Magic and Children, Then and Now

[steepholm]

Back in the day, magical children didn't exist in children's literature. Nesbit, for example, wrote about children who got involved with magical creatures or objects, but while those creatures or objects might lend them magic for a limited time, for example by granting wishes, the children themselves were sturdily ordinary. That, as far as I can see, was typical: children might encounter magic users - from Molesworth's cuckoo clock to Puck, to Cole Hawlings, to Merlin - and they might get temporary magical powers as a result (often to regret it), but they weren't themselves presented as magical.

Then something changed. In the second half of the twentieth century, and particularly post 1970, we begin to meet children who are intrinsically magical. Ged. Will Stanton. Mildred Hubble. The Chants (Christopher and Laura). Buffy. Harry Potter. Percy Jackson.

First, is this even true? It's top-of-the-head stuff, and there may be many counter-examples I've not yet thought of. I suspect things are fuzzier in humorous texts, and in ones set in secondary worlds. (I'm wondering about Dorothy, for example.) But if there is any truth to it is it significant, and if so, of what? Does it reflect changing views of children and childhood? The rise of superhero comics? Different attitudes to magic itself?

Comments

[vschanoes.livejournal.com]

I don't think this necessarily works. Think about George MacDonald with At the Back of the North Wind and The Princess and the Goblin. Diamond and Irene are both pretty magical, particularly if we include the special, intrinsically virtuous child that shows up in so much Victorian literature as part of their magic. And The Water Babies--Tom is pretty much magical by definition, having been tuned into a water baby after his death.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Are Irene and Diamond magical? It's a while since I read those books, and I have no memory of it, but I may be wrong. I don't think being intensely virtuous counts as magical in itself.

Tom's an interesting case, but having seen heleninwales's point (below) I'd be inclined to say that turning into a water baby is something that happens to him, like an enchantment, rather than something that stems from his magical nature. And of course, as with her example of the Light Princess, he's returned to "normal" at the end.

These are interesting counter-examples, though: I think I'm going to have define my terms more carefully.

[vschanoes.livejournal.com]

Well, that virtue is bound up with being spiritually able to access the magic, though.

Diamond is certainly special in some way, and Irene can see her grandmother when nobody else can. That has to do with the power of belief in the latter case, but as it is a quality intrinsic to the child that causes a person/place to materialize that is unable to be seen...I think it's a pretty fuzzy line.

It occurs to me that to be specific, what you're looking at is the rise of the child as mage.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

It occurs to me that to be specific, what you're looking at is the rise of the child as mage.

Yes, that may be a better formulation.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

George MacDonald had magical children and teenagers in his fairytales, though I think all of them started out ordinary and then became magical due to a witch's curse or exposure to magic. That may be splitting hairs, though. The most clear-cut magical kid is the eponymous girl in "The Light Princess," who has no emotional or physical gravity. But Moss and Tangle from "The Golden Key" seem imbued with magic, as much as the people they meet on their journeys; they never return to a non-magical state.

There's also Frank Baum. Dorothy isn't magical, but Tip/Glinda is.

Ursula Le Guin may have created the archetype of the student wizard, though.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I don't know 'The Golden Key' - I'll have to seek it out!

Tip is Tip because of yet another curse, I think, before she becomes Osma - but yes, pretty magical thereafter!

As for pre-Ged student wizards, there's Goethe's sorcerer's apprentice, I suppose - if that counts as being for children? - but there magic seems to be a matter of saying spells in the right order (or the wrong one) rather than inborn magical talent.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

You are in for a treat! "The Golden Key" is lovely. There's some random moralizing early on, and then it becomes this gorgeous allegorical life's journey.

I first read it when I was ten or so, and ever since then, one passage has come into my mind whenever I've had to make an important decision that's difficult or painful. I don't want to spoil it for you, but it's when Tangle is standing in front of a deep, dark hole in the ground.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I'll watch out for that! I think I came to MacDonald from the wrong end: the first book I read was Phantastes, following the breadcrumb trail left by C. S. Lewis, and I've been catching up with his work for children ever since, not very systematically.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Will have to think about this, but you could be on to something. You previously had children who were enchanted in some way -- I'm thinking of George MacDonald's Light Princess, but that was the fairy tale magic of being enchanted by a malevolent magic user. And of course she was unenchanted at the end.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Yes, I don't think being on the butt-end of an enchantment makes you magical any more than being granted a wish does.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

First I'd like to know about how child readers see the different kinds. Dorothy was ordinary and went to a very interesting magical world; the Phoenix and the Psammead were interesting magical creatures. Don't some of the 'magical children' kind keep them in this world, using their single magic talent to deal with rather mundane things?

