according to political and ideological positioning and, ironically, could
become a divisive issue. However, during the convulsive 1820s and par-
ticularly after Bolívar’s brief conservative dictatorship between 1828
and 1830, this tenet consistently evoked at least two central, urgent
issues of the time: the dismembering of Gran Colombia, which hap-
pened after 1830, giving way to three different republics, and the fact
that dissent actually provoked civil war. But even before these dra-
matic events forced Bolívar to change his moderate liberal position, the
identification of public education as being conducive to this unity of
sentiment remained a part of liberal discussions about the education of
the younger generations.39
Even the most radical of liberals accepted that creating unity of
sentiment was a priority for republican education. Simón Rodríguez
(1769–1854), former private tutor to Bolívar, is a case in point. As a
radical and original thinker, Rodriguez played a significant role in
the process of independence and establishing a republican political
regime, particularly after his return from Europe in 1823. On the one
hand, Rodriguez epitomized liberal strategies to deal with children’s and
youths’ emotions, whilst educating them. In his famous work Sociedades
148 Emotional Regimes and School Policy in Colombia, 1800–1835

americanas en 1828, one of the most original texts on the changes occur-
ring in the new republics, he saw the cooling down of sentiments as
a real danger in the education of the new generations of republicans:
‘the patriots are seeing how their sentiments are becoming part of the
past; they do not realise that their children – already! – hear them speak-
ing about their revolution . . . maybe . . . with even less emotion than they
feel when they read Roman History’.40 A new political regime for him
was also about sentiments: ‘no matter how often republicans speak in
public against despotism, the few men who feel its burden will suffer
under it as long as they belong to a people that bear it without feeling
it’.41 The main role of education was to eradicate remnants of the feel-
ing for the old despotic orders still partly present in daily life despite all
the constitutional experiments. On the other hand, if Rodriguez advo-
cated an emotional regime that should not temper but rather accentuate
passions, he clearly addressed this question in a manner that echoed
Bolívar’s contention that unity should be a republican educational goal.
The new republican order had to be achieved by a unity of agreement
to tame the diverging wills of individuals and groups. He argued that
‘this sentiment results from the knowledge that each person has about
his true interests; and schools are necessary in the republics in order to
acquire this knowledge . . . a school for all, because all are citizens’.42
Although many agreed with the conception of influencing passions
as operations of heating up and cooling, particular political groups dif-
fered in terms of educational approach. Various preferences coexisted,
contributing to the shaping of attitudes and practices towards the edu-
cation of children in the new independent and republican era. The
nascent emotional regime stated that patriotic and republican emotions
were to be instilled by education. Whereas independence fighters consis-
tently associated patriotic sentiments with operations intended to heat
up emotional reserves, the question of republican emotions involved a
more nuanced field of possibilities. The construction of the new repub-
lican order oscillated between the two contrary orientations, one of
‘honouring the general will’ and the other geared towards ‘securing the
moral cement of society’, as it was recently described.43 The different
preferences in this field guided the preferences towards a hotter or a
colder variation of the emotional regime.

Heating up emotions through teaching systems and school

rituals?

In order to understand early republican school policies in Gran

Colombia, this section focuses on two measures adopted by the first
 Marcelo Caruso 149

republican governments: the adoption of the monitorial system of

education and the role played by public examinations in elementary
schools. I will argue that discussions about the proper handling of pas-
sions resonated with the elites charged with making policy decisions
and those discussing such matters in the nascent Colombian public
sphere. This resonance led to the adoption of these techniques and
contributed to the controversies in which they were involved. In my
argument, I do not present this explanation in causal terms. Struggling
emotional regimes may have conditioned – yet not wholly determined –
the plausibility and acceptance of educational measures.
If we consider the major decision in the field of elementary school
policy – the official adoption of the English monitorial system of educa-
tion – the multiple views on the new republican emotional regime may
have played a considerable role in shaping both support and opposition.
The basic idea of this system of instruction consisted of the delegation
of all direct teaching to monitors or teaching assistants. These mon-
itors were the best pupils in each subject. They had to go through a
highly standardized curriculum with a small group of pupils. Following
the instructions of this curriculum, pupils were grouped according to
their respective ability in each subject and each group had to train spe-
cific portions of the overall content with a pre-defined didactic device.
Direct teaching, as we know it today, did not take place. The whole sys-
tem was based on practice exercises and repetitions of the pre-defined
content under the supervision of the monitor. There was also a whole
range of order monitors who were responsible for general order in the
classroom and for discipline. The overall design of this system of teach-
ing resulted from the need to provide elementary instruction to a large
group of students – often more than 100 – at a low cost and in a short
time.44
The constitutional assembly for Gran Colombia, not bureaucrats from
the educational or church administration, ordered the adoption of this
system of teaching. Bolívar presented a motion to found three nor-
mal schools based on the monitorial system.45 Almost simultaneously,
Article 14 of the law from 6 August 1821 on the establishment of pri-
mary schools for both sexes declared that ‘the teaching method will
be the same (uniforme) in all parts of the Republic’.46 The emphasis
on unity of method in all schools of the country – a novelty for that
time – was evident. In a controversial plan in 1826, legislators set a
deadline of just one year to convert schools to the new monitorial
method: ‘once a monitorial school has been established in every parish,
no one shall be allowed to run a school under the old and vicious
method’.47 In truth, the fate of the monitorial system of education
150 Emotional Regimes and School Policy in Colombia, 1800–1835

was less certain than this determined statement might suggest. Sluggish
progress and rather unsystematic application prevailed over naïve and
ambitious assumptions about its dissemination.48 Regardless of these
setbacks, contemporaries clearly viewed the system as being part of the
reforms of the new republican era. An observer of the opening of pri-
mary and secondary schools in the city of Boyacá marvelled at the fact
that monitorial schools had been established ‘in spite of the horror
usually inspired by such novelties in the arts and sciences’.49
Explanations for the desire to introduce monitorial schools in
Colombia ranged from the inescapable cultural ascendancy of Great
Britain at that time,50 to its potential to instil discipline,51 to the
networking of early independent political elites.52 Nevertheless, frag-
mentary evidence points to intrinsic aspects of the system that may also
have contributed significantly to its popularity and acceptance; these
are features that adapted to the vicissitudes of the early republican emo-
tional regime. The dynamics of this model of teaching and its strongly
differentiated schedule are cases in point. This required frequent move-
ments of all classes from the benches to the so-called ‘sand desks’ for
writing, and then to the tables, with lessons taking place in all parts
of the large schoolroom. In the words of one leading educationalist of
the early republic, José María Triana (1792–1855), ‘children are contin-
uously occupied without fatigue because of the pleasant change in the
exercises’.53 Observers, like the one reporting to a newspaper in the city
of Medellín in 1823, credited these constant movements and changes
with the power to vivify and make pleasant teaching routines: ‘to con-
vince people about its utility, it suffices to point out the expediency that
it brings in the advancement of the young students without causing
them the annoyance and the aversion that the barbarian methods used
until now necessarily produce’.54
Regular movements – executed in these big schools almost as collec-
tive choreographies – were expected to promote positive emotions and
to intensify emotional states. This expectation resulted from the sen-
sory assumptions shared by educated Spanish and Latin American elites
at that time. One central point of the sensory understanding of emo-
tions was the attempt to expand ‘Locke’s notion of the sensory origins of
ideas by applying it to the emotions and moral sentiments as well. Ideas,
emotions, and moral sentiments alike were expressions of sensibility,
movements of the body’s parts in response to sensory impressions of the
outside world’.55 In fact, this sensory view gave way in the last decades
of the eighteenth century to a veritable pattern of interpretation, prob-
ably across the entire Hispanic world.56 Activating sentiments through
 Marcelo Caruso 151

regular body movements pointed to the strategy of heating emotions

in a context in which the expansion of schooling was equated with a
‘combat against idleness and ignorance’.57
The routines proposed in this system may have been for many the
ideal arrangement of sensations, capable of bringing about specific emo-
tions in a very powerful manner. José María Triana presented this system
to the public as being a particularly effective one. ‘In the old method’,
he wrote, ‘morality was only in the precepts, and here it is in the prac-
tices.’58 He referred here to the strong meritocratic aspects of the system
and its method of honouring achievement on a regular basis, making it
visible for everyone through badges, the distribution of prizes and the
allocation of positions as monitors. The epistemology of the efficacy of
good models over good precepts was certainly older and underlined the
power of sensations as formative forces, one of the tenets of sensory
concepts of learning.59
Monitorial schools may not only have been particularly suited to
the strategy of activating and heating up emotions, but were a sup-
porting factor in achieving the ‘unity of sentiment’ that actors from
different groups saw as promising the consolidation of the republican
order. A reporter in Antioquia clearly formulated the virtues of having a
codified system that could be transplanted into all regions of the young
republic: ‘the wise plan of our government in establishing [monitorial
schools] is to prescribe operations and principles that spread and define
the intelligence that forms the students in the same sentiments and
simplifies instruction by giving rules for its order and progression’.60
This was undoubtedly one of the main concerns of some officials, who
introduced and distributed a unified handbook for the organization and
conduct of teaching in the 1820s, and remained a recurrent point in the
discussions about the freedom to teach throughout the nineteenth cen-
tury.61 The monitorial system of education matched both the intended
mobilization of sentiments and the search for unity of sentiment in the
context of divisive discussions about the shape of the new republican
order.
Another way to heat up patriotic and republican emotions was to
have school performances in public. Again, public ceremonies display-
ing school exercises had existed for a long time and had become more
popular at the end of the eighteenth century in the Hispanic world.62
Now these public examinations became sites for the constitution of
emotional attachment to the imagined community of the republic.
Of course, other public gatherings during the wars of independence
attracted even more attention, like the spectacle of military parades,
152 Emotional Regimes and School Policy in Colombia, 1800–1835

and early decrees and reform projects correspondingly defined school-

ing in terms of military activity.63 Public ceremonies related to the work
of schools gradually gained ground. Although no general regulations
seemed to have ordered public competitions and examinations, these
became common from the 1820s onwards, and were encouraged by local
and regional officials. These public school examinations became crucial
insofar as they put the virtues of the new egalitarian political order on
the scene.
These public ceremonies demonstrating the progress children made
in their education had to show a good deal of republican solemnity.64
The events undoubtedly also aimed to heat up the passions with their
display of educational achievements. Witnessing the wonders of the
new system of education and propagating the new rules of republican
government often coincided, as in the case of a public examination in
Bogotá in 1826: ‘many prizes were distributed at the ceremony and it
was noticed with astonishment that a four- or five-year-old child, the
son of an artisan, answered many questions on the rights of man quite
vividly’.65 For the purposes of heating up republican sentiments, bull-
fighting and dancing accompanied school exercises, as in the opening of
the monitorial school in the town of Honda in 1825.66 We do not know
whether these exercises and celebrations really impressed children, but
the public attempts to heat up passions seemed at least to have gained
the favour of adults. In the town of Guayatá (Tunja), ‘heads of the fam-
ilies’ and ‘priests’ insisted on organizing a public examination for the
opening of the local monitorial school.67 The public even demanded the
re-establishment of public examinations when these were suspended as
a result of political unrest and conflict.68 Public examinations became
a central piece of the new political life of schools and children. Their
organization was fully in line with the early republican programme to
foster passions and heat up sentiments.

Conclusion: children’s emotions and school education in

early republican Colombia

Both school policies – the consistent promotion of the monitorial sys-

tem of education and the organization of school examinations pervaded
with republican enthusiasm – suffered a backlash during Simón Bolívar’s
short dictatorship between 1828 and 1830. It was a time of deep political
crisis in Gran Colombia and Bolívar increasingly took on conservative
positions in the fields of politics, religion and education. He attempted
to form an alliance with the Catholic Church, opposing Francisco de
 Marcelo Caruso 153

Paula Santander’s efforts for a decisive secularization of political and

social life.69 His conservative turn on educational policies was visible
in the transference of educational supervision to the priests and in the
introduction of the freedom to teach, which represented the end of the
monopoly of the monitorial system in the arena of education. A decree
banning public school examinations was issued during this time.70 Both
policies were reinstated after Bolívar’s death in 1830 and the return of
Santander from exile.
Yet something had changed after the crisis between these two repub-
licans tendencies. In general, the second term of Santander’s presidency
showed a shift towards a more careful approach. The mere heating up
of the sentiments prevailing in the public discourses of the 1820s gave
way to more nuanced positions. The forceful assertion of the passions
from the pre-civil war era did not return. Already at a time when civil
and political disagreement had resulted in open conflict, the more con-
servative faction of republicans following Bolívar advocated the taming
of the passions as a necessity: ‘How could fathers fight against the pas-
sions of their sons, those untidy and without habits?’71 Negative effects
of the heating up of passions in schools had become evident, even for
some liberals. Vanity, affirmed an editorial writer in a liberal daily, was a
common feature of the new generation: ‘conceited because of their lit-
tle or greater intelligence and full of pride, they think that disdain and
unpleasant manners with all persons is the nom (sic) plus ultra of their
knowledge and their freedom’.72
After conservative insurgence and disruption, liberals increasingly
advocated their own concepts of docility and tempered passions. Even
in decidedly liberal newspapers, vocabulary concerning emotions and
education became more restrained. One editorialist in Tunja wrote
in 1833 about the blessings of education: ‘children and young peo-
ple . . . you are the ones, who have to receive [education] with docility
and enthusiasm’ for the good of the fatherland.73 Under these condi-
tions, liberals tended to hold more nuanced views on the passions. They
had to be governed rather than be considered as being simply good
and natural. It is in this context that liberals shifted to the paradigm
of ‘the vigilance of the passions’, as the Colombian historian Franz
Hensel Riveros called it.74 As a consequence, school policies that had
been central to the strategy of heating up passions came under scrutiny.
Critics of monitorial schooling – still the official system of elementary
teaching in the 1830s – gained the upper hand by the early 1840s and
school examinations increasingly refrained from working up republi-
can enthusiasm, and focused on more traditional forms of knowledge
154 Emotional Regimes and School Policy in Colombia, 1800–1835

like penmanship rather than on political education and constitutional

rights.75
The new republican emotional regime contributed to the adoption
of school policies after 1830 that increasingly aimed to moderate emo-
tions. Although heating up passions had become a central element
of the republican emotional regime after independence, a rather con-
sensual view on the suitability of emotions heated through education
remained fixed to the realm of patriotic emotions. In the time of war
and independence, these demanded sacrifice and a total commitment
to the cause of forming new polities. Contrary to this, heating up repub-
lican sentiments proved more controversial. Moderate and conservative
forces mistrusted the impact of heated emotions and Bolívar proposed
with the ‘unity of sentiment’ an alternative concept of handling emo-
tions through their moderation. Without renouncing the strategy of
heating up republican sentiments, liberal and radical forces also viewed
the unity of sentiment as an urgent task, particularly after conserva-
tive unrest in the late 1820s. After this experience, a combination of
enthusiasm and docility became stronger.
This account provides a more complete explanation of some fea-
tures of school policies than is provided by the mere ideological divide
between liberal and conservatives. For instance, historiography based
on purely ideological categories could not explain why Bolívar did not
ban the use of monitorial schooling, although this system of teaching
was heavily associated with secularization and liberal groups. If we take
into account the potential contribution of monitorial schools in achiev-
ing a ‘unity of sentiment’ through a unity of school methods, Bolívar’s
reticence to ban them becomes understandable. In the same vein, trans-
formations of public school examinations over time are not only tied to
ideology, but are also closely related to changing preferences in the man-
agement of collective emotions and cannot be completely explained by
referring back to mere ideological devices. If this hypothesis is true, emo-
tional regimes may be considered not only as a correlate of political
regimes, but – mediated through the structuring power of educational
institutions and practices – as one of their formative forces.

Notes
1. T.C. Mosquera, La entrevista de Bolívar y San Martín en Julio de 1822 (El
Colombiano de Bogotá: n.p., 28 October 1861), 1–2.
2. William M. Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of
Emotions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 129.
3. Susan J. Matt, ‘Current Emotion Research in History: Or, Doing History from
the Inside Out’, Emotion Review 3(1) (2011), 117–124.
 Marcelo Caruso 155

4. François-Xavier Guerra, Modernidad e independencias. Ensayos sobre las revolu-

ciones hispánicas, 3rd edn (Mexico: FCE, 2000); Eugenia Roldán Vera, The
British Book Trade and Spanish American Independence: Education and Knowledge
Transmission in Transcontinental Perspective (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003).
5. José Antonio Aguilar Rivera and Rafael Rojas (eds), El republicanismo en
Hispanoamérica: Ensayos de historia intelectual y política (Mexico: FCE, 2002);
Elías J. Palti, El tiempo de política: El siglo XIX reconsiderado (Buenos Aires: Siglo
XXI, 2007).
6. Frank Safford, ‘The Problem of Political Order in Early Republican Spanish
America’, Journal of Latin American Studies 24, Supplement (1992), 83–97.
7. Sajid Alfredo Herrera, ‘Primary Education in Bourbon San Salvador and
Sonsonate, 1750–1808’, in Jordana Dym and Christophe Belaubre (eds), Pol-
itics, Economy, and Society in Bourbon Central America, 1759–1821 (Boulder:
University Press of Colorado, 2006), 17–46.
8. For Mexico, see Ramón Kuri Camacho, ‘Barroco jesuita, teología de los afec-
tos y educación estética en el siglo XVII novohispano’, Revista de Filosofía
55(1) (2007), 55–83.
9. El Amigo de los Niños, ‘Reflexiones sobre la educacion publica’, Semanario
del Nuevo Reyno de Granada (6 March 1808), 75–81.
10. El Amigo de los Niños, ‘Reflexiones sobre la educacion publica’, 79.
11. El Amigo de los Niños, ‘Continuacion del numero anterior’, Semanario del
Nuevo Reyno de Granada (27 March 1808), 99–106, here 101.
12. F.A. de Ulloa, ‘Ensayo sobre el influxo del clima en la educacion fisica y
moral del hombre del Nuevo Reyno de Granada’, Semanario del Nuevo Reyno
de Granada (31 July 1808), 276–281.
13. For a fuller elaboration on the link between music, singing and training the
emotions, see Chapter 10.
14. F.A. de Ulloa, ‘Conclusion del Discurso’, Semanario del Nuevo Reyno de
Granada (9 October 1808), 354–360.
15. ‘Efectos de la educacion’, El Alternativo del Redactor Americano (27 January
1808), 97–100, here 99.
16. ‘Educacion’, Correo de la Ciudad de Bogotá (4 April 1822), 461.
17. Editorial, El Constitucional Antioqueño (25 September 1831), 3–4, here 3.
18. Editorial, 3.
19. Editorial, 3.
20. ‘Catecismo de una sola pregunta’, El Patriota (26 February 1823), 55–58.
21. ‘Catecismo de una sola pregunta’, 57–58.
22. Z., ‘Carta 1 de la montaña: Sobre el amor de la Patria’, El Fosforo (5 February
1823), 9–13.
23. ‘Reflexiones sobre la educacion publica’, 79.
24. Aline Helg, Liberty & Equality in Caribbean Colombia, 1770–1835 (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2004); Isabela Restrepo Mejía, ‘La sober-
anía del “pueblo” durante la época de la Independencia, 1810–1815’, Historia
Crítica 29 (2005), 101–123.
25. Theodora Louise McKennan, ‘Santander and the Vogue of Benthamism
in Colombia and Nueva Granada’ (PhD dissertation, Loyola University
Chicago, 1970).
26. Marcelo Caruso, ‘Literacy and Suffrage: The Politicisation of Schooling
in Postcolonial Hispanic America (1810–1850)’, Paedagogica Historica 46(4)
(2010), 463–478.
156 Emotional Regimes and School Policy in Colombia, 1800–1835

27. James E. Sanders, Contentious Republicans: Popular Politics, Race, and Class in
Nineteenth-Century Colombia (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004).
28. Meri L. Clark, ‘Disciplining Liberty: Early National Colombian School Strug-
gles, 1820–1840’, in Kim Tolley (ed.), Transformations in Schooling: Histor-
ical and Comparative Perspectives (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007),
87–108.
29. John Lynch, Simón Bolívar: A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006).
30. Simón Bolívar, Speech of His Excellency General Bolívar, at the Installation of
the Congress of Venezuela: In Angostura, on the 15th Day of February, 1819
(Angostura: Andrew Roderick, 1819), 20.
31. Bolívar, Speech of His Excellency General Bolívar, 15.
32. ‘Sobre el aeropago colombiano’, El Fosforo (8 May 1823), 108.
33. ‘Sobre el aeropago colombiano’, 108.
34. Editorial, Antidoto Contra los Males de Colombia (14 June 1828), 1–4, here 3.
35. Editorial, 4.
36. Obispo de Maracaibo, ‘Primer sentimiento’, Mis sentimientos, (Bogotá: n.p.,
1826), 5–8, here 5.
37. Bolívar, Speech of His Excellency General Bolívar, 19.
38. Bolívar, Speech of His Excellency General Bolívar, 19.
39. ‘Sobre el aeropago colombiano’, 108.
40. Simon Rodríguez, Sociedades americanas en 1828: Como seran y como podrian
ser en los siglos venideros (Arequipa: n.p., 1828), 7.
41. Rodríguez, Sociedades americanas en 1828, 7.
42. Rodríguez, Sociedades americanas en 1828, 20.
43. Roberto Gargarella, The Legal Foundations of Inequality: Constitutionalism in
the Americas, 1776–1860 (Cambridge University Press, 2010), Chapters 2
and 3.
44. Joseph Lancaster, Improvements in Education, as it Respects the Industrious
Classes of the Community: Containing, a Short Account of its Present State, Hints
towards its Improvement, and a Detail of Some Practical Experiments Conducive
to that End (London: Darton and Harvey, 1803).
45. Gregorio Weinberg, ‘Las ideas lancasterianas en Simón Bolívar y Simón
Rodríguez’, Anuario de Historia de la Educación 1 (1997), 203–220.
46. Olga Lucía Zuluaga de Echeverry, El maestro y el saber pedagógico en Colombia,
1821–1848 (Medellín: Universidad de Antioquía, 1984), 22.
47. M. Báez Osorio, ‘La escuela lancasteriana en Colombia’, Revista de Ciencias de
la Educación 155 (1993), 381–397, here 385.
48. Marcelo Caruso, ‘The Persistence of Educational Semantics: Patterns of Varia-
tion in Monitorial Schooling in Colombia (1821–1844)’, Paedagogica Historica
41(6) (2005), 721–744.
49. ‘Instalación del Colegio de Boyacá’, Gaceta de Colombia (17 November 1822),
81.
50. Edgar Vaughan, Joseph Lancaster en Caracas (1824–1827) (Caracas: Ediciones
del Ministerio de Educación, 1987).
51. Jesús Alberto Echeverry Sánchez, Santander y la instrucción pública (1819–
1840) (Bogotá: Foro Nacional por Colombia/Universidad de Anttioquia,
1989).
52. Roldán Vera, British Book Trade and Spanish American Independence.
53. J.M.T., ‘Enseñanza mutual’, El Conductor (2 March 1827), 63–64, here 63.
 Marcelo Caruso 157

54. ‘Las nuevas escuelas’, Eco de Antiiquia (26 January 1823), 148.
55. Jessica Riskin, Science in the Age of Sensibility: The Sentimental Empiricists of the
French Enlightenment (University of Chicago Press, 2002), 2.
56. Marcelo Caruso, ‘Learning and New Sociability: Schooling and the Con-
cept of the Child in the Spanish Enlightenment’, Paedagogica Historica 48(1)
(2012), 85–98.
57. ‘Las nuevas escuelas’, 148.
58. J.M.T., ‘Enseñanza mutual’, 64.
59. El Amigo de los Niños, ‘Conclusion’, Semanario del Nuevo Reyno de Granada
(10 April 1808), 145–146.
60. ‘Las nuevas escuelas’, 148.
61. Manual del sistema de enseñanza mutua aplicado a las escuelas primarias de los
niños (Bogotá: S.S. Fox, 1826); José María Samper, ‘Instruccion publica’, La
Imprenta (18 March 1852), 24.
62. Eugenia Roldán Vera, ‘Towards a Logic of Citizenship: Public Examinations
in Elementary Schools in Mexico, 1788–1848: State and Education before
and after Independence’, Paedagogica Historica 46(4) (2010), 511–524.
63. Georges Lomné, ‘Las ciudades de la Nueva Granada: Teatro y objeto de
los conflictos de la memoria política (1810–1830)’, Anuario Colombiano de
Historia Social y de la Cultura 21 (1993), 114–135, here 114–129; Marcelo
Caruso, ‘New Schooling and the Invention of a Political Culture: Commu-
nity, Rituals and Meritocracy in Colombian Monitorial Schools, 1821–1842’,
in Eugenia Roldán Vera and Marcelo Caruso (eds), Imported Modernity in Post-
colonial State Formation: The Appropriation of Political, Educational, and Cultural
Models in Nineteenth-Century Latin America (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2007),
277–306, here 288–289.
64. ‘Educacion publica’, Gaceta de Colombia (14 August 1825), 2.
65. ‘Examen publico en la escuela lancasteriana de la capital’, Gaceta de Colombia
(31 December 1826), 2–3.
66. ‘Establecimiento de la escuela de primeras letras en Honda’, Gaceta de
Colombia (27 November 1825), 2.
67. P., ‘Apertura de la escuela de primeras letras de Guayatá’, Gaceta de Colombia
(14 August 1825), 3.
68. Alvarez, ‘Educacion publica. Articulo remitido’, El Constitucional Antioqueño
(12 August 1831), 1–2.
69. Aguilar Rivera and Rojas, El republicanismo en Hispanoamérica.
70. David Bushnell, The Making of Modern Colombia: A Nation in Spite of Itself
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 67–73.
71. ‘Costumbres’, El Antidoto Contra los Males de Colombia (n.p., 1828), 1–2,
here 1.
72. ‘Educacion de la juventud’, El Defensor de las Libertades Colombianas (28 Octo-
ber 1827), 51.
73. J.G.G., ‘Educacion’, El Constitucional de Boyacá (3 March 1833), 305–306.
74. Franz D. Hensel Riveros, Vicios, virtudes y educación: Moral en la construcción
de la República, 1821–1852 (Bogotá: Ediciones Uniandes, 2006).
75. Zuluaga de Echeverry, El maestro y el saber pedagógico en Colombia; Caruso,
‘New Schooling and the Invention of a Political Culture’.
9
Feeling Like a Citizen: The
American Legion’s Boys State
Programme and the Promise of
Americanism
Susan A. Miller

If the experience of war can ever really be called typical, then for a
member of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF), Private First Class
Edward W. Miller had a fairly typical encounter with the First World War.
He enlisted in June 1917 two months after the United States entered the
conflict, but wasn’t shipped to France until April of the following year,
where he fought in some of the war’s last major engagements at Château
Thierry, Champagne-Marne and the Meuse Argonne. Although gassed
on the Western Front, his injuries did not preclude him from serving
in the US occupation forces in France at the war’s end; lingering health
concerns did, however, briefly land him in a veterans’ hospital upon his
return home. Nor was Miller’s military service the only experience that
marked him as an average representative of his generation. Born some-
where in the Balkans, he had arrived in the United States in the early
years of the twentieth century amidst the heaviest waves of immigra-
tion from Southern and Eastern Europe. Like many young immigrant
men (Miller was 22 when he enlisted in the AEF), he was eager to prove
his loyalty to his adopted country by voluntarily returning to Europe –
dressed in an American military uniform.
After the war, Miller channelled his patriotic feelings into the nation’s
newest veterans’ organization, the American Legion. At last my grand-
father departed from the average, and in his zeal for the Legion, he
named his first-born son after the organization’s national commander.
I imagine that this act occasioned a frisson of bemused discomfort at his
Legion Post in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, its overt emotionality

158
 Susan A. Miller 159

out of sync with the more restrained conservatism of small-town

America. But if Miller misconstrued the appropriate form of cultural
expression for his attachment to the Legion, he was not at all wrong
to conclude that much of what the Legion hoped to foster might plau-
sibly be read into my father’s middle name: an intimately emotional,
indeed familial, bond to the organization as well as to fellow veterans,
and, crucially, a desire to instil a reverential, but quite personal, sense
of patriotic attachment in the nation’s youth. Like the organization he
so revered, Miller wanted to ensure that the rising generation accepted
its patriotic duty, but he also wanted his son to feel a profound civic
connection to community and country.1
In this chapter I explore one particular American Legion programme –
Boys State – whose goals were to educate promising young Americans
with what Legion leaders believed to be a practical, hands-on training
in democratic governance and civic life. The Boys State programme was
designed to teach young men factual information about their state gov-
ernments, but it was also predicated on an understanding that those
civics lessons had to be imbued with patriotic feeling. This organiza-
tion, whose motto is ‘For God and Country’, claimed Americanism as its
‘watchword’ in the interwar years and imbued all of its programmes, but
most especially its work with youth, with a spirited, intensely emotional
sense of patriotism.
The American Legion was created by AEF brass, including Theodore
Roosevelt, Jr., in Paris immediately after the war’s end. Officers warily
eyed what they perceived to be a hoard of uncontrollable young men
at the fore of the Russian Revolution and began to worry about the
political proclivities of their own soon-to-be-demobilized troops. Some
officers had been involved in crafting the Committee on Public Infor-
mation’s relentless propaganda appeals that had convinced reluctant
Americans to join the ‘European war’; all officers were cognizant of the
heightened emotional pitch required to stoke soldiers’ morale through
the deadening experience of the trenches.2 In November 1918, however,
they worried that agitated sensibilities unleashed by war might be mag-
netically attracted to the dynamism of the Communist Revolution. The
purpose of the Legion was to redirect the feelings of rank-and-file troops,
provide them with a focus for their stirred-up sense of nationalism and
deploy them as a bulwark against the potential threat of communist
infiltration in America. In short, AEF officers ascribed to the view that
commitment to American ideals, including free-market capitalism as
well as democratic governance, was undergirded by an emotional fer-
vour that cemented patriots’ loyalty to their nation. Legion founders
160 Feeling Like a Citizen

called this belief ‘Americanism’ and it quickly became the central

mission of Legion activities, particularly those involving youth.
In the introduction to Americanism: New Perspectives on the History of
an Ideal, historians Michael Kazin and Joseph A. McCartin draw atten-
tion to the dual meaning of the ‘vast, protean, and famously contested’
concept known as ‘Americanism’.3 This ‘nationalist faith’, they argue,
is predicated on an intertwining of political principle and emotional
commitment, and can only be fully understood by analysing both of
its poles. Although Americanism originated in the first European settle-
ments, its meaning has been transformed generationally, reshaped by
the political and economic necessities of each historical era, but also
significantly altered by the reigning emotional culture of the times.
By the interwar years, when the Legion took up Americanism as its
watchword, the concept had been daubed by ‘New Deal liberals’ with
a ‘tolerant, populist hue’ that celebrated the heroics of common people,
lionized local histories and cultures, and ‘depicted America as one big,
friendly house for ordinary people’.4 Kazin and McCartin claim that this
manifestation of Americanism created, however tentatively, a space for
racial and religious minorities. While I do not disagree with this analy-
sis, I suggest that in the 1930s Americanism’s ‘friendly house’ flung its
doors open even wider to another class of marginally disenfranchised
citizens – the rising generation of children and youth.5
In her analysis of emotion and political change in the Early Republic,
historian Nicole Eustace affirms the unique position of Americans, com-
pared with their European contemporaries, having to ‘develop modes of
patriotism deliberately, rather than inherit them naturally’.6 While she
goes on to argue persuasively against the imperative for a shared senti-
ment of patriotism, I would suggest that we pause a bit longer with the
concept of natural inheritance. Newly minted Americans did occupy a
precariously formative position relative to their nascent state, but surely
the insights of children’s history tell us that unity through birth is never
simply ‘available’ to any nation, but rather must be deliberately taught –
however unself-consciously or didactically – to each and every gener-
ation. The history of political emotions read in conjunction with the
history of youth requires us to examine both the emotional valance of
patriotic bonds and the means by which they are transmitted to the
next generation. In depression-era America, those ties were threaded
through with an inclusive reverence for the local, and a patriotic respect
for daily life. For many Americans, including members of the American
Legion, it was particularly important that these feelings resonated with
children. The interwar years thus present a particularly fertile landscape
 Susan A. Miller 161

for an exploration of emotions history through the lens of the history

of youth.