Do the Chants and Harry Potter really count, since they are joining a magic caste in a world different from ours?

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I too would like to know how child readers see it. I'm not sure how to find out, but it's something to consider.

I mention Dorothy because I'm not sure (not having read all the books) whether she gains magical powers or not, but I'm sure there are those on my friends list who would know (sartorias?).

The children who find the Phoenix and Psammead aren't magical in themselves: they just have the temporary use of magical objects and creatures.

It's true that the Chants and HP are joining a magical caste (as are Will Stanton and Percy Jackson) although I would say that only Christopher Chant is doing it in a world different from ours. Discovering you're a member of a magical caste is a very common trope, now - but are there any examples of it prior to, say, 1965?

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

The children who find the Phoenix and Psammead aren't magical in themselves: they just have the temporary use of magical objects and creatures.

That was my insufficiently-unpacked point. Ordinary children encounter surprising colorful wild interesting uncontrollable stuff (whether they go to Oz or the Phoenix etc come to our world, or their own temporary powers cause fumbles as in Nesbit/Eager). I'm not sure if a magical child in our world gets much of that.

I expect stories about discovering one's own talent would have a different feel, for me, perhaps requiring a more serious, ominous situation to balance a possible Mary Sue effect. -- Hm. But now I'm thinking of Telzey.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I expect stories about discovering one's own talent would have a different feel, for me, perhaps requiring a more serious, ominous situation to balance a possible Mary Sue effect.

Interesting point - especially as the rise of the magical child has largely coincided with the rise of apocalyptic fantasy, at least in books set in our world, where magic isn't a taken-for-granted fact of life. Voldemort or the Dark or the Hellmouth or what/whoever threatens the universe and must be stopped. Sometimes the threat is more personal (e.g. in The Changeover), but it's seldom just about larks. (Maybe the Armitage family would be an exception to that, though?)

[sovay]

Interesting point - especially as the rise of the magical child has largely coincided with the rise of apocalyptic fantasy, at least in books set in our world, where magic isn't a taken-for-granted fact of life.

Where would you place the science fiction novel Children of the Atom (1953) by Wilmar H. Shiras, which explicitly posits a school full of brilliant mutant children brought together by a child psychologist after discovering that one of his awkward quiet patients is actually a supergenius? It differs from other evolutionary-leap fiction like Slan in that it's either present-day of its novel or very near future and from later series like X-Men in that none of the children are paranormally gifted, only preternaturally intelligent. But it's the same kind of discovery of you may be strange, but you are not alone, there are others like you, you can find community you seem to be talking about sideways with the realization that you-the-protagonist are the next Chrestomanci, the next Slayer, the last of the Old Ones, one more child of the sea-god. It's not just discovering you're magical. It's discovering that what sets you apart from the children around you—from your own family, even—links you with another group of children (or adults) somewhere, either to your horror or your delight.

[edit] "Apocalyptic fantasy" is what made me think of it: I flashed on post-apocalyptic science fiction and then backtracked. Children of the Atom is not set after a nuclear devastation, but I believe the protagonists are all the children of workers exposed to lethal doses of radiation in a kind of Three Mile Island incident two decades early.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I don't know Children of the Atom, and indeed I don't know much about SF in general, but I may have mentioned my love of The Chrysalids here, which ticks all of those boxes except the "present-day of its novel" one. Of course, Wyndham wrote a present-day version too, in The Midwich Cuckoos, only there the step-ahead children are seen as evil. Those two novels are nicely complementary, really! But neither involves presented-as-such magic.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

especially as the rise of the magical child has largely coincided with the rise of apocalyptic fantasy, at least in books set in our world[....]

Well, the dark threat wouldn't have to be world-threatening, or even UK threatening (Voldemart). The magical child alone can be threatened, by our normal society -- iconically in the Witch Mountain stories, and perhaps in some of Henderson's "The People" stories or the . Istr this as a common trope: the alien or mutant or 'witch child' is persecuted for her difference, and must use her special powers to survive by concealing her difference.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

You're right, that's definitely another way it can go - and it feeds into another other popular trope, namely "We can't tell the grown-ups about our powers because they'll a) put us in a circus or b) perform experiments on us". This is all detailed in the Why Children have to Solve the Problem without Adult Help manual (Special Powers Subdivision).