Creating the ‘Mythic 49th State’

Returning First World War veterans set to work immediately, creating

local posts and organizing themselves for patriotic service. Within a
decade, the Legion had made national headlines for its involvement
with the ‘Bonus Army’ confrontation, but it was far better known at
the local level for its work with children and youth. The Legion spon-
sored ‘Safe and Sane’ Fourth of July celebrations, organized Memorial
Day parades and advocated the celebration of Armistice Day (later Vet-
erans Day), all of which helped affix the Legion’s vision of Americanism
into the yearly calendar of children’s lives.7 On a more daily basis,
local posts, with the blessing of national officials, took on work in
schools. Legionnaires supported mandatory recitation of the Pledge of
Allegiance, advocated loyalty oaths for teachers, screened history text-
books for untoward content, and sponsored essay and oratory contests
on patriotic themes.8 Come spring, many Legionnaires turned their
formidable energies to the baseball diamond. The Legion’s Junior Base-
ball programme enrolled tens of thousands of boys across the country
every year. Although the sport was administered by the Americanism
division and the rules required players to repeat a patriotic creed before
each game, it is unlikely that boys paid as much attention to this ad
hoc civics lesson as they did to their batting averages. Legion lead-
ers, perhaps sensing that they needed a more deliberate mechanism for
teaching the tenets of Americanism, created a summer programme, Boys
State, which they believed to be an almost ideal forum for instilling
patriotic feelings in American boys.
Begun in Illinois in 1935, Boys State was quickly embraced by rank-
and-file Legionnaires, spreading to more than 30 states by the time the
US entered the Second World War in 1941. Organized under the auspices
of the Americanism division, the programme brought together young
men from virtually every county in their home states for a week-long
summer encampment that typically met on fairgrounds or college cam-
puses in the state’s capital. Boys, or ‘citizens’ as they were called once
they arrived, were selected by their teachers or principals, and spon-
sored by a variety of fraternal clubs such as the Elks, Rotary or Kiwanis,
as well as Boy Scout troops, Chambers of Commerce or Legion Posts.
Once gathered together, the 300–600 new citizens (who had been ran-
domly assigned to political parties) were expected to identify candidates
162 Feeling Like a Citizen

and begin the electioneering process that would fill the dozens of offices
that their ‘mythic’ state government required. Although all boys from
16 to 18 years of age were typically eligible, whether or not they
attended school, organizers preferred high-school juniors. The reason
for this preference betrayed one of the only instances of anxiety about
American youth in an otherwise relentlessly positive vision of young
men’s present character and future prospects.
One of the purposes of Boys State was to impress upon youth that
‘there [was] nothing fundamentally wrong with our American form of
government, that it has not outlived its usefulness’.9 The incessant rep-
etition of this message, however, belied Legion leaders’ assurance of its
acceptance. They feared that Americanism was in a state of decline on
both its intellectual and emotional fronts. If the nation’s distinctive eco-
nomic and political systems were no longer equal to the challenges
brought on by the Great Depression, these policy failures could sap
the people’s commitment to their national institutions. And if America
reneged on its democratic promises, then its citizens’ emotional attach-
ments might be reduced to nothing more than the faded relic of loyalty,
once passionately felt, but now cooled to a tepid habit. This was a state
of affairs that haunted Legion leaders, compelling them to bend all of
their youth programmes towards remedying these alleged ills. The task
of Boys State was to teach young men about the mechanisms of govern-
ment, to be sure, yet to do this in such a way that boys’ hearts became
recommitted to their nation even as their heads were filled with patri-
otic lessons. Boys thus inoculated in mind and spirit could bring the
required intellectual and emotional patriotic commitment back to their
schools, serving as ‘a real vaccine against the alien “isms” plaguing this
disturbed nation today’.10
Legion leaders proposed to do this through the Boys State week-long
programme of ‘hands-on’ experience in governance and democracy.
Although this pedagogy was evocative of progressive education reforms
that stressed the ‘learning by doing’ methods championed by John
Dewey and others, many Legion leaders were suspicious of the educa-
tional professionals and intellectuals with whom they often came into
conflict over textbooks and loyalty oaths. Even though the Legion bor-
rowed progressive language – they often called Boys State a ‘laboratory
of practical political science’, echoing the name given to Dewey’s first
school in Chicago – they tended to distrust both the content and the
feeling behind these institutions. Recognizing that schools were fast
becoming key locations for emotional socialization, and convinced that
the intellectual and emotional tenets of Americanism were not being
 Susan A. Miller 163

properly addressed, the Legion believed it was time to create a new place
where boys could learn how to think and feel like citizens.11
This programmatic obsession with both the mind and heart of
Americanism was paramount to the Legion since many leaders dis-
trusted ‘book knowledge’ alone, fearing that a dispassionate dis-
tance from government did not confer a level-headedness, but rather
encouraged citizens to criticize blithely a system to which they felt
unattached.12 Therefore, like other scholars represented in this vol-
ume, I interrogate the emotional timbre of the affective, patriotic bonds
that youth were supposed to cultivate. Juliane Brauer locates ‘joy and
jolliness’ at the heart of the German Democratic Republic’s efforts to
assimilate the ‘Hitler Youth Generation’, while M. Colette Plum finds
an intensely felt, unifying nationalism within the ‘dominant emo-
tional regime’ of China’s Nationalist government. I suggest that the
American Legion relied on emotionality that had always been present
in Americanism to undergird and reinforce the affective ties it wished
to create between boys, and among the leaders and participants of Boys
State. In caring for each other as citizens, Legion leaders underscored
the importance of an emotional connection between youth and its
government.
Boys State would ‘awaken boys’ desire’ to be a part of a community
characterized by knowledge of the duties and privileges of American
democracy, but also, importantly, by affective bonds between citizens.13
Boys assumed offices in state governments of their own creation and
carefully studied state constitutions for direction, following a pro-
gramme that rooted Americanism firmly in the small-town experiences
that Legion leaders feared were becoming obsolete as the nation grew
into an urban, industrial society.14 Even boys who hailed from urban
areas were encouraged to find the best of their government in the
small-scale and cultivate the face-to-face experiences that were meant
to teach familiarity with local government and allow for a real inti-
macy with their fellow citizens. All this allegedly transpired at Boys State
encampments – over the course of an often sultry and frenetic week in
mid-summer – in a place that may have looked like a state fairground,
but which Legion leaders dubbed the ‘Mythic 49th State’.15
Legionnaires’ glowing descriptions of the patriotic powers of the
Mythic 49th State lead the scholar immediately to Benedict Anderson’s
iconic text Imagined Communities (1983).16 Anderson’s central ques-
tions – how do nations ‘command such profound emotional legitimacy’
and ‘arouse such deep attachments’ – were the very same queries
that the American Legion hoped to answer through the Boys State
164 Feeling Like a Citizen

programme.17 I believe that Anderson’s queries, as well as the Legion’s

answer to those questions, can be best understood by retaining a clear
focus on the emotionality that infuses the introduction of Imagined
Communities, but which, oddly, dissipates in the text itself.18 Here,
Barbara H. Rosenwein’s insights into emotional communities permit a
sustained analysis of the Legion’s anxieties and hopes, as well as the
boys’ responses to lessons they received.
Rosenwein asks that historians take seriously the plural form of emo-
tional communities, arguing that the ‘systems of feelings’ that call them
into being are complex and multi-faceted.19 Not merely do overlapping
communities exist within particular temporal and geographic bound-
aries, but individuals can simultaneously belong to multiple emotional
communities. In the 1930s, American adults were acutely aware of the
truth of these insights, especially regarding their adolescent children.
The growth of high schools and the rise of a burgeoning peer culture,
which was changing the rituals around dating and friendship, offered
affective outlets that economically strained families struggled to pro-
vide. The rise of European totalitarian states that both called forth and
manipulated the emotions of their populations laid bare the depth
of feeling present in political systems and revealed how aggressively
those heightened emotions could spread. A firm sense of Americanism
directed towards adolescents could help to combat the international
threat, but how could this be accomplished when the most power-
ful forces of socialization for youth – stable families and the promise
of a future to work towards – appeared to be in tatters? Legion lead-
ers thought the answer lay in shoring up a civic identity, grounded in
knowledge of American systems and held together by bonds of civic
feeling.
When the Legion created Boys State, it did so within a society that had
a firmly established youth culture that provided an array of patriotic ser-
vice organizations. American Boy Scouting had come of age during the
First World War, and by the 1930s had matured into a thriving national
organization. From YMCA service groups to the Junior Reserve Officer
Training Corps (ROTC) established by the National Defense Act of 1916,
boys had an array of civically minded volunteer groups in which they
could participate. Girls’ civic organizations were dominated by Camp
Fire and the Girl Scouts. All of these groups made patriotic service and
civic education a large part of their mission. All, in short, supported
a basic allegiance to Americanism, but how they viewed this concept
differed widely in the interwar years.20 Most mainstream girls’ organi-
zations cast their lot with internationalism.21 Most mainstream boys’
 Susan A. Miller 165

organizations, however, found internationalism suspect and equated it

with what they thought of as a sentimental and uncritical commit-
ment to pacifism, a naiveté about realpolitik. Suspicious of a wave of
internationalism that they perceived not as a harbinger of cooperation
but as capitulation to communism, the American Legion, in particular,
taught boys that Americanism was the only path to responsible citizen-
ship in an unpredictable transnational world.22 Many Legionnaires took
the ‘war to end all wars’ seriously and strenuously opposed American
involvement in future conflicts, even as their national office argued for
American ‘preparedness’.
Despite differences in opinion about future US involvement in inter-
national affairs, Legionnaires cherished the bonds that they believed
they had formed in the course of bearing arms for their nation. These
men saw themselves as direct descendants of a dying generation of Civil
War veterans and, indeed, as the last in a long line of ‘citizen-soldiers’
who had fought to establish and preserve the republic. But few men,
veterans or not, wished war upon their sons. In the interwar years,
the grotesque carnage of the First World War had all but destroyed
Americans’ belief in the rejuvenating powers of bloodlust that had char-
acterized so many leaders at the turn of the century.23 Yet how could
men hope to ‘keep the spirit of the Great War alive’ – the motto of the
Legion – if they worked to deny their sons the opportunity to become
citizen-soldiers? How could they instil in boys the communal spirit, the
sense of pulling together for a common and supremely worthy goal
unless they were tested in the terrible crucible of war? How could they
raise robust manly citizens outside the military and within a civilian
life? How, in short, could they create a Band of Brothers without a
battlefield?
In Boys State the Legion found its answer to this dilemma. All the
lessons that had been learned from a decade of patriotic youth work
in local communities could be condensed into a single week-long pro-
gramme. This would satisfy the intellectual half of Americanism that
required knowledge of, and commitment to, the distinctive political
and economic ideals of the nation. But where Boys State really stood
out was in its ability to target the other half of Americanism: its insis-
tence on unwavering loyalty and fraternal affection. Here the Legion
attempted to channel the very force that had the potential to drive
young men to ruin – psychologists called it the ‘gang instinct’ – and
instead direct it into the creation of a Mythic State predicated on
emotional bonds between boys and the adult men who brought them
together.24
166 Feeling Like a Citizen

State-ments, Boys States’ Fourth Estate

If the Legion’s incessant evocation of the ‘Mythic 49th State’ calls out
to be read as an imagined emotional community, then the documents
by which we can examine youth experience of Boys State only con-
firm this interpretation.25 Once a day, every day except Sunday, young
editors across the nation turned out State-ments.26 The six- to eight-
paged mimeographed newspapers often borrowed a state’s nickname –
Michigan Boys State paper, for example, was called Wolverine State-
ment – and served as a vehicle for jokes and gossip, baseball box scores
and the endless lists of boys who had been elected to office. Promoted by
adult leaders as a vital part of the democratic community of Boys State,
State-ments also chronicled the political and relational life of encamp-
ments as it was being lived (indeed, most State-ments read more like blogs
than newspapers in their rapid fire, call-and-response recording of daily
life). The editors and writers of State-ments, who often worked on more
adult-regulated school newspapers back home, seized the opportunity
to create the imagined emotional community of Boys State according to
their own will.27
Whether State-ment editors fancied themselves the youthful counter-
parts of cigar-chomping local beat reporters or, after 1939, as kindred
spirits of the Boy Rangers Press, which saved the political career of
Jimmy Stewart in Mr Smith Goes to Washington – and there is evidence
that they did both – they certainly appointed themselves as watch-
dogs of their communities’ emotional and political vitality.28 ‘If there
is a slackening in spirits among any here the Daily Volunteer certainly
won’t hesitate to make mention of it’, warned the editorial staff of
the Tennessee Daily Volunteer.29 Editors managed and directed the patri-
otic spirits of fellow citizens by selectively reporting on what they
viewed as the most important elements of Boys State community life,
turning their daily papers into a palimpsest of prescriptive and pro-
scriptive stories that showed boys how to navigate the multiple layers
of affectionate regard that would allow them to function as loyal citi-
zens of their imaginary States. Although boys’ relationships with adults
frequently claimed front-page status, it was boys’ relationships with
each other as fledging, feeling citizens that filled most of the pages
of the daily State-ments. ‘Print’, as historian Nicole Eustace astutely
observes, ‘has always facilitated the emotional exchanges that allow
people to envision the invisible bonds of nationhood.’30 At Boys States
encampments, boys used State-ments as a vehicle to both repeat back
the patriotic messages communicated to them by adult leaders and
 Susan A. Miller 167

also to forge affective ties that bound them to their State and to each
other.

Man to man

By the mid-1930s, many of the youngsters who participated in Boys

State lived in a world where masculine bonding stressed the fraternal
over the paternal. Male social and service organizations, such as the Elks,
Rotary and Lions Clubs that sponsored many boys for Boys State, had
grown in popularity in response to Americans’ anxiety over urbaniza-
tion and nostalgia for small town, face-to-face governance. The draw to
fraternity was not only reactive; First World War veterans had come of
age in a nation that had seen the strengthening of sibling bonds and
horizontal kinship as well as the very first stirrings of a youth peer
culture that celebrated the brotherhood to be found in high school
and collegiate fraternities and sports clubs.31 Men who became active
in the American Legion were, by definition, inclined towards cultivat-
ing social and civic ties within their own generation; they lived in a
culture that looked kindly on men who extended a brotherly hand to
younger men and boys. They were the volunteer analogue of the Scout
leaders, YMCA workers and youth sports coaches whose professional
identities were intertwined with their ideas about civic duties, espe-
cially as they concerned the boys they served.32 In these fraternal bonds,
adult creators of Boys State constructed the emotive cultural systems of
sociability that cemented Legion visions of loyal Americanism.33
Since reigning ideals of masculinity still required that boys be ready
to fight, both physically and emotionally, American boyhood existed in
a state of perpetual preparedness, even in a nation that rejected such a
policy for its own affairs. And if the unique ideals of Americanism repre-
sented the cause to be fought for, the loyalty Americanism engendered
had to be built into the relationships that would make that fighting pos-
sible. For Legion officials, one of the most important bonds undergirding
Americanism was an informed and affective tie to the elected officials
whose offices served as models for the Boys State programme. These men
were meant to be objects of respect and admiration, with boys cultivat-
ing ties that were characterized by an affectionate regard that did not
devolve into mindless hero worship. State government officials were
to be familiar role models, not distantly revered icons, and this could
only happen through face-to-face meetings. Consequently, Legion offi-
cials typically chose state capitals to host Boy State encampments, not
only for the convenience of state fairgrounds or college dormitories, but
168 Feeling Like a Citizen

also to facilitate a visit to the seat of government – an experience that

boys were encouraged to view as the apotheosis of all the electioneering,
voting and law making that filled their days at camp.
Citizens typically received the invitation to visit their ‘real-life coun-
terparts’ in state government early at Boys State inaugural sessions.
Green Mountain Boys State citizens, for example, were welcomed to
their Mythic State by Vermont Lieutenant Governor Wills, whose speech
stressed the twin pillars of Americanism. Wills encouraged boys to
learn as much as they could about the mechanics of state government
before their impending visit to legislative offices in Montpelier, but he
also informed them that this was insufficient. A real citizen must also
‘feel himself part of his government’, he concluded.34 Elected officials
from dozens of other states echoed Wills’ position and underscored the
Legion’s belief that the strength of a nation was best reflected in the
‘courage, devotion, intelligence and sincerity’ of its citizens. These were
the characteristics of the patriotic emotional system that boys were sup-
posed to cultivate during their week at camp. Legion officials did not
believe that these young men were starting from scratch – Boys State
leaders frequently boasted that they had skimmed the ‘cream of boy
crop’ from across the nation – but the week of civic activities was meant
to draw these traits out.
Boys responded to the early visits from state executives and legislators
by giving the men front-page billing in State-ments. The 10 June 1941
issue of The Cornhusker gave side-by-side front-page coverage to talks by
Governor Griswold of Nebraska and Governor Flagg of Nebraska Boys
State. In fact, a reader unfamiliar with local politics would have to scan
deeply into the articles to disentangle the two chief executives, so sim-
ilar were their speeches. Both governors spoke of the pride they felt in
their states, real and imagined, and reminded their audience that real
pleasure in life is afforded only within democratic systems. The founda-
tion of this democratic promise was located in a citizen’s ability to truly
be a part of his government, as The Cornhusker’s previous day’s front
page made clear. Citizen Bob Olmstead’s winning essay, ‘What Democ-
racy Means to Me’, was imbued with paeans to freedom of religion and
commercial opportunity, but it was also forthright in its claims for the
importance of emotion within a civic community.35 Democracy ‘permits
me to share my feelings and attitudes with others freely’, he concluded.
Many of the feelings that State-ment editors chose to express were
directed to the Legion men who made their encampment possible.
From Maine to Florida to California, boys were courteous and gracious
in expressing their admiration for the men who had sponsored them,
 Susan A. Miller 169

raised money for their upkeep and volunteered to serve as counsel-

lors, or just dropped by to give a speech on the rights and duties of
citizenship. The Utah Boys State News from 1940 offers a typical array
of citizens’ efforts to show that they were responsibly cultivating their
own emotional self-development. Under the headline ‘G-Man Visits’,
editors praised federal agent and Legion member Grimes for his talk
on subversive elements, and reminded fellow citizens of the gratitude
they owed him for taking time from his busy schedule. Just a few days
later, in an editorial entitled ‘Ideals of Boys State’, citizens were cau-
tioned that they were not living up to their promise. Invoking the spirit
of Otto Wiesley, who had visited the previous year to give a ‘good talk
on Americanism’, editors asked fellow citizens to shape up. Apparently,
they did so, because by mid-week Glen Ballinger, the State Commander,
had nothing but praise for the boys. Editors returned the compliment
by featuring a three-quarter page drawing of the commander’s beaming
face above his endorsement that Boys State was the ‘greatest citizenship
programme the American Legion has ever attempted’.36
The only thing that marks Utah’s paper as different from the dozens
of other State-ments is the degree to which the citizens expressed them-
selves in artwork. One drawing deserves special mention. In a single
panel drawing, a Boys State citizen is shown watering a large, healthy
tree, its branches spreading out across the entire frame. The boy’s water-
ing can is labelled ‘Boys State’ and the tree itself is ‘Americanism’. The
Boys State citizen is clearly overjoyed with his work; his Boys State cap
is set at a jaunty angle, he boasts a huge smile, and lines that typically
denote sunshine radiate from his face.37 Time and again in the hun-
dreds of pages of State-ments that were produced in the first years of
the programme, Boys State editors chose to express in prose the feel-
ings that the Utah artist put into his cartoon. They felt themselves to
be vital participants in the organic growth of their nation, were pleased
with the results and were thrilled that Boys States’ caps marked them as
recognizable partners in the American Legion.
Notwithstanding the cartoons that graced Utah’s paper and appeared
occasionally in other State-ments, much of the humour that infused
the papers was jocular banter between the young college counsellors
who helped with the camps and a series of running gags in which the
boys poked fun at the older Legion men who were in charge. Boys
bonded with their elders as men, even as they distinguished themselves
as younger, more vital boys. Editors constantly made fun of counsellors
who pined for girlfriends back home and teased unfortunate counsel-
lors who were saddled with clerical responsibilities by suggesting that
170 Feeling Like a Citizen

they should perform their service in dresses. This good-natured rib-

bing allowed boys to bond with men who were just a few years older
than themselves; their affectionate humour marked the borders of a
shared masculinity defined by the love of women and an aspiration to
gender-appropriate work.
The affectionate humour that editors levelled at the Legion men who
ran Boys State was of a different character, but was within the same emo-
tional register. With the older men, boys marked their own masculinity
in generational opposition. Editors and writers for State-ments relent-
lessly teased the men about grey hair and baldness, their middle-aged
paunches and forgetfulness. Although some of the jokes may sound
harsh to contemporary ears, boys knew to soften the blow by allowing
most of them to play out on the sports fields. Athletics was an integral
part of Boys State, with complicated tournaments sharing time with ad
hoc play. Legion men often formed a side to challenge the boys and,
judging from the State-ments, the most popular field of contest was the
baseball diamond.
By the 1930s, the notion that sport was the moral equivalent of war
was well-worn, but still in wide circulation, and boys lost little time
declaring the equivalent of a light-hearted battle with their mentors.
Kansas Boys State initiated a gag about a leader’s girth, suggesting that he
should purchase his next uniform at the circus supply store as it would
be sure to have enough canvas to clothe him properly.38 Even as boys
from Rhode Island acknowledged the awesome power of men who could
belt home runs over the fence, they mused that their lead in the game
would surely be safe since the men could hardly manage the run around
the bases.39 Boys from Iowa Boys State created an ongoing joke about the
alleged unfair advantage their adult opponents possessed. They might
as well rename the game ‘shine-ball’, the boys complained, since they
were being blinded by the sun reflecting off the bald heads of the oppos-
ing team. But the men who accepted this good-natured grumbling also
welcomed the boys’ ‘sincerest thanks’ for all their hard work.40
In sport as in war, as in their position in a democratic government,
Boys State citizens were taught that they were all in it together. Boys
learned to express their admiration for state officials whose offices they
held for one week over the summer. They practised myriad ways of
expressing their gratitude and affection for the Legion men who made
this experience possible. Boys learned to think of themselves as devoted
and sincere citizens, who were required to save their communities from
the ‘isms’ that threatened their nation. They also learned that the
Mythic State they were creating could only come into being through
 Susan A. Miller 171

camaraderie with their fellow citizens, the ‘swell’ fellows who were their
partners in Americanism.

Brother citizens, the ‘swellest fellows’

As the official record of Boys State proceedings, State-ments were chock-

full of an array of emotional expressions that boys felt for both the
Legionnaires who administered the encampments and the men who
held the offices to which Boys State participants aspired. Important as
these relationships were to the Boys State programme, leaders – and the
boys themselves – seemed to acknowledge that they were of secondary
import. The emotional community that truly constituted the heart of
Americanism was in the relationships that boys created with each other.
Within hours of their arrival, despite the fatigue of long journeys or
prickling feelings of homesickness, boys were charged with their com-
munity’s creation. The first step in this was an intense, even passionate,
whirlwind of courtship. In the elections that would make manifest the
entire Mythic State, boys immediately had to appeal to each other,
solicit each other’s votes and, time and again, willingly choose each
other as partners in the creation of their very own Mythic State.
Citizens of Boys State voted more in one week, often in the course
of a single day, than most Americans did in an entire lifetime. Offices
from governor to coroner had to be filled, with party-affiliated slates
of candidates engaged in boisterous campaigning. This was then duti-
fully amplified by the next day’s State-ments. Candidates’ electioneering
appeals were a mix of tactics that revealed how well they understood
the message sent by Legion leaders that real Americanism depended on
a pairing of ideals and emotion. In formal speeches and in the ongo-
ing chaos of electioneering, boys paired encomia to democratic ideals
with frankly emotional appeals to their fellow citizens. For example, the
Nationalist Party gubernatorial candidate in Nebraska, whose party plat-
form included both ‘a firm stand against the Fifth Column elements’
and a dance on Wednesday night, delivered a ‘rip-roaring’ speech in
which he was overcome by emotion, finally drawing his address to a
close by blurting out ‘you’re the swellest fellows I’ve ever met’.41 He
dashed from the stage to thunderous applause.
Hawkeye Boys State candidates appeared to be a bit more jaded in
terms of the political process. One roused his fellow Iowans by warn-
ing that the ‘government will go to the dogs if we don’t get in’, while
his opponent vowed ‘to leave no stone unturned’ in the course of his
campaign. State-ment editors dutifully covered the speeches, but heaved
172 Feeling Like a Citizen

a world-weary sigh at the tired political bromides offered by the candi-

dates, wondering exactly what these phrases meant and suggesting that
the pair pick up their game if they really wanted to win.42 The editors’
laconic response was an indication of how seriously they took the pro-
ceedings, a view echoed by the editors at Mississippi’s Magnolia Boys
State when their newly elected attorney general was found with his feet
up on his desk, a bottle of Coke and a cigar (unlit) at hand. Editors
admonished those who ‘disregarded the legislative sessions and took
their offices lightly’ and reminded fellow citizens that ‘bonds of brother-
hood’ were supposed to hold them together in a more solemn purpose.43
When the electioneering was over, officials were duly chosen and
sometimes browbeaten into behaving correctly. The remainder of the
week at Boys State was largely filled with the making – and breaking –
of laws. After all, governors, senators, representatives and judges had
to do something with their time, and so they acted with gusto to pass
law after law and set penalty after penalty. In what I read as a farcical
comment on American culture’s obsession with juvenile delinquency
and a robust vote of confidence in each other, boys set about showing
that they well knew how to police themselves. They revealed their com-
mitment to each other by making rules and breaking rules, enacting a
performance of punishment and forgiveness that bound them to each
other in a community. Boys relied on each other to understand the feel-
ings that underlay the letter of the many, many laws that they passed.
Even laws meant to be broken were not obviously flagged, but a wink
and a nod let boys know that these were the rules whose rupture actu-
ally served as an adhesive to bind the Boys State communities together.
Boys showed that they had a feel for these civic codes by engaging in
creative and amusing mischief.
Boys who missed the point and ignored the rules that were not made
to be broken found themselves subject to resentment, anger and scold-
ing disappointment. The affectionate bonds that they had broken tore
at the emotional equilibrium of the camp, and they were quickly singled
out and called to task immediately in State-ments. However, rule breakers
who flaunted the regulations that had been made in order to give the
Boys State jailors, state highway patrol, judges and pardon boards some-
thing to do with their time showed that they understood the real spirit
of the laws and were, accordingly, given an honoured place in the pages
of the State-ments. These professional ‘scofflaws’ were roundly abused
with the most affectionate regard – their devotion to pulling off dare-
devil pranks or flagrant acts of disobedience was greeted with an equally
devoted detailed reporting.
 Susan A. Miller 173

Editors at the Wolverine Whirligig, the paper of Michigan’s Boys State,

named two ‘incorrigibles’ charged with countless mundane offences
against the public order, and a few more imaginative ones, such as
putting a toad in the counsellor’s bed. Both miscreants spent plenty of
time on the ‘road gang’ and in jail for their demerits, but their antics
commanded plenty of column inches and undoubtedly offered not only
amusement but also inspiration to fellow citizens.44 Nor was misbe-
haviour limited to individuals. A ‘feud’ between rival cities – one of the
common forms of Boys State organization – saw the warring mayors put
their governmental training to good use. One mayor employed the ser-
vices of the county registrar of deeds to deprive his nemesis of access to
the lavatory, drinking fountain and stairway leading to his bed.45 How-
ever, perhaps the crowning glory of Michigan misbehaviour went to the
coroner. Called in by the report of a corpse, he found that ‘the manly
crop of hair’ on the sleeping boy’s chest ‘proved too much of a tempta-
tion’ to him. He ‘went for his straight razor’ and sheared the body.46 This
act cost him his office, and time in ‘county lockup’, but it clearly earned
him the devotion of the editors and readers of the Wolverine Whirligig.
Enterprising law breakers broke curfew, short-sheeted beds, ‘borrowed’
pictures of girlfriends to put on display in the dining hall and per-
formed countless other acts of measured, controlled and ultimately
sanctioned disobedience. Some Nebraska boys even mocked the serious
threat posed by ‘fifth column elements’ and started their own renegade
papers, promising to dig up dirt on all.47 Editors from the Green Moun-
tain Statement warned readers about ‘the “sullen mutterings” of the 5th
column lawless men with “black evil” in their hearts – looking to get
back at the paper for its exposure of the political corruption at Boys
State’.48 But the Vermont editors printed their every exchange with that
rogue element. State-ments across the nation reported on the daily life of
their camps – the weather and food and box scores – but they reserved
their most affectionate reporting for the boys who did the most to forge
the bonds between them. Boys understood that their Mythic States were
governed by principles comparable to Americanism. They had to learn
about offices and laws, but, above all, they had to cultivate emotional
bonds with their fellow citizens.

Conclusion

Film footage survives of a handshake from June 1963 between a youthful

thirty-fifth President and a beaming youngster who would, 30 years later
and in fulfilment of a boyish boast made that very day, secure the job for
174 Feeling Like a Citizen

himself. This meeting of John F. Kennedy and a 16-year-old Bill Clinton

at the American Legion’s Boys Nation camp captures the essence of the
programme.49 Almost 30 years before this meeting of the American pres-
idency’s present and future, the American Legion had inaugurated the
programme whose goals included just such encounters, albeit between
slightly less exalted chief executives.
Young men trained at Boys State encampments – from governors and
senators to county coroners – were supposed to learn that their state and
even, perhaps, their nation, was waiting for them. Since the founding
of the republic, Americanism – that inchoate definition of patriotism
that nevertheless felt and feels perfectly clear to those who subscribe to
it – has depended on a balance of intellectual commitment to political
ideals and an emotional connection to country and fellow citizens. Boys
States’ ‘Mythic 49th State’ was not a myth at all – it was a very real
emotional community created by and for the young citizens who dwelt
there, however briefly.

Notes
1. William Pencak, For God and Country: The American Legion, 1919–1941
(Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1989) is the best scholarly history
of the Legion.
2. Susan A. Brewer, Why America Fights: Patriotism and War Propaganda from the
Philippines to Iraq (Oxford University Press, 2009).
3. Michael Kazin and Joseph A. McCartin (eds), Americanism: New Perspectives
on the History of an Ideal (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
2006), 1.
4. Kazin and McCartin, Americanism, 5, 6.
5. My analysis extends what historian Patricia West, among others, calls the
‘domestication of history’; see Patricia West, Domesticating History: The Politi-
cal Origins of America’s House Museums (Washington DC: Smithsonian Institu-
tion Press, 1999); Seth C. Bruggeman (ed.), Born in the U.S.A.: Birth, Commem-
oration, and American Public Memory (Amherst: University of Massachusetts
Press, 2012).
6. Nicole Eustace, ‘Emotion and Political Change’, in Susan J. Matt and Peter
N. Stearns (ed.), Doing Emotions History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
2014), 163–183, here 172.
7. In addition to Pencak’s even-handed history, the Legion inspired quite a few
scholars who took issue with its politics and who produced well-researched
albeit one-dimensional histories. See Dorothy Culp, ‘The American Legion:
A Study in Pressure Politics’ (PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 1939);
William Gellermann, ‘The American Legion as Educator’ (PhD dissertation,
Columbia University, 1938). Gellermann studied with George Counts, an
avowed adversary of the Legion in battles over high-school textbooks.
 Susan A. Miller 175

8. Richard J. Ellis, To the Flag: The Unlikely History of the Pledge of Allegiance
(Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2005).
9. Kansas, Illinois and Indiana documents all repeat this message verbatim. All
state-level documents, as well as all issues of State-ments, can be found at
the archives of the American Legion National Headquarters, Indianapolis,
Indiana (hereinafter AL). All materials are on microfilm and can be located
under the name of the state and year of publication.
10. ‘Looks Real Good’, Fargo Forum (North Dakota) (10 May 1938). Many of
the following notes reference small regional papers from across the United
States. These articles were compiled by the Luce Press Clipping Bureau and
were presumably commissioned by Kansas Boys State officials. All can be
found in Kansas Boys State materials, 1938, AL.
11. For an analogous case, see Stephanie Olsen, Juvenile Nation: Youth, Emotions
and the Making of the Modern British Citizen, 1880–1914 (London: Bloomsbury,
2014); Ute Frevert, Pascal Eitler, Stephanie Olsen et al., Learning How to
Feel: Children’s Literature and Emotional Socialization, 1870–1970 (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2014).
12. Bloomington Evening World (Indiana) (23 May 1938).
13. Burlington News (Vermont) (31 March 1938).
14. Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877–1920 (New York: Hill and Wang,
1967). Wiebe’s iconic 1967 text suggests that the First World War put a halt
to the search, but scholarship written in its wake argues that the interwar
years continue it. See e.g. Ellis W. Hawley, The Great War and the Search for
a Modern Order: A History of the American People and their Institutions, 1917–
1933 (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1979); Joseph M. Hawes, Children between
the Wars: American Childhood, 1920–1940 (New York: Twayne, 1997). Joseph
M. Hawes argues that this is also crucial in understanding youth.
15. In the 1930s, the United States consisted of the Lower Forty-Eight; Alaska
and Hawaii did not join the Union until 1959.
16. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread
of Nationalism, revised edn (New York: Verso, 2006).
17. Anderson, Imagined Communities, 4.
18. Anderson’s ideas, though not without their critics, have had astonishing
staying power. For the suggestion that Jean-Jacques Rousseau was there
before him, see Steven T. Engel, ‘Rousseau and Imagined Communities’,
Review of Politics 67(3) (2005), 515–537.
19. Barbara H. Rosenwein, ‘Problems and Methods in the History of Emotions’,
Passions in Context: Journal of the History and Philosophy of the Emotions 1(1)
(2010), www.passionsincontext.de/index.php?id=557 (date accessed 17 June
2015).
20. Susan A. Miller, Growing Girls: The Natural Origins of Girls’ Organizations in
America (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2007).
21. Tammy M. Proctor, Scouting for Girls: A Century of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts
(Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2009).
22. Although many Boy Scout leaders were in political sympathy with Legion
positions, the international origins and aspirations of the world Scout-
ing movement – epitomized in world Jamborees – caused Scout leaders to
embrace a different rhetoric for their organization.
176 Feeling Like a Citizen

23. Jackson Lears, Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877–1920
(New York: HarperCollins, 2009).
24. On cultural conversations about the gang instinct, see Steven Mintz, Huck’s
Raft: A History of American Childhood (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2004); Kriste Lindenmeyer, The Greatest Generation Grows Up: American
Childhood in the 1930s (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2005).
25. Anderson stresses the role of the press in the creation of communities –
the cover of the latest paperback edition of the book depicts tightly packed
newsprint.
26. Fortunately, a great many of these newsletters were preserved, which permits
me to answer Rosenwein’s call for an abundance of voices within emotional
communities; Rosenwein, ‘Problems and Methods in the History of Emo-
tions’, 12. All the following quotations from various State-ments can be found
under the appropriate state and year. Many State-ments were dated, although
sometimes the dates were given simply as ‘Day One of Boys States’. Few
papers, however, contain legible page numbers.
27. Jane H. Hunter firmly established the worth of youth-edited school newspa-
pers for access to young people’s self-created culture; see Jane H. Hunter, How
Young Ladies Became Girls: The Victorian Origins of American Girlhood (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2002).
28. See Lindenmeyer, Greatest Generation Grows Up, 208–209.
29. Tennessee Daily Volunteer (7 June 1940).
30. Eustace, ‘Emotion and Political Change’, 171.
31. For siblings, see Leonore Davidoff, Thicker than Water: Siblings and their
Relations, 1780–1920 (Oxford University Press, 2012); C. Dallett Hemphill,
Siblings: Brothers and Sisters in American History (Oxford University Press,
2011).
32. There is some debate in the literature over this. See David I. Macleod, Building
Character in the American Boy: The Boy Scouts, YMCA, and their Forerunners,
1870–1920 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983); Kenneth B. Kidd,
Making American Boys: Boyology and the Feral Tale (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2004) for varying degrees of fraternity among ‘boy workers’.
33. Rosenwein, ‘Problems and Methods in the History of Emotions’, 19–20,
quoting Thomas Scheff and Claire Armon-Jones on the social functions of
emotions.
34. Green Mountain State-ment (24 June 1940).
35. Bob Olmstead, ‘What Democracy Means to Me’, The Cornhusker (9 June
1941), front page.
36. Utah Boys State News (10–15 July 1940).
37. Boys’ State News (9 July 1940).
38. Sunflower State-ment (1939).
39. Little Rhody Boys State (1936).
40. Iowa State-ment (1939).
41. The Cornhusker (Nebraska) (10 June 1940).
42. Iowa Hawkeye Stater (5 June 1939).
43. Magnolia Boys State (1939).
44. Wolverine Whirligig (26 June 1941).
45. Wolverine Whirligig (25 June 1941).
46. Wolverine Whirligig (23 June 1941).
 Susan A. Miller 177

47. The Cornhusker (12 June 1940).

48. Green Mountain Boys Statement (27 June 1940).
49. ‘A Future President Meets JFK’, YouTube Video, 2:07, ABC news clip, posted
by the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, 24 July 2009, https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0uErdlyTUo (date accessed 17 June 2015).
10
Disciplining Young People’s
Emotions in the Soviet Occupation
Zone and the Early German
Democratic Republic
Juliane Brauer

For the young people of the ‘Hitler Youth Generation’ – the vast majority
of German children and youth who were in the Hitler Youth organiza-
tion – the collapse following the Second World War entailed an identity
crisis of great proportions. Many felt betrayed. Young people described
themselves, and were described, as victims: they stood ‘on the ruins of
(our) youth’; ‘twelve years have been stolen from us’; they felt ‘mentally
disrupted’ and seduced by ‘satanic education methods’.1
The American military government conducted a study in a small
Hessian town in 1946 that revealed the disastrous emotional and physi-
cal state of young Germans. Confronted daily with death and mourning,
young people had to deal with the loss of family members and par-
ents, often either left to be cared for by relatives or simply orphaned.
Many of their friends had died in the war. Such experiences of loss deter-
mined the everyday life of children and young people immediately after
the war. Many also suffered homelessness, poverty, illness and chronic
malnourishment, as well as from the crime that resulted from these
experiences. Young people, the study claimed, lacked conviction, hope
and perspective, and were tired, burnt-out and disillusioned.2
Young people in the Soviet Occupation Zone saw themselves threat-
ened with arbitrary arrest by the Soviet secret police. Thousands of
young people who had held leading positions in the Hitler Youth
were arrested. The Soviet secret police justified these arrests by claim-
ing that these young people had belonged to the so-called Werewolf
Organization, a paramilitary movement founded in 1944 in the ranks
of the Hitler Youth to fight subversively against Allied troops.3

178
 Juliane Brauer 179

What was post-war German society supposed to do with such young

people? Since its ‘discovery’ around the turn of the twentieth century,
older generations had projected themselves onto youth. They consid-
ered youth to be a socially defined period of life bound to concrete
expectations and an object ‘onto which a society’s self-validation and
creation of sense were bound and onto which many hopes, expecta-
tions and anxieties of the older generation – along with corresponding
demands – were projected’.4
East (German Democratic Republic – GDR) and West Germany had
different responses to this phenomenon. Society in the West permitted
youth to undergo a sort of moratorium, primarily because they lacked
serious ideas as to how members of the Hitler Youth could be socially
integrated, and began in around 1950 to focus on youth.5 In the Soviet
Occupation Zone, communist politicians began their efforts to orga-
nize young people immediately after the war, seeing in them bearers of
socialist visions of the future. The state-sponsored youth organization
Free German Youth (Freie Deutsche Jugend – FDJ) was founded in 1946
and the associated Ernst Thälmann Pioneer Organization in 1948. The
Ernst Thälmann Pioneer Organization was part of the FDJ and consisted
of the Young Pioneers, made up of schoolchildren from the first to third
grades, wearing the distinctive blue kerchief, and the Thälmann Pio-
neers, from the fourth to seventh grades, wearing a red kerchief. In the
eighth grade, young people joined the youth organization, the FDJ, and
remained there until the end of their vocational training or studies. The
so-called FDJlers wore a blue shirt.6
Communist expectations that young people would serve as bear-
ers of hope fed into political campaigns directly addressed to them,
attempting to control and regulate young people’s emotions, expecta-
tions and notions of the future. Political programmes based on young
people’s sponge-like capacity to receive education were a major fea-
ture of communist social systems. Looking at the longer history of
the GDR, however, shows that educating hearts and minds could
also fail, precisely because of those optimistic visions from which
the youth chose to distance themselves. As Peter Stearns concluded,
communist youth leaders were of the conviction that ‘children had
to be remade’ and that ‘communism as an ideology was deeply
imbued with the belief that children were born good, innocent, and
improvable’.7 The socialist authorities made all their political deci-
sions on education on the basis of this principle. At the centre of
these decisions was thus the young person, conceived as a malleable
object.
180 Disciplining Young People’s Emotions in the GDR

Finding some way of approaching these ‘destroyed’ young generations

was a top priority for the Soviet Military Administration, which aimed to
make youth into the ‘standard bearers of a new era’.8 The vision of a new
German youth was outlined in the preface to Die Grundrechte der jungen
Generation (The Fundamental Rights for the Young Generation), agreed upon
by the first Parliament of the Free German Youth in 1946: ‘Only the hard
and rocky path of building up our new homeland can lead us out of the
rubble and misery, it is the path of building a new homeland, the path of
peaceful but truly heroic work, the path of the rebirth of ideals, among
which bravery, youth enthusiasm and vigour have got the place they
deserve; it is the way that allows for joy and jolliness and democratic
liberties to be revived.’9
The key emotions here are ‘joy and jolliness’. The entire socialist
vision of the future was built upon the idea of young people as ‘vig-
orous’, ‘vital’, ‘forward pressing’ and ‘joyful’.10 Part of the communist
youth leaders’ vision of a new, better, socialist Germany involved chil-
dren and young people full of energy, vigour and self-sacrifice, who
would be able to bring about the socialist utopia. In Zygmunt Bauman’s
words, one can see why this was necessary: ‘the image of a future and
a better world was critical of the existing society; in fact a system of
ideas remains utopian and thus able to boost human activity only in so
far as it is perceived as representing a system essentially different from,
if not antithetical to, the existing one’.11 In considering the mentality
of young people at that time, the programme more or less intended
to completely transform or re-educate youth. With this goal in mind,
socialist functionaries offered and tried to evoke strong affirmative emo-
tions in young people. But how was it possible to bring up young people
to embody ‘joy and jolliness’? Is it at all possible to raise children to hold
a particular emotional disposition? Socialist youth leaders of the post-
war period held a firm conviction that they could raise young people to
feel a particular way. One widespread and commonly practised strategy
in this emotional education was group singing. Singing has traditionally
been considered an expression of the joy and jolliness of youth. Music
teachers claimed that group singing had a special emotional effect, as
this chapter will show.
Because of this assumed connection between singing and reaching
young people’s inner core, there was a widespread conviction that group
singing in particular had the power to bind communities closer together.
It was thus claimed that it should be used to shape collective identi-
ties and to communicate political messages, as well as to propagate a
single emotional style, as one can gather from the manual for group
 Juliane Brauer 181

leaders: ‘collective singing boosts morale and forms strong bonds of

friendship that bind children into a tightly knit group. Through com-
monly expressed words, the same feelings, thoughts and ambitions are
evoked in everyone’.12
Based on Monique Scheer’s claim that emotions are a ‘bodily act of
experience and expression’,13 I define singing as a practice of ‘doing
emotion’. I will investigate the ways in which emotional dispositions
and rules come into being, along with the ways in which they are
sought, communicated and perceived through the practice of collective
singing. Emotional practices can be successful in triggering emotions,
but they can also fail, as we shall see below. Songs were and are every-
day objects of use, often sung collectively without specialized training.
For this reason, collective singing is a widespread form of human com-
munication. The emotional effects of songs are decisively conditioned
by the use, presentation and perception of the song.
Focusing on collective singing, this chapter looks at debates and prac-
tices surrounding the project of shaping young people’s emotions. It will
show that in the post-Second World War Soviet Occupation Zone, the
education of young people aimed to summon them to action by promis-
ing them joy and jolliness, while at the same time turning the practice
of these emotions into a duty. In addition, education in the Soviet
Occupied Zone focused on fostering young people’s hopes and wishes
by orienting them towards visions of a socialist future. For the sake
of the socialists’ utopian project, occupation functionaries had to win
over not only the minds but also the hearts of young people. Those
newly placed in positions of responsibility and power conceived of the
young generation as ‘tomorrow’s heads of house’, attributing a key role
to them.14 The chapter explains that the emotional dispositions targeted
and propagated in emotional education included feelings of happi-
ness, cheerfulness (ideally leading to commitment), activity, vigour and
‘combative’ patriotism.15 Moreover, it seeks to show that education of
the emotions was motivated by the presumed link between the young
generation and the future of the socialist state.
The framework for the future was thus mapped out in these songs:
emotions deemed desirable were mobilized in performance at the same
time as those deemed undesirable in terms of the future of the socialist
state were blocked out. The challenge for the historian lies in working
out if, in the long term, the youth of the GDR really meant what they
sang: whether they truly and enduringly felt the happiness, joy, confi-
dence and optimism they expressed in song. If we accept that acquired
preferences, expectations and experiences determine perceptions of
182 Disciplining Young People’s Emotions in the GDR

music, we must also ask if collective singing taught children and youth
to memorize and manifest the patriotic emotions of the FDJ songs.

Youth, singing, and education in the aftermath of 1945

The education of emotions was marked out as a domain in music edu-

cation for post-war music teachers and musicologists. Collective singing
was thus seen as an appropriate means with which to make an impact
on the feelings of children and young people. Discussions on emotional
education in pedagogical circles went back to the pre-war period and
were based on the notion that music pedagogy is a medium of holis-
tic human education that has the potential to shape hearts and minds,
working within the framework of ideological concepts of humanity
and morality, and leading to the debate on artistic education (musische
Erziehung), which in an extended sense could be translated as the ‘forma-
tion of human identities (Menschenbildung) through music’.16 Music was
supposed to serve as a key to reaching people’s inner core, to educating
the emotions.
Music teachers of the post-war period were particularly attached to
the ideas of artistic education, as they themselves were socialized with
the same methods in the 1920s and 1930s. Newspaper reports, mem-
oirs and pamphlets for teachers and youth group leaders all insisted
that collectively singing newly composed songs was to play a key role
in the education of children and young people. ‘Ultimately, we want
to form people for whom the ideal of peaceful work and cooperative
competition within the framework of the family of the peoples of the
world is the highest ideal’, states a pamphlet from the Institute for Music
Education in the Pedagogical Faculty of the Martin Luther University
of Halle-Wittenberg. ‘In order to attain this grand aim, all educational
means are necessary, both the understanding and the soul.’17
The idea that collective singing could form a collective emotional style
was not only important for the socialist education agenda. Debates in
pedagogical circles revolved around concrete efforts to revive young peo-
ple’s joy for life. ‘Singing is an immediate human expression. It expresses
emotional impulses and improves one’s attitude towards life’, claims an
early syllabus from 1946.18 The artistically educated teachers were con-
vinced that singing had a therapeutic function, that it would bring joy,
and that it would make children happy and young people strong and
hopeful. Song was seen as a singularly effective medium to make the
young generation enthusiastic. ‘If the leader of the pioneers participates
with joy and enthusiasm, then his song will carry the others along.’19
 Juliane Brauer 183

At the same time, singing had another decisive function: socialist

spokespeople claimed that it would be capable of forming communities.
‘Music expresses deep feelings and emotions and unifies singers and lis-
teners in a common experience. It makes life more beautiful, brings joy,
chases off worry and summons up fight.’20
Music educators promoted two ways of establishing collective singing
in the socialist educational programme, both in school curricula and in
the FDJ. First, they deployed notions of the emotional impact of music
and its community-building powers in order to integrate music into the
debate about the properly holistic education of ‘socialist personalities’.21
Music textbooks were thus supposed to serve as devices used to inculcate
socialist values and feelings, which for their part served as ‘an orienta-
tion towards peace and understanding among the peoples of the world,
enthusiasm for the people’s struggle for freedom, for the struggle for
the unity of Germany; an education oriented towards a new work ethic,
and the development of positive, honest, humane feelings’.22 Values and
feelings were thus strongly dependent on emotional participation and
conviction.
Second, collective singing found its place in socialist educational pro-
grammes due to dire material circumstances: destroyed schools or school
buildings without heating, overcrowded classes with pupils of all ages
and a lack of suitable teachers (that is, sufficiently trained teachers with-
out a Nazi past). Pupils suffered hunger and lacked clothing and shoes,
as well as having to care for their decimated families and struggle in
order to obtain the most basic provisions. Music education did not ini-
tially take place in school classes, but was instead carried out in the
FDJ. Whereas music as a subject had to compete against core subjects
in the school curriculum, collectively singing newly composed songs
was a fixed part of leisure activities in the Free German Youth and of
daily life in society, beginning with the first anti-fascist committees in
the summer of 1945. Bringing up young people who embodied the atti-
tudes of ‘joy and jolliness’, especially through collective singing, was
one of the first tasks of the new youth organization. Youth functionar-
ies persistently attempted to recruit young people with activities like
sports, sewing (for girls), reading groups, dance (in newly refurbished
clubhouses) and singing. A call for new members explicitly stated that:

Girls and boys will no longer stomp the stepping stones straight,
marching hand in hand, but will move through our homeland like
once upon a time, singing and wearing colourful clothes. They won’t
growl out bloodthirsty songs, but will sing the old folk tunes or the
184 Disciplining Young People’s Emotions in the GDR

songs of struggle that speak of a better future of people living in

freedom. Boys and girls will dance the old folk dances, just as they
bring every nation into the beat, according to their own style and
rhythm.23

Despite the stated break with the past, the anti-fascist youth committees
and the FDJ were able to use the Hitler Youth’s structures and the expe-
rience of its leaders. This becomes clear when one considers the story
of the young composer Siegfried Köhler (1927–1984). Köhler grew up
in Meißen in a music-loving family.24 At the age of ten, he began tak-
ing piano lessons. At 14, he began his first compositions and, beginning
in 1943, he led the student ensemble at his high school. Significantly,
he was also head of the Bannspielschar Meißen 208 (the Bannspielschar
was a type of band organized by the Hitler Youth).25 In the early summer
of 1944, he toured Saxon villages with this band. They sang in hos-
pitals as well as for soldiers and villagers. The group’s collective diary
shows that the repertoire of the Bannspielschar band was exclusively
made up of folk songs old and new, among them Köhler’s composi-
tions. The joyful songs of the Hitler Youth’s choirs contained nothing
about the war or about National Socialist ideology. In the autumn of
1945, the Soviet secret police (NKVD) suspected Köhler of belonging to
the Werewolf Organization. He was thus arrested and interned in Special
Camp Number Four in Bautzen. Suffering from tuberculosis, the 19 year
old was released in June 1946.26 His diaries show that after his release
he continued to compose songs and lead his old band, but now for the
newly established FDJ. The new group’s repertoire remained the same:
‘harmless’ folk songs and hiking songs. The only difference was that
they no longer sang for soldiers and the wounded, but for factory work-
ers and at communist party meetings and FDJ assemblies. Throughout
his life, Köhler hid his arrest by the Soviet secret police; despite the
arrest, he had a successful career as one of the most significant per-
sonalities in the musical life of the GDR. In the autumn of 1946, he
began to study music at the Staatliche Akademie für Musik und Theater in
Dresden (today the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber Dresden),
and in 1955, he was awarded his doctorate in Leipzig. By 1974, he had
written his Habilitation in Halle (Saale). He held multiple leading roles
in the most important groups and organizations. He became rector of
the Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber Dresden in 1968, holding
the office until 1980 and continuing his work as professor of compo-
sition. In 1978, he was one of the founding members of the Dresden
Music Festival. In 1984, he became intendant of the Saxon State Theatre
 Juliane Brauer 185

(Semperoper) in Dresden, holding the post until his sudden death in the
same year.27
Köhler’s example demonstrates how pragmatism and accommodation
determined the life of young people in the Soviet Occupation Zone. His
past as a Hitler Youth leader was apparently an insignificant matter for
the FDJ. More important was his experience of working with youth orga-
nizations, even if the political goals were completely contradictory to
those of the occupying authorities. This was one reason for the rela-
tively quick and successful development of youth organizations after
the war. The FDJ nonetheless seemed to have a certain attraction that
could not simply be reduced to its monopolizing force, and this despite
the scepticism young people held towards political efforts in the post-
war period.28 Thus, in 1948 in the eastern part of Germany (with the
exception of Berlin), about 17 per cent of those between the ages of 14
and 25 joined the FDJ of their own free will.29 I argue that this attrac-
tion to the FDJ could be seen in the organization’s offer of a positive,
distracting and therefore healing emotion, the offer of belonging to a
new, future-oriented emotional community.

The offer of ‘joy and jolliness’

The young Siegfried Köhler made a name for himself by composing two
songs which were very popular immediately after the war, and which
would be sung for decades by children and young people in the Soviet
Occupation Zone and the GDR: ‘Jugend heraus’ (‘Youth, Set Forth!)
and ‘Heut ist ein wunderschöner Tag’ (‘Today is a Beautiful Day’).30
They were popular because they offered the emotional style required
by socialist pedagogues: catchy, upbeat odes to a hopeful, joyful era.
They are about children and young people in good moods, cheerfully
and confidently looking into the future: ‘our hearts are as free as the
larks high above/And our song resonates brightly, joyfully, raised above
all cares’.31 ‘Jugend heraus’, beginning with its declaration that ‘we love
the joyous life’, apparently served as a motto for Köhler, a motto that
corresponded – by no means merely by chance – with the educational
agenda of the first communist youth organizations in the Soviet Occu-
pation Zone. These two songs belong to the musical landscape of the
decade after the war. Children and young people learned them at school
and sang them at the meetings of the FDJ during field trips and during
school festivities right up until the 1980s.32
These two songs were nothing exceptional in the Soviet Occupation
Zone. New songs for children and young people were composed with
186 Disciplining Young People’s Emotions in the GDR

astonishing speed in the first decade after the war. These songs prophe-
sied the vision of a joyfully singing and optimistic generation, with fast
rhythms and melodies that could be quickly and easily learned. Up to
the mid-1950s, more than 120 new songs appeared in the songbooks
and music textbooks in the Soviet Occupation Zone.33 These new songs
were composed by musicians like Köhler, by music teachers or at the
behest of the Commission for Music Education of the Central Office for
the People’s Education. At the Commission, musicologists and music
pedagogues discussed which songs were appropriate for the prescribed
educational goals.34 The songs that found their way into the songbooks
and textbooks tell of the work of building up a new socialist Germany.
They call for a strong and progressive new youth; they sing about love
of the homeland, peace, friendship and solidarity; or they thematize
everyday life, the duties and joys of the pioneers and members of the
FDJ. The songs, often paired with colourful illustrations, such as that in
Figure 10.1, praise happy children and young people, and make claims
about vitality, drive and dedication.
Whilst ‘Jugend heraus’ belonged to the FDJ repertoire, ‘Heut ist ein
wunderschöner Tag’ was considered to be a folk song, learned by chil-
dren at school and sung often. A closer look at the composition of
‘Jugend heraus’ reveals a confident, assertive, proudly forward march-
ing mood. The prevailing goal seems to have been to make children
and young people active. Large interval leaps, such as the octaves at
the beginning of this phrase, refer to keywords: wir lieben (we love), wir
wollen (we want), wir folgen (we follow), wir brechen mit (we break) and
wir ballen die Kräfte zusammen (we come together).

Typical rhythmic phrases punctuating fourths and octaves stand for

an assertive self-consciousness. The homophonic polyvocality in the
phrase ‘Jugend heraus! Wir sind bereit!’ (‘Youth, set forth! We are ready!’)
undergirds the character of the call and underlines the idea of a strong,
rousing collective. Drive, vitality, and dedication make up the central
message of the song, whose simultaneous agent and addressee are the
youths themselves. It offers and calls for a positive orientation towards
the future, an active forward-pressing movement. Young people are
 187

Figure 10.1 Cover of the songbook: Zentralrat der Freien Deutschen Jugend, Abt.
Junge Pioniere (ed.), Wir singen neue Lieder (Berlin: Junge Welt, 1952)
188 Disciplining Young People’s Emotions in the GDR

primarily described in their youth, and thus innocence, as struggling

for a new life and a new era.
Köhler deployed similar means of composition in his folk song-like
hiking song ‘Heut ist ein wunderschöner Tag’. Octaves emphasize cen-
tral words: Tag (day), Sonne (sun), schön (beautiful), leuchtend (light),
frei (free) and hoch (high). There are also phrases that receive rhyth-
mic emphasis through punctuation, such as: wunderschön (beautiful),
lockende Ferne (enticing distance), die Wolken (the clouds), die Herzen so
frei (the hearts so free), jubelt (jubilating) and froh (happy). As opposed
to ‘Jugend heraus’, this song is entirely polyvocal and primarily homo-
phonic. Further, in contrast to ‘Jugend heraus’, a definite agent and
addressee are lacking, as is a clear ideological agenda. For this reason,
it could have functioned well both for the Hitler Youth singing organi-
zation and those of the FDJ. It was well known and sung often in the
decade after the war as it stood for a desirable emotional style: happiness
and cheerfulness. Doubt, anxiety and foot-dragging were nowhere to be
found in the new songs for children and young people. The songs say
nothing of the past, but focus on the present and on a desirable future.
Readily apparent in these songs is an obligation to be happy. The
stereotypical claim to, and call for, an easy, cheerful youth looking con-
fidently into the future was a constitutive part of the deep emotional
connection to the homeland and the state, which offered the space
where this happiness could be actualized. That cheerfulness and vitality
could be promised in abundance in a song was a widely held opinion
amongst contemporaries. In 1952, Hermann Mattern – a member of the
Politbüro of the Central Committee of the ruling Socialist Unity Party of
Germany – gave the Young Pioneers in Dresden a task: ‘but I don’t want
to forget to tell you all that you should be happy and cheerful. A real
Young Pioneer should always have a cheerful song on his lips’.35
The discursive demand for joy and happiness was significant for sev-
eral reasons. First, the imperative of ‘joy and jolliness’ was an important
part of the vision of a socialist utopia, found in Soviet pedagogical
discourses of the 1920s and 1930s, and later influencing East German
pedagogical discourse. Second, the vigour that functionaries laid claim
to was intended to act as a distraction from negative experiences of
the war and the post-war period. It was supposed to give the younger
generation a feeling of security and belonging in a newly established
community. And, third, happily singing children in the Soviet Occupa-
tion Zone presented a picture to Western societies completely opposed
to that of the Western Occupation Zones, where young people were
presented as apathetic and disillusioned.
 Juliane Brauer 189

In the vision of a socialist utopia, the imperative to be joyful played

an important role. Differing from the experience of individual happi-
ness in America, which according to Peter Stearns was supposed to serve
as a basis for personal success,36 the experience of happiness in social-
ism was a collective affair.37 In Soviet politics, young generations were
bound up in a narrative of happiness: ‘happiness was children’s essential
condition, a dogma that remained undisputed throughout the Soviet
period’.38 Happy children were supposed to symbolize the superiority of
the system. They were depicted as a ‘demonstration of righteousness’.
The public presentation of happy children ‘was thus not only (or even
mainly) a goal of Soviet culture, it was a legitimating sacred value’.39
The state could present itself as guarantor of the happiness of joyful
children, as a father figure who looked after the fortune of his fam-
ily. The goal of this paternalistic schema was to integrate the younger
generation into a new social concept. The first President of the GDR,
Wilhelm Pieck, thus assumed the image of a (grand)fatherly patron. The
strategy of deploying joy and jolliness to integrate the young generation
into socialist visions had two decisive advantages. First, by way of this
paternalistic gesture, the state was able to imbue the younger genera-
tion with a sense of obligation, insofar as the latter were supposed to
feel grateful for what was offered to them. The collective happiness that
was promised to members of the socialist utopia was thus made into
something that the younger generation should be willing to defend.
Conversely, the ability to direct young people’s emotions would make
them easier to discipline. Emotions like gratefulness and trust were thus
supposed to create proximity between the new social system and the
new youth. This proximity in turn made the state’s goal of surveillance
easier to execute.
The imperative of joy and jolliness can be traced back to the ‘moral
of joyfulness’. Around 1920, the Magdeburg publisher Emil R. Müller
published a book of his own writings, Sonnige Jugend: Festgedanken
und Feierstunden (Sunny Youth: Celebration Ideas and Festivals). The first
chapter was entitled ‘Die Moral der Fröhlichkeit’ (‘The Morality of
Joyfulness’). Müller, who came from a working-class family, highlighted
the significance of the ‘joyful approach to life’ in transmitting social-
ist ideas.40 According to him, it is precisely this joyful approach to life
that distinguishes ‘weak striving’ from ‘powerful straining towards a
strong humanity filled with camaraderie’.41 In the first chapter of Sonnige
Jugend, Müller developed an important connection between camaraderie
and joyfulness. According to him, joyfulness strengthens camaraderie
and can even be seen as a condition for it. Feeling happiness and
190 Disciplining Young People’s Emotions in the GDR

joyfulness thus goes hand in hand with the feeling of belonging to

a community. He depicted happiness as the emotional glue binding a
functioning community together. The text thus makes clear that the
dictum to be jolly and joyful had its roots both in the older genera-
tion’s projection of particular wishes onto the younger generation and
in the political programme of socialist morality. An apathetic and dis-
illusioned youth did not fit the emotion-laden image of the standard
bearers of hope. For the older generation, joyfulness seemed necessary
to the transformation of young people’s desires into a motor for progress
and social development.
The stereotypical cheerfulness, the feeling of being happy, the
forward-pressing drive and the demand for a future-oriented trust can
all be interpreted against this background as the emotional opposite of
the presentation of post-war youth in the media of the Western Occu-
pied Zones. The Berlin daily paper Der Telegraf, for example, claimed
that the German youth had a ‘confused, distrustful spirit’, which could
only be pulled out of the ‘lethargy of the vacuum left behind by the loss
of a worldview’ with difficulty.42 Public opinion in the Western Occu-
pied Zones often saw German youth as being apathetic, disillusioned
and overburdened with guilt. The youth in the Soviet Occupation Zone,
apparently singing about their new homeland with a spirit of cheer, thus
visibly and audibly demonstrated the success of the youth leaders in
their attempts to win the youth over to the idea of a socialist Germany.
These young people, filled with vitality and drive, were thus supposed
to be visible, audible evidence for the socialist system’s superiority over
neighbouring West Germany.

Learning how to feel

With his songs ‘Jugend heraus’ and ‘Heut ist ein wunderschöner Tag’,
Siegfried Köhler composed so-called Massenlieder, a type of political song
prevalent in socialist countries. The clear, full musical structure of the
songs is readily apparent, as are the simple rhythm and melody. ‘The
effectiveness on the masses’, wrote the music scholar Inge Lammel,
results from the songs’ ‘direct influence on the feelings, thoughts and
actions of many people’. As such, these songs motivated people to
‘actively participate’ in the ‘new duties’.43 How can one determine if
there was a correlation between the emotions proclaimed in the songs,
‘active participation’ and the actual feelings of children and young
people? Is it possible to make such a determination?
A closer look at the actual practice of collective singing supports the
hypothesis that singing was a practice intentionally geared towards a
 Juliane Brauer 191

socialist education. The presumption that song had an influence on

feelings and actions can also be found in a 1947 issue of daily news-
paper Neues Deutschland (New Germany), which reported on the Second
Youth Parliament in Meißen, an event whose mood reverberated in
song:

An unforgettable image, as the first ones with their blue FDJ flags
stepped through the Gothic gate, spectrally lighted by countless
torches. The endless line marches through the tiny streets between
the cramped frame houses of a past era over to the great wide Elbe
Bridge: ‘Jugend heraus!’ is the song heard through the streets, and
there is hardly a German boy or girl who would not have joined this
march.44

This description of young people marching, along with the central

ideas – torches, flags, gothic, singing, German boys and girls – is
reminiscent of the marches of National Socialist youth organizations.
Nevertheless, these parallels, so readily apparent to today’s observer,
were not reflected on at all by contemporaries. One reason for this is
that the GDR defined itself as an anti-fascist state; the state’s founders
insisted on having actively fought against fascism. Contemporaries saw
no need to justify the similarity of post-war and pre-war youth organi-
zations, their ideological objectives being so clearly disparate from one
another. More generally, these practices of community formation have
their origins in nineteenth-century workers’ clubs and societies. They
were and still are in use in different historical and cultural contexts.45
Nonetheless, the young people who marched and sang in Meißen in
1947 were by no means unfamiliar with the emotionally charged nature
of a torch march. In years past, they were supposed to have already
learned to feel senses of belonging, strength and superiority in such sit-
uations. The FDJ appropriated these rituals for itself – rituals that went
far back into the pre-war era – and filled them with its own ideological
ideas and emotions.
The newspaper article stated that there were hardly any German boys
or girls who would not have taken part in the collective march through
Meißen’s historic district, and thus attributed a special emotional effect
to it. The emotional power of the scene was to be found in the totality of
the setting, which was marked by collective singing as well as by torches
and marching. Collective song, constructed with the synchronization
of movement in a marching rhythm, contributed to the mobilization
of emotions.46 A ‘musical community’ was present here, defined as ‘col-
lectivity constructed through and sustained by musical processes and/or
192 Disciplining Young People’s Emotions in the GDR

performances . . . socially and/or symbolically constituted’ giving rise ‘to

real-time social relationships’ existing ‘in the realm of a virtual setting
or in the imagination’.47 One can also speak, after Barbara Rosenwein,
of an ‘emotional community’.48 McNeill and Shelemay correctly point
out that such communities not only have the function of the ‘Consoli-
dation of subgroups’,49 but also that they mark the boundaries of what
can be felt and heard. Only those young people who sang, marched and
thus felt the same emotions belonged to the collective. It is nonetheless
remarkable that the young people marching through Meißen not only
demarcated the boundaries of belonging, but also invited the spectators
to join them.
Is it possible to learn emotions through music, stimulated again and
again through the repetition of the same music in similar situations?
We might interpret group singing as an ‘emotive’, a special kind of
emotional expression that is understood as ‘an attempt to call up the
emotion that is expressed . . . [as] an attempt to feel what one says one
feels’.50 This dynamic relationship between utterances and felt emo-
tions is encapsulated in the performative act of collective singing. The
political significance of such acts occurs with regard to communities,
which ‘have a huge stake in how people habitually use “emotives”’.51
Following this argument, I would describe collective singing – particu-
larly when combined with marching, which was a standard feature in
socialist mass festivities – as a powerful ritual through which emotional
ideals and norms are inculcated. They are powerful in that they engage
the ‘mindful body’ through repetitious singing and marching and affect
it through textual expression together with musical expression. Youth
in Meißen in 1947 not only asserted cheerfulness, drive and confidence
through their singing – they could also have been powerfully affected
by the emotions they sang and performed. In this way, feelings could
be translated into concrete action: joining the FDJ and actively support-
ing the youth organization’s goals, for instance. However, they could
also fail. Collective singing, seen as an emotive, manifests the emotions
called for and intensifies them, while others – such as doubt, anxiety
and sadness – could be hidden and regulated. As already stated, a reper-
toire of songs was established in the GDR with specific motives in mind,
and practices of singing were consciously staged. Thus, one can speak of
an intentional politics of ‘emotives’. The goal was clearly to construct
feelings that conformed with the socialist project, such as joy, cheer-
fulness, drive and dedication, and finally to define and instrumentalize
the desires of the youth. The risk of failure was implicit, as Reddy main-
tains: ‘These attempts [to call up the emotion that is expressed] usually
 Juliane Brauer 193

work, but they can and do fail.’52 It is conceivable that the emotions in
the songs remained in the words, having no further influence on those
singing and listening.