Escape to Witch Mountain was published in 1968, Wiki tells me. I well remember seeing the film in 1975. It was the first time I'd caught the bus to Winchester on my own (we didn't have a cinema in my town). I remember thinking it was marvellous - both film and expedition.

[sovay]

- but are there any examples of it prior to, say, 1965?

Lloyd Alexander's The Book of Three is 1964: Eilonwy is an enchantress in a line of enchantresses. ("It's a family tradition, don't you see? The boys are war-leaders, and the girls are enchantresses.") Whether she eventually abjures it or not, she still begins as intrinsically magical. I do not know if you would not count her, though, because the non-magical Taran is the protagonist and meets her.

If you want an example prior to 1960, I'll see what I've got.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

You get extra points for protagonists, and even more for a this-worldly setting, but I think Eilonwy must count.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Dorothy stays pretty solidly, if not stolidly, Kansas-little-girl (though the illustrations make her rather more glamorous) throughout the series, IIRC. The only magic she effects is through the use of wishing belts and the like.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Dorothy remains "the sweet, simple little girl she was in Kansas" (or words to that effect) all through the series. She just happens to be the lover best friend of a powerful fairy princess and "Girl Ruler", so she gets all the perks.

[vschanoes.livejournal.com]

You know whom I completely forgot? Peter Pan.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Excellent point. Yes, he really seems to have "gone native" with magic a big way, to the extent that he barely seems to be treated as a real boy at all, but he clearly is, or was.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I've been away for a couple of days and so couldn't respond, but I also wanted to chime in with the suggestion of Peter Pan. Perhaps he was, if not the first of the magical children, certainly one of the first?

But there definitely has been an increase in "specialness" as a defining characteristic of the young protagonist. What is more, the story is more likely to revolve around them and their specialness. In the past, the young protagonist was more likely to be a kind of young everyman who got caught up in a larger adventure and played a small part in it.

Last year I had to write a final assignment about Patrick Ness's Chaos Walking trilogy (which I hated!), but in the essay I made the point that Todd is, throughout the series, seen as special and hailed as almost saint-like in his ability to influence the evil mayor Prentiss. Todd's specialness is a very vague quality, but it seemed to me that it was the ultimate example of this trope of special child. He wasn't special because had had magical talents, he just was SPESHUL!!!!

[ayelle.livejournal.com]

Hmm. You have me thinking about the enormous impression that Will Stanton made on me when I first read Dark is Rising (and later Bran). I think my fantasy reading up to that point had been characterized by the sturdily ordinary children in magical situations -- Nesbit, Eager, and come to think of it the first book in Cooper's series, "Over Sea Under Stone." It bowled me over to read about a child protagonist as special and magical as Will.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Heh - you and me both.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I think there are magical children in the Water Babies. And the heroine in The Light Princess is certainly magical. Going back further, you have things like the various version of Le Bel Inconnu, in some of which the young hero has, if not out and out magic, better-than-human skills and has often been raised by fairies or other supernatural beings. The latter isn't aimed at a child audience, I guess, but...

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm thinking of children's literature specifically. The question about the Light Princess is, is she actually magical or is she just an ordinary person suffering under a curse put on her by Princess Makemnoit - just as Sleeping Beauty slept a magical sleep not because she had the Power of Protracted Lie-Ins but because of the bad fairy's spell?

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Well, the Light Princess eventually got more or less normalized, but the spell of lightness had been laid on her as a baby, so she 'identified' with it as something she 'was'. And she found it cool and fun, and she showed off spectacularly; so for that part of the story she wasn't the POV character, and was presented unsympathetically, rather like Nesbit's Phoenix or Babylonian queen.

So I wonder if the distinction between "has magic" and "is magic" might be a matter of the attitude of the person. Tip/Ozma is not quite a good example, because though before the restoration he thought of himself as backwoods Tip and was shocked at the idea of being 'restored' to Ozma, still the restoration was a package deal, so to speak, with no succession of cool powers to test. Suppose instead of turning into a fairy girl, Tip found wings unfolding from his back, and become beautiful as the day. Think what one of Nesbit's main characters would have done with that! Test the wings -- and fumble. See a way to use the beauty to get a sibling out of trouble. Even if he was told (and believed) that this was his true nature, what "he was", he'd be fumbling for ways to test and use these powers, just as the Nesbit kids tested and used everything new, and the story would be fun.