Conclusion

Whether the education of emotions through music was successful or

not cannot clearly be answered, but the sources offer evidence that the
education of young people and their integration into various visions of
the future had a strong correspondence with the activation of their emo-
tions. In conclusion, I would like to emphasize three observations on the
importance of collective singing as a strategy for educating emotions in
the time period examined here.
In the post-war years and later in the GDR, politicians tried to inte-
grate emotional education into schools as well as into the centrally
organized youth organizations. Furthermore, they tried to enhance
this education by identifying all visions of the future with visions of
the socialist Utopia. This resulted in an ‘educational dictatorship’, as
historian Dorothee Wierling has pointed out.53 After a decade of opti-
mism regarding the success of the education of emotions, the mood
turned to disappointment, and the GDR ultimately pursued a policy
of surveillance and aggression against divergent adolescent behaviour.
The ‘emotives’ discussed above must have failed, at least in part, or they
must have only had a short-term effect. The system was unable to refresh
the desirable ‘emotives’ for the new era of the 1960s. It lost power over
the younger generation, which went on to develop its own emotional
style – in music and songs, for instance – which became an increasingly
stronger marker of young people’s identity.54
The endeavours to create appropriate new songs were remarkable. As I
have shown, the so-called mass songs obviously had the potential to
communicate moods in specific situations, such as socialist mass festiv-
ities. Collective singing in this particular case not only underlines the
internal consciousness of belonging to a strong group, but also exter-
nally demonstrates fortitude and purposefulness, combined with the
offer of a utopian dream as ‘an image of . . . a better world’.55 The new
youth organization’s activities – along with its vision of socialist feel-
ings – were strongly related to an optimistic outlook on life, full of joy,
happiness and satisfaction. For their part, these emotions were seen as
gratification for belonging to the new, brave and strong youth that loved
its homeland and aimed to build it anew. This could be interpreted as
an attempt at healing emotions after the devastating experiences of the
194 Disciplining Young People’s Emotions in the GDR

war; a way out into the future, which necessitated the suppression of
the past.

Notes
1. Fritz Domann, ‘Die Stimme der Jugend’, Volkszeitung: Organ der KPD für die
Provinz Sachsen (27 August 1945), 3.
2. Henry J. Kellermann, The Present Status of German Youth, Department
of State Publications 2583 (Washington DC: US Government Printing
Office, 1946); Karl-Heinz Füssl, Die Umerziehung der Deutschen: Jugend und
Schule unter den Siegermächten des Zweiten Weltkriegs 1945–1955, 2nd edn
(Paderborn: Schöningh, 1995), 103–119; Michael Buddrus, ‘A Generation
Twice Betrayed: Youth Policy in the Transition from the Third Reich
to the Soviet Zone of Occupation (1945–1946)’, in Mark Roseman (ed.),
Generations in Conflict: Youth Revolt and Generation Formation in Germany
1770–1968 (Cambridge University Press, 1995), 247–268; Rolf Schörken, Die
Niederlage als Generationserfahrung: Jugendliche nach dem Zusammenbruch der
NS-Herrschaft (Weinheim: Juventa, 2004).
3. Perry Biddiscombe: The Last Nazis: SS Werewolf Guerrilla Resistance in Europe
1944–1947 (New York: History Press, 2013).
4. Jürgen Reulecke, ‘Jugend und Jugendpolitik im mentalitätsgeschichtlichen
Kontext der Nachkriegszeit in Westdeutschland’, in Ulrich Herrmann (ed.),
Jugendpolitik in der Nachkriegszeit: Zeitzeugen, Forschungsberichte, Dokumente
(Weinheim: Juventa, 1993), 75–90, here 87.
5. Reulecke, ‘Jugend und Jugendpolitik im mentalitätsgeschichtlichen Kontext’,
81.
6. See Leonore Ansorg, Kinder im Klassenkampf: Die Geschichte der Pionier-
organisation von 1948 bis Ende der fünfziger Jahre (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag,
1997); Alan McDougall, Youth Politics in East Germany: The Free German Youth
Movement 1946–1968 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004); Alan L. Nothnagle,
Building the East German Myth: Historical Mythology and Youth Propaganda
in the German Democratic Republic, 1945–1989 (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1999); Buddrus, ‘Generation Twice Betrayed’.
7. Peter N. Stearns, Childhood in World History, 2nd edn (London: Routledge,
2011), 103, 104.
8. Zentralrat der Freien Deutschen Jugend, ‘Aufruf an die deutsche Jugend zum
1. Mai: “Seid Bannerträger einer neuen Zeit!”’, Junge Welt 1 (16 April 1947), 1.
9. Freie Deutsche Jugend, Landesleitung Sachsen (ed.), Grundrechte der jungen
Generation (Dresden: Sachsenverlag, 1946), 5
10. Terms taken from P. Buchholz, ‘Alles wirkliche Leben entfaltet sich in der
Gemeinschaft’, Neues Leben: Zeitschrift der Freien Deutschen Jugend 1 (1945),
2; ‘Junge Welt am Mikro: Ausschnitte von den Feierlichkeiten aus Anlaß der
Namensgebung für die Jugendhochschule “Wilhelm Pieck” der Zentralschule
der FDJ am Bogensee, 14.09.1950’, Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv, Potsdam
(DRA), no. 38.
11. Zygmunt Bauman, Socialism: The Active Utopia (London: Allen & Unwin,
1976), 17.
12. Zentralrat der Freien Deutschen Jugend (ed.), Handbuch des Pionierleiters
(Berlin: Neues Leben, 1952), 523.
 Juliane Brauer 195

13. Monique Scheer, ‘Are Emotions a Kind of Practice (and is that What Makes
Them Have a History)? A Bourdieuan Approach to Understanding Emo-
tion’, History and Theory 51(2) (2012), 193–220, here 209. See further the
Introduction to this book.
14. ‘Hausherren der nächsten 50 Jahre . . . die Bürger des künftigen sozialistischen
Deutschlands’, as stated in ‘Der Jugend Vertrauen und Verantwortung:
Kommuniqué des Politbüros des Zentralkomitees der Sozialistischen
Einheitspartei Deutschlands zu Problemen der Jugend in der Deutschen
Demokratischen Republik’, Neues Deutschland 18(259) (21 September 1963),
1–3, here 2.
15. Juliane Brauer, ‘“Mit neuem Fühlen und neuem Geist”: Heimatliebe und
Patriotismus in Kinder- und Jugendliedern der frühen DDR’, in David Eugster
and Sibylle Marti (eds), Das Imaginäre des Kalten Krieges: Beiträge zu einer
Kulturgeschichte des Ost-West-Konfliktes in Europa (Essen: Klartext, 2015),
163–186.
16. Fritz Seidenfaden, Die musische Erziehung in der Gegenwart und ihre
geschichtlichen Quellen und Voraussetzungen (Ratingen: Henn, 1962), 149. The
term ‘artistic’ education (musische Erziehung) was coined at the end of the
1920s by the sociologist Hans Freyer in Über die ethische Bedeutung der Musik
(Wolfenbüttel: G. Kallmeyer, 1928).
17. Denkschrift des Instituts für Musik-Erziehung an der Pädagogischen Fakultät
der Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg (1950), 31, Stiftung Archiv
der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR im Bundesarchiv, DR 2,
5972.
18. Deutsche Zentralverwaltung für Volksbildung in der Sowjetischen Besatzung-
szone Deutschlands, Lehrpläne für die Grund- und Oberschulen in der
sowjetischen Besatzungszone Deutschlands: Kunst- und Musikunterricht (Berlin:
Volk und Wissen, 1 July 1946), 22.
19. Zentralrat der Freien Deutschen Jugend, Handbuch des Pionierleiters, 533.
20. Zentralrat der Freien Deutschen Jugend, Handbuch des Pionierleiters, 533.
21. Sieglinde Siedentop, Musikunterricht in der DDR: Musikpädagogische Studien zu
Erziehung und Bildung in den Klassen 1 bis 4 (Augsburg: Wißner, 2000).
22. E.H. Meyer and E. Ichenhäuser, Grundsätze für Musikschulbücher (1948),
24, Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR im
Bundesarchiv, DR 2, 535.
23. Antifaschistisches Jugendkomitee Magdeburg, ‘Magdeburg ruft seine
Jugend’, Volkszeitung: Organ der KPD für die Provinz Sachsen (25 August
1945), 3.
24. All information on Siegfried Köhler is taken from his estate as well as from
Dieter Härtwig, ‘Köhler, Siegfried’, in Institut für Sächsische Geschichte und
Volkskunde e. V. (ed.), Sächsische Biografie, revised by Martina Schattkowsky,
www.isgv.de/saebi (date accessed 8 October 2014).
25. ‘Zur Person, Schreiben vom Juni 1942’, Nachlass Siegfried Köhler, Saxon State
and University Library Dresden (SLUB), Kapsel 64.
26. See the estate of Siegfried Köhler in the Saxon State and University Library
Dresden.
27. See Härtwig, ‘Köhler, Siegfried’.
28. Alan McDougall, ‘A Duty to Forget? The “Hitler Youth Generation” and
the Transition from Nazism to Communism in Postwar East Germany,
c.1945–49’, German History 26(1) (2008), 24–46, esp. 37–38.
196 Disciplining Young People’s Emotions in the GDR

29. Edeltraud Schulze and Gert Noack (eds), DDR-Jugend: Ein statistisches
Handbuch (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1995), 158.
30. Köhler had already composed the song ‘Heut ist ein wunderschöner Tag’
by the end of 1944. It was one of his Bannspielschar’s favourite songs.
But in the songbooks of the Soviet Occupation Zone and the GDR, it
was always listed as having been composed in 1945. He revised the music
of the song ‘Jugend heraus’ for the 1947 Second Parliament of Youth in
Meißen.
31. ‘Uns sind die Herzen so frei wie die Lerche hoch da droben. Und hell klingt
unser Lied dabei, froh, aller Sorgen enthoben’ (second verse of ‘Heut ist ein
wunderschöner Tag’).
32. ‘Wir lieben das fröhliche Leben’ was the title of a FDJ event in 1986 in the
Palace of the Republic, which was named after the opening line of the song
‘Jugend voraus’. ‘Heut ist ein wunderschöner Tag’ already belonged to the
repertoire of folk songs. It can thus be found, for instance, in the songbook:
Touristenverein Naturfreunde Österreich, Wir lieben das Leben: Liederbuch der
Naturfreunde (Essen: Klartext Verlag, 1987), 25.
33. This claim is based on an analysis of 20 songbooks and music textbooks
published between 1946 and 1956, although there were actually many more
songs.
34. See Brauer, ‘“Mit neuem Fühlen und neuem Geist”’.
35. Herrmann Mattern, ‘Redemanuskript’ (1952), Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv,
Potsdam (DRA), DOK 1056.
36. Peter Stearns has established that in America, beginning in the 1930s at the
latest, ‘cheerfulness’ and ‘childhood’ belonged together, because cheerful-
ness and happiness in childhood translated into success in adult life; see
Peter N. Stearns, ‘Defining Happy Childhoods: Assessing a Recent Change’,
Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 3(2) (2010), 165–186, esp.
173–177. See further Ute Frevert, Pascal Eitler, Stephanie Olsen et al., Learn-
ing How to Feel: Children’s Literature and Emotional Socialization, 1870–1970
(Oxford University Press, 2014), esp. 1–20.
37. Marina Balina and Evgeny Dobrenko (eds), Petrified Utopia: Happiness Soviet
Style (London: Anthem Press, 2011), xv–xvi.
38. Catriona Kelly, ‘A Joyful Soviet Childhood: Licensed Happiness for Lit-
tle Ones’, in Marina Balina and Evgeny Dobrenko (eds), Petrified Utopia:
Happiness Soviet Style (London: Anthem Press, 2011), 3–18, here 8.
39. Kelly, ‘Joyful Soviet Childhood’, 9.
40. E.R. Müller: Sonnige Jugend: Festgedanken und Feierstunden (Berlin: Vorwärts,
1920), 3.
41. Müller, Sonnige Jugend, 3.
42. O.H. Hess, ‘Jugend und Sozialismus’, Der Telegraf (18 May 1946), not
paginated.
43. Inge Lammel, ‘Das Arbeiterlied’, in Rüdiger Sell (ed.), Kleine Liedkunde:
Volkslied, Arbeiterlied, Chormusik, Pionierlied, Jugendlied, Sololied, Chanson,
Singebewegung (Berlin: Volk und Wissen, 1988), 45–68, here 68.
44. Klaus, ‘Der Fackelzug’, Neues Deutschland 2(122) (29 May 1947), 3.
45. See Chapter 11.
46. William H. McNeill, Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human
History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 51–52.
 Juliane Brauer 197

47. Kay Kaufman Shelemay, ‘Musical Communities: Rethinking the Collective

in Music’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 64(2) (2011), 349–390,
here 364.
48. See Chapter 2 in this volume.
49. McNeill, Keeping Together in Time, 52; Shelemay, ‘Musical Communities’, 363.
50. Jan Plamper, ‘The History of Emotions: An Interview with William Reddy,
Barbara Rosenwein, and Peter Stearns’, History and Theory 49(2) (2010),
237–265, here 240 (statement by William Reddy).
51. Plamper, ‘The History of Emotions’, 240 (statement by William Reddy).
52. Plamper, ‘The History of Emotions’, 240 (statement by William Reddy).
53. Dorothee Wierling, ‘Youth as Internal Enemy: Conflicts in the Education
Dictatorship of the 1960s’, in Katherine Pence and Paul Betts (eds), Socialist
Modern: East German Everyday Culture and Politics (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 2008), 157–182.
54. See further Juliane Brauer, ‘Clashes of Emotions: Punk Music, Youth Subcul-
ture, and Authority in the GDR (1978–1983)’, Social Justice: A Journal of Crime,
Conflict and World Order 38(4) (2012), 53–70.
55. Bauman, Socialism, 17.
11
Inscribing War Orphans’ Losses
into the Language of the Nation
in Wartime China, 1937–1945
M. Colette Plum

Stand up, stand up!

Children of the ancestral homeland, stand up!1

These are the opening lyrics to one of the many songs taught to war
orphans during China’s War against Japan (1937–1945). Orphans in
wartime children’s homes were organized by teachers and child relief
workers to sing patriotic songs collectively, to raise morale and to inspire
the children to participate in what was known in China as ‘the War of
Resistance against Japan’. Orphans also sang patriotic songs on street
corners as part of propaganda troops to inspire the masses to partici-
pate in the war effort and discourage collaboration with the Japanese.
The rest of the lyrics of this particular song call the children to lead one
another, hand-in-hand, to the battlefield, to fight the enemy and fight
for their future freedom.
The children being rallied to ‘stand up’ were orphans: children who
had been displaced from their primary emotional communities by the
contingencies of war and were now being cared for in the newly cre-
ated communities of wartime children’s homes. But they are not called
‘orphans’ (gu’er) in this song, nor are they called ‘refugee children’
(nantong) or simply ‘children’ (ertong). They are ‘children of the ances-
tral homeland’ (zuguo de haizimen), an appellation used by Nationalist
state builders to position orphans as children within an emerging emo-
tional community of ‘the family of the nation’ and to elicit from them
feelings of patriotism and national pride, a sense of obligation towards
the nation, a willingness to be led and, above all, a sense of belonging.

198
 M. Colette Plum 199

Chinese child psychologists and child relief workers – who were agents
of Nationalist state building – argued that addressing war orphans with
familial terms such as this and the more frequently used term ‘children
of the minzu (national-race)’ would help to neutralize any threats family-
less children might pose to social stability and direct any ‘excessive’ rage,
fear and grief they felt from their wartime losses into more productive
emotions such as loyalty, an eagerness to sacrifice for the nation and
ultimately towards revenge against the enemy.
The practice of organizing children into singing groups as a means of
encouraging the development of particular emotions expressed in songs
was not unique to wartime China. In Chapter 10, which discusses the
early years of the German Democratic Republic, Juliane Brauer argues
that group singing in socialist youth groups was an ‘emotive’ – a prac-
tice of ‘doing’ emotions – intentionally encouraged to elicit emotions
favourable to the socialist state. Mobilizing war orphans to sing together
as ‘children of the minzu’ functioned similarly as an emotive in wartime
China, and was one of a set of practices institutionalized in China’s
wartime children’s homes that directed displaced children to experience
and express their emotions in new ways that were valued and validated
by what became for them a new emotional community replacing the
presumably more provincial and self-interested emotional ties they had
previously experienced within the families and villages that they had
lost. War orphans not only lost families to the travesties of war, but also
fled for safety, leaving behind their primary emotional communities of
surviving families, villages, neighbourhoods and schools, whose mem-
bers shared common interests and values. Wartime children’s homes
were established by the state, whose agents actively sought to reshape
the values and goals of children and their caregivers to better meet the
goals of nation building.2
In order to better understand the diversity of China’s emotional
communities and how the Nationalist government sought to create a
dominant emotional regime, it is first important to understand some
key components of China’s political and social situation at the time of
Japan’s invasion that challenged the Nationalist government in terms
of forging a unified nation. First, a central aspect of the Nationalist
Party’s nation-building work prior to the war was establishing its legit-
imacy to rule the whole of China in the face of rival powers. Prior to
Japan’s full invasion in June 1937, China had been carved into numer-
ous geopolitical regions with differing local and global interests. These
included: treaty port cities occupied by Western imperialist nations;
areas under the rule of the Nationalist government; areas controlled by
200 Inscribing War Orphans’ Losses into the Language of the Nation

the Communist Party; and warlord regions. With the Japanese invasion,
China’s land mass was further divided into occupied areas controlled
by Japan and unoccupied areas controlled by any of these other rival
powers. Simply put, the Nationalist government was not the sole polit-
ical and economic power capable of shaping the goals and affections of
China’s emotional communities.
Second, in addition to China’s political factionalism, there was a great
deal of cultural and linguistic diversity within what we now think of
as the Chinese nation-state. Chinese expressions of attachment to place
and community were articulated as feelings of affection for, belonging to
and obligations within family, clan, village and region, but not as mem-
bership within a nation-state. Thus, a central concern of the Nationalist
Party’s propaganda machine was to supplant these competing emotional
communities and to forge a shared national identity that transcended
local interests, establishing the Nationalist Party as the rightful wardens
of the national body and an object of loyalty and devotion.
Third, the full force of Japan’s invasion of China which commenced
in July 1937 was rapid, and utilized weapons technology and psycho-
logical tactics never before used against the Chinese population. In just
five short months, Japan had successfully taken over all of China’s
eastern seaboard. Horror stories of the atrocities inflicted by Japanese
troops against China’s civilian population preceded military offensives
and sparked a mass migration of the Chinese population the likes of
which had never been seen before in human history.3 The Nationalist
state was thus dealing with a large displaced and floating population of
potential citizens who had been severed from their former emotional
communities, many of whom had not previously been under the direct
rule of the state.
And, finally, the Nationalist government was keenly aware that there
were rival political powers vying for the affection and loyalty of the
population under its control. The frontlines of the war and the bor-
ders demarcating Nationalist, Japanese and Communist-held territories
were continually shifting during the war such that spying and collabo-
ration with ‘the enemy’ were a constant concern to Nationalist leaders.
In occupied territories, the Japanese ruled via collaborationist regimes
and enlisted the assistance of Chinese elites. Fearing the possibility
of such collaborations, the Nationalist wartime propaganda machine
worked exhaustively to elicit loyalty from the Chinese population,
inspire the masses to sacrifice for the war effort and be on the watch for
traitors and collaborators. All Chinese, including children, were viewed
as possible traitors who might collaborate with either the Japanese or
 M. Colette Plum 201

the Communists, and who were in need of induction into the national
body.
An essential piece of this nation-building work was replacing the affec-
tions and bonds that had been experienced within pre-war emotional
communities with affections and bonds in newly created communi-
ties that were idealized as microcosms of the ‘family of the nation’.
Stearns and Stearns’ concept of emotionology is useful for understand-
ing the nation-building work that occurred with the state’s restructuring
of emotional communities. Emotionology is defined as an emotional
standard being imposed by a dominant power, in part, via institutions.4
In the case of wartime China, affection for ‘the family of the nation’
was a critical emotional standard imposed by the Nationalist state and
its elite propaganda and policy shapers. This chapter examines one of
the new communities where this emotional standard was cultivated:
wartime children’s homes, which were organized to address the needs
of the large population of Chinese children who were separated from
their families during the Japanese invasion. War orphans – lacking fam-
ily ties and available for appropriation by the Japanese, the Communists
and the Nationalists – became special targets for institutionalization.
Orphans, displaced from family and regional ties and desperate for
care, were deemed especially dangerous to social stability and at risk of
becoming traitors or collaborators with the enemy, whether the enemy
was the Japanese or the Communists.
This chapter argues that childcare and relief workers attempted to
mitigate the perceived risks to social stability and nation building
posed by family-less children by shaping their emotional experiences.
By overwriting orphans’ subjective experiences of wartime trauma and
narrating these back to children using the language of nationalism,
state-builders augmented subjective memories of trauma with collec-
tive narratives of national humiliation and suffering. Children’s wartime
anger, fear and grief were subsequently channelled into wartime propa-
ganda activities in service of the goals of nation building.
Within wartime children’s homes, children displaced from their pri-
mary emotional communities could be turned into citizens within new
communities, with dispositions towards self-sacrifice, loyalty and a will-
ingness to labour that might be mobilized to do the work of the nation.
This chapter will first look at how new emotional communities were
forged by reframing orphans from objects of pity and distrust to objects
of affection and value, worthy of love and resource investment. The
chapter then examines how emotional experiences and communities
were shaped by child welfare workers within children’s homes to better
202 Inscribing War Orphans’ Losses into the Language of the Nation

create the dispositions deemed essential for a modern citizenry. Finally,

this chapter argues that orphans forged emotional communities and
honed emotional pathways within children’s homes that were different
from those encouraged by the official emotionology of the ‘family of the
nation’. Child survivors of war trauma utilized the language of nation-
alism to articulate more subjective narratives of survival, inclusion and
redemption, giving meaning and purpose to their post-war lives.

From children of families to ‘children of the minzu’

One cannot assume that war orphans will survive without a concerted
and organized effort to care for them. Written accounts by relief workers
and oral histories of survivors from this period speak of parents and rela-
tives abandoning children on roadsides or throwing children overboard
from boats as families escaped with throngs of other refugees.5 Many
children were separated from their families during air raids or ground
troop invasions and were never reunited with them. Although some
oral history participants who were orphaned during the war tell stories
of receiving food from strangers on roadsides, others recount that they
wandered about in populated areas for days, starving, before they were
given care by formally established relief units.6
In the mass migration of refugees that accompanied the Japanese
invasion, clusters of displaced and orphaned children on roadsides, bus
stations, docks and street corners were a troubling sight to Chinese and
international observers reporting on the invasion. There was a great deal
of propaganda to convince the public that children were worthy of relief
efforts and to then shape caregivers to work for the best interests of dis-
placed children. Child relief leaders believed that both orphans and their
relief workers needed to be taught to feel towards one another in family
terms in order to ensure the orphans’ best possible care. The training of
child welfare workers involved nurturing emotional pathways of care-
giving that tapped into cultural models of mothering, where caregivers
(primarily women) were encouraged to be selfless and devoted to their
charges. The trainers of childcare workers repositioned orphans from
their previous status as other people’s children to their new status as
‘the nation’s children’.
In her address to childcare workers in 1937, the writer, child relief
advocate and head of a wartime children’s home Jun Hui (1904–1981)
utilized the term ‘the nation’s children’ (guojia de ertong) to evoke a sense
of selflessness and commitment on the part of childcare workers towards
the orphans in their care:
 M. Colette Plum 203

You should have an attitude of selflessness towards childcare. We

are participating in childcare work and nurturing children for the
national-race . . . They are all the nation’s children . . . even if there
are differences amongst children . . . childcare workers should not be
partial.7

The primary emotional community for most Chinese children and

adults in pre-war China was the family. Before the war, there were
few cultural models for childcare workers and the public to relate to
orphans beyond pity, indifference or suspicion. Child relief leaders who
recruited and trained child rescue workers believed that in order to cre-
ate a shared emotional community of affective ties mirroring those of
kinship, the feelings of non-familial caregivers needed to be transformed
into feelings of selflessness, commitment and affection. Wartime writ-
ings and public speeches attempted to cut against a perceived fear that
orphans came from backgrounds that would make them less teachable
and hence less valuable to the nation. The discourse created around war
orphans attempted to make the reader sympathetic to their plight by
eliciting feelings of nurturance and care. Maternal feelings of love and
protection were most frequently mentioned, but sibling affections and
obligations were also referenced as a way to conjure support for orphans.
One article in a publication by the Association of Jiangsu Province Refugee
Committees argued that safeguarding the ‘lifeline of the national-race’
(minzu de mingmai) meant regarding ‘all the nation’s children as our
own sons and daughters, sisters and brothers and protect them in the
same way, because not only are children our own sons and daughters
and sisters and brothers, moreover, they are the sons and daughters of
the national-race (minzu)’.8
Chinese child development specialists theorized that it was within
families that potential citizens learned affection, loyalty and a sense
of obligation within an established hierarchy – all of which could
be channelled into loyalty and obligation towards the state. In an
essay published in a 1938 collection on how to care for refugee chil-
dren, Chen Heqin (1892–1982), the founder of child psychology in
China, posits that parents are a child’s first teachers of patriotism
and nationalism: ‘Parents should train children to have loving feel-
ings towards others. People will only be able to love society and the
nation if they developed loving feelings towards others when they
were children.’9 Deprived of love from family, orphans were at risk of
being stunted in their ability to develop a love for the ‘family’ of the
nation.
204 Inscribing War Orphans’ Losses into the Language of the Nation

In the project of creating loyal subjects of the state, the family could
also be an impediment to state goals. Families were where children
might learn to love, but they were also sites for promoting narrow
and selfish interests against the wishes of the state. On the one hand,
orphans, being family-less, were lacking something of vital importance:
without affective ties and a respect for hierarchies that come within filial
relations, they might not be loyal or disciplined citizens. On the other
hand, being family-free, they were manipulable: without the influences
of and loyalties to the family, they could be utilized for the national
purpose. Ideological work was therefore done to convince the public
that children without families, lacking the emotional community of the
family, were not as risky as previously perceived.10
One way of reframing the war orphan’s value was to argue that
wartime trauma created a unique emotional experience for orphans –
an experience of ‘pure hatred’ – which would make them even more
committed in the war against Japan than adults and which would make
them more loyal subjects. Jun Hui argued that war orphans were less
selfish and more loyal than adults precisely because of the trauma they
had endured, making them a great asset to the nation:

The artillery fire of the war has taken (today’s children of the minzu)
from schools, from street corners and from their mothers’ arms and
gathered them together in one place. Transient lives and the enemy’s
brutality have given them a profound understanding of the meaning
of the war, they have more hatred for the enemy in their little pure
souls than adults do. Their pursuit of truth and passion for realizing
truth is greater than adults, and their individualistic worries are fewer
than those of adults.11

From Jun Hui’s perspective, all that was necessary in order to trans-
form orphans from risks to assets was to give them training that would
strengthen their resolve to fight the enemy and engage in the work of
state-building: ‘With proper training they will display a strength as great
as anyone’s strength.’12

Creating emotional pathways towards a loyal and labouring

citizenship

Child relief specialists were at the vanguard in providing the train-

ing that would shape new citizens out of orphaned children and
ideally transform what Chinese child development experts identified
 M. Colette Plum 205

as excessive feelings of fear, grief and rage into a desire for revenge
and feelings of patriotism, loyalty, and a love of labour and enter-
prise that might better serve the Nationalist state. Wartime children’s
homes were not only institutions that cared for and protected children
made vulnerable by wartime atrocities, they were also institutions for
incubating emotional pathways deemed necessary to ensure that these
children would be loyal citizens committed to doing the work of the
nation.
This section will introduce three categories of practices utilized by
child relief workers to shape the emotional experiences of orphans
within wartime children’s homes. These practices aimed at creating
emotional pathways that would support the emotionology of the ‘fam-
ily of the nation’ by cultivating patriotism, a strong sense of ‘national
consciousness’ and a willingness to labour and sacrifice for the nation.
These categories of practices included: re-exposing children to wartime
trauma as a pathway towards a desire for revenge; creating new emo-
tional communities of ‘family’ as a pathway towards patriotism; and
training children to labour as a pathway towards a love for labour,
cooperation and enterprise.

From subjective trauma to collective trauma: pathways

towards revenge

Oral histories, memoirs, newspaper accounts and reports from child

relief organizations reveal particular patterns to the trauma and dislo-
cation that China’s war orphans experienced. Many orphans arrived
at the relative safety of wartime children’s homes in China’s unoccu-
pied interior only after long, exhausting and traumatic exoduses from
far-flung provinces, travelling for weeks or months on foot, boat and,
occasionally, train. Some were survivors many times over, having fled
the terror of aerial bombardments with throngs of other refugees, hid-
ing from low-flying fighter planes reported to have strafed the fleeing
civilian population with aerial fire; some forded or swam across rivers
and streams to find themselves part of a small remainder of survivors
standing on the opposite banks, their classmates or family members
having drowned in the crossing; some had hidden for days out of fear
of approaching ground troops, clustered with strangers in abandoned
cellars or caves. Many of these children saw first-hand the carnage of
war: the severed limbs of the wounded; the stunned and empty gazes
of injured and dying soldiers; the corpses decomposing on the sides of
roads.
206 Inscribing War Orphans’ Losses into the Language of the Nation

One of the founding members of the Wartime Association for Child

Welfare, Xu Jingping, described these children who clustered together in
train stations and on street corners:

Since most of the children were orphans who had lost everything,
they had been eating discarded food and fruit rinds from trash-
cans and they wore torn and dirty clothing. Some were naked from
the waist down, and some children only had gunnysacks draped
over their shoulders. At night, if they didn’t sleep in some dilapi-
dated temple, they passed the night beneath the eaves of a stranger’s
home.13

The war was not abstract to child survivors. Children’s encounters with
trauma and death were often personal and intimate: one oral history
participant reported that he had climbed from a ditch in Anhui after
an aerial bombardment to find his classmates strewn about with severed
limbs, leaving him shocked by both the carnage and the fact that he
was unable to bury his friends; another woke in the safety of her bed in
a children’s home, only to find she was sleeping with a corpse, as her
bunkmate had died of cholera during the night.14
These losses were personal, but they were quickly incorporated by
wartime propagandists and child relief workers into a collective national
narrative that told the story of a beleaguered and weakened nation
that would defy odds and overcome adversity to bring to life a New
China. Orphans’ subjective experiences of wartime trauma were nar-
rated back to them using the language of nationalism, which augmented
their personal memories of trauma with collective images of national
humiliation and suffering as well as collective hopes for renewal and
redemption.
The goal of infusing children with national and race conscious-
ness appears throughout wartime education journals. For example, in
an article on how to implement education for refugee children, one
propagandist raised a concern that children in general should be indoc-
trinated with patriotism and nationalism to prevent their becoming
traitors. Such education was carried out with the general public, both
children and adults, and was called ‘patriotism education’ (guoai zhuyi
jiaoyu) or ‘national-race education’, (minzu jiaoyu), but in wartime chil-
dren’s homes, such education was also termed ‘revenge education’
(fuchou zhuyi jiaoyu), highlighting the need to channel the orphan’s
potential rage over his or her losses into the more desirable emotion
of fervent nationalism and a passion to avenge these losses.
 M. Colette Plum 207

Such training was carried out in children’s homes in a variety of ways,

the most memorable of which for oral history participants were the
Mandarin grammar textbooks and the collective singing of War of Resis-
tance songs. The following two lessons were frequently recited to me
from memory by oral history participants and are reprinted in memoirs
from this period:

Lesson One: ‘Fire, fire, fire. These fires are set by the Japanese devils.’
‘ , , , .’

Lesson Two: ‘Blood, blood, blood. The blood that is flowing is the
Chinese people’s blood.’ ‘ , , , .’

Orphans were frequently assembled to collectively sing songs that

mourned the loss of Chinese territory, described Japanese atrocities and
national humiliation, and celebrated belonging to the national family
and race. They were also assembled to hear reports on wartime political
affairs and military manoeuvres, where they were urged to remain ever
conscious of the war and what was at stake for the nation.15 One photo
from this period shows a schoolteacher mapping out war manoeuvres
on a blackboard.16 The daily schedules in wartime children’s homes
also indicate a prioritizing of War of Resistance education. The Wuhan
Number One Temporary Children’s Home scheduled four hours every
afternoon of War of Resistance education that included singing, reports
on current events, listening to War of Resistance stories and lessons in
first aid.17
Not only was resistance ideology inculcated via grammar texts, col-
lective singing and daily lectures, but the very physical space in which
children lived and studied was designed to provide them with reminders
of the enemy presumed to lurk beyond the institution’s walls and
deemed responsible for the loss of their families and homes.18 For exam-
ple, children in the Wuhan Number One Temporary Children’s Home
were divided into ten grade levels, and each grade was denoted by
one character. The characters, if strung together from the highest grade
to the lowest, formed the sentence: ‘The War of Resistance will be
fought to the end for final victory’ (kang-zhan-dao-di-zheng-qu-zui-hou-
sheng-li).
The classroom walls and layout of the buildings were also designed to
bring images of the battlefield into the classroom:

On the walls of the classrooms were pictures of airplanes and bombs

and field artillery, as well as notices for children about education and
208 Inscribing War Orphans’ Losses into the Language of the Nation

standards for hygiene. And on the two outside walls hung drawings
of the enemy massacring children.19

Given the circumstances that led war orphans to become wards of the
state, they were presumed already to fear the enemy and be eager for pro-
tection. But fear was also believed to be accompanied by rage, and the
rage of orphans was viewed as something that could either be destructive
to nation-building projects or constructive, depending on how it was
channelled. The early childhood specialist Lu Zhuanji identified exces-
sive rage as a psychological abnormality in orphans: a symptom of their
war trauma. But he also argued that the orphans’ rage, if properly chan-
nelled by caregivers, could serve to shape the war orphan into a potent
tool against the enemy and an asset to the nation:

During wartime, children suffer from the aggression of the invad-

ing enemy, and for this reason they can develop reactions of intense
rage. This kind of rage can give rise to a spirit of retribution and
revenge and the consciousness of dying for the cause of justice
and righteousness. In this case, because it is the invading Japanese
who have precipitated the reaction of intense rage in children, the
fact is that it is an extremely good teaching opportunity and can
increase children’s race consciousness and develop children’s patrio-
tism . . . We must put children through a process of energetic training,
to ensure that children’s enraged psyches (fennu xinli) gradually trans-
form into the happy and energetic ideology of being patriotic and
loyal.20

The orphan’s rage, if properly channelled, presented an opportunity for

orphans to develop consciousness of the national-race and patriotism.
But caregivers and propagandists also recognized that the orphan’s rage,
if fanned and given a public forum for expression, would provide a
learning opportunity for the masses. Orphans were not just instilled
with War of Resistance messages – they were also expected to play a
role in propagandizing the need for resistance to the general popula-
tion. Wartime newspapers reported stories such as that of the young girl
Zhang Xiqiu, who, after a group of war orphans led a crowd of 1,000
spectators in a round of War of Resistance songs, told her story of escape
from the enemy. Dressed in the white blouse and blue skirt which were
standard issue in children’s homes, Zhang reportedly moved the crowd
with her words: ‘If the Japanese enemy comes to occupy Wuhan, they
 M. Colette Plum 209

will take all of the children they have not yet killed and transport them
to Japan, where they will become slaves.’21
In recounting her story, Zhang reconfigured her subjective losses of
family and home as collective losses of compatriots and nation. The pri-
orities of Nationalist wartime propaganda – the need to rally Chinese on
the side of the Nationalists in the battle against Japan – demanded new
fears that were incubated in and expressed by war orphans. The official
ideology of resistance – circulated in wartime newspapers and in public
speeches such as this one – layered a fear of abduction and enslavement
onto the fear of bombs and bayonets. There is no historical evidence
that Chinese children were abducted, exported to Japan and enslaved
there, but such rumours became central in appeals to the population to
join the war effort.
Orphans were viewed by the propaganda apparatus as having impor-
tant symbolic value capable of moving the masses in ways which
ordinary citizens and adult refugees could not, precisely because of their
subjective vulnerability and their availability for appropriation. In a
1938 essay on how best to recruit women for resistance work, one of
the founders of the Wartime Association for Child Welfare wrote of the
special ability of war orphans to inspire participation:

Especially organize children’s propaganda troops and use their inno-

cent and clever little voices to tell stories about children’s calamities
and say that they want help to find their paternal and mater-
nal grandmothers and little sisters. Any propaganda group of this
kind will be better able to tug at people’s heartstrings, particularly
women. Not only can this kind of children’s propaganda troupe
attend every rally, but they should also penetrate deeply into every
family.22

Children’s wartime fear and grief were channelled into wartime propa-
ganda activities in the service of the goals of nation building. These
activities included participating in singing troupes and street plays,
hanging wall posters that bore witness to wartime trauma and giving
testimonials to crowds about the hardships they endured.23 The danger-
ous aspects of family-less orphans – whose fear and rage may have led
to anti-social behaviour or even collaboration with the enemy – were
believed to be mitigated by participation in wartime resistance work.
Moreover, their status as war orphans, who had suffered losses presum-
ably directly as a result of the Japanese invasion, gave them powerful
210 Inscribing War Orphans’ Losses into the Language of the Nation

representational value in propagandizing the risks of allying with the

enemy and not participating in wartime work.

‘We were like one big family’

Childcare and teaching practices in wartime children’s homes also tried

to remedy the family-less state of orphans by creating alternative fam-
ilies within children’s homes, with the aim of cultivating the affective
ties and filial practices deemed necessary to develop patriotism. In an
oral history, one children’s home resident, Sun Xiaotang, recalled a
family-like atmosphere where some of her teachers would tuck them
in at night and sing songs; others would cook special dishes for picky
eaters or for sickly children.24
Sun’s favourite teacher was her geography teacher, whom she called
‘Mama Wang’ (Wang Mama). Mama Wang was respected as a gifted
instructor who reportedly never used corporal punishment to discipline
the children, but rather spoke to them with respect and reason. Mama
Wang made a point of bringing students into the Wang family home,
where they could relax and play in a family atmosphere. But there was
something else noteworthy about Mama Wang: ‘Mama Wang’ was a
man. His name was Wang Xuchen, and his wife, ‘Li Mama’ (Li Linyun),
also worked at the children’s home.
Alumni of children’s homes consistently refer to their former teach-
ers and caregivers as ‘mama’, regardless of the gender of the teacher or
caregiver, and alumni of these homes refer to each other by the appro-
priate sibling terms.25 One oral history participant stated that there was
a saying in his children’s home likening the institution to a family: ‘The
students are like siblings, the teachers are like the parents.’26 Former
children’s home residents frequently refer to relations in the children’s
home as harmonious.27
Wartime children’s homes also organized the living quarters to pro-
vide a home-like atmosphere (jiatinghua). Children lived in small units
under the care of one adult, where they ideally shared daily household
chores and produced food and goods collectively for the group’s sup-
port.28 An overview of the Beiquan Loving Children’s Home includes a
section on ‘group living’ (qun). Children are described as living ‘as fami-
lies do within society’, caring for one another and helping out with such
tasks as washing clothes, cooking, tending domestic animals, sewing
and mending, and cutting each other’s hair. Each day, after classes, the
children were divided into groups of elder siblings and younger siblings
in order to help each other with these tasks.29 These family groups are
 M. Colette Plum 211

described as being a loving place where children could talk caringly with
one another and participate in activities together.30
Children’s homes offered Nationalist state builders an opportunity
to create idealized emotional communities that were modelled after
the ideal Chinese family system, viewed as a microcosm of a well-
functioning state. In this system, affective ties within established hier-
archies clearly defined the obligations and expectations of all members,
who were motivated to work for the good of the collective. Wartime
children’s homes also offered Nationalist state builders the opportunity
to encourage emotional experiences that mitigated against any narrow,
tribal interests that might result from strong family attachments. Within
wartime children’s homes, the children were encouraged to make sac-
rifices for the nation and gain pleasure from hard work that would
benefit the family of the children’s home and ultimately the family of
the nation.

Cultivating a love for labour

Education and training in children’s homes capitalized on the family-

less status of orphans, inculcating a level of self-sufficiency and com-
mitment to production that would benefit the greater collective over
the family collective – goals deemed absent in traditional Chinese family
child-rearing practices. ‘Labour education’ (laodong jiaoyu) and ‘produc-
tion training’ (shengchan xunlian) aimed to instil in orphans a ‘love for
labour’ and a ‘spirit of hard work’, as well as a willingness to endure
hardship without complaint (keku nailao).31
Labour activities made up the core of the daily schedule in wartime
children’s homes. In many institutions, the curriculum was structured
with one-quarter of the time spent in classroom learning and the rest
of the day devoted to various manual labour and agricultural activi-
ties.32 Orphans participated in labour activities that required repetitive
motion, technical skills and the ability to focus for long stretches of
time, such as making straw sandals and weaving textiles.33 Children also
made cotton shoes – worn by students and staff, and sold on the local
market – wove blankets and socks, and made rattan articles, tofu and
lithographs.34
In a training manual for child welfare workers, one children’s home
director, Ma Beigong, pointed out that children originally did farm work
in the fields ‘to help their fathers and older brothers’. But he went
on to argue that children are capable of more than agricultural labour
and should be taught skills in handicraft production, wood working,
212 Inscribing War Orphans’ Losses into the Language of the Nation

printmaking, cooking, textile production, blanket weaving, and any-

thing else that might be considered ‘arduous’, but would help fight the
enemy and build the nation. He also argued that such work would teach
orphans to be self-sufficient, habituate them towards labour and teach
them to cooperate with others.35
Child development specialists also believed that by engaging orphans
in work, they could prevent ‘excessive grief’ from becoming a psycho-
logical abnormality that might impede orphans from carrying out tasks
and being ‘enterprising humans’. Lu Zhuanji encouraged caregivers not
to allow children to waste their time grieving: ‘Isn’t it enough that their
own bodies have experienced tragedies? But the dead are dead, and
calamities are calamities. Not only is excessive grief useless for carrying
out tasks, it can also harm your own good fortune.’36 Lu prescribes con-
stant activity, especially work, as a means of preventing children from
feeling ‘lonely’ or ‘bored’ and thus heading off excessive grief.
During a time in which the Chinese state was marshalling all citizens
to participate in nation-building work and productive activity, orphans’
work within children’s homes was thus viewed as an important practice
for fostering a love for labour and a spirit of cooperation, as well as a
means of preventing idleness and a lack of enterprise. Although child
welfare workers justified orphans’ labour in children’s homes by com-
paring these production practices with children’s work on family farms
and within family handicraft industries, the goals of this labour were dif-
ferent from the seemingly provincial goals of family profit: to discourage
emotions that might lead to inactivity or resistance; and to encourage
emotions that would lead to cooperation, self-sacrifice and productivity
for the nation.

Emotional communities and pathways towards redemption

Despite the many practices that aimed at creating emotional commu-

nities that mirrored those of an idealized Chinese family, orphans in
children’s homes still yearned for their families of origin. Wei Yongli
tells of running away multiple times in search of his family, only to be
returned to the children’s home each time.37 No attempts were made to
keep surviving siblings together in children’s homes. Wei described how
he had escaped his hometown, in Anhui Province, along with his sis-
ter, who was a year older. They managed to remain together throughout
their long journey to Chongqing, only to be separated from one another
and placed in different children’s homes in Sichuan, after which they
lost contact. Wei tells of starting middle school in Chengdu three years
 M. Colette Plum 213

later and encountering his sister in the playground there. Rather than
be elated to see one another, he and sister merely stared at one another,
embarrassed: ‘It had been so long, we were no longer like brother and
sister, but were like a boy and a girl at school, too shy to speak to one
another.’38
Political fighting between the Nationalists and the Communists and
brutal purges of Communist cells by the Nationalists also caused divi-
sion and violence within the ‘family’ atmosphere of children’s homes.
In oral histories and memoirs, survivors tell of progressive teachers, who
were often favourite teachers, disappearing after purges of suspected
communists by the Nationalist leadership.39 One oral history participant
reported that there were many underground Communist Party teachers
at her children’s home and one of them ratted out the others in what
became such a large purge that the school was short-staffed and older
children had to be used to teach the younger children.40
Recollections of the experience of family hierarchies also show cracks
in the official emotionology of the nation as a loving family where
agents of the state – acting as loving mothers – bestow affection and
impartial care to all of the nation’s children. Memoirs and oral histo-
ries suggest that child welfare workers were not always loving mothers
trained in progressive childcare and education methods. Survivors fre-
quently referred to kind and loving ‘mamas’ as those who did not use
corporal punishment, implying that there were others who did. One
survivor writes of a head of school who institutionalized corporal pun-
ishment in a particularly harsh and systematic manner. In one especially
traumatic episode, he punished a disabled child by ordering the other
students to strip the child of his pants and beat his buttocks. The stu-
dents resisted carrying out the punishment, but the administrator stood
there until they completed his order, at which point the students report-
edly all cried on the field where their classmate had been beaten. The
administrator was subsequently dismissed after student protests, but not
before other such incidents had occurred, resulting in child injury.41
Lin states that he includes this story in his history because he believes
it is important to distinguish between those caregivers who genuinely
helped orphans and those who harmed them.42
The primary emotional narrative in Lin’s story is not one of a maternal
bond forged by teachers, but rather one of loyalty, love and connected-
ness between orphans who shared hardship. These bonds operated as
pathways, not always towards patriotism and loyalty to the Nationalist
state, but sometimes towards resistance to illegitimate hierarchies such
as that of the abusive headmaster and his reluctant students.
214 Inscribing War Orphans’ Losses into the Language of the Nation

Oral histories and memoirs suggest that bonds between orphans also
survived the Civil War (1946–1949) between Nationalists and Commu-
nists, and transcended the geopolitics of a Nationalist-controlled Taiwan
separated from the People’s Republic of China. Lin ends his narrative of
the history of his children’s home with a reminder that there are war
orphans who reside on both sides of the Taiwan Straits, urging read-
ers (assumed primarily to be alumni of wartime children’s homes) not
to forget their brothers and sisters separated from them via political
divisions. Other orphans mention how their connections with other
children’s home alumni transcended the politics that divided survivors
across the Taiwan Straits. One survivor from Anhui Province, who was
relocated to Taiwan during the Civil War and spent the rest of his adult
life there, said that he managed to maintain his Anhui accent to com-
municate with his former classmates and that he still considered himself
a mainlander. It was the reunions with his ‘brothers and sisters’ from the
children’s homes that kept him returning to Sichuan.43
Despite apparent cracks in the official emotionology of the nation
as a loving family, there are indications that practices within wartime
children’s homes succeeded in cultivating emotional pathways towards
nationalism. Many child survivors state that loving experiences in chil-
dren’s homes nurtured their love of nation. In memoirs published in
alumni journals, survivors often express their own history as a collective
history of shared trauma that had significance within a longer trajectory
of China’s process of modernization and development. One survivor
did archival research into the various funding sources and branches of
wartime child welfare work, and ended his history with an expression
of gratitude that all divisions of orphan relief work ‘had the lofty spirit
of stimulating the fostering of the glorious Chinese race for the future;
all have brilliant chapters in history; all have obtained our respect and
affection’.44 Another survivor tells of how, after graduating from middle
school with the support of the children’s home, he passed the admis-
sions test for the Government and Army School of Technology and
ended up continuing to work there after he graduated, fulfilling his
childhood dream from the children’s home to ‘contribute to the defence
of the mother country’.45
There are also cracks in the official emotionology of the nation as
a loving family, where members are cared for impartially and are given
equal benefits as part of a collective. Memoirs are filled with gratitude for
the opportunities granted by child welfare institutions that allowed sur-
vivors to achieve more personal accomplishments that they would not
have received without their status as orphans. In contrast to the wartime
 M. Colette Plum 215

articulations of terror of abductions by the enemy, survivors credit their

time in the children’s home as saving them from another fate – not from
possible enslavement in Japan, but from lives lacking in education and
opportunity as ordinary members of Chinese society. Many child sur-
vivors credit the children’s homes for providing them with education
and employment opportunities they would not have had access to in
their previously impoverished or underclass lives, as well as habits and
mindsets – such as punctuality, cleanliness and industriousness – that
helped them succeed as adults.46
One oral history participant speaks of his five years residing in a
wartime children’s home as laying the foundation for his future:

I truly cherish the brief experience of my years during the flames of

war, which really formed the foundation for my life course. I can say
one thing . . . every time I have encountered setbacks and hardships,
I can attribute my success to my school-mothers – the teachers from
the No. 2 Children’s Home. My five years in the children’s home truly
fostered in me the courage to face hardship and the spirit to endure
difficulties, a thrifty and simple way of life, and the ability to stand
on my own and be self-sufficient. This is the most precious treasure
in my life and the thing that I take the most pride in.47

Some survivors credit their daily practices of labour with developing

not a love for labour, but dispositions for carrying out difficult profes-
sional tasks. In his memoir, Jin Jingshan credits the long hours he spent
making shoes as a child with his developing the discipline to do other
detailed tasks that require diligence and focus:

From the time I was small I didn’t have a mother or father and noth-
ing fun. I was wild in nature, but this kind of labour changed me
from a wild child into a family-member . . . and from someone who
could not sit still into someone who can sit for a long period of
time. In my 80s I edited a volume called ‘An Overview of Chinese
Culture’ . . . If it weren’t for my making straw shoes 50 years ago this
would never have been published . . . The discipline required for mak-
ing straw shoes was the same discipline that was required for editing
books.48

Interestingly, Jin Jingshan associates his ability to labour with his full
transformation into a ‘family member’ and credits this membership
with his ability to make a contribution to society. In a country where
216 Inscribing War Orphans’ Losses into the Language of the Nation

the orphan had historically receded from the public view or had been
the object of pity and mistrust, war orphans were given a unique
offer: a place in the collective, a political identity and a position of
respect. The official emotionology of the War of Resistance aimed to
elide children’s grief and harness their traumatic memories into wartime
propaganda, labour and self-sacrifice that favoured the collective narra-
tive over subjective experiences of losses. But the personal emotional
bonds and experiences in wartime children’s homes also created path-
ways for orphans to feel value, respect and a hope for the future even as
they utilized the language of the family of the nation to articulate their
self-worth.
In his overview of the Beiquan Loving Children’s Home, a teacher
tells the story of another teacher hitting a child because he was not
listening. The child went to the school headmaster and said: ‘Chinese
people don’t hit other Chinese people. Isn’t it wrong for you to hit me?’
In another instance a teacher was going to hit a child and the child said:
‘You can discipline me, but don’t hit me.’49 The author goes on to say
that it was because these children reminded their caregivers that they
were compatriots that instances of corporal punishment were rare in
this school.
The presence of this nationalistic narrative in the Beiquan overview
about the lives of war orphans is telling because it is precisely through
the narrative of the orphan as sharing a bond with other Chinese
that the author elevates the orphan’s worth. In these stories, nation-
alism – the consciousness of being Chinese in a collective of other
Chinese – was used as a redemptive narrative for war orphans, an iden-
tity shoring up their self-respect. The children opposed to being beaten
were not saying that it was wrong for adults to hit children, nor did
they say that it was wrong for people to hit other people. Rather, this
narrative framed their objections as Chinese nationals: it is wrong for
Chinese to hit other Chinese. It was within this narrative of nation-
alism that the author, reader and children themselves were presumed
to know, given their membership in this collective, that war orphans
should not be struck. These children were protected within their iden-
tity as national subjects and citizens, and derived and articulated worth
from this.

Conclusion

China’s war orphans, displaced from their primary emotional commu-

nities, presented an opportunity for the Nationalist state to create new
 M. Colette Plum 217

emotional communities and experiences that could shape the loyalties

and nation-building contributions of idealized citizens. Child welfare
workers attempted to mitigate the perceived risks posed by family-less
and traumatized children by forging new emotional ties, experiences
and practices within wartime children’s homes. Orphans’ subjective
experiences of wartime trauma were narrated back to them using the
language of nationalism, which augmented children’s subjective mem-
ories of trauma and loss with collective images of humiliation and
suffering. The ultimate objective of these new emotional communi-
ties was to create loyal and productive citizens, but oral histories and
memoirs suggest that there were cracks in the official emotionology.
Orphans were not always treated as ‘children of the minzu’ and the
family-like atmosphere of children’s homes could also be a place of
abuse and political persecution. Oral histories and memoirs also sug-
gest that child survivors created alternative emotional communities that
transcended the family of the nation and geopolitical conflicts. Orphans
reinterpreted emotional practices and nationalist narratives in more sub-
jective ways that not only demanded their treatment as ‘children of the
minzu’, but also redeemed them from their previously dangerous status
as orphans to those worthy of respect for their post-war contributions,
giving meaning and purpose to their trauma and recovery.

Notes
1. Xi Xinghai, ‘Qilai ba! Qilai ba! Zuguo de haizimen, qilai ba!’ [‘Stand Up!
Stand Up! Children of the Ancestral Homeland, Stand Up! A Song Written
for the War’], Yaolan (The Cradle) 2 (1995), 31.
2. Barbara Rosenwein defines ‘emotional communities’ as ‘social groups that
adhere to the same valuations of emotions and how they should be
expressed’ and as ‘groups of people animated by common and similar
interests, values, and emotional styles and valuations’; Jan Plamper, ‘The
History of Emotions: An Interview with William Reddy, Barbara Rosenwein,
and Peter Stearns’, History and Theory 49(2) (2010), 237–265, here 253. See
also Barbara H. Rosenwein, ‘Worrying about Emotions in History’, American
Historical Review 107(3) (2002), 821–845.
3. On refugee flight, see Stephen MacKinnon, ‘Refugee Flight at the Outset of
the Anti-Japanese War’, in Diana Lary and Stephen MacKinnon (eds), Scars of
War: The Impact of Warfare on Modern China (Vancouver: University of British
Columbia Press, 2001), 118–134; R. Keith Schoppa, In a Sea of Bitterness:
Refugees during the Sino-Japanese War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2011).
4. See Peter N. Stearns and Carol Z. Stearns, ‘Emotionology: Clarifying the His-
tory of Emotions and Emotional Standards’, American Historical Review 90(4)
(1985), 813–836.
218 Inscribing War Orphans’ Losses into the Language of the Nation

5. See Wu Yanyin, ‘Shishi jiuji ji jiaoyang nantong de yuanze yu yaodian’ [‘Prin-

ciples and Essentials in the Rescue and Care of Refugee Children’], in Duli
Chubanshe (ed.), Nanmin ertong de jiuji yu jiaoyang [The Rescue and Care of
Refugee Children] (Chongqing: Zhengzhong shuju zong zazhi tuiguangsuo
[Central Publishing House Magazine Popularization Division], 1938), 26.
6. Interview with Wu Dehui, Chengdu (4 October 2002). Pseudonyms are used
for oral history participants unless otherwise indicated by the author.
7. Jun Hui, ‘Xiegei nantong baoyu gongzuozhe’ [‘Letter to Childcare Work-
ers Working with Refugee Children’], Funü Shenghuo [Women’s Life] 6(9)
(1938), 91. Reprinted in Jin Futang (ed.), Kangri fenghuo zhong de yaolan [The
Cradle during the Flames of the War of Resistance] (Beijing: Zhongguo Funü
Chubanshe [China Women’s Press], 1991), 90–91.
8. Fan Renyu, ‘Zenyang cong liuwang zhuandao jiuwang?’ [‘How Do We Go
from Being in Exile to Being Saved from Extinction?’], Nanmin Zhoukan
[Refugees Weekly] 5 (12 May 1938), 3.
9. Chen Heqin, ‘Zenyang jiao xiaohaizi’ [‘How to Teach Children’], in Duli
Chubanshe (ed.), Nanmin ertong de jiuji yu jiaoyang [The Rescue and Care
of Refugee Children] (Chongqing: Zhengzhong shuju zong zazhi tuiguang-
suo [Central Publishing House Magazine Popularization Division], 1938),
50–51.
10. For more on the state’s uses of family-free children, see M. Colette Plum,
‘Orphans in the Family: Family Reform and Children’s Citizenship during
the Anti-Japanese War, 1937–1945’, in James Flath and Norman Smith (eds),
Beyond Suffering: Recounting War in Modern China (Vancouver: University of
British Columbia Press, 2011), 186–206.
11. Jun Hui, ‘Xiegei nantong baoyu gongzuozhe’, 91.
12. Jun Hui, ‘Xiegei nantong baoyu gongzuozhe’, 91.
13. Xu Jingping, ‘Huiyi zhanshi ertong baoyuhui’ [‘Remembering the Wartime
Association for Child Welfare’], in Futang Jin (ed.), Kangri fenghuo zhong de
yaolan, 242.
14. Interviews with Wu Dehui, Chengdu (4 October 2002); Li Hua, Chengdu
(3 October 2002).
15. Interview with Dong Baorong, Chengdu (14 October 2002); Jing, ‘Wuhan di
yi linshi baoyuyuan kaimu yi pie’ [An Overview of
the Opening of Wuhan’s No. 1 Temporary Children’s Home]. Funü Wenhua
Zhanshi Tekan (Women’s Culture: Special Wartime Edition,
no. 11, 1938), 15; Jiang Kaixin, Shijie hongshizihui Beiquan ciyouyuan gaikuang
[A Survey of the International Red Cross Beiquan Loving Home for Children]
(Beiquan: Shijie Hongshizihui [International Red Cross], 1942), 21. This
book can be found in Chongqingshi Dang‘an guan [Chongqing Municipal
Archives].
16. Beijing baoyusheng lianyihui [Beijing Friendship Association of Alumni
from Wartime Children’s Homes] and Luo Guangda (eds), Fenghuo yaolan:
Zhongguo zhanshi ertong baoyuhui tupianji [Cradle in the Flames of War: Pictorial
Collection of the China Wartime Child Welfare Committee] (Shenyang: Meishu
Chubanshe [Fine Art Press], 1996), 61.
17. Jing, 15.
18. Yuan Zengxin, ‘Shilun zhanshi ertong baoyuyuan zhong de kangri fuchou
jiaoyang’ [‘Regarding War of Resistance Revenge Education in Wartime
 M. Colette Plum 219

Children’s Homes’], Baoyusheng Tongxun [Newsletter for Children’s Home

Alumni] 1 (1997), 16–18.
19. Jing, 15.
20. Lu Zhuanji, ‘Zhanshi ertong de yanghu wenti’ [‘Problems with the Care of
Children during Wartime’], Dongfang zazhi [Eastern Miscellany] 36(1) (1939),
82.
21. ‘Ertong jiuji ertong: Jiuji ertong jietou xuanchuan diyiwan’ [‘Children Rescu-
ing Children: The First Evening of Child Refugee Street-Corner Propaganda’],
Xinhua Ribao [The China Daily] (23 August 1938), 3A.
22. Shen Zijiu, ‘Jiuji ji jiaoyang nanmin ertong de xuanchuan’ [‘Propagandizing
about Refugee Children Rescue and Care’], Nanmin ertong de jiuji yu jiaoyang
[The Rescue and Care of Refugee Children]. Published in Duli Chubanshe [Inde-
pendent Press] (ed.), Zhanshi zonghe [A Collection of Wartime Writings], 2nd
edn (Chongqing: Central Publishing House, 1938), 21.
23. Interview with Wei Yongli, Chengdu (26 April 2002); Mao Gulan (inter-
view, 6 October 2002) recollected participating in plays, including one called
Baimao nü [White Feather Woman]. Han Lifeng (interview, 13 October 2002)
also recollected participating in plays and said students often wrote and
directed plays themselves. Tao Rusheng (interview, 21 May 2002) recalled
older students singing songs and performing plays on street corners. Sun
Xiaotang (interview, 21 May 2002) recalled participating in plays and singing
troupes. Dong Baorong (interview, 14 October 2002) recalled that he would
travel several kilometres from the children’s home to local villages as part
of children’s propaganda troops to sing and perform propaganda plays for
villagers.
24. Interview with Sun Xiaotang, Chengdu (21 May 2002); Wei Fuyuan,
Chengdu (interview, 26 April 2002) mentions calling male teachers ‘mama’
and teachers cooking special foods for sick students. Mei Wuli, Chengdu
(interview, 20 September 2002) also mentions special foods cooked for her;
Li Hua (interview, 3 October 2002) also mentions special foods cooked for
her. Han Lifeng, Chengdu (interview, 13 October 2002) mentions teachers
tucking students into bed at night and sharing meals with them.
25. Interviews with Wei Yongli (26 April 2002); Dong Baorong (14 October
2002); Han Lifeng (13 October 2002).
26. Interview with Wei Yongli (26 April 2002). Han Lifeng (interview, 13 October
2002) also used this same metaphor to describe the relationship between
teachers and students, explaining that teachers tucked students in bed at
night as a parent would.
27. For example, Tao Rusheng (interview, 21 May 2002), recalled that ‘the entire
children’s home had an atmosphere of mutual understanding and everyone
got along harmoniously like one big family’. In his memoir, Ou Yanghao
writes that they were ‘like one big family’ and this allowed orphans to ‘shake
off their loneliness’ (baituo guji); Ou Yanghao, ‘Nantong de xin, cimu de
qing’ [‘The Hearts of Refugee Children, the Love of Caregivers’], Baoyusheng
Tongxun [Newsletter of Children’s Home Alumni] 1–2 (2002), 47.
28. Ertong Baoyu [Child Welfare] (Nanjing: Xingzhengyuan Xinwenju [Nationalist
Executive Yuan’s News Bureau], 1947), 5–7.
29. Jiang Kaixin, Shijie hongshizihui beiquan ciyouyuan gaikuang, 14, 21b.
30. Jiang Kaixin, Shijie hongshizihui beiquan ciyouyuan gaikuang, 14.
220 Inscribing War Orphans’ Losses into the Language of the Nation

31. Zhanshi Ertong Baoyuhui Zhejiang Fenhui [Zhejiang Branch of Wartime

Children’s Homes] (ed.), Zhanshi ertong baoyuhui zhejiang fenhui zhounian teji
[Special Anniversary Publication of the Zhejiang Branch of Wartime Children’s
Homes] (Jinhua, Zhejiang: n.p., 1939), 12, 4. This book can be found in
Stanford University, Hoover Archives.
32. For more on child labour in wartime children’s homes, see M. Colette
Plum, ‘Lost Childhoods in a New China: Child-Citizen-Workers at War,
1937–1945’, European Journal of East Asian Studies 11(2) (2012), 237–258.
33. Jin Jingshan, ‘Chuanliuyuan de laodong jiaoyu’ [‘Labor Education in
Sichuan’s No. 6 Children’s Home’], Baoyusheng Tongxun [Newsletter for Chil-
dren’s Home Alumni] 4(13) (1997), 25.
34. Jin Jingshan, ‘Chuanliuyuan de laodong jiaoyu’, 25.
35. Ma Beigong, Zhanshi ertong jiuji zhi lilun yu shijian [The Theory and Practice of
Chinese Wartime Child Relief Work] (n.p.: Zhongguo Zhanshi Ertong Jiuji Xiehui
[China Wartime Child Relief Committee], 1940). This book can be found in
Hoover Library C-3578.
36. Lu Zhuanji, ‘Zhanshi ertong de ying yang wenti’ [‘Nutritional Problems of
Wartime Children’], Dongfang Zazhi [Far Eastern Miscellany] 36(1) (1 February
1938), 82.
37. Interview with Wei Yongli, Chengdu (26 April 2002).
38. Interview with Wei Yongli, Chengdu (26 April 2002).
39. Interview with Mei Wuli, Chengdu (20 September 2002). See also Lin Dedao,
‘Sichuan fenhui Diliu Baoyuyuan jieshao’ [‘An Introduction to the Sichuan
Chapter, Number Six Children’s Home’], Baoyusheng Tongxun (Newsletter for
Children’s Home Alumni) 4(13) (5 December 1997), 2.
40. Interview with Mao Gulan, Chengdu (October 2002).
41. Lin Dedao, ‘Sichuan fenhui Diliu Baoyuyuan jieshao’, 2.
42. Lin Dedao, ‘Sichuan fenhui Diliu Baoyuyuan jieshao’, 4.
43. Interview with Bai Xianfeng, Chengdu (20 September 2002).
44. Wu Nansheng. ‘Yantao zhanshi ertong baoyu yundong lishi de wo jian’
[‘A Discussion of My Views on the Wartime Child Relief Movement’], Yaolan
[The Cradle] 1 (1995), 9–10.
45. Interview with Wu Dehui, Chengdu (4 October 2002).
46. Interview with Mei Wuli, Chengdu (20 September 2002).
47. Interview with Dong Baorong, Chengdu (October, 2002).
48. Jin Jingshan, ‘Chuanliuyuan de laodong jiaoyu’, 24–25.
49. Jiang Kaixin, Shijie hongshizihui beiquan ciyouyuan gaikuang, 42b.
12
Everyday Emotional Practices of
Fathers and Children in Late
Colonial Bengal, India
Swapna M. Banerjee

The ideological discourse on family that emerged in nineteenth-century

Bengal was cemented, as Pradip Bose has argued, by ‘the new idea
of childhood’, with the implication of ‘more intense emotional ties
between parents and children within the family and a weakening of ties
with relatives outside the immediate family’.1 Indeed, India’s encounter
with the West through British colonialism produced a climate that
fostered a new group of intelligentsia in the nineteenth century who
questioned the past and envisioned a series of socio-cultural practices
that pertained to men, women and children in the domestic domain.
Bengal, with Calcutta (now Kolkata) as the imperial capital until 1911,
was particularly prolific in spawning this social group, known as the
bhadralok or the ‘respectable’ middle class, who envisioned a new model
of womanhood, family and children.2 As progenitors of ideas of a new
nation, these early intellectuals left ample documents of their emerging
notions of an ideal family and the roles of the ‘new woman’ as an ideal
mother, with clear-cut instructions on how to raise children.
In contrast to the bulk of the South Asian literature that is directly
concerned with ‘new women’ and motherhood, this chapter engages
with the question of fatherhood and the praxis of paternity. Nestled
within the larger social community of the family, fathers and children
of bhadralok families, represented ‘emotional communities’ engaged in
various forms of sociability, interactions and transformations expressed
through varying emotional practices.3 This chapter argues that a spe-
cific group of educated Indian men, the bhadralok, along with their
commitment to companionate marriage and progressive social reforms,4
were also invested in positioning themselves as caring and responsible

221
222 Everyday Emotional Practices of Fathers and Children

fathers – a position that became central to their self-fashioning as

‘modern’ citizen-subjects. By foregrounding children and fathers of the
bhadralok community and their emotional experiences of love, affec-
tion, anger and despair, it tracks the practices of fatherhood in late colo-
nial Bengal and interrogates whether the role of fathers became a vector
of masculinity for the colonial middle class. It examines reminiscences
of childhood and perceptions of fathers through the eyes of children.
The emphasis on these emotion-rich experiences is not to claim that
distinctly ‘new’ emotions unfolded in father–child relations; however,
the retelling of varied emotions through ‘memory-work’ suggests their
importance in defining filial relationships in colonial India. The objec-
tive here is to explore the formulations and expressions of paternal
authority in a changing socio-cultural milieu that brought about trans-
formations in late colonial filial relations among the burgeoning middle
class.
Historical actors and their emotions are contingent on socio-
economic, cultural and temporal factors. Rajat Kanta Ray emphasized
the importance of sthana (place), kala (time) and patra (dramatis per-
sonae) as the ‘crucial context for understanding the precise meanings
and expressions of human emotion’.5 Ray explored emotions through
literature and ‘not on the basis of the letters and diaries of contem-
poraries’, which in the context of India are ‘not easy for the scholar
to procure and utilize’.6 However, historian Tapan Raychaudhuri has
drawn on personal narratives to argue that altered conjugal relation-
ships in colonial Bengal were suffused with a different kind of emotion
emanating from the perceptions and sensibilities of the colonial era.7
Curiously enough, in their analysis of the mental world of nineteenth-
century historical actors, both Ray and Raychaudhuri stayed away from
engaging with the current historical literature on emotions that has sig-
nificantly bolstered our understanding.8 Ray’s work, in turn, is also given
short shrift in the emerging scholarship.9 Attending to the practices of
everyday life of fathers and children from colonial Bengal, this chapter
seeks a common ground between the theoretical literature and the works
of scholars like Ray, who suggested the use of more intimate sources for
understanding familial relationships.
The father and the child, given the extreme variability of Indian fami-
lies, are plural and unstable categories representing shifting sets of ideas
developed over a period of time, and are contingent upon class, caste,
socio-cultural, ethnic, regional and religious backgrounds.10 In Indian
history and culture, it was not always biological fathers who wielded
ultimate authority. Families subscribing to different monastic lineages
 Swapna M. Banerjee 223

and religious affiliations often attributed ‘fatherhood’ to the spiritual

gurus. In extended multi-generational households, the oldest male mem-
ber of the family was, and often still is, considered the paterfamilias.11
In the Indian epic The Mahabharata, Bhishma, the celibate hero, was
the ‘father’ of the two clans, the Pandavas and the Kauravas, who were
engaged in ‘righteous’ warfare. Moreover, pre-colonial Indian literature
portrayed fathers, biological or not, as sombre and respectful, but also
as victims of their own passions and environment with their follies and
weaknesses. In contrast, women as mothers, daughters, wives and sisters
from late medieval or early modern India appeared as strong figures. The
male protagonists of the populist Bengali Mangal Kavyas of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries were much less developed as characters than
their female counterparts.12
The role of biological fathers arguably assumed a heightened impor-
tance in the colonial era within the newly envisioned family structure
pivoting on men, women and children. But fatherhood also had a figu-
rative meaning, referring to the leadership roles in an incipient nation.
Children too were figured to represent future generations. Moreover,
the enactment of fatherhood can be approached on two levels: the
enunciative, expressed through a variety of pedagogical and norma-
tive literature; and the performative, revealed in daily interaction with
children in real life. The focus of this chapter is on the performative
aspects of fatherhood and the attendant emotions expressed in everyday
encounters between fathers and children. It relies on biographical and
autobiographical narratives of well-known figures of a reformed Hindu
community originating in nineteenth-century Bengal – the Brahmos –
who were engaged in progressive social reforms and literary activism,
thus setting the standards of a modern, hegemonic middle-class cul-
ture. Accounts recalling moments of child–father relationships reveal
that the literate male members of the higher echelon of society, the
fathers discussed here, played critical roles in training and socializing
children. Since autobiographies held ‘a peculiarly significant place in
the inauguration of new forms of social life’ among the Bengali middle
class, we will use them as primary sources not for their ‘authenticity’,
but as media of representations, with all their complexities that offer
myriad possibilities of reading and interpretation.13 Emotional practices
of parents and children recounted in this literature were endowed with
distinct meanings at specific historical moments of the Bengali ‘mod-
ern’ and represented a collective psychology that involved ‘not only
feeling but also doing’.14 The notion and practices of the Bengali ‘mod-
ern’ rested on Western-style education, the proliferation of print culture,
224 Everyday Emotional Practices of Fathers and Children

encounters with ideas of Western liberalism, and new urban professions.