Contrariwise, when the Nesbit kids' baby brother got magicked suddenly into university age, his attitude, like the attitude of the Light Princess, was "this is what I am, of course" rather than "this is a spell laid on by something outside." (And, being spectacularly annoying, he was never a POV character.) Again, the difference would be in the attitude, the belief of the person, rather than in the fact of where the magic actually came from.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

That's a really interesting way of reorientating the distinction - between identifying a magical power as part of oneself, and thinking of it as somehow alien to one's essential nature. I shall have to give it some thought...

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Of course the obvious difference is whether the child is familiar with use of the power, or whether it is something new and surprising that he has to experiment with.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I recollect magical children like Pippi Longstocking, and one called Star Child, from the fifties/sixties, but they weren't British.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I don't know Star Child, but yes, Pippi would certainly count (even though she doesn't talk about things in terms of magic, if I recall). Of course, we have Tommy and Annika, our representatives, to keep our feet on the ground.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Another non-British example might be the Little Prince - though I'm not sure whether that's a children's book. I've not been able to stand it at any age: if that's magic they can keep it!

(I'm not sure why I bounced off it so hard, but I did.)

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I bounced pretty hard off it myself.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

There's The Witch Family, by Eleanor Estes, 1960 (a really wonderful book, by the way).

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Another new one - what a boost this is proving to my tbr pile!

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

Going back to the nineteenth century, does Thumbelina count?

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Interesting question. Certainly magical in her origins, anyway. I've always assumed that Andersen invented her in allusion to Tom Thumb, who isn't magical but happens to be born very small (just as Stuart Little happens to be born looking like a mouse), so I've never thought of her as magical, but I think a case could be made.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

In the second half of the twentieth century, and particularly post 1970, we begin to meet children who are intrinsically magical. Ged. Will Stanton. Mildred Hubble. The Chants (Christopher and Laura). Buffy. Harry Potter. Percy Jackson.

The big divide I see between those periods (at least for children's literature involving children using magic in our world), is dark vs light, gloomy vs fun. Later the children who "are magic", have dark dangerous situations to challenge them. In the earlier period, children who had magic had fun (as well as harmless chaos and frustration): Nesbit, Eager, and I hope others I'm forgetting. (Narnia, written mid-century, had various mixtures). Also, the later magic children's "own" powers, which they exercise naturally and can control, are not as spectacular as the magic that comes from outside sources; in the earlier period spectacular magic was from wishes or enchantment, later from evil sources.

Maybe there's a POV problem here. If the story is from the POV of the child, how is she going to regard the magic that "she is"? If the magic comes from outside (whether by magic item or spell cast on her etc etc), then she can be surprised and impressed and see it as cool and awesome and spectacular. But if it's just something that "she is" and always has been, such an attitude would be problematic.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I think in general that's a fair distinction, but I think we might add that the "fun" time was also the time of using magic as a means of moral instruction, not so much with Nesbit, still less Eager, as with the tradition Nesbit was writing out of - and I'm thinking particularly of Mrs Molesworth. Actually, even with Nesbit there's frequently an element of "Be careful what you wish for". You want to be as beautiful as the sun? Fine, but no one will care about you. You want unlimited wealth? Okay, but it'll be as much use to you as it was to Midas.

Your comment also helps bring into focus one of the achievements of Diana Wynne Jones, who did manage to combine magical powers with fun and spectacular magic, and is I think an exception to your general rule. The general rule is still, I think, a sound one.

[gillo]

Nesbit's children mostly have magic thrust upon 'em, or at least offered on a plate. But I'm currently reading Harding's Luck, for the first time in half a century, and there's a bit there in which she explicitly says some children are able to access magic and make use of it, while others can't. Dickie Harding (possibly her only genuinely working-class protagonist?**) lays out a magic symbol, without knowing it, and thus summons magic, but he actually has to take the steps to make it work for him. She also states that Edred and Elfrida, of House of Arden have a similar talent. The children in that case are offered magic by the Mouldiwarp, and use it for a specific quest. That's relatively late Nesbit, 1909.



**Dickie turns out to be a closet aristocrat, but not until he's spent a lot of time as a tramp, learning about the dignity of labour and actually earning enough to support a household and set his tramp friend on the Path of Virtue.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I remembered Mouldiwarp as another magical creature in the Psammead line, but I'd forgotten that she says only some children have the capability to use magic - interesting!