The new institutions and ideologies, combined with the Indo-Islamic
influences of the past, ushered in altered sensibilities that were reflected
in parent–child relationships and affective behaviour. The transforma-
tions within the household were dependent on age, class and gender
hierarchies, but were also entangled with questions of inheritance,
property rights and economic ties.
The emotional practices of fathers represented in personal narratives
are especially relevant as expressions of manhood if viewed against the
politics of colonial masculinity. Mrinalini Sinha has long demonstrated
the implication of masculinity in the unfolding of British colonial
policies and their ramifications in the lives of the Indian population,
particularly among the Bengalis, who interacted with the British most
heavily as officials in the imperial administration.15 ‘Colonial mas-
culinity’, explained Sinha, ‘was organised along a descending scale.’16
Following the Rebellion of 1857–1858 and the transfer of power of
India from the East India Company to the British Crown, the crisis in
colonial administration was reflected in shifts in practices and in the
ordering of social hierarchy along gendered stereotypes. While high
and low-ranking British officials and non-officials represented differ-
ent degrees of the ‘manly Englishman’, the politically self-conscious,
educated Indians did not share the virile masculinity of the British;
instead, they embodied an ‘unnatural’ or ‘perverted’ form of masculin-
ity.17 The most typical representative of this group of Indians were the
middle-class Bengali Hindus, who were described as ‘effeminate babus’
or dandies.18 Humiliated and deprecated in the public domain of gov-
ernance and administration, these men sought refuge within the realm
of the household surrounded by family and friends and it is within the
domestic domain that they asserted their sovereign status by extending
their dominance and authority over subordinate members.19
Following Sinha, a growing scholarship on South Asia framed mas-
culinity in public, national, imperial, pre-colonial and colonial contexts.
Ruby Lal has indicated the supreme importance of fathers in daughters’
lives.20 But no one has yet linked the question of manhood with the role
of fathers. How can we elide the role of fatherhood and parenting, and
the way its affects and practices influenced bodily experiences, person-
ality and culture in a meaningful and holistic discussion of masculinity?
If ‘“masculinity” . . . acquires its meaning only in specific practices’,21
this chapter underscores the dynamics of father–child relationships in
Bengali households of the late colonial era that acted as a site for the
parallel assertions of authority and manhood of the colonial subject.
 Swapna M. Banerjee 225

Complicating the neat divide between the private and the public, the
chapter examines fathers as products of the new political culture caught
in a changing configuration of power both at home and the world.
The crystallization of the cultural identity of the bhadralok as a new
imperial social formation behoved them to adopt new practices of
fatherhood and parenting. The wide gamut of emotions displayed in
fatherly behaviour thus needs to be analysed in the changing context of
the bhadralok’s roles as economic providers, decision makers, protectors
and moral guides mobilizing the future generation.

Remembering fathers: the Tagores of Jorasanko

Psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakar argued that in India the ‘culturally pre-

scribed pattern of restraint between fathers and sons . . . constitute[s] a
societal norm. In autobiographical accounts, fathers, whether strict or
indulgent, cold or affectionate, are invariably distant’.22 The illustrious
Tagore family of Jorasanko, Calcutta, with its wealth of autobiographical
narratives, provides us with an excellent repertoire of evidence to engage
with Kakar’s thesis. The Tagores, as business partners with the British and
through their leadership roles in new religious (Brahmo), cultural and
nationalist movements, acted as major trendsetters and culture builders
in colonial India.23 The recounting of daily practices between fathers
and children through three successive generations delineates chang-
ing emotions, from the redoubtable authority of the ‘distant’ patriarch
to the playful father active in the everyday lives of children through
love, affection and anger. The fathers and sons from the Tagore family
were all important public figures with considerable social and cultural
influence. Insights into their lives therefore shed light on the changing
parent–child relationship in late colonial Bengal.
Accounts left by the two brothers, two leading public figures of
nineteenth-century Bengal, Satyendranath (1842–1923) and
Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), about their father Maharshi
Debendranath (1817–1905) convey the sombre emotions filled with awe
and respect associated with childhood memories of their father. Their
father, son of Prince Dwarkanath, a leading business partner with the
British, was a foremost leader of the reformist Brahmo Samaj, a religious
association professing monotheism and playing a crucial role in social
reform movements. The details provided by Debendranath’s celebrated
sons portrayed a father caught in the cross-currents of a colonial cul-
ture yet closely clinging on to his cherished values. The accounts help
us locate the importance of the father in the family and the ‘father’ as
226 Everyday Emotional Practices of Fathers and Children

the pioneering leader of the Brahmo Samaj. Debendranath’s second son,

Satyendranath Tagore, the first Indian civil servant, a versatile scholar
and an author, described his father as a ‘conservative’, but represented
him with utmost reverence.24 Satyendranath wrote the introduction to
the translation of his father’s Autobiography as ‘a humble tribute’ to his
father’s memory ‘in the hope that it may reach a wider circle of readers
than the original could possibly command’.25
Satyendranath provides his father’s background and upbringing as the
son of ‘wealthy Dwarkanath Tagore whose lavish expenditure earned
him the title of Prince’.26 Debendranath grew up in pomp and luxury
as a wilful young man until certain ‘providential’ occurrences ‘wrought
a change in him on his attaining manhood, and he felt within him-
self an awakening towards higher life’.27 Emphasizing the achievement
of his father as a spiritual leader of the Brahmo movement and as a
paragon of moral virtues, Satyendranath presented his autobiography
not for any ‘stirring adventures or sensational incidents’, but for its value
in ‘being a record of the spiritual struggle of a noble soul against early
associations, conventionality, and family ties’.28 It documented ‘an illu-
mined life struggling towards more light, and shedding its brilliance on
all around’.29
A more full-fledged paternal image emerged from Satyendranath’s
polymath brother Rabindranath, poet, writer, artist, musician and
the first Asian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1913). In his
Reminiscences he devoted an entire chapter to his father and captured
his earliest memories:

Shortly after my birth my father took to constantly travelling about.

So it is no exaggeration to say that in my early childhood I hardly
knew him. He would now and then come back home all of a sudden,
and with him came foreign servants with whom I felt extremely eager
to make friends.30

Rabindranath never reached the immediate presence of his father and

would only watch him from a distance from his hiding place at the head
of the staircase. At the break of dawn, his father would sit on the roof,
‘silent as an image of white stone, his hands folded on his lap’.31 When
his father came home, the entire house was ‘filled with the weight of
his presence’.32 He remembered everyone being dressed up, everyone
being alert; his mother supervising the cooking; the mace-bearer (Kinu
Harkara) in his ‘white livery and crested turban’ being at his father’s beck
and call. He recalled that the children were asked to keep quiet lest they
 Swapna M. Banerjee 227

disturbed their father’s peace. He remembered himself and the other

children moving slowly, talking softly and not even venturing to peek at
their father.33 Debendranath, indeed, had maintained distance from his
14 surviving children, who had grown up under the regime of servants,
but he had made sure that his children had received a well-rounded edu-
cation in languages, arts, humanities, physical and biological sciences,
sports, music and wrestling.
Rabindranath’s first close encounter with his father was at the age of
11, when they both travelled to the Himalayas. A commanding person-
ality with a meticulous eye to detail, Debendranath had carefully chosen
and ordered for his son a ‘full suit of clothes’ with a ‘gold embroidered
velvet cap’.34 Rabindranath reflected: ‘though nothing would induce
him to put obstacles in the way of my amusing myself as I pleased,
he left no loophole in the strict rules of conduct which he prescribed
for me in other respects’.35 Debendranath had entrusted Rabi with the
responsibility of his cash-box, not a meagre charge for an 11 year old.
Negligence on Rabi’s part would surely have earned him a reprimand.
As much as Rabi enjoyed his freedom from his school in Calcutta,
his trip to the mountains followed a ‘rigorous regime’,36 waking up
before sunrise to learn his Sanskrit declensions, taking a shower in
ice-cold water, hiking up the mountain ridges with his father, singing
devotional songs for him and pursuing lessons in English, Bengali and
astronomy.37 Debendranath represented the classic ‘absent’ father, as
John Tosh described in the context of Victorian England.38 His occa-
sional homecoming also reminds us of the ‘ritual of return’ among
the Victorian fathers,39 but the economic necessity of British middle-
class fathers to work far away from home, although partly true in
the case of Tagores, was not so pronounced in their written accounts.
Debendranath would compensate for his absence from the family not so
much through playfulness and gifts, but perhaps by taking his children
along with him on a trip to the Himalayas.
The distance between father and son recalled here was bridged in
later life through mutual affection and favour. Rabindranath’s own son,
Rathindranath, had been familiarized with his father’s memories of
childhood, and the relationship with Debendranath: ‘My grandfather
loved his youngest son and was delighted to discover unusual talent in
him while still a boy. Probably for this reason he was very generous to
him.’ Rabindranath was given the ‘most convenient and comfortable
rooms in the family house’ and when he was still dissatisfied with it,
‘grandfather helped him to build a separate house for himself’.40 Accord-
ing to this reminiscence of a reminiscence, Debendranath had entrusted
228 Everyday Emotional Practices of Fathers and Children

Rabindranath with the management of his estates, but he was such a

‘strict disciplinarian’ that on the second of every month, he wanted the
accounts to be read out to him: ‘He would remember every figure, and
ask awkward questions whilst the report was being read.’ Rabindranath
had told his own children how he ‘used to be afraid of this day of
trial, like a school-boy going up for his examination. We children would
wonder why our father was so afraid of his father’.41
The governing emotions that defined the relationship between
Debendranath and his sons were awe and fear. Despite Debendranath’s
proclaimed other worldliness, he was remembered as controlling and
authoritative in the way he conducted himself at home and with oth-
ers. Rabindranath mentioned several times that Debendranath stood
out from his countrymen as he had a ‘well-defined code to regu-
late his relations with others and theirs with him’. People ‘had to
be anxiously careful’ in their dealings with him.42 It is plausible that
Debendranath’s supreme authority over his family members was height-
ened by his command of economic resources. If his masculinity was
compromised as a colonized subject, he was the ‘sovereign’ in his
familial set-up.
In fact, the domineering impact of Debendranath, as the patriarch in
charge of family resources, cast its spell on Rabindranath’s conjugal life.
To manage his father’s estate, Rabindranath was often stationed in vari-
ous places in eastern Bengal and Orissa, away from his wife and children,
and he had very little freedom in manoeuvring his personal priorities.
As much as Rabindranath, as a modern man, wanted to be in the com-
pany of his family, he still had to yield to the command of his father.
In 1891, he wrote to his wife, Mrinalini Devi (1872–1902):

If you are already on your way, I shall see you when I am in

Calcutta this time. I shall try to arrange for you to come with me
to Orissa . . . I have already told father what I want to do, I think he under-
stands. I may get my way if I talk to him once or twice more – still it is best
not to raise our hopes.43

In several letters Rabindranath expressed his desire to be close to his wife

and children, but he was left completely at the discretion of his father.
This domination of the father over the conjugal life of the son was a
common experience. In his autobiography, Sivnath Sastri, a nineteenth-
century Brahmo reformer and writer from Bengal, recounted his difficult
relationship with his father who forced him to abandon his first wife
for tenuous reasons and marry a second time.44 These instances exem-
plify the power of the patriarch and the contingent nature of masculine
 Swapna M. Banerjee 229

authority, even as an adult husband. The hierarchical power struc-

ture in the family and the culture of deference to elders subdued the
generational conflict between fathers and sons.
Yet in Rabindranath’s assessment, his father had never stood in the
way of his independence as a child. Debendranath was not deterred by
the danger of his son making mistakes; he had not been alarmed at
the prospect of his son encountering sorrow. ‘He held up a standard,
not a disciplinary rod’,45 an expression closely akin to the Unitarian
description of fathers.46 The influence of Christianity, particularly that
of the Unitarians, on the Brahmos, was well known and was evidenced
by the supremacy of the father, attendance at Sunday schools and engag-
ing in prayers.47 Debendranath’s guiding principles were reason and
conscience – an influence of post-Enlightenment philosophy – but he
vehemently opposed any direct Christian influence in his life and works.
To defray missionary attacks on the Brahmos, he wrote Brahmo Dharma
Grantha, a theistic manual of religion and morals.48
Debendranath’s performance as a father conformed with Kakar’s
description of the distant relationship between fathers and sons.49 From
the portrayal by his two sons, Debendranath emerged as a public leader
of a newly formed community, as the head of the household and as an
active biological father. Debendranath, according to the appraisal of his
children, fulfilled the new role model of the concerned yet controlling
‘modern’ father, not only of his 14 children but of the Brahmo commu-
nity as well. Through his daring renunciation of Hindu ritual practices
at the death of his own father Prince Dwarkanath, in his delegation
of responsibilities to his children, and in giving children their freedom
to choose and make decisions, we witness the birth of new parental
practices based on newly acquired values and sensibilities. Interestingly,
Debendranath’s own Autobiography hardly recounted his own role as a
father of 14 children or experiences with his own father who bequeathed
to him an enormous debt and the responsibility of a large family busi-
ness that he ungrudgingly handled in a judicious manner. Interestingly,
Debendranath’s Autobiography commenced with celebrating the mem-
ory of his paternal grandmother who left a profound spiritual influence
on him. Then he dwelt on his role as a renouncer and a spiritual
leader, the image that he was eager to convey to the world; however,
the authority he commanded over his family, the awe and fear that he
generated in everyone’s minds could be gleaned only from the reflec-
tions of his sons, remembering their childhoods. He had a removed
physical presence in his children’s lives, but his commanding person-
ality had hovered over them. Yielding to extreme deference verging on
fear, the sons maintained the public persona of the father by carefully
230 Everyday Emotional Practices of Fathers and Children

shelving any outburst of anger, love or hatred. They did not openly
discuss their father’s control over the family estate and the way he con-
ducted business in real life. Examples from his sons’ generation depart
from the practices of Debendranath and attest to more intimate parental
interactions.

Rabindranath Tagore and his children

The emotional component between Rabindranath Tagore and his chil-

dren was significantly different from what he experienced with his
father Debendranath. Rabindranath was an affectionate and playful
father who mused over his joy and sorrow with his children. Scholars
have demonstrated the effects of Victorian ideology and ideas of chaste
‘Hindu’ womanhood in conceptualizing the ‘new woman’ in colonial
India. But the literature has glossed over the traces of Victorian influ-
ence in the making of the modern Indian man. Rabindranath Tagore
was a classic example displaying Victorian and Indian sensibilities in
his ideas and practices.50 As a celebrated subject of a new modernity, to
make his living and fulfil his missions, Rabindranath led an itinerant life
like his father Debndranath. We have no access to Debendranath’s emo-
tions in his own writings, but Rabindranath’s letters written to his wife
Mrinalini Devi reveal not only their conjugal intimacy but also his deep
affection for his children and wife.51 On his way to England in August
1890, he wrote to his wife from the ship:

On Sunday night, I felt my spirit leave my body to come and see

you. I saw you sleeping on one side of the large bed, next to you
were Beli and Khoka [their eldest daughter and son, Madhurilata and
Rathindranath]. I caressed you and whispered in your ears, ‘Chhoto-
bou [My Little Wife], please remember that on this Sunday night I left
my body to come and see you. I shall ask you on my return from
England if you saw me too.’ Then I kissed Beli and the baby, and
returned.52

Another letter written in 1890 captured how Rabindranath and his

sister-in-law Jnadanandini Devi (the wife of Satyendranath Tagore,
who we encountered earlier) carefully picked out clothes for his wife
and daughters before his departure to England. Rabindranath selected
a bright red sari and a ‘border’ for his elder daughter Bela (aka
Madhurilata) while his sister-in-law selected ‘a blue and a white one’.
Rabindranath mused: ‘I hope Rani [Renuka] likes it – the fusspot that
 Swapna M. Banerjee 231

she is. Does she ever ask for me? Who knows how grown Khoka [his
son, Rathindranath] will be when I see him on my return . . . I am sure
he will not recognize me. I may turn into such a sahib that none of you
may recognize me.’53
We find in these expressions not the philosopher-poet, but an anxious
father deeply in love with his children and wife,54 a picture missing in
his childhood experience. Rabindranath’s engagement as a father con-
tinued through every step of his children’s life. As torn as he was in his
later life about early marriages and women’s oppression by men, he did
not deviate from the prevalent practices of his time, as is discussed more
fully in Chapter 3. He married off his daughters Madhurilata (Bela) and
Renuka (Rani) at the ages of 14 and 12 respectively and justified himself
on the grounds that given the uniqueness of the Tagores in social and
cultural matters, early marriage would facilitate his daughters’ integra-
tion with their in-laws more easily. After leaving Bela at her husband’s
home for the first time, he dealt with his parting pains in a letter to
his wife, written in 1901, explaining their decision to marry off their
daughters:

We must forget our own joy and sorrow where our children are con-
cerned . . . We must make room for them so that they can mould their
lives in their own way. Yesterday, my mind went back to Bela’s child-
hood time and again. I raised her with such loving care. I remember
how she would play with the pillows in bed and jump on to the little
toys that came her way . . . I remembered how I used to bathe her in
our Park Street house, and when we were in Darjeeling how I used to
wake her up and feed her with warm milk in the nights. Those early
days of having her so close keep haunting me.55

Losing a daughter by early marriage – or later by children’s deaths –

reveals in writing the grieving heart of a loving parent, signalling
a shift in generations and paternal behaviour, with concomitant
changes in the emotional experience of filial relations. Unlike his father
Debendranath, who omitted his wife and children from his autobiog-
raphy, Rabindranath’s gestures symbolized the intimate partnership of
a companionate marriage, and a fatherhood that the modern bhadralok
cherished and championed in their lives. In this changed conjugal rela-
tionship, the wife/mother was not solely responsible for the bodily care
of children, thus blurring the gendered division of labour among cou-
ples. For fathers like Rabindranath, in addition to economic sustenance
and protection, parental responsibilities included providing emotional
232 Everyday Emotional Practices of Fathers and Children

support based on ‘guidance, tenderness and pity’, resonating Unitarian

principles.56 It is worth noting that following his wife’s death in 1902,
Rabindranath single-handedly took care of his five children and often
of their spouses, through their joys and sorrow, life and death.57
But how did Rabindranath’s children perceive him as a father? A letter
written to Rabindranath by his youngest daughter Mira Devi (1894–
1969), when she was a little girl, was filled with stories of her dolls
and toys. The letter testifies to the closeness she enjoyed with her
father.58 Rabindranath’s son Rathindranath provides us with a more
detailed picture by conveying ‘glimpses of some aspects’ of his illustri-
ous ‘father’s personality’ that were ‘not dealt with by his biographers’.59
Rabindranath was remembered as a down-to-earth parent whose august
personality did not stand in the way of his relationship with his
children. His friendly approach was recalled through his attempts to
introduce his children to the many worlds of practical learning, such
as allowing them to handle a precious heirloom clock from his grand-
father, Prince Dwarkanath, and teaching them how to wind it. He also
nurtured affectionately the literary and artistic talents of his nephews
and nieces. Rathindranath noted:

Father never treated any of his children harshly, nor did he, on
the other hand, lavish sentimental affection upon them. I do not
remember any occasion when Father subjected any of us to physi-
cal punishment. Temperamentally it was impossible for him to use
violence. During all the years of my boyhood and youth, only thrice
have I seen him get really angry with me.60

Neither temperamental nor effusive, Rabindranath was nevertheless a

strict disciplinarian and subjected his son Rathindranath to rigorous
training and hardship.61 Moreover, Rabindranath as a public intellec-
tual was equally committed to the causes of children and implemented
serious educational reforms and curriculum in his newly opened school
in Santiniketan.62 He also played a pioneering role in the world of chil-
dren’s literature.63 In his private life, as a loving husband and father,
he emerged as a supreme role model displaying complex emotions of
love, affection and trust in a distinctly different fashion from his father
Debendranath. His attitude, behaviour and practices closely adhered
to the model prescribed in the Brahmo household compendium, The
Duties of Women (1890), which scripted the duties of husband, wife
and children in a paradigmatic nuclear family in late colonial India.64
Rabindranath’s ideas and actions reconciled the instructions of the
 Swapna M. Banerjee 233

normative texts with his everyday practices of a father and husband.

As Tosh pointed out in the context of Victorian fathers, his grieving
or loving tenderness for his wife and children did not compromise his
manliness.65 As an iconic cultural figure, he received tremendous awe
and respect from his children, but as a father he was always their close
companion. Generational conflict or economic dependence and support
did not surface in his children’s recollections.
The exclusive status of the Tagores admittedly kept them far removed
in their manners and practices from ordinary people. Rabindranath’s
example as a hands-on father and husband would also be hard to
match among the population at large. Yet, as influential members of
the educated community, they profoundly shaped bhadralok culture.
To complicate the emotional schema of father–child relations, let us
consider examples from two other important Brahmo families, not as
powerful and illustrious as the Tagores, but which played crucial roles in
the cultural life in colonial and post-colonial Bengal.

Beyond the Tagore fathers and children

Premankur Atorthi (1890–1964), an important writer, playwright and

director, whose lifetime largely coincided with that of Rathindranath
Tagore (1861–1941), Rabindranath’s son, offers us a different portrayal
of father–child relationships. In contrast to the Tagore children, Atorthi
positioned himself as a risk-taker and a deviant in his long autobio-
graphical novel Mahasthabir Jatak (3 vols, 1944–1954). Under no pres-
sure to carefully guard the image of an aristocratic family, Atorthi’s can-
did narrative capturing his caring yet temperamental father was closer to
the emotional experiences of ordinary people. The conflict between gen-
erations and the socio-economic reality that were avoided in the Tagore
narratives were palpable in those of Atorthi. He recalled the memory
of an exceedingly strict father who often flew into a rage and threat-
ened that his son would ‘be beaten to death’ for acts of disobedience.
This image quickly switched to an overbearing yet nurturing father who
himself warmed up the milk and handed out the bowls to his three sons.
He took his sons – nine, five and four year-olds – for a walk in the streets
of late nineteenth-century Calcutta and introduced them to the educa-
tional landmarks in the city. Unable to attain higher education owing to
his adverse family situation, Atorthi’s father instilled in his boys the val-
ues of hard work, studies, prayers and discipline, hoping that they would
bring his dreams to fruition.66 The experiences between fathers and sons
reveal an emotional intimacy where the father voluntarily shared his
234 Everyday Emotional Practices of Fathers and Children

feelings and convictions. Atorthi chronicled not only the towering and
generous personality of this whimsical yet high-minded father, but also
his frequent outbursts of uncontrolled anger, subjecting his sons to bru-
tal corporeal punishment for the slightest offence. We must note here
that Atorthi did not have a female sibling, so it is hard to determine
what his father’s position would have been with regard to a daughter.
For Atorthi’s father, shaming, strictness and austerity were all part of
the healthy rearing of children, imparting to the latter a superior, moral
education. Nowhere in the text did Atorthi record that his father was
suffering from a sense of guilt or remorse following his excessive anger;
rather, softness and comfort always came from the mother, a female rel-
ative or a neighbour. Atorthi also recorded similar experiences in school
in the inhumane beating he received at the hands of a British teacher
who supposedly took ‘great pleasure’ in beating up native students.67
The narrative chronicled many more deviant behaviours by the author
and his friends and their encounters with the brutality of corporal pun-
ishment in school and at home. To what extent this culture at school
had influenced practices at home awaits further research.
Atorthi’s father, despite being prone to anger, was not typically the
‘tyrannical’ father described by Tosh.68 His deployment of anger to exert
authority could be idiosyncratic, but his lack of self-control was a sign of
his own limitations. Although a member of the same reformist Brahmo
community as the Tagores, he represented the aspiring middle class who
struggled to make a ‘respectable’ living in the city. Unlike Debendranath
or Rabindranath, he was not a leader who set norms for his family and
followers, but he was determined to equip his sons with the necessary
education and training so that they could lead a bhadra life. Harassed
by the vagaries of life, Atorthi’s father exerted his full-fledged masculine
authority at home, particularly over his sons.
To complicate this narrative let us interrogate to what extent these
behavioural patterns were gendered. Leela Majumdar (1908–2007), an
outstanding female author, especially for children, belonged to the
highly versatile and talented family of the elite Raychaudhuris, whose
members through several generations had made pioneering contribu-
tions to the printing business and children’s literature in colonial and
post-colonial Bengal. In her autobiography Pakdandi (The Winding Road,
1986), Majumdar recalled that her childhood was spent in absolute bliss
in the foothills of the Himalayas in north and north-eastern India. She
wrote:

in spite of having the supreme sense of happiness and security, my

father was very strict. He had no doubt that severe spanking was
 Swapna M. Banerjee 235

absolutely mandatory to raise healthy children. My father was pre-

pared to sacrifice everything for us; but he roared out so loud at the
slightest acts of disobedience that our hands and feet froze. As a mat-
ter of fact, I never got along well with my father, and later in life we
parted company forever. Whatever it was, as a child I used to avoid
my father, but at the same time I had great respect for him.69

Majumdar’s father was a representative of the successful Bengali middle

class – he worked for the colonial government, was posted in differ-
ent locales within India and harboured sensibilities that constituted
the notion of bhadra (respectability). Leela vividly recalled the inten-
sity of the slap that her father inflicted on her when she chewed on a
plum stone that she picked from his empty plate. She also recounted
his superb physical strength, extraordinary courage and sportsman-
ship, qualities that were highly valued by Indian men, especially in
the face of British criticism. Her uncle (her father’s elder brother),
who actually raised her father, also nurtured a similar belief towards
spanking, but he spared the girls. Leela’s father did not. Leela narrated
instances of playfulness that her father exhibited towards children, but
the children never overcame the distance that grew out of extreme
fear of their father’s anger, temper and punishment. It is striking how
anger and conflict in filial relationships featured prominently in Atorthi
and Majumdar’s narratives. The authors’ expressions were likely less
inhibited because of their families’ lesser status relative to the Tagores.
Another important area of focus should be on how children were posi-
tioned in the narratives. The ‘story-telling children’ recounting austere,
sanctimonious, playful and caregiving fathers were active constituents
of the emotional expressions defining filial relationships. If anger was
recalled as the dominant emotion among most fathers expressing
authority and control (with the exception of Rabindranath Tagore,
whose display of anger has not been recorded in the sources examined),
the response that it elicited from children was that of fear. Yet fear alone
could not keep the youthful impulses under control. Both Atorthi and
Majumdar were risk-takers in several instances – Atorthi’s delinquent
behaviour in school and Majumdar’s choice of her marriage-partner as
a young adult are pertinent examples. Their deviant acts challenged the
ordained behaviour expected of them by their parents. By transgressing
the boundaries, they were at risk of being subjected to brutal physical
and moral punishment and, in extreme scenarios, of losing their rela-
tionships with their fathers, as in the case of Leela Majumdar. Majumdar
so frankly recorded the fall-out possibly because she was able to break
away from the socio-economic control of her father.
236 Everyday Emotional Practices of Fathers and Children

The moral universe, which the fathers created and the mothers
adhered to, subjected children to strict disciplinary codes. Violation of
those norms established children as autonomous subjects exerting their
agency, albeit exposing themselves to the risk of physical and moral
chastisement. But in the context of India, physical punishment of chil-
dren by fathers, apparently missing in the accounts of the Tagores,
was entirely within the range of permissibility.70 The dominance of the
father, in particular, was established through disciplining both the mind
and the body of the child. Physical punishment was considered ther-
apeutic to remedy the ills that plagued the character, the ‘prison of
the body’.71 The moral anxiety expressed in advice literature also sanc-
tioned anger as a corrective to ‘deviant’ behaviour and we witness its
manifestations in child–father interactions.72 The evidence presented in
this chapter was not just intrinsic to colonial Bengal. Autobiographies
from all across India, including those of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
and Jawaharlal Nehru, recorded rage and anger of fathers. We may infer
from this that filial fear, but also defiance, were defining experiences of
colonial Indian childhood.

Conclusion

The affective bond between fathers and children was not new, but
the changing practices of emotional intimacies in filial relationships
debunk the stereotype of distant Indian fathers. The chapter has aimed
to foreground a changing context in which the dominant emotions
of affection, anger, fear and despair were deployed. June McDaniel has
argued that in Bengali aesthetic and devotional traditions, ‘emotion is
not a passive response but an active Eros, involving meaning, beauty,
and creativity, which structures both self and world’.73 More impor-
tantly, as Reddy has pointed out, emotions are not sui generis and they
emerge as a result of ‘an interaction between social organization and
cultural form’ and the human capacity to feel.74 If thought and emo-
tion are embodied and only understood in their social context,75 the
emotional practices that this chapter has recounted were embedded in
the specific social settings (sthana), at the specific historical moments
(kala), and were performed by the specific individuals (patra) that Rajat
Ray has emphasized in his works. The selective examples from a specific
community demonstrate not just ‘collective feelings’, but also a range of
‘collective practices’ of child rearing, and therefore also collective expe-
riences of childhood that evolved through successive generations over a
period of time.76
 Swapna M. Banerjee 237

The fathers and children discussed here were products of colonial

education and culture. Expressions of affection, outrage, restraint or
effusiveness with children and the corresponding emotions of awe, hap-
piness, fear and defiance map the dominant texts of behaviour of fathers
and the emotional expectations and experiences of children. Between
them, fathers and children defined and defied the norms in an altered
socio-cultural scenario. Middle-class fathers and their children repre-
sented an ‘emotional community’ that was constitutive of the reigning
patriarchy, charting the ‘dominant norms of emotional life’ and new
emotional possibilities for children.77
Male members of the Indian intelligentsia were as invested in the
ideas and practices of fatherhood as they were instrumental in formu-
lating new visions of women and motherhood. The performance of
fatherhood was an equally important component of the same patriarchy
that had subjugated women to new ideological parameters at the close of
the nineteenth century.78 The fathers, as literate members of the middle
class, were at risk of criticism by the colonial government. But pater-
nal expressions of love, protection, control and discipline acted as an
attribute and vector of colonial masculinity. The emotional practices of
fatherhood translated the rhetoric of manhood into reality within the
domain of the familiar and the intimate. Fatherhood enabled Indian
men to redeem their precariousness and exert their masculinity in the
hierarchical power relationship with women, servants and especially
children in the negotiated space of the home. But these experiences,
far from being universal, were contingent upon the specific contexts of
marriage, social status and institutions within which they were enacted.
The tension between fathers and children involved aspirations and
expectations around notions of respectability of a new social formation
closely linked to an imperial culture. The pleasures, pangs and anxieties
of fatherhood were rooted in the larger political-economic and socio-
cultural forces that shaped the practices of everyday life and, of course,
children’s emotional upbringing.

Notes
1. Pradip Kumar Bose, ‘Sons of the Nation: Child Rearing in the New Family’, in
Partha Chatterjee (ed.), Texts of Power: Emerging Disciplines in Colonial Bengal
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995), 118–144, here 118, 119.
2. The engagement with family, women and children was evident beyond
Bengal. For the Hindi-speaking belt, see Shobna Nijhawan, ‘Hindi Children’s
Journals and Nationalist Discourse (1910–1930)’, Economic and Political
Weekly 39(33) (14 August 2004), 3723–3729.
238 Everyday Emotional Practices of Fathers and Children

3. The term ‘emotional community’ is used after Barbara H. Rosenwein, ‘Wor-

rying about Emotions in History’, American Historical Review 107(3) (2002),
821–845.
4. See Rochona Majumdar, Marriage and Modernity: Family Values in Colonial
Bengal (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009).
5. Rajat Kanta Ray, Exploring Emotional History: Gender, Mentality and Literature
in the Indian Awakening (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003), viii.
6. Ray, Exploring Emotional History, 324.
7. Tapan Raychaudhuri, ‘Love in a Colonial Climate: Marriage, Sex and
Romance in Nineteenth-Century Bengal’, in Perceptions, Emotions, Sensibil-
ities: Essays on India’s Colonial and Postcolonial Experiences (Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1999), 65–95.
8. Some critical works in the field are: William M. Reddy, The Navigation of
Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions (New York: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2001); Rosenwein, ‘Worrying about Emotions in History’; Peter
N. Stearns and Carol Z. Stearns, ‘Emotionology: Clarifying the History of
Emotions and Emotional Standards’, American Historical Review 90(4) (1985),
813–836.
9. William M. Reddy, The Making of Romantic Love: Longing and Sexuality in
Europe, South Asia, and Japan, 900–1200 CE (University of Chicago Press,
2012); Margrit Pernau, ‘Male Anger and Female Malice: Emotions in Indo-
Muslim Advice Literature’, History Compass 10(2) (2012), 119–128. These
works do not refer to Ray.
10. For the polysemic nature of Indian families, see Sylvia Vatuk, ‘“Family”
as a Contested Concept in Early Nineteenth-Century Madras’, in Indrani
Chatterjee (ed.), Unfamiliar Relations: Family and History in South Asia (Delhi:
Permanent Black, 2004), 161–191.
11. Indrani Chatterjee, Forgotten Friends: Monks, Marriages, and Memories of
Northeast India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2013).
12. Swapna M. Banerjee, ‘Debates on Domesticity and the Position of Women in
Late Colonial India’, History Compass 8(6) (2010), 455–473.
13. Sudipta Kaviraj, ‘The Invention of Private Life: A Reading of Sibnath Sastri’s
Autobiography’, in David Arnold and Stuart Blackburn (eds), Telling Lives
in India: Biography, Autobiography, and Life History (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2004), 83–115, here 84.
14. Rob Boddice, ‘The Affective Turn: Historicizing the Emotions’, in Cristian
Tileagă and Jovan Byford (eds), Psychology and History: Interdisciplinary Explo-
rations (Cambridge University Press, 2014), 147–165.
15. Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity: The ‘Manly Englishman’ and the ‘Effem-
inate Bengali’ in the Late Nineteenth Century (Manchester University Press,
1995).
16. Sinha, Colonial Masculinity, 2.
17. Indira Chowdhury, The Frail Hero and Virile History: Gender and the Politics of
Culture in Colonial Bengal (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001).
18. Chowdhury, Frail Hero and Virile History, 2.
19. Partha Chatterjee, ‘The Nation and its Women’, in The Nation and its Frag-
ments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton University Press, 1993),
116–134; Tanika Sarkar, Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Community, Religion, and
Cultural Nationalism (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001).
 Swapna M. Banerjee 239

20. Ruby Lal, Coming of Age in Nineteenth-Century India: The Girl-Child and the Art
of Playfulness (Cambridge University Press, 2013).
21. Mrinalini Sinha, ‘Giving Masculinity a History: Some Contributions from the
Historiography of Colonial India’, Gender and History 11(3) (1999), 445–460,
here 454.
22. Sudhir Kakar, The Inner World: A Psycho-analytic Study of Childhood and Society
in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1981), 131.
23. Blair B. Kling, Partner in Empire: Dwarkanath Tagore and the Age of Enterprise in
Eastern India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976).
24. Debendranātha Thākura, The Auto-Biography of Maharshi Devendranath
Tagore, translated from the Bengali by Satyendranath Tagore and Indira Devi
(Calcutta: S.C. Sarkar and Sons, 1994), vi.
25. Thākura, Auto-Biography of Maharshi Devendranath Tagore, iii.
26. Thākura, Auto-Biography of Maharshi Devendranath Tagore, iii.
27. Thākura, Auto-Biography of Maharshi Devendranath Tagore, iii.
28. Thākura, Auto-Biography of Maharshi Devendranath Tagore, xvii.
29. Thākura, Auto-Biography of Maharshi Devendranath Tagore, xvii.
30. Rabindranath Tagore, My Reminiscences (London: Macmillan, 1917), 67.
31. Rabindranath Tagore, My Life in My Words, Uma Das Gupta (ed.) (New Delhi:
Penguin Viking, 2006), 28.
32. Tagore, My Reminiscences, 70.
33. Tagore, My Reminiscences, 70.
34. Tagore, My Reminiscences, 77.
35. Tagore, My Reminiscences, 78.
36. Tagore, My Reminiscences, 101.
37. Tagore, My Reminiscences, 89–91.
38. John Tosh, A Man’s Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian
England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 82–83.
39. Tosh, Man’s Place, 84.
40. Rathindranath Tagore, On the Edges of Time (Kolkata: Visvabharati, 1958),
148.
41. Tagore, On the Edges of Time, 148–149.
42. Tagore, My Reminiscences, 77.
43. Rabindranath Tagore, Chitthi Patra, vol. 1 (Kolkata: Visvabharati, 1966),
28–29, emphasis added.
44. Shibnath Sastri, Atmacharit (Kolkata: Signet Press, 1952).
45. Tagore, My Reminiscences, 95.
46. Trev Lynn Broughton and Helen Rogers (eds), Gender and Fatherhood in the
Nineteenth Century (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 18.
47. Lynn Zastoupil, ‘Defining Christians, Making Britons: Rammohun Roy and
the Unitarians’, Victorian Studies 44(2) (2002), 215–243; Peter van der Veer,
Imperial Encounters: Religion and Modernity in India and Britain (Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 2001); David Kopf, The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the
Modern Indian Mind (Princeton University Press, 1979).
48. Debendranath Tagore, Brahma Dharma (Kolkata: Brahmo Samaj, 1848).
49. Kakar, The Inner World, 113–139.
50. Tosh, Man’s Place, 86–87.
51. For Tagore’s ideals of love, see Sudipta Kaviraj, ‘Tagore and Transforma-
tions in the Ideals of Love’, in Francesca Orsini (ed.), Love in South Asia:
240 Everyday Emotional Practices of Fathers and Children

A Cultural History (Cambridge University Press, 2006), 161–182; Samir Dayal,

‘Re-positioning India: Tagore’s Passionate Politics of “Love”’, in Resisting
Modernity: Counternarratives of Nation and Masculinity in Pre-independence India
(Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), 69–108.
52. Tagore, Chitthi Patra, 11–12.
53. Tagore, Chitthi Patra, 13–15.
54. For parallels, see Tosh, Man’s Place, 83.
55. Tagore, Chitthi Patra, 67–69.
56. Broughton and Rogers, Gender and Fatherhood in the Nineteenth Century, 18.
57. Of Rabindranath’s five children, only his eldest son Rathindranath and
youngest daughter Mira Devi survived.
58. Mira Devi, Smritikatha (Kolkata: Visvabharati, 1975), 7–8 (the manuscript of
the handwritten letter is attached as a preface to the collection of essays).
59. Tagore, On the Edges of Time, preface (not paginated).
60. Tagore, On the Edges of Time, 149.
61. Devi, Smritikatha, 19.
62. Kathleen M. O’Connell, Rabindranath Tagore: The Poet as Educator (Kolkata:
Visva-Bharati, 2002).
63. See Gautam Chando Roy, ‘The Pathshala and the School: Experiences of
Growing up in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Bengal’, in Rajat Kanta
Ray (ed.), Mind, Body, and Society: Life and Mentality in Colonial Bengal (Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1995), 195–231; Tanika Sarkar, ‘The Child and
the World: Rabindranath Tagore’s Ideas on Education’, in Rebels, Wives,
Saints: Designing Selves and Nations in Colonial Times (Kolkata: Seagull, 2009),
268–98.
64. Judith E. Walsh, Domesticity in Colonial India: What Women Learned When
Men Gave Them Advice (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004).
65. As a philosophical and ‘romantic’ poet deeply committed to arts and
humanities, Rabindranath was often criticized for being effeminate, but he
himself never felt demeaned or threatened by such attributes. For Victorian
fathers, see Tosh, Man’s Place, 100.
66. Premankur Atorthi, Mahasthabir Jatak, vol. 3 (Kolkata: De’s Publishing,
1964), 7–8.
67. Premankur Atorthi, ‘Satyabadi’ [‘One Who Always Says Truth’], Mouchak
15(5) (1924, Jyaistha, 1331 BS), 66–72.
68. Tosh, Man’s Place, 79–101.
69. Leela Majumdar, Pakdandi (Kolkata: Ananda Publishers, 1986), 5–6.
70. For the idea of physical punishment, see Bose, ‘Sons of the Nation’, 134–136.
71. Bose, ‘Sons of the Nation’, 135.
72. Pernau, ‘Male Anger and Female Malice’.
73. June McDaniel, ‘Emotion in Bengali Religious Thought: Substance and
Metaphor’, in Joel Marks and Roger T. Ames (eds), Emotions in Asian Thought:
A Dialogue in Comparative Philosophy (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1995), 39–63, here 54.
74. Reddy, Making of Romantic Love, 348.
75. Monique Scheer, ‘Are Emotions a Kind of Practice (And is that What Makes
Them Have a History)? A Bourdieuian Approach to Understanding Emotion’,
History and Theory 51(2) (2012), 193–220.
76. See Boddice, ‘Affective Turn’.
 Swapna M. Banerjee 241

77. Barbara H. Rosenwein, ‘Problems and Methods in the History of Emotions’,

Passions in Context: Journal of the History and Philosophy of the Emotions 1(1)
(2010), www.passionsincontext.de/index.php?id=557 (date accessed 25 June
2015). According to William Reddy, dominant norms of behaviour are
prescribed by ‘emotional regimes’; Reddy, Navigation of Feeling, 129.
78. Chatterjee, ‘The Nation and its Women’.
13
Anti-vaccination and the Politics
of Grief for Children in Late
Victorian England
Lydia Murdoch

This chapter sets out to explore the public and explicitly political forms
of mourning for children in nineteenth-century England, using the
protest movement against compulsory smallpox vaccination for infants
as a case study. In Victorian England, grief took on new communal forms
often associated with the body and material culture. For example, Jay’s
London General Mourning Warehouse on Regent Street opened in 1841,
providing elite mourners with fashionable clothing and setting off a
commercial industry. It was here that wealthy women could purchase
black mourning dresses from the required ‘list of silks, crapes, paramat-
tas, cashmeres, grenadines, and tulles’ to meet the latest fashions that
changed, according to Jay’s, ‘not only every month, but well-nigh every
week’.1 Less well-off women resorted to pawnshops, borrowed dresses
or dyed one of their own black out of respect for the dead.2 The pri-
vate emotional state of bereavement for the Victorians typically took
public and visible, physical forms, epitomized but by no means monop-
olized by the ‘halo of commercial grandeur’ within Messrs. W. Jay and
Company’s expanded shop.3 Funerals became grandiose affairs, from the
state service marking the Duke of Wellington’s death in 1852 (where the
hearse alone cost £11,000) to working-class burials that nearly always
left surviving family members in debt.4 Post-mortem photographs mar-
shalled the latest technology to provide what for many families would
be their only keepsake image of those who passed. Deborah Lutz exam-
ines other tangible, physical relics – including hair jewellery, locks of
hair and death masks – that Victorians used to evoke the emotional con-
nections between the living and the dead.5 After Prince Albert’s death in

242
 Lydia Murdoch 243

1861, Queen Victoria had at least eight pieces of jewellery made includ-
ing his hair as she entered what would be an extreme and unusually
extended period of mourning.6 Criticism of increasingly ostentatious
and expensive mourning rituals emerged as early as the 1850s and
gained following through organizations such as the Anti-Mourning Asso-
ciation (founded in 1866) and the National Funeral and Mourning Reform
Association (founded in 1875). Until the massive upheaval of the First
World War, however, most Victorians sought comfort by expressing their
grief and respect for the dead in visible forms often worn on the body
or enacted in space through processions and public gatherings.7
Although most histories of death and the Victorians focus on adults,
dying remained throughout the nineteenth century an experience
largely associated with the young. By the end of the century, deaths
of infants under one year old still made up one-quarter of all deaths
in England and Wales. Even as the general death rate declined, infant
mortality remained high with roughly one out of every seven chil-
dren dying before reaching their first birthday.8 Recent scholarship on
parental bereavement during the nineteenth century has done much
to address what José Harris identified in 1993 as ‘a phenomenon that
still awaits imaginative historical reconstruction’.9 M. Jeanne Peterson
offered one of the earliest accounts of elite Victorian parents strug-
gling with the death of children in her analysis of the gentry couple
Catherine and Archibald Tait, who lost five of their seven children to
scarlet fever in 1856 – a case that Pat Jalland developed in detail in
her foundational work Death in the Victorian Family (1996).10 Moving
from elite to working-class families, Ellen Ross and Julie-Marie Strange
have shown how working parents also deeply grieved the deaths of
children in ways that voiced the language of fatalism and resignation,
but also expressed ‘profound sorrow’.11 What these and other recent
works on child mortality share is a common rejection of earlier theories
claiming that high child death rates discouraged parents from develop-
ing affectionate bonds with children or from mourning their deaths.12
These emerging studies of child death also primarily concentrate on pri-
vate forms of grief within families, particularly parental bereavement.13
Mourning for children, however, took on ever more prominent public
forms as childhood came to be redefined during the nineteenth century
as a life stage associated with innocence, domesticity and protection.
During the last decades of the nineteenth century, anti-vaccinationist
protesters integrated familiar communal mourning rituals into their
political demonstrations in order to oppose what they interpreted as
unjust class-based laws and to affirm their rights as English citizens,
244 Anti-vaccination and the Politics of Grief for Children

and their children’s rights as putative citizens. Political demonstrations

in the form of funeral processions, black-bannered handbills and even
post-mortem photographs of children directly brought modes of mourn-
ing into the public political realm, allowing working-class women, men
and children a voice in shaping national debates.14 By openly – and
controversially – referencing their grief over children in public protests,
the anti-vaccinationists illustrated Susan Matt’s and Peter Stearns’ point
that: ‘Choosing to express or repress a feeling . . . can be an explicitly
political act.’15 Judith Butler has likewise stressed how public forms of
mourning shape awareness of political communities by marking partic-
ular lives as having value – and, by extension, representing generally
unspoken views about which lives are not publicly valued. Writing in
response to public reactions in the United States following 11 Septem-
ber 2001, Butler remarked that ‘some lives are grievable, and others are
not; the differential allocation of grievability that decides what kind of
subject is and must be grieved, and which kind of subject must not,
operates to produce and maintain certain exclusionary conceptions of
who is normatively human’, and thus who is deemed deserving or unde-
serving of full legal and political rights.16 In the nineteenth-century
context, public demonstrations of grief also served as markers of indi-
vidual claims to citizenship and rights, for both working-class adults
and their children.
Late Victorian anti-vaccinationists sought to employ the political
potential of mourning rituals to communicate suffering and injustice
particularly related to the protection of child life. Their protests reveal
how child life became ‘more grievable’ (drawing on Butler’s terminol-
ogy) over the course of the nineteenth century as the ideal of childhood
gained prominence and took on new meanings.17 By the century’s end,
the ideal childhood was increasingly understood as a time of education
and play rather than work and discipline.18 Parental affection for chil-
dren was certainly not new, but modern concepts of childhood brought
greater political prominence to arguments of child preciousness and
loss. In response to rallying cries to protect the young, grief for those
who died prematurely arose as a major theme and mode of expres-
sion in many Victorian political debates, ranging from child labour laws
to urban health and sanitation reforms to the abolition of slavery and
Britain’s role as an imperial power.19
By appealing to emotions of grief and rituals of mourning for children
newly understood as precious, anti-vaccinationists enacted political
protest in a new key, while drawing upon a long tradition of street
activists, including opponents of the New Poor Law (1834), Chartists,
 Lydia Murdoch 245

members of the Salvation Army and suffragists. The anti-vaccinationists’

actions demonstrate how emotions tied to childhood, particularly the
protection of child life and the mourning of child death, emerged as cru-
cial markers of political legitimacy by the late nineteenth century – and
also underscore how political arguments appealing to shared mourning
elicited attack. Anti-vaccinationists have often been dismissed, both by
their contemporaries and by historians, as one-issue, misguided quacks,
who impeded medical discoveries that ultimately led to the eradication
of smallpox – a disease that in the early nineteenth century remained
one of the greatest threats to child life.20 However, by appealing to public
appreciation of child life along with widely accepted communal forms
of expressing grief in the context of political protest against the state,
anti-vaccinationists disrupted the existing ‘emotional regime’, William
Reddy’s term for the ‘normative order for emotions’ that is essential to
‘any stable political regime’.21 Public grief for children, presented as hav-
ing been harmed by state vaccination policies, thus questioned the very
meaning of the nation and asserted a greater political voice for working-
class men and women, while at the same time forcefully expressing
the sanctity of individual child life as an end in itself.22 Thus, public
mobilization of grief for dead children emerged as a powerful state-
ment of working-class and women’s political rights, as well as of the
importance of safeguarding children from avoidable suffering.23 At the
same time, the explicitly political and public expressions of mourning
sparked controversy and ultimately reinforced widespread representa-
tions of the anti-vaccinationists’ marginality and even inhumanity. The
political and public expressions of mourning for children proved so new
that they created a backlash from critics, who not only lambasted the
anti-vaccinationists’ scientific arguments, but also decried their public
displays of emotion vulgar and inauthentic.

‘Murdered by Compulsory Vaccination’: political

demonstrations of mourning

In her expert history of the English anti-vaccination movement, Nadja

Durbach argues that opposition arose against state vaccination policies
largely because of the class-based nature of the legislation, in addition
to continued medical and religious resistance to the use of the cowpox
vaccine developed by Edward Jenner in the 1790s.24 The 1853 Vacci-
nation Act required the vaccination of all English and Welsh infants
within three months of birth. Popular resistance increased significantly
after the 1867 Act enforced compulsory vaccination more rigorously
246 Anti-vaccination and the Politics of Grief for Children

by appointing public vaccination officers and increasing penalties for

non-compliance. Private doctors who served wealthier clients generally
preferred using calf lymph for the vaccine matter, but public vacci-
nators relied mostly on arm-to-arm vaccination.25 Opponents of this
method objected to the possible transmission of blood diseases, includ-
ing erysipelas and in extremely rare cases syphilis, and to the widespread
practice of harvesting vaccine lymph supplies directly from the cow-
pox pustules of recently vaccinated children. Fear proved a main driving
force behind the movement, since the actual threat of dying from dis-
eases transmitted by arm-to-arm vaccination remained very low. Yet
political inequalities also fuelled opposition to compulsory vaccination
as adults objected to what they took as insufficient regard for the lives
of working-class children as well as to the use of class-based methods
of enforcing the law. Parents who refused to vaccinate their children
could be fined up to 20 shillings – a punishment that, after 1867, could
be imposed repeatedly until the child reached the age of 14. Working-
class parents who were unable to afford fines as well as court costs
risked having their household goods seized and sold at public auc-
tions and, if fines remained unpaid, were liable to be sentenced to up
to two weeks’ imprisonment. Durbach details the growth of the anti-
vaccination movement, so that in Leicester, the centre of protest, some
factories closed for the 1885 national anti-vaccinationist demonstra-
tion.26 The government eventually created a clause for conscientious
objection to vaccination in 1898, which in 1907 could be granted by
a simple oath before a local magistrate or justice of the peace, thereby
effectively undoing compulsory vaccination in England and Wales.27
Victorian journalists and writers often characterized the anti-
vaccinationists as a fringe movement, but Durbach underscores their
deep ties with other working-class groups, particularly labour, Protestant
dissenters and women’s rights campaigners.28 Grief for dead children
gave women – especially mothers – a new political voice to speak
on issues of individual rights, child custody and bodily autonomy
that proved central not only to the anti-vaccination movement, but
also to a host of other nineteenth-century reforms, including earlier
opposition to the New Poor Law, the campaign to repeal the Con-
tagious Diseases (CD) Acts (1864, 1866 and 1869) that introduced
state medical regulation of prostitution, and women’s suffrage. Many
prominent women who opposed compulsory vaccination also served
as leaders of the women’s movement; these included activists such
as Frances Power Cobbe (1822–1904), Josephine Butler (1828–1906),
Elizabeth Wolstenholme Elmy (1833–1918), Ursula Bright (1835–1915),
 Lydia Murdoch 247

Millicent Garrett Fawcett (1847–1929), and, most of all, the working-

class suffragist Jessie Craigen (1834/1835–1899). The prominent anti-
vaccinationist Mary Hume-Rothery (1824–1885), daughter of the Liberal
Member of Parliament Joseph Hume, highlighted these connections
in her pamphlet Women and Doctors: Or, Medical Despotism in England
(1871). The work presented a broad call for Englishwomen’s rights in
areas ranging from women’s suffrage to higher education and con-
trol over childbirth and reproduction. Hume-Rothery condemned both
the Vaccination Acts and the CD Acts for overturning traditional
English liberties and creating a political structure ‘under which free-
born Englishwomen can no longer call their bodies or their babes their
own’.29
In the midst of the growing women’s suffrage movement and the
campaign against the CD Acts, which Parliament suspended in 1883
and repealed in 1886, anti-vaccinationists held a series of controversial
demonstrations that drew upon Victorian mourning culture to present
parental bereavement as an explicit form of political protest. On the late
afternoon of 5 August 1884, just hours after the Marquis of Salisbury
brought petitions to the House of Lords demanding the repeal of com-
pulsory vaccination laws, the ‘House of Commons was assailed . . . by
an extraordinary procession of petitioners’.30 A brass band playing the
‘Dead March’ from Handel’s Saul led the procession. Expressions of
grief over dead children and the preciousness of infant life, however,
remained the centrepiece of the parade. The band was followed by a
group of six women wearing mourning dress, each holding a baby in
her arms, riding aloft a carriage and pair – the typical sort of passenger
carriage used for funerals. While it was not unusual for working-class
women to join funeral processions, the mere presence of these female
mourners challenged earlier strictures against upper- and middle-class
women attending funerals.31 Jalland notes that as late as 1870, Cassell’s
Household Guide cautioned elite women not to follow the example of
the poor by allowing women at funeral services, where they too often
‘interrupt and destroy the solemnity of the ceremony with their sobs’.32
It was more accepted for elite women to attend services and proces-
sions by the 1890s, but only if they kept their grief contained – exactly
what the anti-vaccinationists refused to do. The women protesters sang
along with the band as they distributed handbills embellished with
black mourning borders. The leaflets explained that the demonstrators
came before the House of Commons in response to ‘the child of a cou-
ple living in Peckham [who] had been vaccinated, and three weeks later
died of erysipelas’.33 Banners stated the case more forcefully: ‘Murdered
248 Anti-vaccination and the Politics of Grief for Children

by Compulsory Vaccination.’34 Demanding the repeal of the Vaccina-

tion Acts, the protesters ended their circular with ‘an appeal to the
working women of South London to join in this demand of the Leg-
islature’. Several of the regional newspapers that widely reported on
the procession alongside updates of General Gordon and the Siege of
Khartoum spitefully suggested that ‘the appeal seemed to have fallen
on deaf ears, the working women being probably otherwise engaged’.35
The anti-vaccinationists did not go completely unheard, however, for
that evening the group of women demonstrators interviewed the Liberal
Member of Parliament for Stockport, Charles Hopwood, ‘in the outer
hall of the House of Commons’.36
By publicly bringing women’s grief for children through the streets of
London and into the House of Commons (albeit restricted to the ‘outer
hall’), the protesters sought to gain recognition and blame the State for
harming children. The strategic use of a funeral procession – includ-
ing mourning dress and Handel’s ‘Dead March’, first performed at the
King’s Theatre in 1739 and by this time regularly used in State funerals –
brought attention to the deaths of children that anti-vaccinationists
claimed went unrecognized by the government. The use of widely
shared visual and musical mourning customs may have raised sympathy
for grieving parents. But protesters also hoped that the appeal to emo-
tion would highlight what they claimed the government overlooked:
the supposedly deadly effects of the Vaccination Acts on individual
working-class children.
The processional banner declaring ‘Murdered by Compulsory Vacci-
nation’ drew upon the movement’s established rhetoric. In 1879, the
London Society for the Abolition of Compulsory Vaccination cited a parlia-
mentary report from the previous year to conclude that ‘25,000 children
are slaughtered annually by diseases inoculated into the system by
vaccination’ and that ‘a far greater number are injured and maimed
for life by the same unwholesome rite’.37 Mary Hume-Rothery used
similar rhetoric in her pamphlet, 150 Reasons for Disobeying the Vac-
cination Law, by Persons Prosecuted under it (1878), which reproduced
statements taken mostly from police court reports. The case of Charles
Washington Nye of Chatham, imprisoned eight times for disobey-
ing the Vaccination Acts, opened the document with the declaration
that ‘he lost two children, murdered by vaccination at one time’.38
Subsequent entries reported cases of children ‘injured’, ‘damaged’,
‘ruined’, ‘poisoned’, ‘killed’ and ‘murdered’. James Button, a farmer from
Norfolk, declared: ‘I cannot suffer my children to be vaccinated until
I can allow my conscience to brand me as a murderer.’39 The funeral
 Lydia Murdoch 249

procession of August 1884 and following protests took this rhetoric to

the streets. By February 1885, The Vaccination Inquirer printed lyrics for
a ‘Vaccination-Funeral Ode’ to be sung to the tune of ‘Hark the Herald
Angels Sing’:

They have slain our bonny boys;

Festered o’er their infant joys.
Swine that rend us from our pearls,
They have slain our little girls. –
Vaccination, skin and bone,
Laughs upon his gory throne.40

Once again using familiar genres for new purposes, protestors trans-
formed the popular Christmas carol into an eight-verse testimony that
portrayed innocent children in gruesome danger.
Anti-vaccinationists thus reinforced notions of childhood innocence,
but within the populist framework of classic Liberalism stressing indi-
vidual rights and liberties.41 Proponents of vaccination, going back
to the initial global campaigns to transmit Jenner’s cowpox vaccine
in the early nineteenth century, drew upon emerging ideals of child-
hood innocence as well. Supporters of vaccination argued that the
procedure not only saved lives, but also protected innocent children
and promoted parental domestic affection. Doctors and government
officials held up vaccination policies in England and the Empire as
primary evidence of progress and universal humanitarianism, while
at the same time glossing over the practical inequalities inherent in
these very programmes: the main subjects used to carry the live vac-
cine across the globe tended to be working-class, orphaned, ‘mixed-race’
or colonial children treated as subjects of the State rather than as citi-
zens.42 When late nineteenth-century anti-vaccinationists appealed to
notions of childhood innocence, their aim was to challenge the increas-
ing interventionist powers of medical authorities and the State – Mary
Hume-Rothery’s Medical Despotism – characterized most of all by the
CD Acts and Vaccination Acts. The class-based nature of the Vaccina-
tion Acts encouraged anti-vaccinationists to overlook the vast number
of lives saved through medical advancement and instead focus on the
threat to personal rights and bodily autonomy. In their formulation,
the medical State threatened rather than protected innocent children;
it was the ‘swine’ that killed ‘bonny boys’ and ‘little girls’, destroying
‘infant joys’, all the while mocking the people as a tyrant from ‘upon
his gory throne’. The anti-vaccinationist understanding of the child also
250 Anti-vaccination and the Politics of Grief for Children

associated childhood innocence with individual rights and liberties –

the foundations of liberal citizenship.
By the 1880s, Jessie Craigen underscored children’s new status as
citizens as she emerged as a key organizer of local anti-vaccinationist
protests. Craigen had already established herself as a temperance
reformer, a campaigner against the CD Acts and vivisection, as well as
a radical-liberal leader of the women’s suffrage movement who spoke
at national women’s meetings by the early 1880s. Her background as a
child actor in pantomime and her working-class associations ultimately
caused middle-class suffragists to marginalize her contributions.43 Yet
Sandra Stanley Holton shows how, despite women’s differences, Craigen
sought unity among suffragists by stressing women’s and children’s
shared suffering through what Craigen termed ‘mother love’, although
she herself remained childless and unmarried.44 By the autumn of 1883,
the anti-vaccinationist press recognized Craigen as a rousing speaker at
outdoor meetings around London, where she joined others in calling
for the repeal of the Vaccination Acts.45 In the spring and summer of
1884, she travelled beyond the capital to speak before audiences of over
1,000.46 By August, the Marylebone Police Court fined her for holding
several meetings before ‘large audiences in Primrose Hill Park on com-
pulsory vaccination’.47 She directly engaged parents who disobeyed the
law and was likely a main organizer of the August 1884 anti-vaccination
funeral procession to Parliament. She published a letter in The Vaccina-
tion Inquirer recounting the specific case of the Peckham infant, Mary
Ann Maria Phillips, who died from erysipelas following vaccination.
‘The point I wish to call attention to is this’, wrote Craigen:

that even were the security against small-pox real (which it is not),
yet that security ought not to be obtained by the legal slaughter of
a minority of children who perish under the lancet. Each citizen has
an equal right with all others to protection for life and health, and
the State has no right to force destruction, or the rule of destruction,
on any, even for the supposed benefit of all.48

As a suffragist, Craigen used grief for children to raise questions of rights

and to emphasize how all lives within the political body deserved equal
recognition and protection. Her argument gave new status to children
by stressing the value of the individual child life and claiming that even
infants held the fundamental rights and liberties of citizens.
Through her words and her actions, Craigen underscored the politi-
cal importance of parental – paternal as well as maternal – grief as an
 Lydia Murdoch 251

emotional reminder of the individual rights of children and their par-

ents. In the months following the August 1884 demonstration, she led
a number of processions celebrating the release of anti-vaccinationists
imprisoned for refusing to pay fines – a common tactic among anti-
vaccinators.49 Henry Crisp, a shoemaker, spent two weeks in Holloway
Gaol and emerged as a model of loving fatherhood and a spokesman for
individual rights.50 He opposed compulsory vaccination on the grounds
that ‘having lost one child, killed by vaccination, [he] refused to be
accessory to the murder of another’.51 Upon his release, Craigen met
him outside Holloway in an ‘open carriage’. She passed out handbills
in the streets and gave a ‘vigorous speech’ against the Vaccination Acts
before joining a procession of at least ten other carriages led by a band to
Crisp’s home at Walthamstow.52 In November, she joined a similar pro-
cession at Eastbourne honouring the release of Mrs Meredith from Lewes
Prison. Craigen ‘was foremost among the speakers, and was everywhere
cheered to the echo’, her words no doubt contributing to the ‘sympathy’
several members of the local town council expressed for the event.53 Two
months later, hundreds of people assembled at Eastbourne to oppose
the auctioning of goods seized by police from locals who refused to pay
fines for non-compliance with the vaccination laws. The Sussex Daily
News reported that Craigen ‘harangued the multitude from a carriage
in front of the police-station’ – revealing how controversial her public
presence, speech and demeanour remained even in this overall positive
account. Craigen ‘quoted statistics’ in support of her cause, but most of
all appealed to the authenticity of anti-vaccinationists’ emotions regard-
ing the value of children. According to the newspaper: ‘She called upon
Eastbourne ratepayers not to vote for Guardians who would not promise
to respect the feelings and opinions of the anti-vaccinators.’54 She went
on to link the cause of women’s and children’s suffering with the need
for suffrage, declaring: ‘I am only a poor woman. If women have no
votes they have voices; and God has given me powers of speech to
advocate the cause of the poor, down-trodden, and oppressed’ (loud
applause).’55
On Saturday, 20 December 1884, Craigen organized another more
elaborate anti-vaccination demonstration in the form of a funeral pro-
cession – this time crossing from the East End to the West End of
London. The march followed the death of a specific child for whom
anti-vaccinationists contested the physician’s officially reported cause
of death. ‘An infant killed by vaccination in Hackney was certified
by the medical attendant as having died of scarlet-fever and whoop-
ing cough’, reported the Vaccination Inquirer, ‘although there were no
252 Anti-vaccination and the Politics of Grief for Children

signs of eruptive fever, nor did the mother ever hear the child cough.’56
Demands for an inquest into the child’s cause of death had been denied.
Opposed by the law and by medical authorities, Craigen ‘took the
matter up’; she appealed to shared forms of grief and mourning to
bring the anti-vaccinationist cause – and specifically the testimonies of
women and mothers – before the public.57 Moving from East to West
London, the procession ‘passed through the principal streets, attracting
great attention’, bringing the subjective world of emotion and feeling
into public display as a core political message of the movement.58 The
Sheffield Daily Telegraph identified the Anti-Vaccination Society’s tactics
as a form of ‘street realism’ that took the group’s ‘claim that the enforce-
ment of the law of vaccination is a direct source of infant mortality’
and ‘embodied it into a series of demonstration funerals’.59 The funeral
march aimed to mark what otherwise remained silenced or denied:
the intrinsic value of individual child lives harmed by compulsory
vaccination and the rights of working-class parents and children.
The order of the procession across London reinforced this associa-
tion between the increasing preciousness of child life and assertions of
working-class political rights. First came the band riding in an open
brake carriage as they played the ‘Dead March’ from Saul. Next to
the driver along the carriage side, a woman supported a large placard
with the message: ‘To the memory of a child killed by Act of Par-
liament.’60 An open hearse drawn by two horses followed the band.
It carried the child’s small white coffin – the typical colour reinforc-
ing youthful innocence – encircled with wreaths. Finally, there were
‘a number of mourning coaches filled with women in black, and a
banner inscribed, “In memory of 1,000 children who have died this
year through vaccination”’.61 Countering the law and medical author-
ities, anti-vaccinationists gave a central place to child sufferers and
the women who mourned them. Craigen sought wider public sympa-
thy for children and the grief felt for their loss by appealing to the
music, language and modes of embodied mourning. The funeral demon-
strations appealed to shared mourning practices to uncover what the
anti-vaccinationists termed harmful injustice of the law that sacrificed
helpless children. By placing women mourners as the core participants
in the processions, Craigen gave voice to working-class women like her-
self, including the otherwise unheeded Hackney mother who had never
heard her child cough, but remained unable to overturn the official
cause of death.
However, the majority of newspapers responded by challenging the
very feelings and emotions that Craigen sought to reveal and uphold
 Lydia Murdoch 253

as legitimate sources of political authority. The Globe, one of London’s

oldest evening papers and a strong critic of the anti-vaccinationists,
declared the procession to be an ‘outrage’, a ‘hideous spectacle’ of
‘revolting character’.62 It decried the inauthenticity of emotion in what
it understood to be a moment of theatricality, rather than what the
Sheffield Daily Telegraph had termed ‘street realism’. Craigen’s efforts
were called ‘a mock funeral procession’, which presented ‘caricatures of
a most solemn and most saddening religious ceremonial’. Rather than
conveying sincere grief, the women of the mourning carriages made
‘pretence to be overcome with woe’. The Globe concluded: ‘It would be a
waste of time and trouble to appeal to the feelings of people who get up
such shameful exhibitions as this shocking burlesque. They cannot have
any feelings, or they would not so flagrantly violate the most elementary
principles of public decorum.’63 The Globe’s insistence that mourning for
children should remain private and that such public, explicitly polit-
ical referencing of grief must necessarily be inauthentic highlighted
the newness of the anti-vaccinationists’ tactics. Craigen sought to give
voice and visual representation to the otherwise ignored bereavement
of parents whose children died following vaccination in an effort to
question the Vaccination Acts. But critics of the movement stressed that
the anti-vaccinationists’ grief, like their scientific knowledge, was a false
vulgarization. By condemning the procession as a ‘burlesque’, The Globe
not only declared the protestors’ grief to be false, but also suggested
that such demonstrations ridiculed sincere emotion. The reference to
burlesque – a form of theatre popular with working-class audiences –
also reinforced the marginality of working-class anti-vaccinationists and
implicitly denied their claims to the essential sovereignty of the child.
It was particularly the public display of emotion used for political
purposes – the bringing of working-class protests and female mourners
into the thoroughfares of London’s West End – that riled the newspaper
to appeal to the law as a power that might prevent such demonstra-
tions in the future in order to ‘uphold public decency’. Otherwise, The
Globe claimed: ‘West-end streets will soon be utterly unfit for persons of
any refinement or feeling to walk or drive through.’64 Regional papers
echoed The Globe’s condemnation of the anti-vaccinationist tactics.
Berrow’s Worcester Journal declared that the ‘burlesque recently enacted
by them in the West End streets of London was as disgraceful as it
was scandalous’. The newspaper singled out the women’s ‘mock grief’
as ‘really disgusting’ and supported The Globe in arguing that such
a ‘revolting sight’ should have been ‘instantly stopped by the police
authorities’. ‘The vaccination alarmists might at least be content with
254 Anti-vaccination and the Politics of Grief for Children

their private “public” meetings’, it wrote, ‘without outraging the feel-

ings of the English people by ridiculing the most solemn of our religious
rites.’65 Gauging the ‘feelings of the English people’, of course, cannot
simply be done by a review of press reports. The Sheffield Daily Tele-
graph, one of the country’s leading papers that expressed greater support
of the anti-vaccinationist cause, underscored the mixed crowd response
to the demonstration by writing that a bystander who condemned the
procession as a ‘“ghastly blasphemous parody” was at once set upon
by half a dozen women, which showed that the anti-vaccinationists
had their sympathisers distributed freely abroad amongst the crowd’.66
Such disputes in the streets and in the press over whether the funeral
procession marching from East to West London was an act of real-
ism or a burlesque parody suggest that much more was at stake than
the standards of public emotion. By openly mourning the Hackney
child’s death, the anti-vaccinationists questioned the official cause of
death (prioritizing a mother’s knowledge over a medical certificate)
and moreover asserted the grievability of this individual child’s fatal-
ity – a public mourning that, as Judith Butler stresses, brings political
recognition.

‘Children’s Day’: the national anti-vaccination

demonstration

Three months later, on 23 March 1885, anti-vaccinationists organized

the national demonstration at Leicester attended by at least 20,000
marchers.67 The procession was followed by evening meetings at the
Temperance Hall and another the next morning for delegates, includ-
ing Craigen, who came as a representative of the South London Women’s
Liberation League.68 Countering earlier charges of theatricality and insin-
cerity, organizers wrote in February that the parade would have ‘music
and banners, and illustrations realistic and pathetic’ in order to com-
bat the ‘conspiracy of silence’.69 Again, protestors incorporated public
displays of grief and mourning for dead children and anxiety for endan-
gered children into the procession. Along with displays of ‘furniture
seized for blood-money’, a model of Holloway Prison, a horse and cow
representing the sources of vaccination, and even an effigy of Edward
Jenner hanged from a borrowed gallows and scaffold, there was ‘a well-
appointed hearse, with a child’s coffin inscribed, “Another victim of
vaccination”’.70 The Daily News reported that ‘a real coffin for a child,
covered with wreaths’ was carried on a ‘carriage bier, and followed by
mourners’.71 Banners also highlighted women’s grief with statements
 Lydia Murdoch 255

such as ‘Rachels are weeping for their children all over the land’ and ‘The
mothers of England demand repeal’.72 One life-size visual reproduced an
image familiar in the anti-vaccination press: ‘a skeleton vaccinating an
infant in its mother’s lap, while a policeman grips her uplifted hand –
the mother’s face being full of agony and the babe’s face of infantine
unconsciousness – while the skeleton and the officer of the law are
grinning with horrid expressiveness’.73
Along with these representations of child death and parental bereave-
ment, however, the Leicester procession also incorporated living unvac-
cinated children as displays of health and symbols of liberty. One
eyewitness wrote to the Vaccination Inquirer, ‘Leicester, Monday, 23rd
of March, 1885, will be a golden date on the page of memory, a birth-
day of liberty. It should be known as the Children’s Day’.74 Many young
participants were the children of the 5,000 individuals who at the time
of the demonstration had been summoned for non-compliance with
the vaccination laws.75 The children marched together as a group fol-
lowing four other ‘detachments’: parents who had ‘suffered terms of
imprisonment’, those from whom police had seized household goods
to cover fines, those who had paid fines and members of the Boards of
Guardians who refused to enforce the compulsory laws.76 The Vaccina-
tion Inquirer heralded the ‘large deputations of the five or ten thousand
“infantile law-breakers,” to whose honour the day was devoted, look-
ing so fresh, and wholesome, and free from blemish, that many and
many a warm heart must have cursed the horrid tyranny which threat-
ened them with a peril worse than an enemy’s siege of Leicester’. These
children, with ‘bright, happy faces’, joined in ‘waving their own tiny
bannerets and cheering with delight’, as ‘mothers at upper windows
clasping their infants’ looked on.77 The children’s contingent put the
new nineteenth-century ideal of childhood on display in the flesh. The
innocence, happiness and health of child marchers became equated
with English liberty, just as expressions of mourning for premature child
death stood for State tyranny.
Moreover, the national rally at Leicester gave children a direct political
voice as citizens in the making. Youthful demonstrators not only served
as material evidence of healthy, happy and innocent children uncon-
taminated by vaccination, but also acted as political agents by marching
in their own contingent, by carrying banners and by cheering on the
crowds of onlookers. Child participants in the march became ‘infantile
law-breakers’ in their own right. No longer merely the objects of polit-
ical debates, these infant and youthful protesters began to take on the
role of active citizens.
256 Anti-vaccination and the Politics of Grief for Children

Conclusion

Emotions related to child life and child death served as essential aspects
of the late Victorian anti-vaccination movement, as well as of the
broader working-class and women’s rights campaigns associated with
it. Anti-vaccinationists drew upon common mourning rituals to gain a
political voice for themselves and a political status for children. By pub-
licly and repeatedly integrating funeral processions, mourning dress
and music into their political demonstrations, protestors –including the
many women and men who were still denied suffrage – expressed their
sense that the Vaccination Acts harmed individual children and that the
State should not overlook these lives. That these tactics sparked such an
intense backlash from the press suggests they marked a notable disrup-
tion of the ‘emotional regime’, not only by bringing grief for children
into public view for political purposes, but also by politicizing the child
in a radical new way. Yet, ultimately, the successful undoing of com-
pulsory vaccination following the 1907 Act rested not upon scientific
arguments, but on the conscientious objection of parents who testi-
fied to the sincerity of their beliefs and the sanctity of their children.
By the early twentieth century, both the new ideal of happy, unblem-
ished childhood, full of sovereign potential, and public expressions of
grieving following child death would become lasting components of
political culture.

Notes
1. Richard Davey, A History of Mourning (London: Jay’s, 1889), 95. I am grateful
for comments and suggestions on this chapter from Nadja Durbach, Andrew
Evans and Stephanie Olsen. I also thank the Elinor Nims Brink Fund of Vassar
College for its generous support of this research.
2. Ellen Ross, Love and Toil: Motherhood in Outcast London, 1870–1918 (Oxford
University Press, 1993), 193; Julie-Marie Strange, Death, Grief and Poverty in
Britain, 1870–1914 (Cambridge University Press, 2005), 118–120.
3. Ladies’ Blackwod’s Magazine, as quoted in Notices Historical and Miscellaneous
Concerning Mourning Apparel, &c. in England (London: n.p., 1850), 33.
4. On Wellington’s funeral, see Gerhard Joseph and Herbert F. Tucker, ‘Passing
On: Death’, in Herbert F. Tucker (ed.), A Companion to Victorian Literature
and Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 110–124, here 119; John Wolffe, Great
Deaths: Grieving, Religion, and Nationhood in Victorian and Edwardian Britain
(Oxford University Press, 2000), 28–55. While James Curl and others have
focused on the extravagance of working-class funerals, Julie-Marie Strange
argues that such accounts have been ‘mythologized’ and that ‘the definition
of working-class death custom in terms of social status alone is unhelpful’;
see James Stevens Curl, The Victorian Celebration of Death (Newton Abbot:
David & Charles, 1972); and Strange, Death, Grief and Poverty in Britain, 99.
 Lydia Murdoch 257

5. Deborah Lutz, ‘The Dead Still Among Us: Victorian Secular Relics, Hair
Jewelry, and Death Culture’, Victorian Literature and Culture 39(1) (2011),
127–142; Deborah Lutz, Relics of Death in Victorian Literature and Culture
(Cambridge University Press, 2015).
6. Lutz, ‘Dead Still Among Us’, 132. On the unusual nature of Queen Victoria’s
mourning, see Pat Jalland, Death in the Victorian Family (Oxford University
Press, 1996), 318–121.
7. On the effects of the First World War on mourning, see David Cannadine,
‘War and Death, Grief and Mourning in Modern Britain’, in Joachim Whaley
(ed.), Mirrors of Mortality: Studies in the Social History of Death (New York: St
Martin’s Press, 1981), 187–242. Jay Winter explores how traditionalist modes
of mourning remained influential and took on new meanings during the
First World War. See Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great
War in European Cultural History (Cambridge University Press, 1995).
8. Anthony Wohl, Endangered Lives: Public Health in Victorian Britain
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 11; Jalland, Death in the
Victorian Family, 120.
9. José Harris, Private Lives, Public Spirit: A Social History of Britain, 1870–1914
(Oxford University Press, 1993), 54, quoted in Jalland, Death in the Victorian
Family, 124.
10. M. Jeanne Peterson, Family, Love, and Work in the Lives of Victorian
Gentlewomen (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), 108–115;
Jalland, Death in the Victorian Family, 119–142.
11. Ross, Love and Toil, 189–194; Strange, Death, Grief and Poverty in Britain,
230–62, quotation 261.
12. In The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500–1800 (New York: Harper &
Row, 1977), Lawrence Stone argued that high child mortality rates limited
parental affection for children. Linda A. Pollock was one of the first schol-
ars to challenge this view in Forgotten Children: Parent-Child Relations from
1500 to 1900 (Cambridge University Press, 1983). See also Robert Wood,
Children Remembered: Responses to Untimely Death in the Past (Liverpool Uni-
versity Press, 2006); Anthony Fletcher, Growing Up in England: The Experience
of Childhood, 1600–1914 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 81–93.
13. Leonore Davidoff offers an important exception in her chapter on sibling
death in Thicker than Water: Siblings and Their Relations, 1780–1920 (Oxford
University Press, 2012), 308–334.
14. For an example of children’s post-mortem photographs used for the anti-
vaccinationist cause, see William J. Furnival, Alleged Vaccinal Injuries: Illus-
trated (Stone: William J. Furnival, 1907).
15. Susan J. Matt and Peter N. Stearns, introduction to Doing Emotions History
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014), 1–13, here 5. In making this gen-
eral point, Matt and Stearns are referring specifically to the work of Nicole
Eustace and William Reddy. See Nicole Eustace, Passion is the Gale: Emotion,
Power, and the Coming of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 2008), 11; William M. Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling:
A Framework for the History of Emotions (Cambridge University Press, 2001),
124–125.
16. Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London:
Verso, 2004), xiv–xv.
258 Anti-vaccination and the Politics of Grief for Children

17. Butler, Precarious Life, 30.

18. For general overviews of the history of modern childhood, see e.g. Hugh
Cunningham, Children and Childhood in Western Society since 1500 (London:
Longman, 1995); Peter N. Stearns, Childhood in World History (New York:
Routledge, 2006).
19. Lydia Murdoch, ‘“The Dead and the Living”: Child Death, the Public Mortu-
ary Movement, and the Spaces of Grief and Selfhood in Victorian London’,
Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, special issue on child death
edited by Kathleen Jones, Lydia Murdoch and Tamara Myers (forthcoming,
2015); Lydia Murdoch, ‘“Suppressed Grief”: Mourning the Death of British
Children and the Memory of the 1857 Indian Rebellion’, Journal of British
Studies 51(2) (2012), 364–392.
20. See Susan Pedersen, ‘Anti-Condescensionism’, review of Bodily Matters:
The Anti-Vaccination Movement in England, 1853–1907, by Nadja Durbach
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), London Review of Books 27(17)
(1 September 2005), 7–8.
21. Reddy, Navigation of Feeling, 124, 129.
22. The nation and the State in this sense do not imply established ‘forged’
entities, but rather, in Antoinette Burton’s words, ‘something always in
the process of becoming . . . as an historically pliable ideal always being per-
formed through repetitive and ritualized acts, but never fully achieved’.
Burton is applying the work of Bernard S. Cohn and Greg Dening as well
as Judith Butler; Antoinette Burton, ‘Who Needs the Nation? Interrogating
“British” History’, Journal of Historical Sociology 10(3) (1997), 227–248, here
237, emphasis in original.
23. For a discussion of the emotional cultures of working-class history in the
context of nineteenth-century America, see Thomas C. Buchanan, ‘Class
Sentiments: Putting the Emotion Back in Working-Class History’, Journal of
Social History 48(1) (2014), 72–87.
24. Nadja Durbach, Bodily Matters: The Anti-Vaccination Movement in England,
1853–1907 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005).
25. Durbach, Bodily Matters, 3. Durbach notes that, after 1871, parents who failed
to return their children to the public vaccinator to supply lymph could be
fined 20 shillings.
26. Durbach, Bodily Matters, 43–44.
27. Durbach, Bodily Matters, 190.
28. Durbach, Bodily Matters, 41–47.
29. Mary Hume-Rothery, Women and Doctors: Or, Medical Despotism in England
(Manchester: Abel Heywood & Son, 1871), 16.
30. ‘Our London Letter’, Sheffield & Rotherham Independent (6 August 1884), 2;
‘House of Lords’, The Times (6 August 1884), 6.
31. Jalland, Death in the Victorian Family, 221; Strange, Death, Grief and Poverty in
Britain, 123–124.
32. ‘Death in the Household’, Cassell’s Household Guide: Being a Complete
Encyclopaedia of Domestic and Social Economy, and Forming a Guide to Every
Department of Practical Life, vol. 3 (London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, 1869),
344–346, here 344, quoted in Jalland, Death in the Victorian Family, 221.
33. ‘Our London Letter’.
 Lydia Murdoch 259

34. National Anti-Compulsory Vaccination Reporter (September 1884), 198, quoted

in Durbach, Bodily Matters, 63.
35. ‘Our London Letter’. For other regional reports, see ‘London Correspon-
dence’, Western Times (6 August 1884), 4; ‘A Novel Deputation’, Lancaster
Gazette and General Advertiser for Lancashire, Westmorland, and Yorkshire
(9 August 1884); ‘A Sensational Deputation’, Sunderland Daily Echo and
Shipping Gazette (6 August 1884), 3; ‘Correspondence’, Huddersfield Daily
Chronicle (7 August 1884), 3; ‘Anti-Vaccination Demonstration’, Western Mail
(7 August 1884); Dundee Courier & Argus and Northern Warder (8 August 1884);
‘Summary of the Week’s News’, Leicester Chronicle and the Leicester Mercury
(9 August 1884), 3; ‘News in Brief’, York Herald (9 August 1884), 11; ‘Notes of
the Week’, Bury and Norwich Post, and Suffolk Herald (12 August 1884), 3.
36. Dundee Courier & Argus and Northern Warder (8 August 1884).
37. ‘How Parents May Protect Their Offspring from the Dangers and Injuries of
Vaccination’, Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review 1 (April 1879), 14.
38. Mary Hume-Rothery (ed.), 150 Reasons for Disobeying the Vaccination Law, by
Persons Prosecuted under it (Cheltenham: George F. Poole, 1878), 3.
39. Hume-Rothery, 150 Reasons for Disobeying the Vaccination Law, 4.
40. ‘Vaccination-Funeral Ode’, Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review 6 (February
1885), 206.
41. On the Old Liberalism of anti-vaccinationists, see Durbach, Bodily Matters,
69–90.
42. Lydia Murdoch, ‘Carrying the Pox: The Use of Children and Ideals of Child-
hood in Early British and Imperial Campaigns against Smallpox’, Journal of
Social History 48(3) (2015), 511–535.
43. Sandra Stanley Holton, ‘Silk Dresses and Lavender Kid Gloves: The Wayward
Career of Jessie Craigen, Working Suffragist’, Women’s History Review 5(1)
(1996), 129–150. See also Sandra Stanley Holton, ‘A “Strange, Erratic
Genius”: Jessie Craigen, Working Suffragist’, in Suffrage Days: Stories from the
Women’s Suffrage Movement (London: Routledge, 1996), 49–69.
44. Jessie Craigen, as quoted in Holton, ‘Silk Dresses and Lavender Kid Gloves’,
134.
45. ‘Miss Craigen’s Meetings’, Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review 5 (October
1883), 148.
46. ‘The Right Hon. James Stansfeld, M.P.’, Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review
6 (April 1884), 12; ‘Miss Jessie Craigen in Primrose-Hill Park’, Vaccination
Inquirer and Health Review 6 (August 1884), 91.
47. ‘Miss Jessie Craigen in Primrose-Hill Park’.
48. Jessie Craigen, ‘A Peckham Disaster’, Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review 6
(September 1884), 116.
49. Durbach, Bodily Matters, 50.
50. On anti-vaccinationists’ appeal to masculine ideals and nurturing father-
hood, see Durbach, Bodily Matters, 55–60.
51. ‘Mr. Henry Crisp, of Walthamstow’, Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review 6
(October 1884), 131.
52. North Western Gazette, as quoted in ‘Mr. Henry Crisp, of Walthamstow’.
53. ‘Demonstration at Eastbourne’, Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review 6
(January 1885), 193.
260 Anti-vaccination and the Politics of Grief for Children

54. Sussex Daily News, as quoted in ‘Demonstration at Eastbourne’, Vaccination

Inquirer and Health Review 6 (February 1885), 210.
55. Sussex Daily News, as quoted in ‘Demonstration at Eastbourne’, 210.
56. ‘A Procession across London’, Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review 6
(January 1885), 193.
57. ‘Procession across London’.
58. ‘Anti-Vaccination Demonstration’, York Herald (27 December 1884), 8.
59. ‘London Letter’, Sheffield Daily Telegraph (22 December 1884), 2.
60. ‘London Letter’, 2.
61. ‘Procession across London’; Durbach, Bodily Matters, 63.
62. ‘What are We Coming to!’, The Globe (22 December 1884), 1.
63. ‘What are We Coming to!’.
64. ‘What are We Coming to!’.
65. ‘London Letter’, Berrow’s Worcester Journal (27 December 1884), 4.
66. ‘London Letter’, Sheffield Daily Telegraph (22 December 1884), 2.
67. ‘Anti-Vaccination Demonstration at Leicester’, The Times (24 March 1885),
10. Durbach cites estimates of crowds of between 80,000 and 100,000; see
Durbach, Bodily Matters, 51.
68. ‘Evening Meeting’, Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review 7 (April 1885), 6;
‘Conference of Delegates’, Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review 7 (April
1885), 14.
69. ‘Notes of the Month’, Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review 6 (February
1885), 197.
70. ‘The Procession’, Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review 7 (April 1885), 5;
‘The Leicester Demonstration’, Vaccination Inquirer and Health Review 7 (April
1885), 4.
71. ‘Anti-Compulsory Vaccination Demonstration at Leicester’, Daily News
(24 March 1885), 6.
72. ‘The Procession’, 4.
73. ‘The Procession’, 4.
74. ‘The Procession’, 4.
75. ‘Anti-Vaccination Demonstration at Leicester.’
76. ‘Anti-Compulsory Vaccination Demonstration at Leicester.’
77. ‘The Procession’, 5.
Index

aesthetics (and emotions) 111–113 child welfare workers 201–202,

affective failure 18 211–213, 217
Age of Consent Act (1891), India 5, child/wife 36, 42, 49–51
24, 35, 37, 39, 50 children of the minzu 199, 202, 204,
agency 3, 28, 96, 102, 134, 236 217
aggression 96, 102–103, 105, 112, China’s war against Japan (Second
115, 193, 208 Sino–Japanese War) 22,
Allen, Marjory (Lady Allen of 198–202, 204, 207–209, 215
Hurtwood) 105 Christian Endeavour 78, 87–88
American Legion 8, 158–171, 174 Christian mission 6, 17–19, 23–25,
Americanism 159–165, 167–169, 38, 56–72, 77, 79, 85–87, 229
171, 173–174 Christianity 6, 23–24, 44, 62–63, 66,
Anderson, Benedict 163–164 70, 72, 76–89, 229
architecture 1, 27, 95–6, 121 church(es) 17, 24, 65, 78–80, 83, 86,
of hospitals 106–111 88, 104
of schools 111–114 citizenship 7, 101–106, 112, 165,
theory of emotions 97–100 169, 204, 244, 250
Ariès, Philippe 95–96 civilizing (or civilizing mission)
assimilation/assimilatory education 56–57, 63, 67–68, 71–72, 99
24–25 class relations/identity 4, 6, 9, 16,
Atorthi, Premankur 233–235 19–20, 22–23, 26, 28, 45, 59, 66,
77, 79–80, 87–88, 112, 121–123
Bai, G. Sumati 45–51 Clinton, Bill 174
Bhadralok 24, 221–222, 225, 231, collaboration 25, 198, 200, 209
233 colonial masculinity 224, 237
Bildungsroman 36, 41–43, 50 Communist Party 184, 200, 213
Boddice, Rob 25 conflict 2, 28, 36, 100, 106, 143,
Bolívar, Simón 139–140, 144–149, 152–153, 158, 217, 229, 233, 235
152–154 conjugal love 1, 6, 48–49, 51
Bowlby, John 101, 108–110 Craigen, Jessie 247, 250–254
Boys State 8, 27, 159, 161–174 Curtis Commission 109
Brahmos 223, 225–226, 228–229,
232–234 death 9, 35, 40, 42, 46, 61, 81, 178,
bullying 120, 134 206, 229, 231–233, 242–243, 245,
Bushnell, Horace 77 248, 251–252, 254–6
Butler, Judith 244, 254 dependence 16, 20, 233
discipline 3, 7, 24, 65–66, 69, 102,
Charterhouse 122–124, 126–127, 119–126, 128, 134, 145, 149–150,
129–132, 135 189, 204, 210, 215–216, 233, 237,
Child Marriage Restraint Act (1929), 244
India 36, 44, 49 Doddridge, Philip 80
child removal 17 dormitories 7, 68, 71, 119–120,
child rescue 17–18, 29, 203 122–135, 167

261
262 Index

educational dictatorship 193 Fletcher, Reverend Alexander 80

Edwards, Jonathan 80 Free German Youth (FDJ) 179–180,
emotional communities 5, 8, 13, 182–186, 188, 191–192
19–21, 36, 77–79, 84, 87–88, 100, Freud, Anna 102–3
164, 166, 171, 174, 185, 198–205, friendship 49, 121, 131, 135, 164,
211–212, 216–217, 221, 237 181, 186
emotional comportment 20 funerals 21, 242–244, 247–256
emotional crisis 25, 36
emotional education 2–4, 6–8, 10, gang instinct 165
23, 27, 119, 139, 180–182, 192 global history 5, 13–14, 26
emotional enculturation 21 gratitude 21, 24, 81, 145, 169–70,
emotional expectations 4, 16–17, 19, 214
21–22, 25–26, 67, 71, 79–80, grief 1, 8–9, 21, 27, 178, 199, 201,
85–87, 99, 121, 179, 181 205, 209, 212, 216, 242–250,
emotional experience 3, 6, 9, 13, 252–256
19, 21, 69, 101, 108, 110,
120–122, 201, 204–205, 211, 222, happiness 6, 9, 37, 57–63, 69–72,
231, 233 81–82, 84, 111, 115, 181,
emotional formation 5, 10, 12–14, 188–190, 193, 234, 237, 255
19–26, 28–29 hatred 25, 204, 230
emotional frontiers 5, 7, 10, 12, home 1, 6, 8, 17, 22–24, 27, 39–43,
22–26, 28–29, 100 56–63, 67, 69–71, 78–79, 81–83,
emotional labour 19, 64 100–101, 103–104, 106–108, 110,
emotional mobility 21 113–114, 120, 123, 131, 133, 171,
emotional navigation 7, 21–22, 25, 198–199, 201–202, 205–217,
100, 106, 166 225–228, 231, 234, 237
emotional practices 3, 7, 13, 20–21, hope 4, 22–23, 57, 61–62, 178–179,
24, 111, 181, 217, 221, 223–224, 181–182, 185, 190, 206, 216, 228
236–237 hospitals/hospitalization 7, 66, 100,
emotional regimes 5, 7, 20, 27, 35, 106–111, 158, 184
106, 139–140, 142–143, 145,
147–150, 154, 163, 199, 245, 256 imagined communities 163–164
emotional training 22 imperial encounters 21, 23, 26
emotionology 13, 98, 111, 201–202, imperial political agendas 18
205, 213–214, 216–217 independence, Latin America 7,
emotives 5, 96, 167, 192–193, 139–142, 144, 146–148, 151, 154
199 indigenous children/families 6,
Eustace, Nicole 160, 166 17–18, 23–25, 77–78, 144
informal educators/informal
family 1, 8–9, 23, 27, 37–38, 40–42, education 4, 23
44, 50, 58, 62–63, 70, 85–86, 95, innocence/innocent child 3, 9–10,
101, 123, 182, 184, 189, 198–217, 12, 16–20, 26, 51, 59, 66, 179,
221, 223–230, 232–234, 237, 188, 209, 243, 249–250, 252, 255
242–243 intentionality 21
fatherhood 24, 221–225, 231, 237, Inuit children 24
251
First Nations 24 Jesuits 141
First World War 27, 82–83, 161, jolliness 21, 163, 180–181, 183, 185,
164–165, 167 188–189
 Index 263

joy 1, 6, 8, 21–22, 43, 57, 59–62, 72, parent–child relationships 17, 70,
81–84, 87, 105, 131, 163, 222–224, 235–236
180–186, 188–190, 192–193, parental rights 251–2
230–232, 249 patriotic emotions 140, 154,
juvenile delinquency 72, 172 158–166, 168, 174, 181–182
philanthropy 56, 59, 66
keenness 62, 66–67, 71–72 Pillay, A.P. 44–51
Platt Committee 106–110
labour 8, 58, 65, 201, 204–205, play 60, 76–77, 102–106, 170, 210,
211–212, 215–216, 231, 244, 227, 230–231, 235, 244
246 playgrounds 7, 22, 99–100, 102–106,
labour education 211 213
Lancing College 122–123, 126, political ideology 21, 68, 154, 179,
128–129, 131, 133, 135 184, 207–209
love 1, 6, 16–18, 20, 27, 35–37, preparedness 165, 167
44–46, 48–49, 51, 57–58, 62, programme of feeling 21
64–65, 70–72, 81–87, 102–104, propaganda 8, 159, 198, 200–202,
144, 147, 170, 186, 193 209, 216
loyalty 8, 22, 28, 57, 64, 71–72, 85, Protestantism 6, 18, 23–24, 72,
140, 143, 158–159, 161–162, 165, 76–89, 246
167, 199–201, 203, 205, 213 public school 1, 7, 119–135

racial hierarchies 6, 19
Majumdar, Leela 234–235
Ratanbai 36, 38–45, 50
malleability 3, 10, 12, 19, 21, 57, 72,
Reddy, William M. 20, 100, 140, 192,
112, 179
236, 245
masturbation 46–48
relationships 2, 9, 17, 20–21, 28, 63,
material culture 2, 120, 242
101, 121, 125–126, 166–167, 171,
Metis 24
192
monitorial system of
republican education 27, 139, 141,
education/monitorial schools
144–145, 147–148
144, 149–156
residential schools 24–25
mourning see grief
Rodríguez, Simón 147–148
Rosenwein, Barbara 20–21, 79, 100,
nation-building 28, 199, 201, 208, 105, 164, 192
212, 217
national consciousness 205 Santander, Francisco de Paula 146,
Nationalist government (China) 163, 153
199–200 schools 4, 7, 19, 22–27, 38, 40–42,
newspapers (youth produced) 63, 66, 68, 70–72, 96, 98–99, 101,
166–167 111–114
Nikambe, Shevantibai 38–40, 42–45 Second World War 1, 7, 21, 26, 65,
102, 111
orphanage 22–3 sensualism/sensualistic theories 142
orphans 8–9, 22, 24, 178, 198–217, sentimental child/childhood 12,
249 19, 29
sermons, children’s 1, 79–82, 84–85
pain 18, 21, 60, 62, 70, 108, 231 service 57, 64–65, 72, 86, 158, 161,
Paneth, Marie 102–104, 106 164, 167
264 Index

settler societies 17, 19, 24, 77 Tagore, Debendranath 225–232, 234

sex 35, 38, 45–51, 125–129, 134 Tagore, Rabindranath 225–235
sex education 37, 44, 46, 49–50 Tagore, Rathindranath 227, 230–233
sex instinct 47–48, 51 Tagore, Satyendranath 225–226, 230
shame 24–25, 41, 126, 141, 253 Thälmann Pionier Organization 179
silencing 28 transnational settings 23
singing, collective 181–183,
190–193, 199, 207, 209 unity of sentiment 147, 151, 154
universality 6, 17, 19, 36, 47
Sino–Japanese War (Second)
see China’s war against Japan
vaccination 242, 245–256
smallpox 242, 245
violence 102–106, 119, 127, 134,
socialist utopia 180–181, 188–189,
213, 232
193
Spence, Sir James 108–110
Waddell, Reverend Rutherford 79–85
sports 48, 161, 167, 170, 183, 227, War see First World War; Second
235 World War
St Andrew’s Bible School News 84–86 War of Resistance (China) 198,
St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, 207–208, 216
Dunedin 78–80, 84, 86–88 whiteness 18–19
Stearns, Peter N. 3, 15–16, 98, 179, Winchester College 122–125,
189, 201, 244 128–131, 133
structures of feeling 20
study 124, 131–2 Young Soldiers of the Cross 80,
suffrage 144, 246–248, 250–251, 256 86–87